In Hadith #34 of the 40 Hadiths on Social Justice series, Sh. Omar Suleiman discusses gender equity in Islam.
Omar Suleiman – Social Justice – Episode 34 – We Used to Have No Regard for Women
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss various topics related to Islam, including political views on women, racism, and the history of civil rights movement. They share experiences teaching class on the transition from Islam to modernity and the importance of empowerment for women. The conversation also touches on the paradigm shift taking place in women, including the belief that men and women are the twin halves of men and the need for forgiveness. The speakers also discuss the history of women's ownership, including the use of pre-existing rights, and the importance of the Islamic framework for women’s rights.
AI: Summary ©
If the people on the stream can't hear you, then it's too low. The new rule that we have now from the last sort of seminar solo and he was talking to him and voila, so we're getting to the last six seven heads now of the 40 Hadith series. We're not going to finish before Ramadan as I wanted to. But inshallah Tata will finish before I leave for hedge before I leave
slightly before
it's too loud, isn't it? It's way too loud.
So
inshallah we'll we'll have about four helicopters left to do three or four alekos left to do after Ramadan inshallah, which will knock out probably a week after eat. But I do recognize that sometimes there are topics that you that that you know, you want to get in. And as I keep on looking through the topics, I'm like others another topic, there's another topic. So it comes out to like 5060. So we'll see what happens. But I do plan on keeping it as a 40 collection and shortland, covering as much as we can within 40. Just for the sake of staying true to the name.
We've covered a lot of ground, though, if you go back and you look through the topics that we've covered, so far, we've hit on many issues, and I would hope that everyone goes through the notes and goes through, I think we're good, no, we're good. Is it good? No. Yeah, it's good. Good. So I think if everyone goes through the notes and make sure that they cover the entire series, then there's really a reframing of many different issues. Now, some of the more sensitive issues, or the ones that are in popular discourse are harder to discuss within the context of justice, because there's some things that are clear reforms from an Islamic perspective, meaning there is a clear violation.
And it would be recognized even by the American Muslim in the 21st century as a violation of rights are an injustice in the seventh century. And Islam came and did away with that, and no one would dispute that it's not made a reform to a particular problem. And then there are some issues that are more complicated, like racism is not a very complicated one. I would hope, though, to some people it might be.
But you know, that there's a problem. And Islam comes and has a very explicit tradition, anti racist tradition. And that's what made it so popular to many of the liberation movements that have existed, you know, starting with Edward blyden. In Africa in the 18th century and beyond, where people identify Islam as a liberating theology, right. So it's not as a justice based theology. But what happens when there's a discussion about something where what is considered justice is so hotly disputed and debatable. All right. So what happens, for example, I'm going to use the word feminism, when a discussion of feminism takes place, what is liberation of women are their rights. So there's
a clear problem. There are violations of women's rights around the world.
And we would say that Islam has solutions to them. But there are certain ideologies are certain iterations, especially certain iterations, maybe to a greater extent of feminism as it exists that would completely negate that and would actually view what we would view as a reform as Muslims as being regressive. Right? So what happens when you're dealing with new ideologies, and not just new ideologies, but ideologies that are in constant evolution and a religion that's supposed to be timeless? Right? How do you actually reconcile between those two things? It's a very difficult discussion. So I'm going to start this class with a question. And I hope someone gets the right
answer. It'll make me feel really good about the first 34 calipers. All right.
If you could say, if someone asked you, what did Islam do for women, what's the greatest thing that Islam did for women? What would be your response? I want to hear some answers.
Men can answer to
your man you can answer
make them look good.
All right. How old are you?
You don't mind me asking how old are you? Okay, you can tell he's seven okay. Mashallah.
The for everyone on the stream, right?
acknowledge their value.
acknowledge their value in society. Can you be more can you clarify?
Is that the definition of value though?
You're close.
don't finish my helper formula.
Cuz you're mentioning some things I'm supposed to be quoting,
the stream can't hear you. But the answer is correct between both of you, which is the greatest contribution that is not made to women's rights is recognizing the full humanity of a woman, which was revolutionary. That was unheard of, especially in spaces of theology, especially from a theological perspective, in fact, from an Abrahamic perspective, hot debates that would continue on
until modern times, the recognition of a woman's full humanity, a woman's full humanity. Now, before I even go into the details of that I want to share with you on experience I had a few weeks ago. All right, so I was reading this article online. And it was talking about the disproportionate amounts of * for women, excuse me for being blunt, or the you know, how women are portrayed * in movies in Hollywood. And I'm reading the first half of this article, I'm going great. So we're going to talk about the objectification of women and how that's a problem and how this is regressive and how this isn't. Okay. And you know, there it was talking about, particularly in like, ads and
magazines and stuff like that, like even the idea, what are what are the cognitive responses to seeing many women in a picture posing in a certain way, and how that feeds objectification and reading the first half of the article, and I'm going this is fantastic. Except that the second part of the article was that the solution is to put more * men and ads in movies, and to objectify men more often, to you know, settle that equilibrium. I'm sitting there. I'm like, how is this okay? So, Islam is reformed in recognition of the full humanity of a woman would also be a response to that too, right? But no, or most current day iterations of feminism would not tackle that as an issue
that needs to be dealt with, from a feminist paradigm, especially when we're talking about third wave feminism, another experience I'll share with you, I was teaching class Islam in the civil rights movement. Last semester at SMU, I'll be teaching it again this coming semester inshallah. So you might hear me talk about Malcolm X for an hour or three hours. But this is a full class where we go into the full history of Islam in the civil rights movement, biographical and sociological and political, and what that meant, and how theology also accommodated and was accommodated in the civil rights movement. And we're reading this book, and one of the books that we read is women in the
nation, which is a book by Dr. jameela Kareem and Don Murray, Gibson, women in the nation. So she talks about the transition of women from the Nation of Islam, into Sunni Islam and some of the differences, the things that had to be negotiated. If you look at the Nation of Islam, one of their distinctive features, and one of their most attractive features is discipline. Right, a whole lot of discipline, it benefited Malcolm at benefit. I mean, people benefit from that discipline, right? So the uniformity of the nation. And there's a strong emphasis on gender roles in the nation. Okay. And we had this debate in class, and it was women and women that were debating what was written in the
books, because basically, the book has a bunch of different experiences from women that transition between the nation and Sunni Islam as how they viewed empowerment. Did they feel empowered by the nations, the way that the Nation of Islam look that women are treated women? Or did they feel belittled by it? And it was very interesting, because we had that discussion in class. The women in class had very different views. My students had, you know, had a had a very, you know, it was a respectful debate, obviously, everyone was doing it and trying to come to a conclusion. But there were, there was great variation and how empowerment would be viewed. Okay, whether the way that
women in the Nation of Islam were looked at was empowering, or degrading, diminishing. In fact, and I didn't, I didn't watch Beyonce stuff, but I just have a news alert anything about Malcolm X that comes up in academia, I get an alert about it. So apparently, she referenced some sort of clip in one of her performances where Malcolm is talking about in his nation of islam days, this was in this post in 1962, or 1963, where he says, the most disrespected woman in America is the black woman. And he actually says we will kill you for our women. Now that protectiveness could be looked at as belittling to some whereas others could take pride in. And the debate that took place in class was
very fascinating, because what it came down to is that if you look at the socio historical influences, particularly in a Jim Crow era, in the Jim Crow era, black women were so tired of seeing black men and masculine that the empowerment of black men meant the empowerment of the black human being period. So black women, many black women felt empowered and do feel empowered. So the point is, is that
ideology, especially in the modern day where ideology is more fluid than it's ever been, can be very short sighted sometimes, and can be very restricted to one particular socio cultural context. And so the debate about technicalities and what is empowerment versus what is diminishing,
will show that difference. And that's when we're talking about grad students out of,
you know, well to do university so well to do grad students, then what about a woman in Valley Ranch that lives in a 4000? square foot home? versus a woman in, you know, Palestine, in the Gaza?
Alright, that has seven kids and lives in the slums? Are they going to have different views as to what is empowerment? versus what is diminishing? Of course they will, if we can't have that, that, you know, if there are going to be different views within a classroom, to that extent, in the United States, to people that live in the same time, but still have different experiences, then what does that say about two people that live in completely different contexts? Now, what does that say about a woman then? Or how would you compare the view of a woman now or the view of men now, in regards to empowerment versus what's diminishing, to someone that lives in Arabia and the seventh century?
You see the problem here. So we have to first take a step back. And what's the greatest way to deal with the subject first and foremost, the restoration of full humanity, the best way to decide whether a faith tradition was empowering versus diminishing, is to see how women felt with the advent of Islam. In seventh century Arabia, as the revelation was coming, and how the men now viewed women as a result of the revelation of the Quran, and the Sunnah, and we talked about complementarianism, and differential feminism and these types of things in the when we talked about the rights or how rights are conceived of in a marriage in Islamic tradition, we talked about that.
So if you go back to that lecture, we did touch on this subject a bit, but I want to focus on that. So we start off with two things. And there's a paper that was that we wrote a theme called, we used to have no regard for women gender equity in the advent of Islam, so you can actually go through it. There are three papers that I'd recommend or four papers actually on our website, one of them is going to be released next week in sha Allah.
One of them is honor killings by Dr. Jonathan brown looking at honor killings. So when you think honor killings, what do you associate it with, or the average American associates it with not just Muslims, but particularly like brown Muslims, and, you know, a very particular area, right? Whereas the country, which has the most honor killings, per capita is El Salvador. Okay? So how our views have been so skewed in regards to the situation of women around the world. And a lot of times, we ourselves have internalized this idea that Muslims are more backwards in regards to women's rights than any other group of people. Whereas most of the time, these things are regional versus religious
anyway, the you know, the way that women will be treated in a region will usually not differ radically between culture or religion, it's about the region itself. In any case, that's one paper the other paper is the one that I just mentioned, which I'll talk about.
We used to have no regard for women gender equity in the advent of Islam. The other one is why ideological bandwagons fill Islam paper on feminism, why ideological, it's just a primer. Why ideological bandwagons fill in Islam,
or are failing Muslims. And the next one shot was a paper next week that's going to be released, which is examining myths in, in, in Islamic law about women. So examining actually, you know, questions of inheritance and testimony and analysis, domestic violence and these types of things. So actually scrutinizing those myths and how they have come to be viewed as normative and shout lots, Ana, that'll be next week, as I said, but I just mentioned that the most revolutionary thing that Islam did was restoring the full humanity of women. All right, and the best way to decide whether it's an empowering tradition or not, is to look at how women viewed themselves
with the advent of Islam and how men now readjusted their lens in regards to women with the advent of Islam, so you take it from two directions. It first starts off with Ahmed will hapa be allowed Thailand. Now Omar as a very proud
personality, especially prior to Islam, he harshness is what he's known for. He's known for having a domineering personality. And Omar is the one who has this quote, he says,
couldn't afford a Java learner to do denisa. He starts off with this. It's powerful. He says in the days of ignorance, we
used to have no regard for women whatsoever. at the ends of Allah huffy hidden Emma Anza until Allah Subhana Allah revealed about them what he revealed what costs them at a Hunan costume and allotted for them what he allotted. I'm going to say that again, we used to have no regard in the days of ignorance, we used to have no regard for women until Allah revealed about them what he revealed and allotted for them or a portion for them. What he apportions
what is almost prioritize here,
the law or the view of the essential value, the intrinsic value of women starts with that right? And we used to have no regard for them until Allah revealed about them what he revealed, then it comes to the legal aspects of it as well, what a lot a lot did for them, as well. What about women? How did women feel about the tradition? Find a hadith find any situation and our tradition is revealing? Because it takes into consideration the lowest perspective in society, the perspective of a lay person in society these things were not these things were collected in books. And you find Sahaba female companions of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam who felt like Islam diminish them? Or
is it across the board, that women themselves felt empowered by the message of the Prophet sallallahu wasallam. And that's actually a challenge. All right, you can find the tradition where a woman mentioned that she felt like the tradition diminished her as opposed to empowered her, then do so in fact, there's a Hadith, or there's a saying where the women mentioned. And it's authentic, that they said that Allah and His Messenger are more merciful to us than ourselves. Allah and His Messenger are more merciful to us than ourselves. So it starts off with the restoration of humanity. And then it goes to the spirits in which the law, the framework of the law is conceived in the first
place. All right, and then everything is based off of that. So you have to look at the paradigm first, what is the paradigm shift that's taking place with the lens of a man like commonweal hip hop, and also on Santa model, the Allahu taala. And this is a powerful narration where she says to the prophets, I seldom she says, you know, all the verses in the Koran even though when they're praising the believers in the Arabic language, when you say money without singing me nuts, when you say the believing the believers, it means believing men and women, but still, you know, the craving for that specific reward for me not the acknowledgement for the believing women. And when she lodged
the complaint to the prophets lie, some of them she's combing her hair and she hears the revelation that the prophets lie some as mentioned, Revelation has come to him in the meaning of minutes when Muslim you know, with a Muslim mouth, well, Connie, Tina will call Anita and so on so forth and suited as up where Allah mentions the believing men, the believing women, the Muslim men, the Muslim women, the the development, the devout women, the charitable men, the charitable women, those that seek forgiveness from the men, those that seek forgiveness from the women all the way to the end, all these categories. And Allah subhana wa tada has promised for them, their full reward without any
deficiency whatsoever. I forgot to mention the heads, the 40 of these class, I should probably start with ahaadeeth. So what's the Hadith that outlines all of this? How many of you have heard the Hadith? Fear Allah, be conscious of Allah? Well, there'll be sheppy tomorrow, or it's up, be conscious of the punishment of God, even with half a date. Everyone's heard that right.
So the word is shut pietramala. Jeopardy tomorrow is literally if you took a date, and you tore it in half, which was common for people that were trying to conserve people that didn't have enough food, right. There's a famous narration where
a woman came to her and she gave her charity give her three dates. She had two hungry children. She gave both of them a date, and then she was about to eat hers. And then they complained for more. So what did she do? He taught him to, and then she gave it to her two daughters. And when I show it was so touched by that she told the prophets lie. Some of the prophets lie. Some said that Allah has entered her into paradise by that action. That action alone was enough to guarantee that woman paradise, right. So Shakti Tamara, when someone's hungry or when someone's trying to split something or they've got to you split the dating half right? The Prophet sly Salim said,
and Nisa Shaka Korean women are the twin halves of men
use that same language. Women are the twin halves of men. I know because the translation of the Hadith is usually kind of awkward, intimate, intimate, intimate, Lisa schuchart for rigid, that women are the twin halves of men. What that speaking to is essential value and what that's speaking to
His fullness in humanity, and then everything else is viewed within that spirits. So any difference in law, first of all, the default is that legislation and roles and responsibilities, whether hoonah Mr. de de la hinda been modeled for them is like that which is upon them. So the default is that everything even in regards to the law is equal unless specified, otherwise, unless something is specified, a difference is specified, that difference is not specified because of the value of a person being different. You know, because when you say, for example, when you say differential, like in this country, they said separate but equal,
they really mean separate but equal, was Jim Crow separate but equal, was that really a thing? No. And by the way, even non integration, it's still not a thing, there is no equality, okay? They're just more different ways to degrade parts of your population. But doing it in a more sophisticated way, so that people notice it a little bit less, it's not as obvious as the two water fountains being next to each other. All right. So when the law differs, it doesn't differ, or the role or the responsibility does not differ out of
the inherent superiority of one gender over the other. Is that clear? Now, why is it? Why is it revolutionary to recognize the full humanity? So?
You know, I could read off a bunch of quotes from Aristotle. Everyone's heard of Aristotle, right? Aristotle who said, a woman is defective and a misbegotten man. All right, or you could read the literature of the church, the Catholic Church in particular, you could read, Hammurabi law, the oldest laws, right? And how those conceived of women and what that meant from a legal perspective, so if a man strikes a pregnant woman, thereby causing her to miscarry and die, the assailants daughter shall be put to death and the oldest book of law, all right, you kill the assailant, daughter, because God forbid you actually hold the man accountable. All right. So you can find those
things and you can find,
you know, debates that are taking place even within the Abrahamic corpus, fill now, by the way, so the ninja loss, the ninja laws, for example, in Judaism, Judaism has reformed conservative and Orthodox right? So when a woman is on her menses, does she contaminate utensils that she needs to be isolated? Is she forbidden from she forbidden from supplication? And does she have to atone because the word atonement is used in Leviticus by casting a stone? Or, you know, when she when she finishes or offering,
you know, an atonement for her uncleanliness during her menstruation? So what's the difference between that and
Hades and how those laws are in Islam? Right? So there are debates that take place in there and what that meant from the text and was there a feeling of punishment or degradation? That wasn't about law, but it was about the value of a woman as a whole. And of course, you were just hinting on it's actually the Council of making in the year 585. This is debate about whether or not women had souls. Okay. So you go from
debates about whether a woman is soulless to in economical mirandola. The most noble of you in the sight of God is the one who is most pious and Ulla mentioning at the beginning of the verse in the HELOC inoculum in the Quran once our Jana come she Reuben waka Bella, we created you, from male and female nations and tribes so that you may get to know one another. The most noble of you is the one who's most pious, right? So you go from equality, equity and salvation, the same equality and salvation, equality and reward. Is there any difference in Islam when a man does something or a woman does something in terms of edit in terms of reward in terms of spirituality in terms of taqwa
in terms of Asana, you know, faith and excellence in all of these different types of things? No, that's revolutionary. That was something the recognition of that full humanity. So recognizing that Islam was born into that world as a whole. And then also it's important to recognize where the derogatory law comes from. All right, so, obviously, we know that in the Arab world, the poorer tribes, they used to bury their daughters alive. It was a common practice. Okay, well, either Buddha too soon, to be even been putting that right. So a lot condemns the practice of burying the girl alive. But then a lot goes back a lot also mentions what what either Bushido has a home bill,
when one of you is given the good news of a daughter,
you know, one of whom was swept under
the column that a person's face is covered with darkness and they're embarrassed and ashamed. Like, wait, that before you get to the burying her, you've already buried her value, and that's what that's what allows you as a society to be okay with people very
their daughter's alive and not bat an eyelid at it right that this is something that's become acceptable because of the very way that women were conceived of the marital schemes that existed in the time of the prophets license. Now, this is something I remember what I did
first course in Islam, and the thicker family, and I looked at the book on marital schemes, and I said, Hmm, have all these different names for marital schemes? And I was like, Okay, so I'm guessing this is like monogamy and polygamy.
I'm guessing that's what marital schemes means. Right? When you look at Fitness law, and I opened up and there were 12, jelly 12 marital schemes from the days of ignorance. So for example, the quote of an Ibis that when a man's father would die,
he would be most entitled to his wife. Yes, you heard that right. If he wished he would keep her for himself or hold her until she is ransoms with a bridal gallery, or she dies and takes her wealth, not poverty. Okay. The strange marital schemes of men actually sending their women be intimate with others so that they could have a child from a more noble tribe. And actually enacting contracts around that.
You go from that to the prophets of Allah when he was said, I'm telling a young girl that comes to him and says, My father married me off without my permission. And the prophets lie some saying you have the right to either continue with that marriage or to let it go, that your consent is necessary for the cause. You go from that to a society where it was normal for people to trade wives.
And by the way, I'm not even gonna talk. But I mean, think about where we are right now as a society. And Alright, so things are more differently packaged, but they essentially do the exact same thing. All right. So you look at marital schemes as they existed. And then you look at the the the rights, and the contracts and the necessary obligations, and prerequisites and terminology, just the terminology that surrounded zoas that surrounded marriage as a whole. With the advent of this now,
in Islam, when a the widow has to observe a waiting period, right?
If she punished, she blamed for her husband's death. He looked at as being lower because her husband died in society. I mean, what happens with there? Well, what happened before Islam and jelly it was something called if the lot, it's actually so disgusting. It's hard for me to read it. And because the kids are in the room, I'll actually be a little bit kind, but you can look up if the log, Zainab rhodiola horn has said that when a woman's husband would die, she would be confined to a small dark room, she had done her worst clothes, she would not touch perfume or anything similar until an entire year passed away. Then after the year, she'd come out of the small room, a dungeon basically.
And she would be brought an animal, a donkey, a bird or a lamb.
And she would do if logs with it. If the log is the wiping of the private with them, that was common in their society. And then she would cast it as a sign of her bereavement. Like it was punishment and torture for her.
There in the spirit of their ADA, as described in Islam was described with what out of consideration for the woman
and her well being after husband passes away. Right, so not confining to a dungeon or forcing to cast some sort of stone or to harm yourself. And obviously, it's in that same spirit that you have like Sati. And some places you know, where a woman is widow burning and stuff like that, right? It's in that same idea that you are somehow a curse. You brought a curse upon the family, by your very existence and by your very being. So it's not actually shifting if the load versus what about the way that hate menstruation was viewed the revolutionary rhetoric of the Prophet slice that I'm saying a believer is never impure.
The believer is never impure. Meaning what? That ritual impurity does not mean spiritual impurity, or you're soulless or you're to be punished or you to be, you know, looked down upon and in fact, the Hadeeth in the manisa Chautauqua region comes in the discussion, the long headings that comes in the bottom of a discussion about Genova versus men and women ritual impurity versus men and women in the profits licensing essentially ritual impurity for the men and the woman is the same. Jenna with very slight differences, ritual impurity for the man and the woman is the same. The Prophet sly seldom, you know, if you read some of the Hadith and they just you're like, why was this such a big
deal back then? The Prophet sallallahu wasallam still touching his wife when she was menstruating, still kissing her still showing her kindness still being in the same room was a revolutionary not just for Arabian society, but Abrahamic texts.
Right like that this was because this is an extension looked up, you know, the profit slice that um, is coming in the same revelation as Ibrahim and Moosa and Isa and he's adding him as salaam. So how is it then that a woman is not isolated because that was the practice of added Kitab. The people of the book was that a woman would actually not sleep in the same room and she would be confined to a different room. That was the practice of the People of the Book in Medina. So they were like, wait, so we're different in that regard. The prophets of Allah Harney, who was studying I'm telling, you shall know the law and how when she cried in hajj, because of her ritual impurity and the prophets
lysozyme said, You are not cursed. This is merely something that Allah has given to the daughters of Adam, it is set up. But then who are the daughters of Adam, it is what's revolutionary about not blaming Eve for the mistake of Adam. Because if you look at all the literature that belittled women, from a theological perspective, it used the angle of Daughters of Eve.
So Daughters of evil, evil, right? not inherently evil. Okay? So a lot. So it's
changing the entire conversation about how we look at Adam and Eve, it actually has, if you're going to restore the humanity of a person, you actually need to go back to how humanity starts.
All right. So if the woman is blamed for the action of the man from the start, and that's how it's going to be projected for the rest of history, then that opens the door for blame in the realm of widow in the realm of done if the law, the widow, and all the other things that these are curses and punishments, and what have you. Okay, so it's important to start off from that. And by the way, you know, I do mention this because it's important I talked about the difference between how a woman would view feminism in gym, you know, a black woman and a woman in particular in Jim Crow era in America versus a white woman in 2018. And how feminism would be viewed or third wave feminism are
very particular iteration of feminism would be viewed differently by those two, when you think about
this barbaric treatment of women. As I said, we have to we have to ask ourselves, and this is about reframing the the conversation. And this is going to be a really, it might be a problematic or controversial statement. Are women in the 21st century in America really less objectified than they were in Macau in the seventh century?
The discussion?
Okay, so what is objectification? What is taking away the humanity of a person? And when you look at what happens in some places where prescriptive secularism is because anywhere we're prescriptive secularism has taken over it has become far more oppressive than any religious system in history.
Europe in the 20th century is enough of that. Communism, Nazi ism, Malcolm X calls it American dollar ism is just as bad as European imperialism and all the isms that come were so much more oppressive. And you think about, like if there was someone reading 1400 years later about how in France, a woman wearing a bikini on a beach trying to cover her skin on a beach has to have cops come apprehend her and make her take off her bottini? They might be talking about them in 1400 years, hopefully less than that. The way that we're talking about seven century jehadi. Arabs, you understand? So the importance of reframing the conversation as a whole. And we have to we have to be
willing to do that, that it starts off with the restoration of full humanity plus how ancient is ancient like, are we really talking about these systems that existed back in the day and don't exist anymore? Well, what about 19th and 20th century, England and France, right were
during the reign of Henry the Eighth English parliament, prohibited women from reading the New Testaments, because they were inherently impure, not ritually impure, inherently impure. So women were not allowed to touch the Bible to touch the New Testament, up until the 19th century. And by the way, up until the year 1805, English law permitted a man to sell his wife for as little as six pennies.
When you think about ownership rights and property rights in the United States, and what that looks like, so you know, you can mention how an inheritance law for example, Islam brought inheritance, who was the first religion really theological system period to assign inheritance to women.
But then you ask yourself, Well, how why is it that women inherit half of what men inherit? Isn't that still regressive?
that someone's phone I was about to say someone has a really nice down in Valley Ranch. Not that we don't have great more than eating right.
So if you were to look at that, I forgot my train of thought.
Well as I say, inheritance so for example, the question comes up, why is it that in Islam woman, a woman inherits half of what a man inherits the the average Muslim will respond well, in Islam, the man is obliged to spend on his wife, right? What if I told you that out of 34 scenarios, a woman actually inherits more than a man in 30 out of 34? and throw it in the discussion of Muslim women in discussion of inheritance law? It's not that black and white. So there is an average situation Islam takes into consideration the not just the cultural context, but the individual, the individual situation of people. Okay, and what that means testimony is the same thing. A woman's testimony is
not half of a man's testimony making that statement unqualified is actually factually incorrect. Okay. Because guess what, there are many areas where a woman's testimony is not only to the same effect of a man, but it would actually even be more like in issues of law and breastfeeding and things of that sort. So instead of getting caught up in
these,
these exceptions, not just exceptions, but really the law itself, you go back and you look at how the law is conceived? And is it conceived in a way that truly does be little, demean and diminish? And I would think that you know, and this is where we look at, for example, honor killings. So if you if you open, I'm actually going to do it right now, because it's actually cool. And if you search honor killings in Islam,
to be the first result that comes up if it's not, then he's not doing his job. But if you search honor killings in Islam,
no, it's not the first results.
By Dr. Jonathan brown on European he actually starts off with this situation is Islam is not the cause of honor killings, it's part of the solution. So it gives the scenario that took place. So this part of history, you're unlikely to read or hear about in 1947, in the British colony of Nigeria, because you guys do know Africa was colonized, right? Black Panther didn't teach you guys that did it.
I'm not gonna have a killmonger debate right now. I'm just saying, you guys know Africa was colonized. Right? All right, just making sure 1947 in the British colony of Nigeria, English judges have to overturn what they viewed as the backward ruling of a local shediac courts. You know, just like the show Dr. Cortes we haven't got like 10 of them now. Right? We don't have the same mayor. It's okay. We don't
have to worry about that anymore. A man had been sentenced to death for murder. But the British after mentioned, we don't have Sharia courts in Irving, the British superior courts, the British Superior Court steps in on a Sharia court in Nigeria in 1947. What was the British Superior Court the shittier court
said that this men had to die. Why because that men killed his wife. Okay. The British court overruled the study on a court on the excuse that this was a crime of passion and a crime of passion is not punishable by death. You can actually read this in case law in 1947. In the British colony of Nigeria, where the city on court was trying to prosecute the men to the fullest extent for killing his wife under the excuse that it was an honor killing. And the British Superior Court said no, no, this was a crime of passion. This is excusable. Now, let me come to a conclusion on this. All right, because I do think it's very important. I want to mention this in particular,
Islamic history should not be romanticized, the current state of the Muslim Ummah should not be romanticized. So to just say that Islam helped Muslim women realize their rights in the southern century is not sufficient. Are there legitimate grievances? Yes. And usually when there are legitimate grievances, then there are illegitimate means to exploit or illegitimate agendas that exploit legitimate grievances. All right, so that's going to happen. So obviously, that's why the article about ideological bandwagons is important is that it's not simply enough to deconstruct though that's an important part of it to deconstruct and to show the excesses of certain ideologies
that operate and all the isms that exist and how incoherent they truly are. All right, it's not enough to do that. It's important to speak to legitimate grievances will with the empowering nature of Islam and to actually have that shine through through the son of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasallam. So historical examples of women's rights are not enough. That same spirit of empowerment should be employed by modern day Muslim scholars with an Islamic framework, speaking from truly the Quran and the Sunnah and an appropriate will suit and appropriate framework as we have. And of course, the results did speak for themselves.
You're talking about a generation of the companions because at the end of the day, 40 heads of social justice, we do talk about the paradigm shift. You're talking about a society
where a woman was buried physically after being buried in her value and looked at as an inherent curse. In the same generation, you can produce female Muslim scholars
that could speak with authority to the entire generation of the prophets lie Selim, like our shuttle de la Han Han be recognized as an authority in her field, not just be called the mother of the believers, but could speak as the authority on the authority on jurisprudence. And of course, you can read in that paper about the two women that all muddled the law and who appointed to oversee the marketplace and ensure she felt inside the lid on the Ouija and different women that were elevated in their actual positions in society as a result of the reorienting of how women were viewed in their essential nature. A lot of questions.
No questions great.
Either that means I did a really good job or that means that you guys are afraid to open up any subjects.
Yes.
Feminism