Tariq Ramadan – Chronicles of Ramadan #26 Women
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses three traps: understanding the text in the way people are reinterpreted, victimization, and hesitation in addressing women's rights. They emphasize the importance of rebuilding cultural understanding and avoiding victimization. The speaker also emphasizes the need to avoid sacralizing words and reminds people to tell their loved ones the truth.
AI: Summary ©
Peace be with you.
We are talking about the victims and all
the victims,
and in which way we have to repair
what should be repaired in our historical
tradition. And when we come to Islam, we
understand that there is something which is essential
in the way we are dealing with women
because the way our scriptural sources and the
text were interpreted were was very much influenced
by the cultural surrounding at that time, the
environment,
and it was very much based on the
patriarchal
in the way the men were reading the
scriptural sources.
And when you come to the text, you
understand that there are many, many things that
were
misinterpreted
and wrongly
which which has to do with the equal
dignity of men and
women before God and within the society equal
rights for the same competence, the same salary,
for the same,
presence and,
interpersonal
relationships
within the society. They have to get the
same rights, and we have to repair this.
And this is part of
the way we have to come back to
the sources
and to
disentangle
the sources and the scriptural sources from
the cultural constraints and the cultural understanding.
That's important, but at the same time, what
we have to do is to avoid,
3 traps
within this process. The first one is to
understand this as a battle,
a struggle between men and women,
in the name of women's rights,
and that's completely wrong. What we have to
do is to come together to reread the
text, to reinterpret
the text in order
to change the cultural understanding.
This is the first trap, and this is
an important one.
The second one is this kind of victimization.
It's as if because of women,
it's, the victims of discrimination and exploitation
in the patriarchal system.
That as the victims, we have to nurture
the sense, oh, I am a victim and
this is because,
I'm treated in such a way that I
should not or I cannot,
deal with,
my duties as a woman, and this is
something which is wrong and presenting the man
as,
in fact, the one who is oppressing.
And this is wrong because even men are
the victims of the cultural setting, the cultural
environment within which they were educated, and this
has to also to be understood, so we
have to come together to do this. And
the third one is,
the first trap that we have to avoid
is this kind of sacralizing,
what the victims are saying. It's as if
because a woman is complaining. She's always right,
and she's right by definition.
No. That's not true. In your car if
you come to the Quran and you look
at Bilqis, Bilqis is the voice of wisdom,
and she's saying the
truth. But,
the wife of the governor,
in the story of Yusuf is just lying,
and she recognized at the end that she
was lying. So she can say the truth
and she can,
lie at the at the same time
exactly as a man. This is the reality
of our condition,
and this has to be avoided at the
same time. Three traps, that's something which is
essential. Repairing,
and fixing the reality of cultural discrimination
in the name of what the texts are
telling us.
Equal right and equal dignity
before God and within society. Don't forget to
tell the people you love that you love
them. Life is fragile.