Tradicionalista

I was reading through Cosmopolitan earlier this month, I know judge me. Let the judgments fly through. Just for the record, I consider it mindless reading and I don’t read much of it. I know I should pick up quran when I’m bored but trashy magazines are my weakness. As some of you may know…95% of the articles are about how to have sex lol, and every month the titles of the articles don’t differ too much.

Anyway, something caught my eye.

“Fallen New York governor Elliot Spitzer’s penchant for prostitutes has left women everywhere wondering, can men ever be monogamous> “It’s possible but having just one partner is a sacrifice,” says George Weinberg, PhD, author of Why Men Won’t Commit. “Even when a guy adores his wife or girlfriend, the power of desire is really strong. Guys cheat because they want novelty and variety. To them affairs represent freedom. “

Now, I straight up am not an avid supporter of polygamy today, and am against it in the USA for the most part. But I think people have to be less hypocritical when discussing the issue. Whenever a Muslim brings up the issue of male libido as being a defense for polygamy, people tend to jump on that negatively. However, people won’t flinch when they read it from Cosmopolitan, a very liberal magazine. They won’t go around screaming misogynist to Dr. George Weinberg’s comment.

For the record, I think bringing up the point of male desire is dumb for a defense of polygamy. I mean the guy is not getting a stripper, he is getting another wife and eventually family. And if a guy really has great desire I doubt even 4 will do the job. So I don’t think that’s a very good defense of polygamy.

Even though many Arab countries are pretty much secular, in the area of women they go back to being Fred Flinstone.

In Lebanon, women who are income earners cannot go to the \to the bank to open a bank account for her kids. There are 18 family codes.

In this Aljazeera English interview, this Lebanese women talks about how she married an Egyptian man and he left her and her kids are teenagers and they can’t get Lebanese citizenship. Isn’t this outrageous? They have NO health care and no social security and they won’t be able to go to college if they don’t get citizenship.

I am very proud of Morocco, because the nationality law was changed. A woman can now pass on her nationality to her children even if she marries a foreigner yay!. When this law was not in place, women whose husbands abandoned them with kids had many problems and I even know of one that had to forge a Moroccan passport for her son in order ti survive. And we know that Morocco is a country where the women and men alike marry foreigners frequently.

Worse, these women’s groups are subject to harassment by radical political Islamists. In Morocco, they had one of their offices bombed. In Jordan, their websites get hacked and now the website leads people to a website about Saudi Arabia. I don’t know what kind of Islamic law prevents children from basic citizenship rights if their father wasn’t the best of men.

I know this is old news when there was the “historic” jumuah that a woman led. I know it’s way overkill to talk about this. No I don’t support what happened…
But I have to say one of the things that upset me about the Muslim community was the personal attacks that were being made against this woman. People got angry and made many personal attacks against her as a person. That’s not cool. While I don’t support women leading prayers, that’s still not cool.

But my post isn’t about this topic in general. It’s about using what happened as an example of sparking some type of conversation. All too often the most controversial posts on the blogosphere get the most commentary. Then the writer of the blog writes another well written, well thought out better post and it hardly gets any traffic. Why? (This is just general by the way.)

People tend to listen and leave their comments on very controversial posts with radical statements in them. But some excellent well-written posts get ignored because they might be more moderate.

So do we always need to see something extreme to spark discussion? Did Amina Wadud’s jumuah cause just that? If she would have just resorted to some mosque activism about letting women in mosques etc, would that have had the same effect as her radical move? I don’t know what her goal was at all but maybe it was to spark discussion about women in mosques and not have them be imams, but it took something like that to get people talking? Who knows?

A part of me thinks that she might have just added more wood to the fire (echó mas leña al fuego) because this got many Muslims very angry so it was kind of a shooting in the foot.

Do extreme acts make the most difference and spark the most discussion, or do they just aggravate the wound more and make things worse?

hmm. Just thinking and rambling.

By the way check out this great article at by UmmZaid and women and the mosque.

Read this piece of Spoken word poetry performed last yeat by a Muslim woman. Very moving when heard performed:

Here’s the link to the original blog post.

My Spoken Word 

I’m passive, weak, uneducated
Veiled from head to toe
One of his four wives
Work in the kitchen all day
And spread my legs wide at night
That’s what you think, right?
Funny how the devil spreads ignorance amongst a “civilized people”
The Orientalist whispers in so many ears
To him, I’m the mistress of the harem
Black-hair, olive skin, eyes that glow, hips that don’t lie
Hold up
Sexual exploitation- There’s nothing exotic about that
Or
I’m poor, cracked feet that never touched soft designer shoes
Dirty, hungry, cold, alone
I’m calling out for help, America save me from my fathers, my brothers, my backward culture, America–  save me from myself,
Let me tell you something
You don’t have to be a woman to hear my stories
But you have to be a woman to understand them
The blood that boils in my veins is the same as yours
My story is a testament of my struggle
My struggle is a testament of my faith
I am a Muslim woman
Muslim woman.
I made Prophets weak in the knees,
Fought alongside my man in war
Then went home to nurture my baby
Does that surprise you?
You say I need liberation
What do you call it?
Oh yeah…Furthering women’s rights in the Middle East
I have one thing to say to you
My liberation won’t come from the one who has oppressed me
Bringing me democracy
You think you’re really gonna send Condi
to tell me how to be free
But wait, I’m not here to play the blame game
Let’s make this more real
Not only do I take this hate from you
But I take it internally from the close-minded bigots of my own society
So my Muslim father tells me how to dress, but so does BCBG
So my Muslim brothers tell me how to act, but so does MTV
Yea… so it’s this double bind I face
When I realize that if I do what I want,
I won’t make anyone happy
Too good to be bad, too bad to be good
But wait, why this dichotomy
Since when did my identity become a zero sum game
Why do you insist on labeling me?
Putting me in boxes simple and easy only for you to understand
Countless books and movies dedicated to uncovering me instead of just letting me be
What’s in free will when my spiritual will isn’t allowed to be free
Just look at France and Turkey
“Unveiling the Muslim Woman”
Why don’t I unveil your sexist patriarchal ideology
Remember The golden rule—treat others how you’d like to be treated, if you’re so keen to educate then please be educated,
Enslaving not our bodies now but our minds,
Eating disorders and depression, no love and not that much attention
This equality talk is cheap and the price expensive
Using my body to sell everything from cigarettes to automotives,
Confusing my flesh for my spirit
Confusing my humanity as weakness 
When I say something in protest
Standing against trafficking, hunger, poverty, violence, you know “women’s” issues,
they brush it aside to…oh, she’s just a Femi-NAZI
So Don’t confuse my silence as submission
nor my covering for oppression
Don’t confuse my peaceful battle as lack of conviction
When you ask what sustains me
I say: not man, not America, But God, our God
Am I American, Kashmiri, or an ABCD,
On applications, I check none of the above, all of the above, some of the above, but ultimately

I am a Muslim woman.

 Go to the original post.

I was reading this article. It was talking about how things like breast cancer often go untreated in Saudi Arabia, because of the stigma it has in society.

The article says that many women want to avoid being seen by a male doctor,

“One Saudi woman ignored the cancer growing in her breast because she didn’t want to risk a referral to a male doctor. Another was divorced by her husband on the mere suspicion she had the disease, while a third was dragged away from a mammogram machine because the technicians were men.”

Goodness gracious, what is this? I know the press tends to play these things up but still, if they don’t want to go to a male technician that’s fine but are they going to try and find female technicians? I hope so. Besides, I’m no fiqh scholar but I do know that the order of healthcare goes from Muslim female, non-Muslim female, Muslim male, non-Muslim male. (Let me know if that order is wrong.) It doesn’t say if there’s no Muslim female no health care!

However, I think this artcle was trying it’s best to be balanced wa Allahu alim. It told two outstanding stories at the end of it about very supportive Saudi husbands.

“Fawzia al-Zewid, a 45-year-old mother of six, said her husband’s support was overwhelming after she was diagnosed with the disease two years ago. When she began losing her hair, he shaved her hair before shaving his. Her two young sons chose to do the same.

“They didn’t want me to have the only bald head in the house. What more support could you ask for?” said al-Zewid.

Last year her husband died of a heart attack.

“When he was alive, I wasn’t afraid of breast cancer,” she said. “Today, without his support, I am.”"

Al-Amoudi has urged the kingdom’s clergymen to “enlighten the people and take up the issue of women’s health in their sermons.”

Ialso think that we do need to appeal to the male religious leaders to talk and be outspoken about women’s health and how important it is. These are the people that have an influence on the masses.

Here’s a picture of Laura Bush with 2 Saudi doctors.

I read this great article today about how after so much argument, people STILL see the veil as representing oppression etc. I thought that the tagline, “I’m not oppressed, because I choose to dress this way” was repeated way too much, but the author of this article concludes that it’s not repeated enough.

The article is called Unveiling the Veil. Read it. I know articles about hijab get tiring because the subject is soo overdone, but this one is actually well-written. I got to the page and was rolling my eyes before I even started, but it’s actually not too bad.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

“In your typical introduction to women’s studies class, you might spend a few weeks (near the end of the semester) on “women of color.” If you’re lucky, one class period will be devoted to Islam and feminism. You’ll study a typical “liberal” feminist who criticizes the institution of purdah and asserts that it doesn’t allow women freedom. Then you’ll read the Muslim feminist who waxes lyrically about how she doesn’t have to worry about having abs of steel in time for bikini season. She then goes on to conclude that purdah is just fine, as long as it’s the choice of the woman herself.

At this point, everybody in the class is in solemn agreement: It’s not the fabric that’s the issue. It’s the coercion. No one should have to wear either a hijab or a bikini if she doesn’t want to. Class dismissed.”

“Listening to the Piliafas’ story reminded me that maybe Women’s Studies 101 isn’t that cliched after all. Many people still assume that by placing a piece of fabric on my head, I’ve pitched my brains into the dumpster, given my rights away to any male in a 50-mile radius and buried my voice in the backyard.”

Bismillah

This post is about a notable female scholar of hadith during the Mamluk period in Egypt and Damascus.

One thing to note- these women were not anomalies in their time. The fact that women were scholars of hadith (and other things but this period there were a lot of hadith scholars) was a normal thing.

The ijaza system in the studies of hadith allowed children to receive ijazas before they came of age with the understanding that they would study and understand the texts later on in life. Hadith studies was open to everyone because many people could memorize, short and popular collections of hadith. Women excelled so much in this field that men eagerly sought them out as teachers to get ijazas from them. Another reason why the men sought them out was because these women had famous people in their chains of transmission and these men wanted to obtain these famous names in their own chains as well.

Zaynab Bint al Kamal is one example. She was a Hanbali of Damascus.  She transmitted popular and major works such as Sahih al Bukhari, Muslim and the Muwatta and many other little works as well.  Ibn Hajar al Asqalani learned from her. She appears in 139 of Ibn Hajar al Asqalani’s isnads. SubhanAllah.

Ibn Battuta also received ijaza from her In his book, Rihlat Ibn Battuta, he calls her a “traveler of the world” and she is listed a a person that granted him ijaza when he visited Damascus, Syria.

Roster of some more notable students Zaynab bint al Kamal :

• Muhammad b. Ahmad ad-Dhahabi (d. 748 H/137)
• Khalil al Safadi (d. 764 H /1362)
• Taj-ad-Din as-Subki (d. 771 H/1369)

In Sunni Islamic scholarship, hadith has to be one of the most important branches. It is one of the major sources of law and women were at the forefront of its study and women never fabricated ahadith while men did.

This is during a time period when the Western women wouldn’t even imagine being schooled and Muslim women were at the forefront of the science of hadith. Look at the reputation that Muslim women have now. Many Muslim women in Muslim countries are illiterate. It’s sad that we are going backwards instead of forward. Everyone make dua that  Allah makes women come to the forefront of Islamic scholarship again side by side with men. Ameen.

And may He bless all of our wonderful scholars that have transmitted all of this knowledge to us.

Wow, we should all read this. It’s about Muslims and apostasy or near apostasy. It’s called Leaving the Deen.

I was listening to yet another lecture on hijab with Yasir Qadhi and there was nothing very unique about it, it was very dumbed down and simple and it was the usual stuff. But something at the end sort of struck me when he spoke about the *importance* of hijab. He said something to the effect of we shouldn’t put it before everything, like it’s not more important than praying and other things but we’re also not going to say that the way we dress is irrelevant, because it is relevant. It seems like people don’t like to hear that last part. Now before everyone jumps on me, I know and believe that hijab is fard by ijma, there’s no ikhtilaf on at least covering everything but face, hands (and feet? I’m not going to get into this, that is not the point of my post so don’t bother.) I get that.

I just feel like the outward aspect of hijab is so emphasized for some women that once they wear it, they think they’re done and this is a phenomenon that can be pretty damaging. I know many parents that I know of want their daughter to wear at least the headscarf and ignore what type of clothing she wears, so we have so many girls in tight clothing and hijab. These negative things are only coming from us giving an outward symbol more importance than the qualities of modesty and chastity and the type of clothing worn.

We all know that “hijab” was revealed in Medina so the women were already intensely faithful. But we’ve gotten to the point where if a Muslim woman who might come from a non-practicing family shows up to MSA wants to learn more about her deen, the first thing she might be presented with is a headcover or she might be lectured on why hijab is fard. I’ve seen this. (I’ve actually been that girl but alhamdulilah I was born a Muslim and didn’t know much and learned a lot and nobody ever spoke about hijab but I ended up choosing it myself after guess what? learning about my religion) The girl never comes back to MSA. Duh I wouldn’t either. It’s very possible in this day and age that she might not even know basic seerah or some sciences of the Qu’ran and people are lecturing her about hijab as if it’s the criteria. Like Shaykh Hamza says, it’s an obligation but don’t make it a hijab between her and her deen. It can’t be a hijab between her and her deen. That’s so detrimental. If a Muslim boy wanted to learn more would you lecture him about kufis, beards and thobes?

Like Dr. Jackson said: “Social order should not be based on a perfect Muslim.” The Muslim community needs to be more inclusive.

I hear about these MSAs that don’t have any non-hijabi members. Now I understand a lot of them may not be interested in MSA but i can’t believe that about all of them. They complain about MSAs being too condescending and exclusive. That is not the way. Only with God’s grace was I not in a horrible MSA like that, or else I would have ran away from this deen and I seek refuge with Allah.

People come into university very confused and girls and guys come in and are interested in MSA. Those freshman events are pivotal and important. The MSA after all and said is done is a STUDENT organization funded by the UNIVERSITY. It is not a Sunni organiation, it is not a Shia organization it is not a male organization it is not a caliphate it is not the Kingdon of Saudi Arabia. After all, a non Muslim could lawfully be President because it’s student run primarily. I could be president of the Jewish Students Association whether I’d be elected is another story, but the point is these are student clubs so not being inclusive is foolish.

Two women one Man

I took most of my material from Mohamed Fadel’s informative article on the issue and a book by Ibn al Qayyim al Jawziyya.

Does the rule establish a norm? Is it applicable to all cases tried by a court?

Riwaya(narration) and fatwa( non-binding legal opinion) are strictly gender neutral by ijma3(consensus) and so is the interpretation of revelations.

13^th century jurist al Qarafi-

Ibn al Salah- adab al Mufti- “Maleness and freedom are not required of the mufti., just as is the case for the narrator.  A woman could and still can be a legitimate mufti and her legal opinions are just as morally binding as that of males.

A popular opinion among Muslim laypersons and even exegetes is that the verse 2:282 is explained because women are inherently more unreliable than men. However jurists could not accept that because if women are more inherently unreliable than men then how come there are chains of narration of Hadith with only women comprising them? Hadith is something that is surely important in Islam and the preservation and classification of Hadith is significant in Islamic scholarship. If women are intellectually less capable, then surely they would not be able to narrate Hadith. Also, if you look into Hadith history women were NOT fabricators of Hadith while men were, because they wanted some political end.

Aisha bint Abu bakr may God be pleased with her was the most prominent. She issued legal opinions on controversial issues and subsequent scholars would use her opinions to bolster their own.

Even after the death of the first generation of Muslims, women continued to actively participate in the transmission of ahadith and they were also jurists (faqihas)

“… a 10th-century Baghdad-born jurist who traveled through Syria and Egypt, teaching other women; a female scholar — or muhaddithat — in 12th-century Egypt whose male students marveled at her mastery of a “camel load” of texts; and a 15th-century woman who taught Hadith at the Prophet’s grave in Medina, one of the most important spots in Islam. One seventh-century Medina woman who reached the academic rank of jurist issued key fatwas on hajj rituals and commerce; another female jurist living in medieval Aleppo not only issued fatwas but also advised her far more famous husband on how to issue his.” (From the article A Secret History)

Umm al-Darda, a prominent jurist in seventh-century Damascus, is startling. As a young woman, Umm al-Darda used to sit with male scholars in the mosque, talking shop. “I’ve tried to worship Allah in every way,” she wrote, “but I’ve never found a better one than sitting around, debating other scholars.” She went on to teach Hadith and fiqh, or law, at the mosque, and even lectured in the men’s section; her students included the caliph of Damascus.”

Back in the day, women were shapers of Islamic law, now in many places; they are not even considered as someone to consult with about these matters.

Also many women’s names were found on ijazas as being teachers and students of men.

Al-Hattab, a North African jurist of the 16^th century, mentions women in his chain of authorities (isnad). One of them Fatima al Kinani was a jurist who transmitted important works of Maliki jurisprudence.

The Muslim Jurists of the Early Centuries used Social Circumstances to explain verse 2:282

One thing I want to shed light on is that the interpretations of this verse that say that this verse is due to a social circumstance rather than gender bias is NOT new. It is not a modern argument. Many people say that only Muslim modernists say this. However, the early jurists, including Ibn Taymiya also use social circumstances to explain this verse.

The opinions of the jurists are taken prmarily from Mohamed Fadel’s article.

Al Qarafi(prominent Maliki jurist of the 13^th century)- presents a confusing argument

But his 1^st justification is that in 13^th century women were viewed as inferior to men. He also mentions that in the Egyptian society courts had a hard time getting the people to respect their decisions. He also said that the losing party of the court would hold a grudge against the witnesses that testified against them. He says that the wisdom of having two women would lessen the blow and get them to respect the court decision.

His 2^nd justification is back to biology that women are inherently less reliable in matters of memory.

Ibn Al Shatt’s (1323) commentary says that this is a weak argument because if women are inherently less reliable than this deficiency in females would also be present when women narrated Hadith.

The nest jurist is the 15^th century Hanafi Scholar At-Tarablusi-

He basically says that this law was put in place to avoid social corruption and involving women too much in political discourse. So he believes hthat women’s testimony is equal to men but that women shouldn’t testify since that requires leaving the house.

The interesting part is that he doesn’t call into question the reliability of women’s testimony.

Another interesting part is that men’s testimony is not welcome in issues that pertain to females, or issues that socially pertain to females. We also see in the Surah Nur, verses 6-9 that a woman can also testify that she didn’t commit adultery. So the testimony of female witnesses without male witnesses is enough to win a claim if it has to do with breastfeeding or childbirth or pregnancy.

 Now for my favorites ibn taymiyya and ibn al qayyim al Jawziyya:

Ibn al Qayyim al Jawziyya says and I got this from his book:

I can’t type Arabic on this computer sorry I stink at transliteration.

Wa la rayba anna hadihi al hikma fi al ta3dud hiya fi al tahammul fa –amma idha aqalat al amr a wa hafizat wa kanat mimman yuthaq bi diniha fa inna al maqsud hasil bi khabaraiha ka-ma yahsul bi-akhbar al diyanat

So these scholars basically reject the 2 women=1 man rule. They say that women’s testimony is accepted based on what she says and based on whether she is credible and trustworthy in her religion. They make an interesting argument that this verse refers to recording a testimony “for the purpose of protecting a right in the event of a future dispute” rather than testifying before a judge.

Ibn Taymiyya says that this verse is not directed towards judges but it is rather directed towards people involved in a transaction. He says that the verse doesn’t even have any relevance to courtroom proceedings! And if it does have any significance it’s just saying that ruling with two male witnesses is probably the best thing to do probably because of women’s lack of frequent movement.

Finally, people that reject a blanket discrimination of women in testimony are radically breaking from Traditional Islamic Law. The early jurists used a whole lot of social circumstances to explain why there is apparent gender discrimination. This is just preliminary. I still haven’t finished going through Ibn al Qayyim’s material.