The Difficulty of Being a Modern Muslim Woman
May 18, 2009
by Asma T. Uddin
|This article was originally published on the Muslim Gateway at Patheos. Copyright of this article is held exclusively by Patheos. Contact Patheos directly to acquire permission for republication. Author Asma T. Uddin is Editor-in-Chief of AltMuslimah.com, an online portal that explores gender relations among Muslims from the male and female perspectives, and puts the spotlight on strong, successful Muslim women.
Photo by Chris Schuepp
Growing up Muslim and female in America was, and remains, a tumultous process. While Islam generally is under tremendous scrutiny, there is probably no issue in greater contention than that of gender relations in Islam. With the media constantly spewing out images of oppressed Muslim women and angry Muslim men, the world looks on with both fascination and disgust. The Muslim gender dynamic — supposedly a singular, unchanging construct — has become a spectacle for everyone to gawk at, comment on, and ultimately use to ridicule the larger Muslim community.
But it is not just our neighbors who are gawking: Muslims often find themselves feeling awkward as well, especially as the news becomes stranger and more prevalent. Part of this is about Western Muslim women trying to make sense of supposedly religiously motivated gender oppression, but much of this is about reflecting on our individual spiritual cores — the place where we, in our quiet moments, wonder about our identity vis-a-vis the world, the part of us that cowers under the spotlight.
This self reflection involves quite a bit of confusion, as it is hard to reconcile the heart-wrenching news of oppression with our daily experience of meeting, interacting with, living among — being — strong, confident, successful Muslim women.
Recent news of such gender oppression includes a Saudi judge’s refusal to annul an eight-year old’s marriage to a 47-year-old man. On April 11, a judge from the Saudi city of Onaiza refused for the second time the request of the girl’s mother to annul the marriage. The eight-year old’s father had agreed to the marriage as a way of paying off debt to the man who became her husband. The judge stuck to his earlier ruling, holding that the girl could petition for divorce once she reached puberty. In the meanwhile, the judge ordered that the 47-year-old groom refrain from engaging in sexual relations with the young girl.
Despite the judge’s stated restrictions, the entire scenario disgusts us at our core. Not only has a young girl been bartered in exchange for relief from debt, but her body has been relinquished to a much older man in a position of dominance. To think that she will have free will to petition for divorce several years into this marriage seems cruelly ambivalent at best. Her innocence has been ravaged, and ours has, too.
Accentuating the injustice of this incident is the mobile phone video of a teenage girl being flogged by Taliban fighters, which emerged in early April from the Swat Valley in Pakistan. In the video, a burqua-clad woman lay face down on the ground, with two men holding her arms and feet while a third one in an ominous-looking black turban whipped her repeatedly. As the video shows, after 34 lashes, the woman was led into a stone building. Her crime: she was seen exiting her home with a man not her husband.
The strangeness we see reported on in the larger Muslim world, the spectacles that make the news, are as bizarre to us as they are to anyone else, except perhaps more so because they are blamed on a religion we share with the perpetrators. And we — as Western Muslims — referencing our lived realities, wonder how that can be. Yes, problems exist, but they exist as they do in all communities. And just as problems exist, achievements and successes do too, at a much larger scale than the hardships.
Buried beneath the stories coming out of Saudi Arabia and the newly Talibanized Swat Valley are stories like that of Istanbul’s first female mosque designer, Zeynep Fadillioglu. Fadillioglu is a successful architecht, known for her innovative designs for hotels and bars, and she now has translated her vision — contemporary, edgy — into an utterly beautiful mosque.
Both symbolically and literally, Fadillioglu has taken interpretative control of the religion — its space, its image, its definition. And so have other women, such as those involved in modern-day reinterpretation of Islamic texts, premised in part on the sensitivity to gender differences. The Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity (WISE) is one such effort, based in North America. It aims to develop a global legal council of empowered Muslim women who can speak out with authority and influence on issues relevant to Muslim women. And on an international scale, the Musawah Network of activists, lawyers, scholars, politicians, journalists and bloggers is working to redefine Muslim family law.
WISE and Musawah are efforts envisioned and mobilized by Muslim women and men who come from a background of strength and success. Their life experiences have taught them the fundamental connection between Islam and gender equality. By striving to achieve change in the context of Islamic law, they are acknowledging the favorable role of Islamic law and spirituality in their own lives, and using it as a connection to the people they seek to help.
On a smaller, less dramatic scale, I, too, am working toward a changed gender dynamic in the global Muslim community. Through writing, speaking, and other forms of advocacy, I aim to bring complex gender issues to the fore so that they may be analyzed and their problematic elements addressed. The constant tension between my experiences and those of Muslim women elsewhere in the world provides an ongoing impetus to seek and create change.
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Asma – Thank you for sharing this. As I see it, it’s the underlying patriarchal system of all cultures and mainstream religions that is the problem. Until women are equally represented in positions of power, the gender dynamics and, consequently the system, are not going to really change. I personally have a problem supporting patriarchal religions and speak out against them. I also have a problem with the patriarchal system we live in. One of the changes I have made in myself as a result of this past years election debacle, is to say the word patriarchy out loud when talking about the problems we are having in our country and the world right now. I’m am no longer going to be afraid to name it for what it is just to avoid upsetting others or because I don’t want to deal with uncomfortable feelings. If not now, when? Thank you again for sharing your experience.
“The Muslim gender dynamic — supposedly a singular, unchanging construct — has become a spectacle for everyone to gawk at, comment on, and ultimately use to ridicule the larger Muslim community.”
When a nation such as Saudi Arabia with its wealth and influence doesn’t allow women to drive cars and the vast majority of marriages throughout the Islamic world are arranged and the woman has little to say about, it is rather difficult to avoid controversy and remain free from scuitinty.
Al Qu’ran and the Sunnah are essentially written in stone and I see no means of redress on the inequity set forth, despite the efforts of progress and reform cited above:
An-Nisaa
Ayat 34:
Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband’s) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next), refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance): for Allah is Most High, Great (above you all).
Ayat 15&16:
If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence of four (reliable) witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some (other) way.
If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful.
Ayat 11: Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females…..
What are the positive aspects of being Muslim that would make a woman stay a part of the religion? Instead of trying to change it, why not try to escape it?
Samanthasmom,
I am an atheist but culturally and spiritually I can see the draw of maintaining a connection with one’s religion even after said religion has demonstrated patriarchal qualities. I know people who have had to deal with extreme forms of patriarchy in Judaism, Christianity and Catholicism but have sought and found more liberal and egalitarian sects that they can be a part of.
I’m a skeptic about ANY religion. I tend to dislike them all, including the supposedly crunchy, neopagan “woman-friendly” ones that seem not very much so to me.
So for me, picking any one out of the mix and singling it out is nonsense. I dislike ANY religion out of the gate to be perfectly honest, but I’ve heard waaaaaaay too many Western women with ankle-killing stiletto heels and makeup talk trash about headscarves, which I find preposterous.
I’m also sick and tired of everyone focusing on what women wear. Perhaps someday, people will start talking about new laws being enacted that force Muslim men to shave. I’m not holding my breath, though.
Anyhow, until then, I’m afraid that religion will always get a shrug and noncommital noise from me. Like alcohol, it’s not the cause of misogyny, just the excuse. When men stop WANTING to treat women like garbage, they’ll stop mining excuses for it in religion.
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