Authors: Asra Nomani
I considered these rules some of the most imposing restrictions on a woman's right to self-determination. I knew the power of unfettered mobility. The year before the women's protest drive in Saudi Arabia, I had scrambled through my Chicago apartment to find my driver's license, lost in one of my pants pockets. That was the summer when United Airlines flight 232 crashed in a cornfield outside Sioux City, Iowa, killing 112 people. My editor at the
Wall Street Journal
had dispatched me, the cub airline reporter, to report from the scene, my first reporting assignment in the field. I had to fly to Omaha, Nebraska, to rent a car and drive Interstate 29 north to Sioux City. Breathing a deep sigh of relief when I found my driver's license, I bolted out the door to go do my job. My driver's license empowered me as a professional journalist and as a woman.
I could never have asserted myself in Saudi Arabia as I'd done in America. By law, Saudi women aren't allowed to go out in public or outside
the country without a male chaperone. To me, this was unconscionable in a religion that sprang from the courage of a woman who lived alone in Mecca. Hajar certainly had no male chaperone. The U.S. State Department on its website warns travelers that a married woman residing with a Saudi husband can't leave the country or have her children leave Saudi Arabia without her husband's permission, even if the woman or her children are U.S. citizens. The husband, as the family's sponsor, is the only one who can request an exit visa. In most of the country women can't go out without being covered from head to toe in black. The State Department even advises women not to wear pants. As pilgrims, we were excused from wearing the fully veiled nikab but were advised not to walk in public without a male escort.
The night slipped into the early morning, and Shibli awakened with the azan, the call for prayer. It was a magical moment as the nighttime flock of ababeel gave way to the morning's birds. A few dark clouds hung in the air. A row of Indonesian women in lacy white hijab stood nearby. They caught sight of Shibli and smiled. A woman prayed from her wheelchair. With Shibli awake in my arms, I couldn't join the prayers. Men and women were standing shoulder to shoulder, leaving no place to lay Shibli down. I stood alone as this sea of Muslims stood, bent, and prostrated in unison. After the prayers had ended, a Turkish woman living in Germany put a shimmering brown scarf in front of me to pray upon. I looked at Shibli, wondering how I would pray with him. “I will hold him,” the Turkish woman offered.
I hesitated. What if she ran away with him? I yielded to faith and put Shibli carefully in her arms. I prayed, greeting the angels on both my shoulders with the conclusion of my prayer. I turned to find Shibli nestled in the Turkish woman's arms. He was safe. I eased him back into my arms. By then, my family had found me. As we left the Turkish woman purred with a sound that Shibli appreciated. I was struck by the universal sound of love. A man from Indonesia stopped to play with Shibli. “As-salaam alaykum!” he said loudly and warmly. Shibli looked warmly into his eyes. The man and his wife missed their son, whom they had left at home to do the pilgrimage. She played with Shibli too. I was struck by the friendliness with which pilgrims, even male pilgrims, greeted us. There were few formalities and barriers. As I left I had a warm feeling of acceptance and freedom. My father and Samir headed back downstairs to retrieve our sandals. My mother, Safiyyah, Shibli, and I boldly did the unthinkable. We headed home alone to room 708 of the Sheraton without our requisite chaperone.
MECCA
âWhen I looked at the forgotten history of Islam, I saw the legacy of women who had to stand very much alone in the world, starting with the mother of the prophet of Islam.
The prophet was born in the year 570 in Mecca and named Muhammad ibn Abdullah, or “Muhammad, son of Abdullah.” His parents had married not long before, but his father didn't see his son into the world. A merchant, he died just days before his son's birth on a trading excursion. Interestingly, Muhammad's father's name, Abdullah, meant “servant of Allah,” after the pagan deity with that name at that time in pre-Islamic history. Although the history books don't cast her this way, his mother, Amina, entered motherhood as a single mother. I had always heard this story, but it took on special meaning for me after I took my own son through the city of the prophet's birth. I knew well the fears and dashed hopes of a mother bringing a child into the world alone, no matter what the circumstances. At a time when I was looking for strength from women in my religion, I found a strong woman right at the birth of Islamic history, namely, Muhammad's mother.
For reasons that aren't explained, Muhammad's mother died when he was six years old. Historians don't speak much about her life or her influence on her son. The Qur'an doesn't mention her by name. But having seen through my own eyes the immense influence of a mother on a child in the early years, I can't help but think that she must have had a profound influence on the man he grew up to be. Much as my son went to my father's home while I worked, Muhammad went to his maternal grandfather's home after his mother's death. Sadly, his grandfather died three years later, and Muhammad, at about the age of my nephew, Samir, was then sent to live with his paternal uncle, a struggling trader. The family, the Hashmi, were merchants; though not rich, they belonged to the tribe, the Quraysh, that had sprung from the people who had found Hajar and her son Ishmael in the desert generations earlier. They were now the leading trading tribe of Mecca.
The young boy traveled with his uncle on caravans throughout the Middle East. When his uncle's tottering business finally failed a few years later, Muhammad returned to Mecca, where he became a lowly goat herder. Sometime later, Khadijah, a prosperous woman who led a trading empire, was looking for a man to lead her caravan to Syria. I always thought of her as Leona Helmsley without the mean streak or the IRS problems. Muhammad's uncle got him the job.
Mecca was a rich city, but this wealth had a dark side. There was a great divide in Mecca between the rich and the poor, an underclass of slaves and hirelings, and rigid class barriers. A loose council of elders from the well-to-do families ruled the city and tried to enforce law and order, but they spent a lot of time fighting among themselves. In that culture, Muhammad came to be known as an honest broker.
Islamic historians say Khadijah respected the virtue of her young employee and proposed marriage to him. Muhammad was twenty-five and single. Khadijah was forty and a widow. She had no fear about making the first move, however, and he had no fear of a working woman who was more successful than himself. On the most intimate level, Khadijah chose her lover. She was a woman who had ownership over her heart and body. That ancient proposal is the first example we have in the Muslim world of the right of women to self-determination in matters of love. With his acceptance of the proposal, Muhammad blessed this notion. In contrast, I've read Pakistani newspapers filled with accounts of the horrors of fathers, uncles, and brothers throwing acid on the faces of women in their families who acted as independently as Khadijah. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in 2003 nonprofit groups in one of Pakistan's largest cities, Rawalpindi, said they recorded up to five thousand cases of women being burned alive, often for claiming their rights, by their husbands or in-laws over the previous five years.
I truly came to admire Khadijah when I read
Nine Parts of Desire
by Geraldine Brooks, my former colleague at the
Wall Street Journal
. Geraldine cites a saying around the time of the prophet Muhammad that women have responsibility for nine parts of desire and men responsibility for only one part. She speaks of Khadijah as the prophet Muhammad's “boss.” I had never thought of their relationship that way before. Muhammad and Khadijah would have at least six children, of whom only four daughters survived. He married no other woman while she was alive, though he did take multiple wives later.
Khadijah was a key figure in the prophet Muhammad's success. Mecca was a decadent and unruly place, but Muhammad had a reflective personality and Khadijah gave him the space to express it. Beginning in his early thirties, he often ventured out of town to meditate in a cave atop a small mountain called Mount Hira, or Jabal al-Noor, “Mountain of Light.” At the age of forty, he experienced a transformative moment. On the seventeenth night of the month of Ramadan in the year 610, he ascended to his cave to pray, fast, and meditate, as he had grown accustomed to doing every year during that month. He was worried that year about the
spiritual emptiness that had crept into the business culture of his tribe, the Quraysh. While worshiping the high god named al-Lah, meaning “the God,” they threw their wealth at the worship of many gods. Pilgrims swept through Mecca every year to worship trees, stones, and wells inhabited by powerful spirits. Consistent with the roots of many religions, most of those spirits had one thing in common: they were female.
By that time in history, monotheism was alive and robust. Judaism and Christianity had been around for centuries. Jews and Christians lived freely in Mecca, doing business with the people of the Quraysh tribe and the rest of present-day Saudi Arabia, and they often mocked the Quraysh for not having a prophet or divinely ordained path.
That night Muhammad awakened to hear words spilling from his mouth. Those words were the first chapter of the book that would become the Qur'an. It is said that the angel Jibril appeared to Muhammad and told him to preach to the people about Allah, the one and only true God. Gabriel told him that he was chosen to be the last prophet of God. Fear gripped Muhammad. He responded with the age-old remedy: flight.
He ran home and hid under his bed sheets. The next day Khadijahânot afraidâtook her husband to meet her aged, blind cousin, Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a Christian man who knew how to read and write. Waraqa told him that the angel who had visited him was the same one who had visited Moses and Mary, mother of Jesus. Waraqa told Muhammad he would be a prophet but would be opposed by many. It took a womanâKhadijahâto act clearly, bravely, and wisely enough to encourage Muhammad to venture onto the world stage as a prophet.
And so Islam, its name meaning “surrender,” was born. Its full meaning suggests submitting oneself totally to God. Muhammad's chief message to his people was that “there is no other God but Allah.” He taught a monotheism that challenged the polytheism of the time. Khadijah became the world's first convert to Islam. With her wealth, she provided Muhammad with the material comfort that allowed him to focus on his spiritual practice, meditation, and preaching.
In one respect Khadijah was not unusual: working women were an integral part of the earliest history of Islam. I was stunned when I read about their contributions to early Muslim history. They were fully engaged in society. A Muslim woman named Samra bint Nahik al-Asadiyya cracked a mean whip that she literally kept with her as she carried out her job in the market as a
muhtasib
, a market inspector who made sure people had ethical business dealings. The divorced aunt of a man by the name of Jabir ibn Abdullah left her house to get some of her date palms harvested
and sold. Someone tried to stop her, claiming she wasn't allowed out during the period of
iddah
, the time a woman is supposed to wait to remarry after being widowed or divorced. She went to the prophet for a verdict. He told her: “You go out and get the dates harvested (and sold) so that you may be able to do some other good work.” Muslim women supported their households. The wife of a famous scholar, Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, told the prophet that the family's only income came from her handicraft work. “I am a woman engaged in handicraft (on which we survive), but my husband and son have nothing,” she said, sharing with him her life as a working woman. Muhammad didn't admonish her.
After Muhammad recited the verses on women and men living modestly, Umar, a leading companion of the prophet's at the time, saw a woman named Saudah leaving her home. He stopped her and admonished her for not covering her hair. She continued anyway but told the prophet about the scolding when she returned home. He listened and responded, “Undoubtedly, Allah has permitted you to go out to fulfill your needs.” The prophet even encouraged women to work. Qilah, a
sahabiah
, or female companion of the prophet's, came to Muhammad to ask various questions on business practice and said, “I am a woman who purchases goods and sells.” His acceptance of her was an affirmation of women working outside the home.
Even after the prophet's death, there were reports of women who made their livelihood in business. When Umar served as caliph, or leader of the Muslim community, a woman named Asma' bint Makhzumah used to sell perfume imported from Yemen. Another companion of the prophet's once praised the negotiating skills of a woman who bought a big fish at a reasonable price.
On our third day in Saudi Arabia, my family and I stood in the busy street outside the Ka'bah and tried to find the place where Khadijah lived with the prophet. “Khadijah lived here somewhere,” my father said, pointing toward rows of narrow storefronts in front of which a flurry of cars swept by, beeping loudly. With those historical images in our minds, we headed out to the mountain to pay our respects to the place where historians say Muhammad received the revelations that became the Qur'an. On our way, we passed a storefront for Daewoo Motors. At the base of the mountain, next to a Toyota and Mazda dealership, the driver stopped beside signs for GTX and Castrol motor oils. We craned our necks to look in awe at the steep climb that some pilgrims were making to the Cave of Hira, where the prophet used to meditate. As we pulled away the driver told us
that Khadijah used to walk the many miles from Mecca to the cave just to give her husband his meals.
My father listened intently to the driver's story. He was so moved by Khadijah's commitment to the prophet that he started to weep. Safiyyah, Samir, and I exchanged curious and worried looks with each other.
Today Khadijah is remembered at a grave that sits behind a boundary wall in a cemetery in Mecca called Jannat al-Mualla, or “the Cemetery of the Exalted.” It is a magnet to the devout, especially those who respect the power of Khadijah's spirit. It is near the Mosque of the Jinn, where we were told a group of jinn, or “spirits,” came to the prophet Muhammad and listened to him recite a portion of the Qur'an.
We had to be careful how we expressed our respects at Khadijah's grave, which we discovered to be merely an unmarked patch of dirt with small rocks piled on it. On the way to the cemetery we had been given an innocent-looking brochure with a subtle message: “May Allah Accept Your Hajj.” Inside, the brochure spelled out the rules clearly: there were to be no acts of devotion at any graves. The Saudis banned paying homage at graves, and, indeed, the Wahhabi ideology had emerged in part to crush homage given to Sufi saints, a practice that was often carried out at their graves.
“Bebe! Bebe!” a woman with the air of nobility shouted to Shibli as we stood in the hot afternoon sun at Khadijah's grave. She was a pilgrim from Nigeria. We were both there to pay respects to the great lady of Islam. Before setting out that day, the Nigerian pilgrim had wrapped a batik scarf around her head in a covering that seemed almost royal. She sat on a bench and reached out, enfolding Shibli's delicate fingers into her dark hands. As she stood up she towered above us. She took Shibli into her arms and nuzzled him against her bosom. Laying him back into my arms, she ran to catch her bus. As she took her seat I waved good-bye with Shibli in my arms. As she leaned out of the window of her bus I told my new friend that maybe I would visit her one day in Nigeria. We had had an ordinary encounter that lasted only a few minutes, but meeting her was meaningful to me. In embracing Shibli and me, she epitomized, like Khadijah and Mary and Muhammad and Jesus, the true spirit of religion: love and kindness without preconceptions and judgments. It seems to me that we need more of this spirit in the world.
“I'll be expecting you,” she said.
I breathed the air deeply at Khadijah's grave, trying to absorb the great spirit of the woman who had been buried there. My mother, who hadn't
joined us for this pilgrimage to the grave of Khadijah but instead was resting from the night before at the Ka'bah, didn't need to breathe in this powerful woman's spirit. She lived it.