Authors: Asra Nomani
As Muslims in America, we are engaging in
jihad li tajdid al-ruh al-Islami
âa struggle for the renewal of the soul of Islam. We aren't trying to change Islam. We are trying to question defective doctrine from a perspective based on the Qur'an, the traditions of the prophet, and
ijtihad
(critical thinking). I was fortunate enough to travel to the heart of Islam through the pilgrimage of the hajj, and I was blessed to come to know the pulse of the true spirit of Islam. As a result, I was prepared to join the quiet tide of reform that is very much under way in U.S. Muslim communities. That movement eschews bigoted, sexist, and intolerant practices that betray Islam, the prophet Muhammad, and all of the good people who call themselves Muslims.
Almost five hundred years ago, Martin Luther became a symbol of religious reform when he posted the “95 theses” on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany, calling for Pope Leo X to eschew traditions adopted by the Catholic Church and return to the essentials of Christianity. The Muslim world's Martina Luthers are currently leading a reform movement based on the principles of the prophet's first community in the seventh century. For instance, four twentysomething women attorneys in Chicago were added to the board of the Downtown Islamic Center when they complained about inadequate facilities for women in a new mosque design, and the website Muslim WakeUp! organizes monthly meetings nationwide for building tolerant inclusive communities. The inspirations for these actions are the women who prayed, spoke, led, studied, and debated in mosques at the time of the prophet Muhammad. When seven Muslim women gathered in Morgantown and marched on the mosque to support women's rights everywhere, they evoked the strength of the historical mother of Islam, Hajar, a single mother who relied on her will and faith to raise her son in the desert where modern-day Mecca now stands.
Within the Muslim world, some critics try to marginalize those of us in the reform movement with personal attacks. But the larger Muslim
community is recognizing that the issue of women's rights is not about one woman or even seven women. Our spiritual membership is vast. In Vancouver, Canada, the political candidate and human rights activist Itrath Syed protested when mosque leaders wouldn't let her address a congregation recently, as they had promised; instead, the imam preached a sermon deriding her. In mosques in Washington, D.C., the community leader Sharifa Alkhateeb removed ceiling-to-floor separations, sat in front of partitions, and prayed in spaces that have been restricted to men before her death in the fall of 2004. At a mosque fund-raiser in Chicago, radiologist Ejaz Rahim cast aside the
RESERVED
sign on a front table set aside for late-arriving men and took a seat. In Sacramento, California, Nasrin Aboobaker helped found the SALAM Center, whose bylaws include the mandate to “empower women.”
Those trying to slow us down need to realize that we are a generation that believes that if change will come tomorrow, we should have it today.
Improving the status of women has been the symbolic expression of broader historical reform. We have model mosques in the United States and Canada that understand that. In Sterling, Virginia, at the ADAMS mosque, women walk through the front door, participate in study circles, serve on the board, and share the same prayer hall as men, separated by only a symbolic partition. Mechanical engineer Uzma Rasheed introduced a martial arts class for women there. In Perrysburg, Ohio, the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo elected Chereefe Kadri, a woman, as its president in 2001. In Toronto, a respected Pakistani Canadian Muslim social worker, Shahina Siddiqui, drafted a report on making mosques “sister-friendly” and raised her voice for women's rights in mosques in an essay in the
National Post
. In support, Muslims widely circulated her column via email. For months the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the civil rights group for Muslims, ignored my pleas for help, saying it didn't get involved in Islamic-Islamic relations. After our march on the mosque, the council circulated Shahina Siddiqui's “sister-friendly” paper with the intention of supporting it.
In Chicago imam Abdul Malik Mujahid added a man's voice to the call for women's rights in mosques in a powerful sermon he delivered in the late summer of 2004. A well-respected leader as president of an Islamic media company, Sound Vision, he estimated that nine mosques out of ten in the Chicago area offer a dearth of leadership roles to women, as well as inadequate space, facilities, and services. In a section of his sermon titled “âMen's Islam' or Islam for All,” he said, “While sisters are a full part of the community, many mosques are run as though Islam is just for men.”
He called for action: “It is time that sisters come together and provide leadership in clearly defining a Muslim women's manifesto for change in mosques in North America.” He proposed that Muslim women in North America start a national women's caucus to bring about three reforms to mosques and community centers: having them publicly state that it is not Islamic to deny women entrance; providing women with space without a barrier and an unobstructed view of the prayer leader; requiring that one-third of board seats be filled by women, one-third by men, and one-third by people born in the United States, allowing for more tolerant attitudes about participation by women. He called for such a caucus to give deadlines to mosques to provide space for women and to convene a meeting of Muslim leaders in the United States and Canada to make the issue of women's rights in mosques a priority.
In Morgantown the cause of
islah
(reform, making righteous) was winning. In the time since I had first entered the main hall, women had begun to walk through the front door, pray in the main hall, fill positions of leadership, and guide community activities.
In a real glimmer of hope, I discovered strong Muslim men and women throughout the United States and Canada who were using intellectual reasoning, expressions of dissent, and important courageous actions to fight to liberate Muslim communities from cultural norms that contradict the Islamic principles of tolerance, inclusion, and equality. A male Toronto mosque planner included tampon dispensers in his design for the women's restroom, as well as a private room for women who would usually stay home during their menstrual period. Muslim women from New York to San Francisco chronicled their efforts to remove screens, step in front of one-way mirrors, and raise questions at community meetings. One called herself a “Muslimah rebel.” Muslim men chronicled their efforts to equalize participation and accommodations for their wives, sisters, and daughters.
Even the government of Saudi Arabia has realized that it must reform its puritanical society. “Progress. It sounds right in every language,” a radio ad for the government recently proclaimed.
Golam Akhter, convener of the Bangladesh-USA Human Rights Coalition, posted an e-mail in a discussion group in which he declared that women's Islamic rights in mosques are consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “One sister's dilema and conviction resolved a problem. So long we pretended these problems as minuscuale and insignificant; possibly the true Islam will be exported from the west to east by wars and interpretation of the holy Quran and Hadith, a fresh, by Islamic scholars from the west.”
Averse to the theological quagmire implicit in the use of the word “reform,” some Islamic intellectuals, such as Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, are speaking of the movement as a “renaissance.” Dr. Ahmed had started a public dialogue with Judea Pearl, the father of my friend Danny, to transform modern-day Muslim relations with the Jewish world through tolerance. He believes in dismantling barriers in the Muslim world that amount to bigotry
and
sexism. On the Royal Jordanian flight to the hajj, I had read an article by Dr. Ahmed, who is also a former ambassador from Pakistan to the United Kingdom. As I was about to be, he had been moved by doing the hajj together with his family, without barriers.
On Muslim WakeUp's comment board, the literature professor Mohja Kahf posted an e-mail from the Islamic studies scholar Amina Wadud, who argued for Meccan-style praying while maintaining separate areas for men and women who want to be segregated. “As far as my opinion on the matter of gender restrictive practices as they are observed in most mosques in the United States and elsewhere,” Wadud said, “I am advocating a complete dismantling of gender stratification so that women and men can pray side by side if they want, be led in that prayer by a Muslim man or woman, listen with respect to a
kutbah
given by a man or a woman.”
It's clear that certain traditions and ideologies ultimately contradict essential teachings of Islam as a religion of peace. The veteran
Washington Post
Middle East correspondent Carlyle Murphy notes: “The task of reinterpreting Islam for modern times is the essence of Islam's contemporary revival . . . around the globe. If this âinterpretive imperative,' as some Muslims call it, is fully embraced, Islam's revival will become Islam's renaissance, ushering in a new era of intellectual creativity for Muslims. This is the promise of Islam, and the source of passion for Islam.”
I believe there are some fundamental changes the world of Islam must make in order to be true to the spirit of the religion. First, we must live by the golden rule common to all of the religions and philosophies of the world. We must respect others. Second, we must open the doors of Islam. Saudi Arabia must open the doors of Mecca and Medina to those who are not Muslim. Muslims around the world must open the doors of their mosques to women and those who are not Muslim. Third, we must open the doors of ijtihad in the Muslim world. Fourth, and finally, we must honor and respect the voices and rights of
all
people.
In my hajj group there were examples of Muslim women thriving in the changes that were transforming our communities and bringing them more
in line with the ideals set forth by the prophet Muhammad. The college student who made space in the women's tent in Mina so that my mother and I could sleep with Safiyyah came back from the hajj and rose to become president of the Muslim Students' Association at Penn State and a member of the Vice President's Cabinet of Student Leaders. She graduated in May 2004 with honors in biobehavioral health, planning to pursue a master's degree in public health and social work. And her mother's prayers on pilgrimage came true. In a traditional ceremony in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Hilton in June 2004, she married a handsome Penn State student she had gotten engaged to after the hajj, following a courtship as coleaders of the Penn State Muslim Students' Association.
For the photos she bowed to tradition: in the demure images she is veiled, with eyes cast down. But in others she is beaming openly with a wide smile. In hijab, her mother beams just as widely. Most of the women guests wore hijab, but not all of them. The wedding invitation included the date from the Islamic calendar and a Qur'anic verse (30:21): “And among His signs is that He created mates for you from yourselves, that you may dwell in tranquility with them.” Their e-guestbook included congratulations from friends with names like Lisa, George, and Francis, as well as a saying that reminded them that the prophet exhorted men to treat their wives well. “The best of the human beings are the ones [with] good manner[s], and the best ones of those are the ones who are good to their wives.” A former Penn State classmate wrote to the couple: “I sincerely pray that Allah blesses your marriage and your future together and truly makes you a garment for one another insha'Allah [God willing]. Oh and don't forget. . . . âBREAKITDOWNNOW . . . DA NA NA NA!' lol :).”
The triumph of our young hajj friend was the victory of the American Muslim girl next door. It was a tale told more smoothly than my own, it seemed, but I didn't envy her. I was thrilled for her.
Admittedly, redefining boundaries comes at a cost. I've wept from public phone booths in India. Cultural expectations made me want to literally kill myself from the shame of carrying a baby without a ring on my finger. I wept for hours after a mosque leader in Morgantown threatened to issue a restraining order against me just because I dared to sit behind the men during a Friday night study session. And the personal attacks against me for my choice to be honest about Shibli's conception, even though they come from an isolated minority, have hurt me to the core.
In the same way, redefining boundaries also seems to come with costs to society. Social order breaks down somewhat for a while as people live
outside traditional boundaries and deal with public disclosure of unwed pregnancies, abusive marriages, exploitation, and other societal challenges. But it is certainly not my intention to dispense with social order as we redefine boundaries. I believe that if rigidity breeds rebellion, hedonism breeds irresponsibility. As we redefine boundaries, it's important to remember that all societies need to be defined as well by personal responsibility.
I believe that society is better served by redefining its boundaries in the spirit of compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, and love that all religions teach. And ultimately, I am convinced, I am a better person as well for having redefined these boundaries. I feel that I am richer and stronger for all that I have gone through. It is not everybody's path that I have followed, but it is the only one I feel I could have traveled. I have suffered some, and I have seen suffering. I have endured betrayal, shame, and hostility. But I have not surrendered, and in my survival and triumph, I am happy.
In the most humble of ways, I know my son directly connects me to God. I went to Mecca in fear, wonder, and doubt. Then I stood in front of the Ka'bah without shame. My body was a vessel for the divine act of creation. Men's interpretations had told me that I was a criminal, but I rejected their judgment. I didn't anticipate the effect that my pilgrimage to Mecca would have on me. After undergoing the most sacred of experiences as a Muslim woman in one of the most repressive regimes in the world, I received a shocking wake-up call when I tried to bring the lessons from the pilgrimage home to my own community in Americaâone of the most democratic societies in the world.