Forgotten Heroines

Many Muslims like to idealize the stories of the Sahabah, especially the female Companions, and use them to impose an unrealistic definition of Muslim womanhood on the Ummah: an ideal that turns Muslimahs into paragons of piety, virtue, and docile submission, akin to Madonna on a pedestal.

What we forget are the stories of the Sahabiyaat who were not innocent, sheltered beings, but rather women with dark pasts and hidden secrets. 

Hind bint Utbah was a villainess before the Conquest of Makkah; al-Ghaamidiyyah was a married woman who had an affair, became pregnant from it, and publicly confessed her sin to RasulAllah himself, so that she could be purified of her sin. Her repentance was so great that it would have been sufficient for 70 of the people of Madinah.

Before we go about preaching a false image of what a Muslim woman should be, let us honor the #ForgottenHeroines of Islamic history... those who proved that Muslim women need be only one thing: sincere, true believers in their Lord.

#ForgottenHeroines