Good Muslim Women

Before you talk about the trauma of motherhood, or how your masjid deliberately excludes women, or how you have been preyed upon by marriage bandits or a superstar da'ee...

You must reassure the patriarchy that you are A Good Muslim Woman.

No, of course you're not a feminist. Of course you hphold Muslim male superiority. Of course you don't think that *all* men are bad. Of course they're not to blame.

Before you talk about being a woman, about what you were told womanhood meant, about becoming a woman...

You must reassure the patriarchy that you are A Good Muslim Woman.

No, of course you don't think that men are responsible for the oppression of women. Of course you think that men have it just as bad, if not worse. Of course you know how privileged women are in Islam.

Before you endure the catcalls you endure every time you walk out of the house, before you talk about the time you were raped, before you talk about being sexually assaulted in Hajj or Umrah, before you mention the abuse of women...

You must reassure the patriarchy that you are A Good Muslim Woman.

No, of course you don't deny the obligation of hijab. Of course you dress appropriately. Of course you were with your mahram. Of course you know that men are abused too.

Before you give a talk or write a book or stand up for a cause or walk into the masjid, before you dare to publicly exist -

You must reassure the patriarchy that you are A Good Muslim Woman.

Female leadership as a sign of Qiyaamah

Question: "I saw a Hadith that says that female leadership is a sign of Qiyamah is this authentic? Does it necessarily say it's a bad thing?

When the best among you are your rulers, the rich amongst you are liberal and the affairs of your State are decided upon by consultation among yourselves, then the surface of the earth is better for you than its inside. And when the worst among you are your rulers, the rich among you are miserly and the affairs of the State are entrusted to women, then the inside of the earth is better for you than its surface (Tirmidhi)."

Answer:

Although this hadith was narrated by Imam atTirmidhi, he himself commented the following regarding its authenticity:
“This hadith is ghareeb (strange), and we do not know of it except from the statement of Saalih al-Mirri, and Saalih al-Mirri has strange ahadith which only he narrates. They are not to be followed, while he is a righteous man.”
As well, Shaykh al-Albani has declared this hadith weak in his book Da’eef al-Jaami’ asSagheer, and it is included in the collection of weak ahadith, Al-Targheeb wat’Tarheeb.

Due to the weakness of this hadith, it should not be taken into consideration and there is no need to discuss its meaning.

http://fatwa.islamweb.net/fatwa/index.php?page=showfatwa&Option=FatwaId&Id=80325

Passion and Power: The Politics of the Ideal Muslimah

IT IS HUMAN nature to be hyper aware and critical of those in the public eye, and Muslims are no different. Imams, shuyûkh, and other popular figures in the Muslim public sphere are all subject to scrutiny and fascination.

Muslim women who are engaged in the public sphere are even more vulnerable to criticism. Every aspect of their lives – whether it’s their marital status, the color of their hijabs and jilbâbs, how many children they have or (God forbid they get a divorce!) why they weren’t good enough wives to begin with (and how their publicity was probably the reason for it) – is up for discussion by the general masses, who are vicious critics with lots of sanctimonious self-righteousness and very little ḥusn al-ẓann (benefit of the doubt).

No matter how religious or scholarly, Muslim women who find themselves having a public presence are always expected to fit a very specific mould – one of the ‘ideal Muslimah.’

However, this ‘ideal Muslimah’ is fictional: it was not fully embodied even by the best of women, the wives of the Prophet (sallAllahu 'alayhi wa sallam), his female Companions, and the women of the Tâbiîn. We have allowed ourselves to create a false narrative that the women of those times spoke only in a certain way, dressed only in a certain way, and interacted with society at large in a very limited and specific way. We have been led to believe that they were devoid of personality quirks, strong opinions, and personal conflicts with even their husbands; we have been led to believe that they were Madonnas whose piety ensured a lack of normal humanity.

Yet none of this is true. It is true that they were women of taqwa; women of knowledge, wisdom and understanding; women of modesty and chastity; women who were dedicated to the worship of Allah. But they were also women who chose to lead armies into battle; women who not only disagreed with their husbands, but insisted on following their own opinions; women who were passionate and did not allow others to dictate how they would speak or behave.

One such woman was Âishah bint Ṭalḥa ibn Ubaydillâh. Her father was the Sahabi Ṭalḥa ibn Ubaydullâh, her mother was Umm Kulthûm bint Abi Bakr Al-Siddîq, and her aunt was Umm al-Mu’minîn Âishah bint Abi Bakr.

Âishah bint Ṭalḥa was a muḥadditha (scholar of Hadith), a faqîha (jurist), a muftiyya (one who issues non-binding legal rulings), and an abida (worshiper) who was considered nearly equal to Âishah bint Abi Bakr, the Prophet’s wife, in piety, knowledge, and intellect.

She was also known to be the most beautiful woman of Madinah, a woman who had three husbands, and who was unmatched in the sheer force of her personality.

She also did not cover her face. Though she observed hijab and covered herself with a khimâr and jilbâb, she left her face bare – and as a result, her beauty became famed both within Madinah and outside of it.

It is narrated that once Aishah got into a fight with her husband Abdullâh ibn Abd Al-Raḥmân ibn Abi Bakr Al-Ṣiddîq and left her home in a state of fury. On her way to Al-Masjid Al-Nabawy, where she was going to visit her aunt ¢Âishah, she came across the Sahabi Abu Hurairah. In shock, he stared at her and exclaimed, “SubḥânAllah! I’ve just seen one of the Hûr Al-În!” (As for the fight with her husband – Âishah stayed with her aunt for four months before she decided to go back home.)

Anas ibn Mâlik once told her directly, “By Allah, I have never seen anyone more beautiful than you other than Mu'awiyah ibn Abi Sufyân when he is sitting on the minbar of RasûlAllâh!” Her response was one of complete self-assurance. “By Allah, I am more beautiful than a powerful flame seen by a man who is freezing on an icy night!”

Imagine how such a woman would be considered today – a woman who has the audacity to reply with such confidence, who not only acknowledges what others say about her, but emphasizes it. (And forget about a woman who leaves her husband’s home in anger and doesn’t go back until she so chooses!)

One point of note is that Âishah demonstrated that it was apparently not considered harâm for her to leave her husband’s home without his permission; after all, she spent the duration of those four months in the home of Umm Al-Mu’minîn Âishah. If she had committed a sin in doing so, wouldn’t her aunt have rebuked her and sent her back to her husband? The situation was a far cry from what we hear from many people today – that for a woman to even step foot outside of her husband’s home without his permission is wrong; that for a woman to leave her husband’s home out of anger is tantamount to minor kufr!

Her second husband, Mus'ab ibn Al-Zubair, was a man who loved her deeply and began to feel jealous over the fact that her beauty was so obvious to all who saw her. One day he told her, “Either stay within your home or cover your face when you go out!”

Her reply?

Allah has given me this distinction of beauty, so I want people to look upon me and know my virtue over them; I will never cover it when it comes from Allah. And by Allah, Allah knows that there is no fault in my character upon which anyone can comment!

The narrator who was relating this story to Imam Al-Ṣafadi commented, “This was true. She was extremely strong in character, and that was what the women of Banu Taym were like.”

In this incident, what stands out is that – lack of niqâb aside – this was a clear case of a man commanding his wife to do something… and the wife choosing to follow her own fiqh opinion in the full confidence that she was not doing something displeasing to Allah.

While one may disagree with her choice not to wear niqâb, it is particularly intriguing that for a woman known to be one of the greatest Tâbi'iyyât of her time. She was described as thiqa (strong and trustworthy in the Science of Hadith) by Yaḥya ibn Ma'în, Al-Dâraquṭni, Imam Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal and others; she was also classified as ḥujja (one whose statements and actions are used as evidence in legal matters), which is a category very few individuals were considered worthy of. Also, she defied what is commonly taught as a primary requirement in the marital relationship: the unwavering obedience of a wife to her husband in absolutely every sphere of life.

Obviously, it is undeniable that Allah gave men the role of qawwâm (guardian – a man responsible towards the women of his family) – but perhaps it is also time for us to acknowledge that over time, Muslims have over-exaggerated what that role entails. The Sahaba and Tâbi'în, it appears, did not have such a stringent concept of wifely submission to a husband’s every whim and desire.

Examples from her life were recorded in the books of fiqh. After the death of Âishah’s first husband, Mus'ab ibn Al-Zubair proposed marriage to her, but for one reason or another, she refused to accept… and went as far as swearing an oath of dhihâr. “If I marry him, he will be forbidden to me like my father’s back!” she declared. It was an unprecedented moment of Islamic jurisprudence. For one reason or another, she eventually relented, and the scholarly decision was that she needed to pay an expiation for her oath. As kaffâra (expiation), she bought and freed a slave worth 2,000 dinars.

On another occasion, she swore an oath of dhihâr once again – and again, to her husband Mus¢ab. She locked herself in her rooms and refused to allow him anywhere near her, reminding him of her oath, though he begged and pleaded to be able to even speak to her. In the end, he summoned Âmir Al-Sha'bi, the faqîh of Kufa, to discuss the matter with Âishah. Having had a change of heart, she asked Âmir Al-Sha'bi how to resolve the matter. His fatwah was that the oath was invalid, and that she was required to pay the kaffâra. She agreed with his conclusion, and allowed Mus'ab to return to her. In appreciation, she gave Âmir Al-Sha'bi 4,000 dirhams for his efforts in solving the fiqh conundrum.

There are numerous other stories from Âishah bint Ṭalḥa’s life that demonstrates just how different she was from our preconceived notions of what ‘true scholarship’ was like. Today, a woman who conducts herself in such a manner would never be accepted as a person of righteousness and authority. She would be spoken of in harsh terms, accused of being a ‘fitna’(temptation, tough test) to those around her, denied any public position of Islamic education to the masses.

Yet in Â’ishah bint Ṭalḥa’s time, she was considered to be a woman of extreme piety and worship, a woman who taught men of the Tâbi¢în, a woman who was recorded as being amuḥadditha, a faqîha, and a muftiyya. Despite all these stories that were known about her, no one seem to have found a contradiction in the fact that she spoke and behaved in such a way, and that she was still such a woman of righteousness. There were many Sahabah who lived at her time, yet they apparently accepted her for the way she was.

What we can learn from Â’ishah bint Ṭalḥa’s life is not necessarily to derive fiqh opinions aboutniqâb or dhihâr –or whether wives can walk out on their husbands– but rather to reflect upon how we consider women, their personalities and their conduct, and their presence in the public sphere. Our ideas of what an ‘appropriate Muslim woman’ is meant to be has been so clouded by our own filters – both cultural ones and Islamicly justified ones – that we fail to realize that the greatest generations of Muslims often had very different ideas of what was considered acceptable.

Though we have come to believe that a pious woman is a silent woman, or a woman who restricts any and all aspects of herself to the private setting, or a woman whose public presence is as minimal and stark as possible, it is obvious from the biographies of female scholars of the past that this was not always considered the ideal. A woman’s role was seen as far more flexible as it is today; a woman’s ability to stand her ground and be more than automatically obedient was recognized and not castigated.

The Ṣahâbiyyât and Tâbi'iyyât lived as normal human beings with emotions, temptations, quirks of personality, issues in their relationships, and so on – yet this did not detract from their greatness as believers and scholars whose worth was recognized.

It may just be that we have a great deal of changing to do when it comes to how we perceive and perpetuate ‘the ideal Muslimah’ – whether she is a scholar in the public sphere, an individual in the domestic sphere, or both. For us to be able to raise new generations of heroines of Islam to revitalize the Ummah, it is necessary for us to challenge our own narrow ideas of what type of women those first heroines of Islam were to begin with.

(Author’s Note: The source for the narrations about Âishah bint Ṭalḥa were related by Sh. Muhammad Akram Nadwi, referencing Imam Al-Ṣafadi.)

Lollipops, Hijabs, & the 'Ideal Muslimah'

Regarding those who think that the lollipop/hijab analogy isn't a big deal, or that people who object to it simply don't get the point of analogies:

1) We understand what analogies are. We understand their uses. We also understand that there is such thing as a good analogy, and a bad analogy.
(Examples of bad analogies:
http://www.jimcarlton.com/bad_analogies.htm
http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/5-morons-who-pulled-offensive-analogies-out-their-ass/)

2) The lollipop analogy is particularly offensive because of what it implies. The image shows a wrapped lollipop - i.e. a woman in hijab, who is ostensibly clean and undamaged - and an unwrapped lollipop that is covered in dirt and surrounded by flies - i.e. a woman not in hijab, who is dirty and attracting filth (men).

Even if one plays along and agrees to the premise that hijab is primarily (or solely) to protect women from men, the analogy is still quite dangerous. Why? Because a hijabed 'lollipop' is considered worthy and desirable, and an unwrapped lollipop is considered - literally - garbage to be discarded.
Thus, the analogy does nothing to say that a woman in hijab will be protected. It implies very heavily that a woman in hijab is desired (everyone would love a wrapped lollipop!) but that a woman who does not wear hijab is NOT desirable and is dirty and is, essentially, worthless and to be despised.

Again - even assuming that one agrees with the sentiment that hijab is about protecting women from men - this is, at the very least, a disturbing way to speak about any human being, let alone one's sister in Islam.

3) Using analogies is great to get a point across - except that we also need to recognize that the way certain analogies are used, and the context they're used in, also contribute to something more.
In the case of the lollipop analogy, it has contributed and exacerbated the attitude that hijab *is* primarily about 'warding off men', and stripping it of all other nuance and reasoning (including what Allah mentioned in the Qur'an, i.e. that it is also a form of identity for the Muslim woman, and obviously, that it is an act of worship).

Just a brief look at the comments section of these memes will show how so many Muslims - men and women alike - truly believe that hijab is the be-all and end-all definition for what a good Muslim woman is, that it is the only yardstick by which a woman's self worth or piety revolves around.

Other analogies such as the flowers and pearls/diamonds are not as offensive as the lollipop one (in that there is no equating un-hijabed women with being garbage), but still contribute to unhealthy ideas about Muslim women, their self-worth, and their role in society is (that they are *all* delicate - or should be if they aren't, and if they aren't, that they are lacking in femininite; that they are to be seen - but only in a certain way - and not heard; that they are not meant to contribute in any other capacity than a domestic one).

The lollipop one, however, remains hands-down the most disgusting and offensive analogy I have seen in terms of how it refers to women.

4) It is very, very easy for men to tell anti-lollipop folks (and I mean lollipop in the metaphorical sense, obviously) that we are exaggerating - because they themselves have never experienced firsthand what it is to be told that your entire self-worth as a human being depends on whether you are covered, how you are covered, and what you are covered with.

As an example -
I wear niqab and in the time that I once had a picture of myself on FB - in black abayah, niqab, half-gloves, a jacket, and sunglasses - I received numerous comments telling me that I wasn't wearing "real" hijab because I was 'attracting too much attention.' Despite the fact that I am a writer who posts almost daily on a wide variety of topics, people felt compelled to comment solely on on this one aspect - my image.

I found it annoying, but I have more to worry about than what people think of my image. Yet it also made me realize how much more other Muslim women go through on a daily basis - how pressured they are, how they are made to feel that their entire worth depends solely upon how they look, instead of a myriad of other factors.

5) It is necessary to know that for many, many years, a significant percentage of Islamic books and lectures about "women in Islam" pushed forward a very shallow, narrow, and restricted view of Muslim women.
The 'ideal Muslimah' was described as being a woman solely dedicated to the domestic sphere; a woman who is quiet, meek, and delicate; that her only desires revolve around her husband and her family.

There is, of course, nothing wrong whatsoever with a woman who does match that description. The problem arises when women who do *not* fit those characteristics are looked down on, viewed as and spoken about as lacking in faith and 'true femininity.' These women are considered to be inferior and less valuable as members of the Ummah, simply because they do not fit a certain definition.
Unfortunately, we forget that even the wives and female Companions of RasulAllah (sallAllahu 'alayhi wa sallam) varied from each other in personality and demeanour. Women such as A'ishah and Hafsah (radhiAllahu 'anhunna) were forthright and outspoken; others, such as Fatimah bint RasulAllah and Maymunah bint al-Haarith were much more demure and private. Both categories of women, both types of women, were beloved to Allah and recognized as greater than all others simply because their Taqwa was what He cared about most - not that they should have all been cookie cutter replicates of each other.

It is this history and baggage that many Muslim women carry today. We have heard these messages for so long and had them shoved down our throats to the point that many of us have questioned whether we have any worth in the Sight of Allah.

It is not enough to say that "not all men" carry such an unhealthy attitude about Muslim women, because the sad fact is that many of them - a significant proportion of them - do. What's worse is that many of them have only the best intentions and do not actually intend to be hurtful or offensive. It is precisely because of this that we should encourage a stop to the use of lollipop (and other) analogies - to help our brothers in Islam realize that such a reductive attitude does nothing to foster goodwill and harmony between Muslims, but merely exacerbates antagonistic feelings and behaviours.

Rather than spend further time arguing as to whether it is okay or not to use analogies that compare women to objects, we should be channeling our energy on how to view each other - men and women alike - as more than one-dimensional creatures whose value depends solely upon one single behaviour or item of clothing.
Instead, let us take the time to overcome our own inner biases and strive to see each other as human beings with both strengths and flaws, weaknesses and abilities. Let us try to embody the best description of believers as Allah mentioned in the Qur'an:

{The believing men and believing women are allies of one another. They enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and establish prayer and give zakah and obey Allah and His Messenger. Those - Allah will have mercy upon them. Indeed, Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise.} (Qur'an 9:71)