 to define and remind us of the proper relationship between ourselves and our Creator. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in Surah al-Nisa, and this particular verse is, we know, is an extremely important verse of the Quran and often is recited. And Salat al-Juma, it begins by saying, O humanity, reverence your guardian Lord who created you from one soul and from that one soul created his mate and from them scattered about many men and women. So fear Allah, he from which you demand your mutual rights and reverence the booms that bore you for fairly Allah is always watching over you. Now one narration of this ayah, or reading of this ayah, it fundamentally suggests that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala calls us not only to revere him, but also to revere the wounds that bore us. And of course, all of us have been born by women, our mothers, which of course the prophet Muhammad informed us were the source of our Jannah, that Jannah to be below the feed of mothers. And there's a Hadith Qudsi where the prophet says, Allah says, I'm the most merciful, I have created the womb and I have extracted for her, or for it a name from my own name because the word ar-Rahman is a cognate of ar-Rahm as well, or ar-Rahm is a cognate of ar-Rahman. I mean they have the same roots, etymological roots, ar-Rahim ayyar hamu, and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that to show the value and importance of the rights of the womb and of course we associate the wombs with our mothers and of course with women who have the capacity to give life and to carry life and to bear life. And then he goes on and says in this Hadith, whoever connects with it, I will connect with him. And whoever severs ties with it, I will sever ties with him. Emphasizing the value and importance of that relationship between ourselves and our mothers and also the way of honoring the other sex, which of course without which the human being would not be complete, that man is not complete without woman, nor is woman complete without man. The prophet further told us that the world is a place of benefit, it is a good, a place to gather and amass goods and the best of its goods is a righteous woman. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala revealed a verse in Quran in that particular verse that says for those who hoard gold and silver and for those who amass gold and silver and do not pay for or spend it in the way of Allah, take tidings of a painful punishment. When this verse revealed Sahaba were really confused, they were really conflicted because naturally in this world in order for you to live, you have sustenance and you get it through amassing currency, gold and silver. But this particular verse threatens that anyone who has it and amasses it and hoards it, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will punish you if you don't spend it in the way of Allah. So they asked the prophet, what type of wealth or property is the most superior type of wealth? And he responded to them saying, The best forms of wealth are a reverent tongue, I mean a tongue that makes mention of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala remembers God often, a grateful heart and a believing wife that helps one in one's faith, that helps one in one's faith. We can continue to go through many, many hadith, many verses to see that the prophet, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is calling us to honor, to honor women, to honor our mothers, to honor our wives, etc. And as a matter of fact, there's a hadith which says that this world, if you translate this literally, the world is sweet and green, in other words that there are things in this world that we take delight from, either through our taste buds or through our eyes as well, that we see things that are beautiful, that we indulge and we take things and taste things in this world which are tasty, we would say. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala replaces you in this place, in other words he brings one of us and then we die and then another person comes or another group of people in generation comes after us to follow us and succeed us. He does that so that he shall see how you will all act. So everyone comes into this world and Allah expects things from us. So see who we're going to live up to the expectations. And then he goes on and says, fatakud dunya watakun nisa. He says so fear or be on guard against the dunya and especially women, especially if women. Because the first fitna of the children of Israil, it related to women. Now of course, this is not to say that, okay, well, that woman is something evil. But otherwise, of course, the Prophet said to him, he's warning who largely you're talking about a collection of men. So beware and be on guard against the world, especially women in this world. And then he's connected with another hadith where he says, matarak tu fitna tin baadi adarra ala rijali min al nisa. That I have left no fitna after my passing more harmful to men than women. This is the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, saying this. Now of course, we can think about this in a sort of a kind of, give a sort of an erotic sort of like interpretation to this, but it's also something else. Let me consider the fact that Allah, He says, that Allah says that men are the caretakers of women. In other words, they say that there's a great responsibility, a list of obligations that men have towards women. And if men fall short, then that in itself is going to be a significant source of harm upon them. Now if we come back to this hadith of Bani Israil, and in what ways women were the first fitna for them, listed among the ways that the women of the children of Israil became a sort of fitna for them are that for one, the men, they lost their sense of jealousy, or what we call al-ghaira, towards their women. One hadith mentions that there were, for instance, there were a group of women, one of them was very short, and she was embarrassed by the fact that when she stood next to her friends that she really didn't match up to them in height, and so she went and she created these wooden shoes, sort of like an early form of the, what do you call it, those special, what do you call them, high heels, right? Early form of high heels, right? And so as she walked along the road and some people, they see it as, who is that? They knew, they used to know who she was, but when they would see her, they would get confused because they know her to be a very short woman. That's just one course of simple example. Another example is that it said that they, that when they went to the synagogue, where they would go to the temple, that they themselves would, you know, they would utilize perfumes, which are very loud or sort of, you know, had a very pungent sort of scent about them, or they would, they would utilize fake hair, you know, wigs and extensions, things like that. But also it was said that one of the things they did as well was that the poor woman would place expectations upon the men, you know, which were equal to the expectation that rich women would place upon their men. In other words, they would try to, they would convince the men that, you know, to go and exert a lot of effort into a mass, a lot of things so they can keep them satisfied, even though the men themselves really didn't have the capacity to do that. In other words, they put a significant burden upon them. At any rate, there are many things we can say about this, but fundamentally coming to the book itself, which translated as, there's no male preference in Islamic law, now this may seem somewhat like Eglomaximoran for a lot of people because all are familiar and we know that Islamic law does treat men differently than women, or women differently than men in many different areas. In regard to dress, in regard to the way that we pray, women pray behind the men. In regard to divorce rights, that men have the authority to unilaterally divorce, women don't have the right to unilaterally divorce, they can get a divorce, but not in the same way that men can get a divorce. Men, given the, you know, the polygyny being made lawful for men, but not for women, et cetera, et cetera. We know many, many different examples of that, right? So, for one, someone would give you a list of these things and one would naturally conclude that, okay, well, clearly Islam prefers men over women. Why is it that men, they lead the prayers? Women, they don't lead the prayers. Why is it that the Khalifa, for instance, can only be a man, right, not a woman? So people will say, well, it seems pretty obvious to me that there's a preference for men over women, but what we can overlook quite often when we reflect upon this is that greater responsibility doesn't necessarily mean greater reward, unless the individual with that greater responsibility has actually fulfilled their responsibility. Greater responsibility is greater burden, as well, right? It's a greater burden. And Allah has found outside, has chosen certain people for certain tasks and obligations because of, one, because of certain capacities that Allah has found outside has given to one over the other. Other times, simply because Allah can do it every once. We forget about this quite often, I think, is that sometimes Allah has found outside, He may decide that this is the way things have to be, not because one person is necessarily better than the other, but simply as a test to see how certain people, those who are not given those particular privileges, will react. Because think about, for instance, Ibrahim Ali Saddam. Ibrahim, of course, Allah, He chose him to be Abu al-Ambiyah, father of prophets, and promised him that he would make his progeny also leaders and exemplars. That Allah, we see Ibrahim, the example of Ibrahim, as a seeker in the Quran, an individual, he's pondering, reflecting upon the universe sees the star and says, this is my Lord, how the Arab be, then it goes away, he says, no, can't be my Lord, then sees the moon, says the same thing, and then finally the sun, how the Akbar, this is the greatest, the biggest of all of them, it has to be my Lord, but then it's set, and he says, well, I turn my face in the direction of the one who has, you know, who has originated the heavens and the earth. So we see the example of this sort of individual who's seeking certainty, and some say that he's doing this because he's trying to really demonstrate to his people that the things they worship really have no right to be worshiped, because, you know, they set, they go away, they disappear. But at any rate, we see that example of Ibrahim, but we also see the example of Ibrahim who, when Allah swt asks him to do something for him, such as, oh, leave your family, your wife and your child in the middle of the desert. He goes and he does it, right? He doesn't question God's wisdom, he just does it, right? And then when Hajar alaihi salam, we know that when she asks him, well, why did Allah tell you to do this? And he says, you know, yes, Allah told me to do this. And so it sees the renders, too. So if he understands that if Allah told me to do it, then there must be a wisdom in him telling me to do so. Or then we ask him to slaughter his son. Ismail alaihi salam, you know, and then Ismail will surrender, too. Qalia abati, if al-maatu'mar, do what you've been ordered to do. So it says, you don't need, insha'Allah, you'll find me, insha'Allah, among the patient. Right? So at any rate, the point being that in Islam, there are some things that Allah swt he expects from us and he tells us why. And then there are other things he expects from us and he doesn't tell us why, but we still are expected to comply with those things. And so, of course, the challenge of faith is to try to balance that because often we want to understand why something is what it is. And so certain things about Islam are immutable. We can't change them. And then there are other things, we've been given indications on why or whether or not they can be subject to change due to circumstance. So the author of this book is a book I translated originally was written by a Moroccan scholar, Sheikh Mohammed At-Tawil, ar-rahmallah, is one of the great Moroccan muftis who died in 2015 and actually had the pleasure to learn some things from him during his life. And there's a very small treaty called La Tukhuriye Tafilfaq. There's no male preference in Islamic law. And fundamentally, what he approaches many of the more controversial matters, the matters of controversy which we're accustomed to in a very, I guess you'll say, classical and traditional way while at the same time offering at times some important wisdoms that highlight why Allah Almighty may have highlighted a particular preference. Now what happens quite often is that there's a confusion in my opinion between seeing the difference and the different treatment that Allah Almighty may give to one sex over the other and then assuming that that particular reason, the reason for that particular discrimination or that distinction has to do with the fact that Allah Almighty loves one more than the other. Allah Almighty of course is giving the man certain positions, but that in itself doesn't necessarily mean or is not necessarily a sign that Allah loves men more than he loves nor loves women. If anything, you can perhaps claim the opposite. In other words, because Allah Almighty wants men to care for women and protect them, etc., because of how type of value those women do have or women in general, they do have. But equality or inequality is not necessarily a sign of injustice or unequal treatment is not necessarily a sign of injustice and equal treatment is not necessarily a sign of justice. I think that that is something we have to be very clear about. The Quran is very clear as well that the male is unlike the female. And injustice happens when you treat two who are the same differently. So to the extent that we see ourselves as the same, we will also experience much more anxiety and resentment perhaps even if we notice that there's a different treatment. But I do think that if we remind ourselves that men and women are mostly the same, but there are some things that distinguish us from one another and so as long as we acknowledge that men and women are different as species that when there's a different treatment by Allah or by someone else, then it's not necessarily a sign of injustice and not necessarily a sign of injustice. Let me just read just a couple of paragraphs a few paragraphs from the book. There's no male preference in Islamic law. It's an important treatise written by the great Moroccan legal scholar, Muhammad Ibn Qasim al-Tawil, the Mufti of Fez who taught at the Qadar-e-Een, the College of Sharia, and other important institutions. The book repudiates the common allegation of Islam possessing an inherently male bias to the detriment of women as a false stereotype promulgated by the enemies of Islam whose goal is to alienate Muslim women and others from their unique moral tradition. Islam's opponents have taken advantage of Muslim ignorance of their religion through colonization and as colonial advocates by undermining religious education, removing Islam from public life and replacing it with secular law codes thereby transforming Muslim culture. The book is divided into three chapters, one an introduction, two a chapter refuting the claim of the male bias in Fiqh, and three a third chapter highlighting the origins behind legal distinctions between men and women. The author explains in his introduction that the primary reason behind the confusion of Islam's critics is that they make the error of assuming that the role of Muslim jurists is to legislate which results in men codifying laws that grant them advantages over women. A tech wheel rejects this misapprehension and clarifies that the job of the jurist is and has always been to really elucidate scripture and disclose knowledge of God's predetermined judgments as they believe them to be based upon the interpretative tools at their disposal. If error happens, it is the result of the failure to properly comprehend the sources and the misapplication of legal principles not from animus against women nor spiritual corruption. Now an important point here is that some people and even Muslims may open this book in your reading and say, well, in certain chapters I don't really see much difference between the way he's interpreting these issues and the way that I've heard people speak about them in the past and I'm still left with the fundamental problem of wrestling with why Allah swt preferred or He given certain advantages or privileges to men and not to women. And they think that if you are to if you are to actually prove or persuade your reader into believing the thesis of the book or the title itself contains a thesis which is that there's no male preference that fundamentally that demands of you that you have to deny or reject many of the hadith that we typically would characterize as misogynistic. So when they open the book and say well this person except the hadith is authentic but fundamentally he says well it is not my job to legislate the job of the jurist is to disclose or uncover what has already been determined by Allah swt that only Allah swt has the right to legislate to determine something haram compulsory or recommended only He has it right and the jurists they believe they believe that Allah has already ruled about many many different issues of course we know them expressly when we find the verse or hadith expressly say something but other things are ambiguous and so we look for the answer to those questions and so the jurist the job of the jurist is not to make you feel good it's not to make things easy for you right the jurist the job of the jurist is to fundamentally highlight or at least to the best of his or her abilities to uncover or clarify to you what Allah swt his foregone judgment is right and so so he continues here and he says well I say in the present book Muhammad is at will takes a unique approach to explaining the many matters of controversy surrounding the Islamic teachings on gender besides the book provocative title at that wheel proceeds with minimizing the role that gender plays in legal distinction between males and females this claim is not that being a man or woman is completely devoid of consideration in laws here to privilege men over women but that the maleness or femaleness of actors are not integral to fitness and qualification for certain offices benefits and rights rather the sharia places greater emphasis on optimal capacity to carry out and act or fulfill a role than on the sex of the person given one or more duties if sex is found to be a condition for fitness it is largely coincidental or due to certain biological advantages that one gender has over the other for a tent wheel this is a presumptive rule for nearly all gendered injunctions which can be easily gleaned from information provided to us by scripture or known through experience on the other hand when it is impossible to discern the efficient cause for such rulings the expectation from believers is to merely submit to God's command without objection again coming back to the idea or the fact that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sometimes He mentions the expectation but then He says why but then other times He doesn't say why common example I like to bring up is one of Salat for instance five prayers maghrib is three rakats fudges two why? we don't know but we still perform them and that is one small example fasting why no food, drink or sexual activity why that why not includes talking in general you understand you can perhaps discern some wisdom in that but at the same time why sunsets why sunrise or sunset dawn to dusk why not just a few hours in today why not allow us to drink water and just don't eat food so there are all these things there and so the default for us as believers is that our Lord knows best and when our Lord gives us a commandment that we surrender that is the thought that we hear and we obey what this means is that Tatwil supports his legalism with both divine command theory also called theological volunteerism and intellectualism like traditional Sunnis he prefers to limit the authority of intellect by pegging it to efficient causes discernible from scriptural fiat and when Rasheel Sunnation is impossible he defaults to volunteerism while not allowing for a putative wisdom to dictate the legitimacy or illegitimacy of a particular viewpoint in other words while there may be some scholars who may explain or try to explain certain injunctions like for instance in one chapter he talks about why is it we call the word guild or the dia of the woman is half of that of a man in other words if a woman's life is taken and people are expected to the promoter's family is expected to pay 50 camels to the family and for men it was 100 camels so the question is that well why so he mentions a couple of scholars and says one scholar said the reason is because men are more valuable than women so in other words he's signing an utilitarian value to them men hold public office they do this and that and women don't do all these other things so he's just mentioning it himself he disagrees with it but he mentions it in one scholar then another scholar says well the reason is because if a man's life is taken for instance if you imagine like the father and the family if his life is taken especially considering that at a time especially in one salary households that the entire family suffers as a result of that whereas if the wife if the mother dies you know they don't suffer any financial harm right so at the end of that he says both of them are incorrect he says the reason that a man his dia, his were guilt is more than that of a woman because he's a man and the reason that a woman's is half of that is because she's a woman in other words he's saying that listen we don't know why other than those facts that Allah's kind of decided to say okay woman this much man this much we don't know why we only know what Allah said all the prophets say about this his default becomes hey well where we can explain we just hear it and we obey and we don't go any further than that especially once you start to get into explanation then you perhaps create a greater problem much more complication when you try to explain and say oh well men are more valuable than women right you know so you can an objective way to determine this is why Allah's kind of decided this or that and so in other words if Allah didn't say that's why we can't say that's why this is his point if Allah didn't say that's why we can't say that's why we can only surrender to the command to the commandment which is that if a man's life is taken this is how much is given if a woman's life is taken this is how much so that's the direction he goes in and there are other areas where he does this as well in the book but then sometimes he will go and explain the wisdoms of certain other injunctions at any rate he covers quite a number of issues in the book quite a number of issues in the book he he's sectioned on he talks about polygyny the the issue of women's testimony women's leadership the matter of the the divorce being placed in the man's the hand of the husband issues of inheritance about why we find in many situations men receive twice the amount that women receive and then also the question of men having charge of a woman so there are multiple things to talk about but I just wanted to offer an introduction I know they're probably going to be like a number of important questions and the reason that I I felt it was important to translate such a book and to have this discussion especially in light of our current condition worldwide is that we have to remember we have to remember that we are created for the worship of Allah that we are servants of God in this creation and I think that many people are losing sight of that fact and it's important for us to deepen faith and you don't deepen faith when you try to skirt over issues that are matters of controversy that you simply try to ignore them or you try to just simply dismiss them that oh well you know that the hadith has to be fabricated because I don't like it it makes me feel a certain way that's not the way to deal with it that we have to we have to have those hard discussions about those things that are points of difficulty in Islam and Islam means submission submission is not easy all the time so that's why I think it's important for us to have books like this and it's really to start a discussion you may not agree with everything you can be very opinionated at times but that's fine it's fine for you to say I disagree with what the Sheikh says on this point at that point because I'm not sure that's backed up by statistics or this or that fine but in general I think it's good for us to be reminded of the importance of our commitment to the Creator and that we don't always require an explanation for why we have to do certain things or why we have to embrace certain ideas especially if those ideas are not necessarily harmful to us as individuals as collective with that shall I open up the floor for any questions that you may have I think there's a microphone over here a bottle of coffee a salamu alaikum a salamu alaikum I have a microphone here for anyone that has questions just a quick check of the one question I had was from my understanding there are certain rulings in Islamic law that are just definite unchangeable and that there are some rulings that may be subject to some change in certain circumstances as you know better than I one of the common we're subjected oftentimes to a relentless attack by more progressive or modernist ideas that question and make us suspicious of claims of what is definite and lots of concepts will be invoked about trying to shift away something that may have always been considered to be definitive there's laxity there's flexibility in a particular matter my question is how have our scholars classified what is definitive and what is relative because I imagine in the topic that you're speaking about a lot of it applies right thank you now that's a good question the things that are immutable and changeable are characterized in Arabic languages and things that are known to be part of the deem by necessity right and these are beliefs or practices which have reached this from the time of the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi sallam by we call it by indisputable authenticity mass transmission and any individual any Muslim who happens to oppose or contravene or reject those beliefs or practices are considered to be outside of the pill of Islam and those things will include things like the five prayers of the prophet Ramadan the fact that for instance etc so these are things that both learning Muslims they know that are things that distinguish Islam from other religions or sort of become the basis for determining the authenticity or the soundness of your faith now another another way to know this is in particular let's say if we're talking about the Quran or the injunctions of like Mirov inheritance law for instance because this is an area where we find that there's a lot of strong push to change today why can't we make it equal why can't we make it that women receive the same exact amount that men do well I would say that first and foremost in certain areas they do certain areas they do receive the same exact according to Sharia and in other cases women actually they exclude a bar of certain men from inheritance right I teach inheritance law at Suicide so the claim that Islam or men receive twice the amount that women receive is not an absolute statement to begin with so the Quran in Niza it mentions that Allah SWT is speaking about children and siblings but then there are three different categories of siblings some siblings they get the same amount but anyway the whole point is this is that after Allah SWT he goes through the verses of Mirov of inheritance towards the end of the verses he says these are the boundaries set by God so do not transgress them and then he goes in and threatens with the hellfire etc so that's a definite way to know that something is unchangeable in other words he says that regardless of how you feel about it Allah said this is set and if you try to change it if you alter it you're going to go to hell so that's a definite way to know when something is immutable and he says the same thing about divorce he forbids husbands from expelling their wives from their homes and they should not go out unless they are guilty of a clear indecency and then he says those are the boundaries set by God so I'm going to divorce my wife and I'm going to go get out of here no you can't you're not allowed to do so because Allah said these are the boundaries set by him so you can't kick her out of the house just because you feel that you're done with her no you can't she has a right to stay there unless she's guilty of a clear indecency which can be proven that she was understanding so here that's one definite way to know that something is immutable in my opinion the brother here will say I look for it during the book inshallah what I was going to ask is I wonder if because if preference in the way that we normally talk about it it seems like there is preference I wonder if the intended meaning is like injustice like meaning there's a preference but that preference doesn't result in injustice because especially when it's coming from the one who created men and women and knows them better than anyone else you know because I think just speaking like contemporary English like all those things seem like seem like preference in the worldly sense at least maybe not in the spiritual sense right well I mean that's the way that when people mention and say that Islam has a preference for men over women they mean it that they're suggesting that or implying that there's an injustice involved with that because it's unequal treatment and inequality or unequal treatment is a sign of injustice in the minds of of course contemporary people right but you know but again because yes we are all human beings that we share the same genus but we're different species there's male, there's the female and the ancients had the same understanding like read Aristotle his ethics and he talks about how because it's the Greeks of course we're not saying that he's the proof of this being true but non-Muslims I mean the point being non-Muslims also had a similar understanding that or acceptance that the male and female are not equal equal in the sense that we usually mean when we talk about you know equality and because of that unequalness or the lack of sameness between the male and the female to treat one different than the way that you treat the other not an active injustice but true we can argue that okay yeah that there's a preference for men because okay okay men are the head of the household or men again they have the right to unilaterally divorce but we can also if men turned it in the other direction and say hey well no I think women have a preference because women they don't have to pay me a dollar a dollar before we get married no women don't have to provide maintenance on a regular regular maintenance right I mean but men don't generally do that so but but you can definitely we can make a list you know that men are the ones who have to take care of the children if there's during the marriage and after the marriage as well right women don't have to do that it's the men who have to do so right so it seemed like there's a preference for women we can go make a list like what expectations there are of men and what expectations there are of women and you can make the argument in the other direction too why is it that even like when we started talking about you know the right to intimacy in marriage right that the right to intimacy is shared between men and women right but only the man is provided to provide regular maintenance the woman doesn't have to provide regular maintenance for the husband right you know so it's we can go on in that direction too so it's only because we accept that that preference equals injustice or different treatment equals injustice without consideration of the sameness or the lack of sameness between the people or the subjects themselves this is why you know there's confusion I would say no but again to the degree that we embrace the idea of the fiction that men and women are 100% the same is what we'll find an increase in anxiety an increase in resentment increase in anger about what appears to be an unjust treatment between the two questions? so otherwise we're looking online yes thank you so much for the informative talk I have a couple of questions one, because we're talking Morocco is Hanafi fiqh so I'm wondering I meant it's my age I mixed it all up but yes of course Maliki of Hanafi fiqh how different that is or how different is my question and then a second question a little unrelated regarding talaq there's a lot of stuff going on in India now partly it's a reaction with the Hindus because it's not a Muslim society and there's a lot of problems Muslims are facing but men will say if I say talaq, talaq, talaq we're divorced and that's three talaqs it's done and I don't get that at all from reading Quran so I'm wondering if you could discuss Hanafi Maliki differences and then the talaq well the three talaqs and the single sitting but according to the consensus of the fourth schools of the Sunni schools is that the three talaqs in one sitting counts as three talaqs now that became the norm because men were abusing talaq that they were threatening constantly threatening their wives with talaq and they were pronouncing it a lot of times and this became a normal custom for them to do during the time of the Prophet three talaqs in one which counts as one talaq in an attempt to discourage men from pronouncing divorce on a regular basis he decided that no that this three counts as three so if you pronounce it's called the talaq bid'ah as well that it's a is a heretical an unorthodox type of divorce it's not approved of by the Sunni itself so it became the norm and then the four schools they convened the consensus upon it and so scholars from Muslim countries who adopt different schools they'll continue to embrace it as like the norm and what's supposed to happen now of course depending on the country and whatever their scholars are doing they may have different solutions for that and I couldn't offer what considered to be the right way to go about that but since on that topic of talaq I think is important as well too is to reflect upon just the fact that we have talaq or the initiation of the unilateral sort of pronouncement of talaq in the hands of men as opposed to women like a wife can never say wake up tomorrow and say hey you know I'm divorced from you it just can't happen that way it's just it just can't happen no turn this one or this one okay it just can't happen I think it's still yeah it doesn't really matter but well yeah so the wife can't unilaterally make that decision right now of course in the West this is looked upon as being a sign of oppression for Muslim women the fact that Muslim women can't do the same they don't have a reciprocal right that the man has to pronounce divorce but I think an important question is this is to ask is like is divorce a good thing now of course you know there are situations that you know women probably need to have easy access to divorce because there are some very abusive relationships true there's no doubt about it but it's not the norm we would say right that it's not most the vast majority of Muslim marriages right it's only when you consider divorce to be a good thing that you would say that only one of the partners having the ability to do that that it is a sign of injustice right if anything the goal of marriage we want people to stay together we want to have healthy families and have children and grow up in healthy households and Allah swt he decided to give that authority to men and not to women for whatever reason and this is one of those areas where he gets he goes into a bit of his rational bag I guess you were saying when he starts to explain like why is it that Allah swt gave his men and spoke to women it doesn't simply say because Allah says so no he goes into some some explanations that you may or may not agree with but he talks about issues of emotional states as opposed to men composure as opposed to emotion and how men generally are much more deliberate before those type of decisions happen and of course somebody will say well I know men who are not deliberate sure the exception doesn't make the rule even though there are a lot of exceptions nowadays because you live in a very hyper I would say a hyper emasculated society but not in the negatives I mean it to say that it's negative to be female but men themselves are not being true to manhood as it was always understood in the past but we do live in a hyper emasculated world today and so a lot of pressures on both men and women to live up to expectations of other people's moral philosophies so we have our own moral philosophy we have our own moral philosophy as Muslims we have our own law and if a if a if a people who reject Allah subhanu wa ta'ala who have completely turned their back on Allah subhanu wa ta'ala and decided that they want to live their lives in a certain way object to our way of life that shouldn't matter to us that shouldn't matter to us because Allah subhanu wa ta'ala created all humanity to worship Him and those individuals who knowingly reject Allah subhanu wa ta'ala we know what their end is that shouldn't matter to us our goal should be to bring them the teachings of God ourselves to try to instill faith within them and try to have persuasive conversations with those people that should be our goal as opposed to we're going to render and then try to modify the law as was given to us by Allah subhanu wa ta'ala is that okay any other questions no there's some people online so maybe you want to say oh like in regards to on Allah subhanu wa ta'ala is you know this revelation is coming to the soul of Islam and say first or any of these we could be contentious subjects because obviously they were being laid out because what was going on between man and woman and the unfairness that was going on in the society especially at that time but is there like in some of these instances were was it just so extreme what was going on with women in society there where the sahaba wasn't asking like more questions where we would have more hadith on why half goes to the daughter or these other things was it just because this was such an open revelation to something that was way more even fair than even what existed before is that the reason that we don't see a lot of hadith maybe on this subject matter well I don't think that there's enough historical evidence to support the idea that that the only reason that the only reason why that earlier Muslims didn't change and I'm not saying that you necessarily said this but I think it sort of implies that in some regards you know it moves in that direction that they didn't change the rules simply because of the fact that that they didn't evolve you know to that because basically okay well the pride of Islam women didn't have the right to divorce they didn't have a right to inheritance as a matter of fact often women could be trapped into a marriage you know and have no conjugal rights you know if a husband gets mad at her right and just say I'm not just not going to be intimate with you for a year two years three years right so when the Islam comes and says no then she has a right to divorce women she has rights to her wells you know to inherit the wealth as well etc right so shared sure it definitely was a whole lot better than it was prior to that but I think Muslims today have to ask the question of why why hadn't Muslims until now start to question these things right what what happened you know with us today why do we think we're so much more evolved right and more intelligent than the people of the past and including female women of the past like Aisha Allah Jalla Anha, Um Salamah you know Zaynab bin Jashshah the Prophet's wives own wives because Um Salamah she noticed things too she noticed that she asked the Prophet why is it that okay men are getting half twice the amount that women receive she actually asked the Prophet that so I said why did that mean only half of the reward when we do the same exact thing that men do right so if I pray my Salah right am I getting only like half the reward that a man gets right when I fast Ramadan am I only getting half the reward that a man receives because she looked at inheritance she's like well he's getting twice the amount that I get in inheritance you know but that means if I do anything that you know it's the same and the Prophet said no of course of course you're going to get your full reward right there's no distinction in those areas right so she asked that question she asked she came to him about jihad as well she's like well you said that jihad is the one of the greatest things that anyone can do the most of periods actions that anyone can be involved in you know but men only men can do it why can't we do it she wanted to go to jihad too right so someone think of the hadith of the poor people who came to the Prophet Islam and said you know we pray they pray like we pray they fast like we fast but they give charity with the surplus of their wealth right and then in one narration he says it hasn't a lot given you something similar to what they had you know every tazbiha there's a sadaqa every tazbiha there's a sadaqa every enjoyment of good every prohibition from harm from wrong sadaqa you know he gave us these things but another narration of that he mentions at the end of it he said that is Allah's bounty he gives from wherever he pleases right and this comes up in surah to nisa as well don't you hope that Allah will help you do not seek that by which Allah has given some of you fadl over others men shall have a portion of what they earn women shall have a portion of what they earn and women shall have a portion of what they earn what is Allah's bounty he says at the end but in those areas where Allah clearly distinguishes some of you over others and has not given permission for you to transgress the boundaries in those areas then don't seek to want to be those things a man should not want to be a woman a woman should not want to be a man a woman should not want to take on the responsibilities of a man should not want to take on the responsibilities of a woman right so that's really what he's saying he's not saying that if you're poor you shouldn't want to be rich or if you're ignorant you shouldn't be knowledgeable learn it in those areas sure you see someone who's better than you go right ahead and do those things but if we reflect upon the fact that today the areas where not only women but their defenders among men, anything they highlight as signs of injustice in areas where there needs to be equal representation is almost exclusively in areas of power right and we know what the prophet said when it came to matters of power the Sahabi comes to him and says appoint me to oppose we don't give it to people who ask for it right or Abudar he asked the prophet, give me a position prophet prays Abudar in so many different hadiths right but Abudar came to him and said no in the Arak al-Ba'ifah you're not fit for it you're not fit for this he's a man so the prophet is telling certain people others are not fit when he came to Umrah al-Khatab and asked him why you don't employ me in your government and Umrah al-Khatab says to him I don't want your dean to become corrupt because what he's doing he's looking at the temperament of Abu Ubaiman Qab he had a certain temperament that Umrah al-Khatab felt wasn't fit for someone who holds public office so he said I don't want your dean to become corrupt so but today you don't see a mass movement to ensure that that there's like 50-50 representation among steel workers among people who are cleaning out the sewage or going out and being on the battlefield you don't see any strong emphasis on that at all it's always about you have all these people in positions of power you need to be 50-50 or we imagine being an Imam for instance is a position of power therefore sisters should be allowed to give the khutbah or they should lead the salat as well lead everybody too it's not a position of power it's not anything else sir I'm fine with me Hamdillah I appreciate everyone coming out and if you haven't copied the book and hopefully you purchased one for someone other people you know as well but Hamdillah just a few words before Ramadan Hamdillah we're on the eve of Ramadan and Ramadan is about fasting but it's also about family and it's hadith of the prophet states that shaitan places his his throne over the waters and dispatches his minions from that from that location and those who are closest to him are those who are most effective and seducing and causing fitna among the people it says that one of them will come and say hey today I did this and say you've done nothing then another one will come and say well I met this man and I stayed with him I separated him from his wife and then shaitan brings that one close you're the one so we keep this in mind and so this particular topic is extremely important especially in our times when families are falling apart or people are no longer forming families we know that certain communities almost 80% of the new births are out of wetlock compared to early 20th century numbers and it increases promiscuity among other things but this the human family is falling apart we divide it among not only religious lines sometimes but mostly nowadays this gender is sexual orientation it's race it's all these different lines upon which people are divided and shaitan has taken full advantage of all of us in those particular regards that the human being the man is not complete without woman and this is why the prophet said that women they are the complementary halves of men because there is a perfection that happens between all of us you may come across hadith which sounds to be offensive with respect to women but there is a proper way to understand those hadith and Allah He judges by taqwa in the prophet said taqwa is here in the heart so whoever has the most taqwa is most loved by Allah it's not determined by what particular task you've been given compared to the other person because one may be given certain rights that another is not being given it's not a sign that Allah loves the other person more it doesn't mean that at all this individual has certain capacities that war just simply Allah out of his bounty you simply decide to give this responsibility to another to test that person and to test us as well but ultimately Allah He judges on the basis of taqwa and since taqwa can only truly be known by Allah since it's in the heart that itself is an added benefit in that none of us are able to aggregate ourselves to the extent that we can say that I'm better than my wife because I'm a man and my wife says I'm better than my husband because I'm a woman and that in itself is really an intelligent talk that we see spread and so we ask Allah they grant you all a blessed Ramadan that you reap the full benefits of the blessed month through your fasts and your prayers your reading of the Quran and protecting your families and parents everyone peace be upon you peace be upon you peace be upon you