 Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem. So inshaAllah Ta'ala we are going to be talking about feminism and we do have Hamdira a significant amount of time to do so. So we're going to try and dive into some of the history, some of the ideology as well as how it affects us as Muslim women and how it affects modernity in general. So before we begin then I think it's important to at least talk a little bit about why this topic is important in the first place. It may be that many of us don't identify as feminists and so we don't feel this topic is necessarily relevant to our lives. Though those of you here probably do, maybe some of you online, or just some people in the community may not feel that this is a relevant topic. But we have to realize that living in this western society, whether we identify with the movement or not, we do have to engage with it because it is propagating itself, whether in our media, on our campuses, in our communities through people that come from those academic circles. And so we do have to contend with the movement and the ideology, even if we don't identify with it because its ideas are so prominent in our society. And I actually think that it is beneficial that we are discussing as Muslims this movement of feminism has been around since at least the 1940s. But I think as a Muslim community we're starting to discuss this movement or ideology only in the past couple of years, two, three, maybe five at most and a lot of them really starting to discuss this issue in depth. And I think it has been beneficial because it's allowed us to do a couple of things. It's allowed us to one sharpen our own arguments as to why we believe what we believe. It's also allowed us to even expose ourselves as sometimes we can have the correct belief, but we believe it for the wrong reasons. And so, for example, there was an incident, not the only one, but there was an incident where someone used the feminine pronoun for God. And a lot of people spoke out against it, right? And so the traditional, the orthodox belief is that we refer to in the third person masculine in particular in Arabic, but also that can translate to English. However, when we, when that discussion was taking place, you saw the flaw underlying why some people believe that we use that pronoun. Some people believing that metaphorically God was more aligned with the masculine. And this is not our Islamic belief. So sometimes when we have to engage with feminism in particular, then it exposes that some in our community while having the right beliefs don't believe it for the right reason. And it allows us to correct our beliefs. So inshallah to Allah before we go any further, then we have to thank Allah for allowing us to be here, to give praise to Allah. Inshallah to Allah we're all in the best state of health any man. And if not may Allah bring us to, to the best of health any man. And we send peace upon our prophet. So we should begin by reminding ourselves or continue by reminding ourselves what is the purpose of Islam itself. We know that as Muslims, our purpose in taking on this faith and practice and belief is so that we can submit to the one true God, to Allah in true monotheism. And we want to touch on also what is the purpose of Islamic law because a lot of the issues when we're discussing feminism have to do with why does this law affect women in this way and men in a different way. So in his book on living Islam, then Dr. Umar, he says that the five major objectives of law are the preservation of religion, self reason, children and wealth. And the core maxims are matters will be judged by what's apparent. Certainty will not be overturned by doubt, harm must be removed, hardship must be alleviated and custom has the weight of the law. So, and then the basic of our sort of Islamic ethics, where we get our law from, where we get our beliefs from, is the Quran, the Sunnah and scholarship. So the Quran, the revelation given to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam from Allah, the Sunnah, the way of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the way in which he lived his life. And then of course the scholarship that preserves that way of life. And so whatever ideology we are discussing, whether it's right or wrong, whether we can holistically take on that ideology or whether we want to take it apart and ask, well, what part of this ideology aligns with Islam and what part if it doesn't, then we are turning back to these original sources in order to determine the answer to that question. And so what is feminism? Feminism is an ideology and a cultural movement. The basic definition of feminism is that it is the theory of political and social equality between the sexes and the second definition being organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests. But it's important that we discuss what feminism has pushed for and not just what it is stated to believe, but also what are the rights that it has actively pushed for. And even before we get into that, then we want to ask, well, what do some of these words that we take for granted mean? What does equality mean? And why is it important? So what is equality? We know that equality means sameness, the same measure treating two things as equal, treating them the same, whether that's equality of outcome or equality of opportunity is always an ongoing conversation, but essentially to treat two things the same. And then we want to question whether or not that is a worthy goal. So why are we fighting for equality in particular? What is the larger goal? Of course, of feminism is some kind of justice, right? So is equality the only means or even the correct means by which to reach the justice, the outcome that they want? And we should question that and look into that and Shola Tallah will come back to that towards the end. So why equality? Why is the fight for women's rights rooted in equality? So we have to ask, as I just mentioned, is equality the only way to gender justice? And if not, how do we decipher between appropriate and inappropriate equality? So maybe we say that sometimes equality is appropriate and necessary and other times it isn't. Or maybe we believe holistically that equality is a valuable aim or maybe we don't. We don't believe that equality is the way to justice. But we have to question at its basis, does that align with what we believe as Muslims? And then when we say we're fighting for the rights of women, so the second definition being organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests. Well, of course, we have to ask what is a right? Rights can be given by Alasya Panwadala. Rights can be given by the state. Rights can be given within a family. So who is determining the rights that feminists are fighting for and do they align with what we believe as Muslims? And is something a right, so something that you are owed and if you are not given it, it is an injustice, is something a right just because feminists say it's a right? Who determines what is actually a right? And of course, lastly, with the last part of that definition, what are interests that are legitimate to fight for? Is every interest that women either say or in their interest or feminists say or in women's interest actually legitimate to fight for? So then we want to ask in particular, well, what exactly have feminists fought for? And actually before we go into detail there, then into very specifics, and we want to get into feminism and what it is and what it started out as. So as we mentioned, feminism has been around at least since the 1940s with the so-called first wave of feminism. And even though a lot of people view the first wave of feminism as having to do solely with voting rights, it in fact had a lot of the ideologies and foundations that are still prominent today. This is the root of it. So feminists of the first wave were questioning traditional roles. Is marriage aspirational? Are children something valuable taking care of children? Is that valuable for a woman to do or is it a burden? Is domestic work a burden or is it something valuable? And clearly they were criticizing it and questioning whether it was something of value. And then looking at women's lives in general as having to do more with the inner world, we'll say, then is this inner work the work of the home valuable or should we be seeking our value in the public sphere? And criticizing the sort of ideal feminine role of the housewife and criticizing that as being dependent and that women should be independent and go and find their value and their meaning outside of the home. And then even then you see this idea that women are disempowered, that there is this patriarchy that disempowers women and keeps them in the home and keeps them from flourishing. And that the way to empowerment for some feminists who are very radical was not to get married, was not to have children. And at the very least to seek a role outside the home for one's fulfillment. So one of the early feminist thinkers was a woman by the name of Simone B. Devor, forgive me if I'm saying her name wrong. So one of the interesting things that I found about her is that she actually wanted to become a nun and later lost faith before she took on feminism and existentialism and became a philosopher. And I found this interesting because I just thought about is that parallel for some Muslim women that not exactly or analogous, but not exactly in that some Muslim women find more acceptance in let's say the world of academia than in the world of traditional scholarship and maybe for some women they would have turned to more traditional Islamic knowledge if they were accepted in that realm. And so that is in a sense one of the valuable criticism is that we can look at the ideology but we can also look at what brings women to that ideology as well. So she wrote this famous book called The Second Sex and in that her infamous line is that a woman is not born but made. And the interesting thing is that her ideas are actually more prominent now than they were back in the 1940s, especially in America. So we have this idea that is growing in prominence or sometimes it's hard to tell is that the majority of you are just the loudest voices in the room but nevertheless this idea is more prominent today that we are assigned a gender. Not that you are born a boy or born a girl and then the doctor just recognizes your gender but that you are actually assigned your gender by the doctor. And so she said again that one is not born but rather becomes a woman so that you are socialized into your gender. There's nothing about it that is inherent but rather society influences you to act the way that you do in a feminine manner in the feminine role and not that there's anything inherent about being a woman or significant. And the interesting thing as well about her is that because she was an existentialist and for existentialists to simply put it they don't believe that this world has any inherent meaning that you have to find that meaning for yourself and they don't believe in God maybe there are exceptions but in general they don't believe in God and so this aligns with that ideology that you are given this role you're socialized into it and so if you work hard enough you can be socialized out of it that your gender isn't this thing that is valuable that was given to you by Allah, but rather it is something you can be socialized into or socialized out of. And so this view closely aligns with what we call now gender constructionism and so the same idea that gender is largely just a social construct and doesn't have larger meaning. It's not biologically grounded but socialization creates men and women and this is one of her thoughts on housewives and I think it's crucial to hear her thoughts on this quote from her on housewives because the housewife is taking sort of the most traditional of feminine roles so the critique is really the critique of traditional femininity and not just the singular role of the housewife and so she said a few tasks are more like torture than housework with its endless repetition the clean becomes soil the soil is made clean over and over day after day the housewife wears herself out marking time she makes nothing simply perpetuates the present eating, sleeping, cleaning the years no longer rise up toward heaven they lie spread out ahead great and identical the battle against dust and dirt never won so to her and some women may feel like that sometimes but to her this was a completely invaluable just demeaning role for women to take on within the household and she didn't think it was worth women spending their time and their life on and as you see she said it makes nothing so this is not something long lasting and rather for her women to go out and make something like men that stands the test of time in her estimate and Sholatela will get to why that can be problematic so then we move to sort of the second wave feminism and so you have this continuation of questioning society and biology and existentialism and also of the constraints of biology so one feminist she said how to liberate my true hope everything is against me the first obstacle to my escape is this woman's body barring in my way a voluptuous body with closed eyes voluntary blind stretched out full ready to perish so seeing the woman's body as essentially a burden this is part of the feminist ideology so another early feminist thinker was Betty Frieden in the 1960s so her famous book was the feminist the feminine I think the feminine mistake and she spoke about the problem without a name and for her that problem without a name was this role that women had within the home instead of going out and getting a career and making a name for themselves they were so-called burdened by this traditional by traditional women's work and so this is a quote again from Simone um deep of your I'm sure I'm messing that name up my apologies um so she this is about housewives again so she said she qualified housewise she said a parasite sucking out the living strength of another organism the housewives labor does not even tend to war the creation of anything durable women's work within the home is not directly useful to society produces nothing the housewife is subordinate secondary parasitic it is for her common welfare that the situation must be altered by prohibiting marriage as a career for women and so clearly they were uplifting traditional men's work that that is what women should be doing demeaning traditional women's work and but interestingly enough and this is why you have to go beyond the definition and look at what they actually have propagated because the part of that definition is working on behalf of women's interest but interestingly enough Simone deep of war she said that a woman should not be allowed to choose to be a housewife because if she can then most would choose it right so there's clearly a an acknowledging that a lot of women want to do this work but in the feminist point of view then this work is not worthy and it's interesting that we live in a society now where no women aren't forced to not do that work but we live in a society that makes it difficult for even women who want to do that work so makes it economically difficult socially difficult to stay home and and tend to her home and her children and her husband and and even to just take a more lax a more lax option when it comes to career choices whether that's passive income or working part time we live in a society that makes that difficult and and in some ways is a fulfillment of what early feminists wanted so modern if we move to modern feminist thinkers then we can think of someone like Chimanda Agozi so she had the popular TED talk we should all be feminists and it was a similar thing of questioning traditional social norms especially in her country of Nigeria and questioning gender expectations why should it be assumed she gave the example of going out to eat and she paid and then the man still assumed that the man who was with her paid so these sort of gender norms and gender expectations that she questioned and it is important for us to note that not everything that feminists fight for is antithetical to Islam right so that's why we have to view it with a critical eye and ask ourselves what is and what isn't and then also to ask ourselves knowing what is opposed to Islam and what is actually aligned with Islam then is the same movement that holistically we want to align with or not so we want to look at some specific fights that feminists have fought for inshallah so while feminists put themselves in this broad category of fighting for women's rights and women's interests they have fought very specific rights and very specific interests right so a few of those are a few of their big issues have been work, abortion and sexual freedom so work the right to work and equal pay abortion the right to kill one's fetus or one's baby depending on what language you want to use and sexual freedom the right to have multiple partners so we want to look at each of these and ask ourselves what has been the long term consequences of this movement and we should also say that feminism is very much tied into the larger progressive movement right and it's also important I think to say that it shouldn't be that we are almost picking on feminism in a sense obviously that's what the talk is about but it's not that it is necessarily the worst of ideologies that we have to contend with in modernity it's one of many living in a liberal secularized society it is one of many issues that we have to contend with as Muslims so we want to look at it and we also want to compare it to more of an Islamic world view so what has the right to work brought women what has been the consequence of it so okay so women have the right to work and earn their own money right and there's nothing necessarily negative about that we wouldn't say Islamically that there is anything necessarily wrong with that so in the Islamic world view however we would say that women have the right in terms of something that you are old and it would be an injustice for it not to be given have the right to be taken care of by the appropriate male family members so whether that's the husband the father whoever it is depending on the family situation so what has happened however as a outcome of this desire to work in this fight to work is that it's actually become a the circumstance has been that women actually now feel obligated to work as one of the unforeseen consequences of this fight so in her book Return to Modesty by Wendy Charlotte then she says working mothers with small children now say that they work because I have to and so she says why do so many women say that if we have been freed from oppression and are supposed to be liberated then how does it come to pass that so many women feel forced to do what they do not so we have almost the opposite circumstance that maybe one can say existed in the 40s 50s 60s where instead of being oppressed so-called oppressed to not be able to work to not be able to fulfill one's through work then women are on the other end oppressed in having to work whether they have a six-week-old at home it doesn't matter they have to work from social pressure as well as economic pressure and this quote from a very tragic story but Hamdela that she shared her story so that we could further discuss this issue so this is a woman whose son actually died in daycare and so she is discussing the difficulty of having to leave him and this inclination she felt to not leave him to be with her young son but the social and economic pressure to return to work anyhow so she said in comparison with other mothers I knew I felt lucky to have three months paid maternity leave after her son was born most of the parents in my community had only weeks before they had to leave their baby to go back to work but nonetheless even with three months under our belt and her baby's neck being strong enough to hold himself I was uncomfortable with the idea of leaving him I wanted to be his caregiver longer until he was a bit bigger I could see how our time together his early infancy was of so much value how being with him every day made him more and more comfortable navigating this new environment I noticed how he looked to me to learn things and make sense of the world I could tell how safe and secure he felt though it was hard and tiring at times every minute with her son felt like an investment in his current and future well-being to mention I was hopelessly tickled with him but what compounded the financial concern was that if I quit we would lose our health care her partner not sure if they were married or not worked freelance and her baby was covered under her health insurance I felt propelled down the street swept into the train carried along by a system that gave me no choice but to submit to the inevitability of any working mother of an infant in America so women now feel this pressure to work even if there is a you know that intuition telling them not to work there is this pressure to work because of the way our society has been set up and it's an unforeseen circumstance I'm sure or unforeseen consequence but it is never the last connected to this fight for women to work the normalizing of women working and then obligation that women now feel to work and the lack of support that many have to do otherwise so the Islamic world's view as opposed to that is that men remain primarily responsible for the women in their life so whether the woman is working or isn't working it still remains his responsibility to take care of that woman and this gives women the freedom to use their money as they will to take care of their children primarily if they choose to and to focus that energy on that inner world and what happened with feminism in this regard is that again we went from one extreme to the other and the Islamic world's view allows for a balance that you can work if you choose to but you can also focus your energy on that more traditional feminine role if you choose to as well so the Islamic world's view is that work is an option and an opportunity whereas work has become in our society a right and a responsibility and the interesting thing is that another unforeseen consequence is that what you end up having is actually inequality because we have times a typical woman still does most of the housework still does most of the child care and also works whereas the men are doing more than they did a few decades ago in the household but not nearly equal to what women are doing and so now you have a lopsided inequality in the home whereas Islamically there would at least be a balance so whether a woman is fully taking on that role in the household or she's choosing to work in a schedule that is fitting to her so the next right that has been prominent among feminists is this right to abortion so the feminist mantra has been my body my rights and the Islamic world's view is that abortion is circumstantial and allowed in certain very specific cases so what have been the consequences of that fight so in the feminist world's view and as well as the outcome in our society then sex becomes divorced from both childbearing and responsibility so in the past in our society people feel different ways about this but had a young man or however old a man gotten a woman pregnant outside of marriage then you had this idea of the shotgun wedding right of being forced into responsibility now obviously there are downsides to that but at least this idea that you would have to be responsible for life forced men into a kind of responsibility that is lacking today there is a really interesting article about the reality of abortion and that is that even though it's presented as a woman's right my body my rights that rhetoric very often men are convincing women to have abortions they are participating in the persuasion of this woman having an abortion and obviously that would be in part to avoid that responsibility so it has not been solely sort of another right that has almost become oppressive for women so there there was a there was a movie I guess it's old now but a movie called vanilla sky with Tom Cruise and Penelope cruise I'm not sure cruise okay and in this movie there was a scene where this was so as I put as another consequence that sex becomes casual so there was this scene where this woman that he Cameron Diaz who was the character that he had been having this casual relationship with and then he falls in love with someone else the Penelope cruise character and there's this scene where she's driving him somewhere then she starts driving crazy and getting really angry and she says to the character to Tom Cruise's character she says when did you stop caring about the promises that you made so then the Tom Cruise character he says promises I thought and then she says do you understand how hard it is to pretend to be your buddy she says she loves him she's been sounds funny to say these lines while summarizing but anyway the point is that for women this sort of right has been very lopsided because women have this emotional attachment to intimacy that men don't always have that men don't necessarily have so this freedom this freedom to be to have multiple partners or even to be freed from the burden of children hasn't really been as freeing to women because as we started out we asked well is equality actually what we should be fighting for and this is one case where it's clear to see that equality isn't necessarily what we want because how can you make two things equal among two different genders that are not equal at least in this regard right so feminism okay so to look at the Islamic world's view that responsibility remains tied to intercourse and sacred bonds remain sacred right so then you have this this fight that feminism has been pushing for sexual freedom for women so feminists will say well why can't a woman be with as many men as a man can be with women and one of the things that's interesting that we should note as Muslim women is that it's clear to see that we don't have the same starting point as feminists right so Islamically we don't believe that it's okay for a man to be with multiple women before marriage but not okay for a woman right we believe that it's wrong for both and this is one of the one of the issues I think with Muslim women sometimes taking on feminism is that we're taking a fight that actually isn't relevant to us where we to actually adopt the principles and morals of our faith so sorry so we didn't go fully into abortion when it comes to the Islamic view is also that it is a family, a communal decision that it maintains the sacredness of life so this is not something casual she will say that you need to refer to a doctor and there has to be a serious reason as to why someone would have an abortion and it remains a responsibility on men and women abortion becomes the exception and not the rule and there also will be more planned pregnancies within loving relationships so it's interesting when you sort of think about this idea and this is touching on both abortion and the idea of the out of wedlock child of the comparison between a child who is born out of a marriage where two people are committed to each other versus the comparison of a child born out of lust to people who simply acted on their lust so it's not only a personal decision but it's also that something that affects all of society so then you have this issue of the freedom to be with multiple partners that feminism has fought for so the idea that a woman should be able to be with whoever she wants and the interesting sort of consequence of that is that it turns women into objects so instead of a woman being someone that a man is going to have a full relationship with he can merely use her just for sex whereas in a traditional society within an Islamic society then that would not be a possibility there would have to be marriage which involves commitment and rights and responsibility and something that even feminist Jermaine Greer who was a second wave feminist noted is that after 30 years of feminism there is vastly more pornography which obviously makes women into objects so freeing allowing the sexual impulse to be freed in both men and women it also it had this negative impact of turning women into objects and not really freeing them but oppressing them in a different way so they also say in more recent years there has been the so-called slut walk where women are saying that a woman can be with as many men as she wants and she should not be judged she should not be judged harshly so it also people can have the consequence of making the act of intimacy cheap and making relationships harder so if it someone I thought it was funny but it was nevertheless an intelligent critique that uh that when you take this when you take sex outside of marriage it actually in an ironic way also harms men because in order to be a man and get married there are certain things that you have to do with your life you have to have a certain amount of money maybe a certain amount of education um be a decent person a decent character to present yourself to a man in order to get his approval and obviously present yourself to the woman as well in order to get married whereas in our society it can only take alcohol take nothing at all for him to have access to a woman's body and so what kind of men are we creating as well and um so Jermaine Greer she also said and she's interesting because she has at least been willing to critique the feminism that she propagated back in the 70s right and and look at the consequences of it and question um some of the things that she believed in so Jermaine Greer she said that the sexuality that has been freed is male sexuality promiscuity harms women more than men women continue to experience the momentous consequences of pregnancy for one obviously there are other consequences while the male body is affected and it may sound funny to say but even within our culture within our media if you look at the music or the movies or other representations in our culture it's clear to see or even women's magazines it's clear to see that women are the ones hurting in our promiscuous society so women are asking the question about is the guy going to call and will he still love her and will he still want to be in a relationship with her if she has intercourse with him before marriage so clearly women are the ones who are more hurt in the society by promiscuity so this article and with a young woman I think college age she discussed um herself being you know quote unquote right this the sexually free woman um a result of feminism and the sexual revolution um she was discussing her relationship but then she talked about a man that she was with who now in this culture of me too and consent that he constantly asked her for consent but what was interesting which she said in one sense she appreciated that but then she said but then he never called her right never set up to never took that relationship further and so she said in the article in the days and weeks after I was left thinking that our culture is current approach to consent is too narrow a culture of consent should be a culture of care for the other person and the the title the title of this article was called um he asked permission to touch but not to ghost um but the the sort of ironic thing and and part of it is very interesting because hopefully as Muslims we see that what our prophet said is what has taught us our own ethics has freed us from what some non-Muslims are facing in our post feminism post sexual revolution and liberalism and progressivism um society is that you can't really have it both ways right you can't really have a society where people are so called free to have intercourse with whoever they want and also expect the level of care and concern that would exist in a society where monogamy and marriage are normative you can't really have both um so beyond the ability to say no and yes to intimacy women are still not truly freed they are left jilted and left with um they are disadvantaged by this setup so one of the interesting things we also see modern feminists talk about is almost expanding the definition of rape and so I believe this is this was passed in New York City that if both a man and woman are inebriated and they have intercourse and that man can actually be uh what would the word be prosecuted for rape so because they say that well the woman can't consent to rape in this scenario and there was another law they were fighting for I don't know if it was passed that if a man lies in order to sleep with a woman that should also be classified as rape because it's not true consent because if he didn't lie whatever he said he loved her and had a relationship with her but if he didn't lie then she would not have um had intercourse with him and so we see that that these that non-muslims who subscribe to this ideology have put themselves in a very strange predicament right but even as Muslims you see at times um some Muslims some Muslim women trying to follow suits or there has even been some community this question of consent and what I find funny and ironic about that is that within the an Islamic normative society or just within Islam then the idea of consent is not needed because it's built into the larger Islamic contracts so there's consent there's rights there's responsibility there's far more than that whereas in our society women are not really protected all they have is this bare minimum of consent and so this is another case where some Muslim women are fighting for something that isn't actually applicable to our community or to our tradition if we knew our tradition so then you can compare that to so then you can compare that to Islam so in Islam both the man and the woman within a marriage have the right to intimacy and the messenger of Allah SAW then we know that he told men to approach women with kindness so this idea that we quoted from in the article that someone would sleep with a woman and not be kind to her obviously this is Zina so it's completely outside the fold of Islam but even within marriage the Prophet SAW still telling men recommending to them that they need to be kind to their wives that this act of intimacy is also tied in with kindness and the Prophet SAW he said to one of his companions he said O Abdullah I have heard that you fast all night and that you stand all night in prayer and I said yes so messenger of Allah he said do not do that fast and break your fast stand in prayer and sleep for your body has rights over you your eyes have rights over you and your wife has rights over you and the commentary to this hadith it says the husband should not exhaust himself in worship to the extent that he becomes too weak to fulfill her rights to fulfill her rights and by right unless he is out earning a living or obviously in worship so we see Islam is recognizing holistically the rights of women in this area but also protecting them within marriage and it's also noted it's also recognized within Islam that the wife too often times we hear about we have to get young people married or men need to get married in order to be protected from Zina but our tradition also speaks about that in regard to women that Shari also requires that a wife be protected from immorality by means of her husband having intercourse with her as much as is needed to satisfy her and to provide this protection and so we see that Islam clearly recognizes women's rights holistically and so this attempt unfortunately by feminism to piece together various aspects that really can't coexist as we already said it really can't exist that you have people that don't necessarily care about one another who are committing Zina together and then you also try to force those people to care it can't really coexist and the law can only do but so much to correct this and it's only correcting after the fact right so again I'm not sure if that law was passed but if a man lies to a woman and then he sleeps with her based on that lie if that law is passed and he can go to jail for rape well that only is correcting the issue after the fact whereas Islam is correcting it and setting a foundation of safety and protection before of course we have the issue with sexual freedom as Jermaine Greer as we already said from Jermaine Greer is that it can only be but so free as long as women's bodies still produce children and despite birth control despite even abortion women still have children and whether it's because birth control doesn't work or because not every woman just because there is the right to have abortion wants to have an abortion and so it can only be but so free when women still have to have children and one of the feminist so called feminist hero was this I don't know if this was the name of the show or just the character Murphy Brown who was this career woman and she also had a baby and she was doing it all on her own and this was seen as this kind of feminist hero this woman who is completely allegedly independent but the reality for women of today is that that is a deep burden to have a young child and have a career and not have any man who is responsible for either that is not the ideal scenario for most women but this was seen as the ideal for feminism so inshallah tala can we take a little break? okay so inshallah we'll just take maybe 10 minutes is okay okay so 10 minute break and come back okay so inshallah tala I think we're going to go until at least 330 maybe up until 345 and then hopefully questions and comments and discussion so some other problematic beliefs of feminism are in modesty a disregard for modesty as standard anti-patriarchy issues with male leadership or male power the demeaning of motherhood motherhood seen as less valuable than having a career or at least not superior or having a career being superior and individualism self over others so alright so the demeaning of motherhood as this burden a biological burden a care burden with feminism sometimes because it is I believe sometimes completely out of tune with what women actually want so this idea of motherhood as a burden I'm sure some women feel like that but in my experience just speaking to mothers I've never heard them use that though let me not say that I never heard them holistically categorized as that there may be moments but not I don't think they're as holistically categorized as a burden and some women also enjoy pregnancy and being pregnant and beyond that there is a desire of women to care for their children and there was an interesting TED talk I watched recently where she spoke about empowering men in the home and I thought it was interesting one to be empowered in the home but also it's interesting because she spoke about she mentioned a study that showed women spend a significant amount of time quote unquote correcting the chores that their husband has done it's funny because in that you kind of are unwittingly admitting that women have a kind of power in the home they get to say what's correct and this when it comes to childcare and food etc then there definitely is a hierarchy of women in the home that have it more of a power at least over the day to day lives of their children, of their family of their household and interestingly enough a few days ago my niece and nephews were visiting so my niece she said something she's three so she said girls rule at home I thought oh that's interesting and she said ma which is my mother she said ma rules in this home okay that's interesting and then she said and my mommy rules in my home and I thought that was so interesting that in her observation women were in charge the women were the ones who were telling people what to do the household was run so there is a kind of power there but unfortunately it's largely been demeaned so we don't see that as power and then this issue of anti patriarchy so the issue is that and this is not all feminist but at least a significant voice within feminism is that there's no distinction between anti patriarchy so good and bad male leadership that it's not and it can sometimes be that for example people talk about the issue with all male panels right and in a sense we can say what is that really problematic but there is there is a legitimate point of view that there need to be women in certain spaces to have the woman's voice within that space represented for other women's comfort etc so sometimes it is legitimate to question why men are dominating a certain space but sometimes it's not and so to not be able to have that distinction can be problematic and I think that patriarchy can also and again we're talking purely about the sort of dictionary definition of patriarchy male leadership lineage through the male line that it can also be beneficial because it gives men a kind of responsibility that they may not otherwise have so women have a kind of and as we see in our society if a woman has a child out of wedlock more than likely she is going to be the one who is providing protecting and caring for that child either by herself or taking on most of that responsibility whereas within or even we mentioned within a household a married couple if the woman is also working she's still working and taking on most of the nurturing and the household responsibilities whereas within a patriarchy or patriarchal setup at least the man is taking on a distinct responsibility so within the household he's taking on that responsibility of being the provider whereas in our society men and women are taking on both the responsibility of the provider but still everything else is leaning more towards the woman so it gives men responsibility it also sets expectations for men and what their role should be within a family within a society and again for women it comes a bit more natural to us because we are child bearers so it is natural to be responsible for the child that you gave birth to whereas the responsibility for men comes more so socially through marriage and then being responsible for a wife and children and not biologically because he doesn't have that distinct biological connection to his child so then individualism the focus on individual rights women's rights instead of a focus on harmony as a whole now there isn't an issue to focus just on women's rights but as a goal as an end goal what is the end goal do we just want women to have more rights so we want like in our society so now women are succeeding more than men in certain fields but at the same time then finding it more difficult to find suitable marriage partners because they have because there has been so much attention on the success of women in certain areas that men have actually begun to fall behind in certain areas so the end goal should still be harmony even if you're solely focusing on the smaller aspect of a particular women's rights or women's rights so feminism also devalues the feminine and it's interesting that you see feminism constantly is rewarding is uplifting women who take on traditionally masculine role and either ignoring or demeaning women who take on traditionally feminine the traditionally feminine roles and it's interesting because you have to ask why that is because it almost becomes a kind of misogyny within feminism to say that everything associated with women is not valuable and everything associated with men traditionally is valuable and that in and of itself is of course problematic so masculine women and increasingly now feminine men so the man that is the trans woman we celebrate trans women men who take on the feminine role so there is this celebrating of anyone who sort of goes against the more traditional role for their gender and qualities and characteristics it also makes gender into this social construct that makes it superficial so being a man being a woman has no deeper meaning it's a construct it's a performance and that's why we have a society now where someone can simply put on makeup and a dress sorry Georgia say that they feel like a woman and be treated as such and be told that we should treat that person as a woman because it's a construct it's a performance it's not something deeper it's not biologically rooted or even metaphysically rooted so there are there have been disputes within feminism of course feminism we know is not just one thing it's not just one one type of feminism so we can make a note to that so with this freedom with this equality that women are asking for there is an interesting question among feminists as to whether a woman can degrade herself if she chooses to right does a woman have the right to degrade herself if that is her choice so there was a hashtag movement and it was called headless women and so what this feminist was calling for was the end of these movie posters it was a very interesting commentary but these movie posters that consistently use women's bodies without their faces but the interesting and in Britain as well there was this issue of I think those car races where you just have those women who wave the flag or something and I think they banned it or something like that and this question was brought up of okay but do these women have a right to demean themselves to sexualize themselves to be an object for men if they choose to and so this is a difficult area that feminism gets into something like pornography is it degrading or is it empowering are those women empowered because they are using their bodies as they choose to or are they degraded because they are using their bodies they are objects for men and being humiliated even something like like Niqab is Niqab a free choice or is it inherently oppressive some feminists would say no this is inherently oppressive this is something men have created for women to cover themselves and some will say well no if women want to wear that and they are free to do so and some feminists they also disagree on this issue of trans women are they women because they say they feel like women which also ties into this idea of being a woman or being a man just being a social construct or is being a woman does it have a deeper meaning is it deeply tied to biology so what we didn't touch on I mean we somewhat touched on modern feminism in quoting Chimanda Gosey I believe her name was but you have this feminism that I believe she would be a part of that's called inclusive feminism that some Muslim women have felt a kinship towards so feminism in realizing that it was largely the first second wave was largely talking to middle class white women then they wanted to include other women and the struggles of other women so some Muslim women found an ally ship or find an ally ship with a third wave feminism and so the roots of some of that kinship the roots of some of that kinship can be seen as a common enemy this idea of patriarchy being a common enemy the failure of men to fulfill rights the lack of access and inclusion in our own communities and a belief in a patriarchy that has historically oppressed women so okay we actually didn't so part of the problem there are a couple of problems part of the problem with Muslim women choosing to be a part of this movement in some aspects so for one you have and we're going to discuss it further in a moment but you have this idea of wearing hijab being seen as a part of a woman's right a woman's choice and that being sort of the main reason that we as Muslim women point to as to why we wear hijab and though this is partly true because we choose everything that we wear we wear hijab is for devotional reasons it's to worship it's not merely a choice between should I wear hijab today or should I show my here we wear it purposefully in order to worship and part of the danger of this allyship is that we can also end up equating things that are haram and things that are halal and praise worthy so for example I saw an image on a Muslim woman who is a Naqabi on her Instagram where it was a cartoon of a Muslim woman a Naqab and a man dressed in drag and essentially saying well we all have the choice to dress how we want but this is clearly or maybe not so clearly but this is problematic because as Muslims within our religion we cannot support someone who dresses in drag that's not a part of our religion it's forbidden in our religion but if you use the feminist rhetoric of choice as to why you dress the way you dress then this is what you'll end up supporting anyone who makes a free choice to dress how they dress you will then have to support and this is sort of the difficulty in being a part of any larger movement within society is that there is this expectation maybe rightfully so that kind of one hand washes the other right if I support you wearing the Qab you should support the man in drag but we as Muslim women our beliefs have to as Muslims in general our beliefs have to come first and we have to remember the foundational reasons as to why we do what we do and believe what we believe so we we I don't want to say we can't but I think it's difficult to accept the premise for example of hijab just being a choice as is the feminist rhetoric for those who support it because as we mentioned some believe it's just oppressive it's difficult to accept this premise because it can force us to accept unislamic premises and the funny thing is well you can say well I just won't accept that I believe it's a choice but I'm not going to accept something that is completely unislamic at the same time someone who supports us who is doing something that's unislamic someone who supports us isn't wrong to say now you should support me right so we're also putting ourselves in a difficult position even if we just say well I'll just accept the support but I won't give it back right so then we come before we talk about the gender so we wanted to mention this idea as well of feminism taking away a woman's agency so I think there's a lot of it's very problematic to have almost this boogeyman that can explain all the issues that women are facing as patriarchy it also can remove practical solutions so of course we can for example of course we can acknowledge that rape is wrong it's always wrong no matter what but it goes to the extent that if you say well maybe you shouldn't go out at night or well maybe you shouldn't dress that particular way that could attract a certain kind of attention then you are victim blaming even if you clearly say well I still no matter what even if you're naked you don't deserve to be raped even to suggest any practical solution then you can be seen as victim blaming it also removes responsibility so the locus of control is placed outside of the woman herself and ironically this only makes us even more powerless if you believe that all the power is with men and only they can give us power then you're ultimately admitting that you are powerless and I think that can be deeply problematic and also deeply damaging even to our faith to believe that if you believe that there is this patriarchy where men have all the power and women do not well what are we saying about a Lois Yapanua Dalla can you hold in your mind that God is a just and merciful God and also believe that he gave all the power to men and none to women so we want to touch on so I included the if the resurrection were established upon you while one of you has a hand of sapling let him plant it to say that even when all the odds are not in our favor there's always some agency we can take so we may not have the same agency that men have but there is always some power that every group that every individual has within their own agency as well as acknowledging their own limits which every human being has men included and this quote from Sheikh Abdullah of Hemi where he says the women of the Ansar so they were the helpers in Medina that the Muslims migrated to and of course became Muslim themselves he said the women of the Ansar were limitless because they focus on what they could do so so much so much of feminist rhetoric is focused on limitations and what we can't do and this can also be problematic just in actually reaching our goals so what can we do one example that I heard Sheikh Nandui say something like this is that women may often complain about access to the masjid but women in our time and our society have money where are the masjids built by women if we want to see more inclusive masjids that is a project that we could focus on I think he also mentioned giving more money to the masjid as well but our voices can be heard or we can create our own solutions if we focus on what can we do instead of what we can't do which is not to say those institutions shouldn't improve but it's to say that we can also look at our own agency so we want to talk a bit about the gender wars before we have inshallah Q&A and discussion so this is just something to think about do we have any agreements with feminism can you be both Muslim and feminist what are our disagreements with feminism or is feminism antithetical to Islam so can we solely blame feminism for the gender wars well I think this would also be problematic it would be doing what feminism does of creating this all-encompassing um almost well let's use I was going to say shaitan but that may be too extreme but using this sort of all-encompassing boogie man like saying that we can blame all our issues on and so if we say the gender wars in our community solely because of feminism I think that would also be problematic hopefully you all have answers to this as well but this is just alohaala my observations as to what is the gender war and where does it come from I think there is perpetual gaslighting from men and women about this is not really happening this is not actually true that when women are sharing their stories that it's either diminished or that this is just not happening and the same can happen with men but men are just not as vocal about their issues the constant naming and shaming of the other gender the labeling and dismissing there is also the issue of a failed patriarchy in a sense right because if we say that patriarchy is male leadership if indeed male leadership was responsible in doing what it should be doing and fulfilling rights then we could also say there probably wouldn't be so many women turning to feminism if they felt fulfilled by the leadership in their community and that's whether it's on a micro level in your household or a macro level with the public leadership there is also feminism has a part to blame and that there is this problem I believe looking for harmony and balance and just looking for rights we can look on the micro level that even if there was a marriage where rights were being fulfilled and that was it that probably would not be a very happy marriage the ultimate goal is not just rights but also harmony and balance and happiness the equality project has also been has also been problematic as we've already stated a couple of times where women are actually taking on more responsibility and men are not taking on an equal responsibility so I think in Sholah Ta'ala we're going to end here and then if you all want to and in Sholah I'll touch on some of the other things I have here but if I keep going it might be another hour so thank you so very much that was a really wonderful presentation very well thought out and I'm a little bit older so I don't know about the 1940s but I certainly remember the 1960s because I was in college then and feminism and I wasn't Muslim at the time either so I just I want to mention a couple of different things first of all the concept of feminism is a paradigm that is outside of Islam now I'm not against women's rights what I'm saying is feminism the way the West understands it like so many other things they don't get about Islam it's a paradigm and so we also have to develop our own paradigm of what women's rights are that Allah has given us in the Quran because a lot of the patriarchy not whether men should be ruling over the family or whatever society a lot of the patriarchy we see in the world has nothing to do with Islam has to do with what's happened over the centuries historically secondly I'm going to make just several different points and maybe ask you to comment on it women in many countries where it's a three generation family can easily work because they don't have to worry about babysitting because grandma is there grandpa is there and so on and I've seen this in India with my husband's family women can go work because they don't have to worry about the children and their contributions it's very different from the pressure that women feel here because you come home your child's been taken care of so you don't have to worry about a bad babysitter and someone has cooked the food so all the things that put pressure on women here when they work are taken care of through a three generation family there was something else I wanted to say but I'll leave it at that yeah I think that's a good point and as I heard Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad say that a lot of Islamic law that refers to the family is difficult to understand outside of the context of the extended family that would be the Islamic norm so that's absolutely true that we have a unique circumstance where families are operating mother, father, children and that does put a lot of burden on women so thank you for making those points I'll just elaborate a little bit more so you understand the context because the senior moment has just plagued me it is a plague coming back outside of the asylum I just wanted to ask you I'm very politically involved I was national delegate for two years and so I'm very involved with the Democratic Party in the past and the Democrat Party has gotten very liberal so the idea that you have up there in regards to pro-choice I understand that how your explanation is about nationalism and how that doesn't align with our beliefs in the political sphere what I have had to deal with is people will ask me these questions because I'm politically involved and I'm a woman who wears a hijab and the non-Muslims will ask me this question and say well but do you believe in pro-choice and this is my answer to them and I don't think I'm being wrong as a Muslim to say this when I say yes I would not want them to push their religion on me I don't push my religion on them what I tell them is I would never do an abortion because that's not part of my faith but if that's what you need to do because of whatever circumstances sometimes like right now the Republican Party is against abortion even in incest even in rape and these are rights that are being taken away from women in circumstances that they should be able to control and the second issue is the Republican Party also does not allow to take care of these children they're unwanted to parents okay they're on I've dealt with kids in school where they're neglected because their parents were addicts or they couldn't afford the child and they had to keep it for whatever religious reasons because I was in Utah so a lot of Mormons do not do abortions so anyways the point is is that wrong because I've had some male Muslims point out to me but that's not part of our religion and what I tell them is and often it's their girlfriends their angled girlfriends asking me these questions okay and they'll say well how can you say that you know that we don't believe in pro-choice and yet I think that it's not right for me not to because they have ownership of their body which is what you went over and I'm not their keeper unless Obana Ta'ala is if they're Muslim and if they're not so I just want you to clarify why is that particular idea not something that I can maybe say well and clearly anyone who's involved in politics and many other fields probably anywhere where you're dealing with non-Muslims specifically progressives then you're in a difficult predicament but I think that as Muslims we've taken on this idea, this principle that you know it's very American, very western that religion is personal and Alhamdulillah I absolutely don't believe that is what Islam tells us to do that is our Islamic way we believe in what we believe because it's true not because it's personally I choose to follow Islam but if you want to be Buddhist that's great like no we believe Islam because it's true and so what you say is different from what you believe right so I'm going off of what we believe that do we have ownership of our body well no not absolutely we can't kill ourselves right so if someone was going to say my life is terrible I want to kill myself we wouldn't say in part because it's not socially acceptable to say we wouldn't say well it's your choice I don't believe in suicide but if you want to kill yourself you know that's on you so I think we have to realize that in part that is because of the society we believe in what we choose to say or believe and it's almost as if it aligns with popular society then we're more than willing if someone said well I want to kill myself we'd probably say no get help don't do that but if someone says I want an abortion because we live in a society that believes no choice then we say well that's your choice I wouldn't want to do it but you know that's on you as Muslims we also have to develop deeper thought on this issue so again we don't just not believe in abortion in an absolute sense because we just don't believe in it you know we have to better understand the deeper reasons what about the sacredness of life right what about that life being created by Elisha Panawatela and you don't own that life what about Elisha Panawatela tells us do not kill your children out of fear of poverty and that's a lot of the reason I don't know if it's majority but that's a significant portion of why women kill their children and have abortions so what are you going to actually say that's a difficult question to answer but again you know I see and I admire I admire Catholics in some way the Catholics in our society because they're very not all of course but a lot of them are very straightforward about their belief but they've also sort of developed a deeper philosophy so that they can explain well why is life sacred and here's also some of the science and you know here's here's why I believe what I believe and not simply well that's just what I believe right so I don't know maybe it's better to just avoid these conversations in the end is it a personal choice in terms of the state well it is so you wouldn't necessarily be wrong and saying well it is your personal choice if your intent is saying that it is your personal choice according to the society we live in you know according to the current laws but do we believe just a personal choice as Muslims well no we don't so maybe there is the aspect of intention there is also important thank you so much for your lecture I'm so sorry I was late ahead so I'm bummed that I am so grateful to be able to get a chance to hear you speak and thank you for your thoughts I really appreciate your critique and your analysis and your insights I read some of your work on your website actually research your references and your papers and really looked at your work extensively not extensively but when I saw you were giving a talk I stopped and looked at your work for a second I saw the book that you submitted that you have an essay in I didn't read the Hadith of Asha amazing work and thank you so much I'm so grateful for your work so a couple of things that have that have occurred to me in your talk are quick question first of all I'm confused about your thoughts on the separation of church and state in the United States so you're saying I work in mental health you're saying our religion trumps everything else our religion is our religion is our religion is prioritized over all other things and I understand that on a personal level and I know you're saying you can't separate this the personal kind of opinion but I'm curious about how you see living in a diverse and multicultural nation particularly in the states where we have such incredible diversity and saying things like our religion is ahead of everything else and that can determine how we vote wondering how you see church and state separated working into that first question second is a comment which is that I have a background in feminism I've read a lot of feminism and was raised in a very feminist household and I love your work and I say it's the utmost respect and care for you as a scholar as an academic and as a thinker and want to contribute to your work as a sister and as a teacher that making I want to acknowledge this and I want to say I did hear you acknowledge it but making statements about feminism with that kind of blanket inclusion of so many strands of thought is really really dangerous I think and you run the risk of losing I think some of your more really vital points about women's rights and gender wars because you're making blanket statements and the final thing I'll say I have to make this quick another comment I have and I really like to hear your comment on this is your use of the word patriarchy equates it with father rule but I think that's a misunderstanding of a traditional kind of again feminist critique feminist critique of patriarchy patriarchy from a Christian perspective is that men dominate women and dominate nature and it's not about father rule per se as perceived in Islam so I have argued for a long time that the prophet peace be upon him was not a patriarchal person he did not believe in patriarchy Solaulah Salaam he did not believe in patriarchy because he did not believe in abusing and oppressing women in nature and talking about patriarchy and the way you're talking about it tends to I think misunderstand kind of like a it's a misunderstanding of the critique which is abusing women and nature with men in power women can be in power and practice patriarchy by abusing weak and powerless people so the critique of patriarchy is about dominance and abuse not about men so understanding that is really critical and I think to deconstructing societal problems especially in terms of women and the last thing I'll say I think I've lost it I think I'll stop there I really really appreciate your work again I have the utmost respect for your work and thank you so much for your contribution I will continue to read you and I'm looking forward to getting your book and meeting your essay in that book thank you so much okay so okay I think a problem that I find with I don't know if it's feminism or feminists is that there is often this sort of there is often this rebuttal that feminism is many things when people critique it and I think the problem is that as you said I did acknowledge that there are different strands of feminism which is why I started with the dictionary definition because that at the very least I would hope feminists agree on the dictionary definition of feminism and then mention sort of as an honor I mentioned different strands of feminism for one I think when we're critiquing feminism we are critiquing the feminism that has seeped most prominently into our society right so there is ego feminism, there is liberal feminism, there are all kinds of feminism but there is another one I can't remember the name right now there is another one where they very much believed in the value of women's work and in the talk we are doing tomorrow I think her last name is Ferencia I don't completely remember there was a movement called wages for housework and they said you know why should the reduction of cars be more valuable than the producing of babies and having children caring for them so absolutely there are different strands and some agree with Islam more than others however that particular strand is not what won out that is not what seeped into our society so my critique of feminism is the feminism that has affected most of us when it comes to the definition of patriarchy I mentioned that one of the problems I see with feminism and this idea of patriarchy is exactly I think what you did there is not distinctly separating good what we can call good patriarchy from bad patriarchy the idea that patriarchy is abused and anyone can be patriarchal Allah Halim you know I think that's a stretch of the word to the point where it would almost be pointless in using it if it's just about dominance any group can dominate so why call it patriarchy right but I think again we went to the dictionary definition there where it's about lineage through the father and leadership of men both in public and in the home so if feminism is critiquing abusive patriarchy well who would disagree with that but I think very often it's not only critiquing abusive patriarchy which is why you see people saying smash the patriarchy and talking about all male panels there's no abuse happening if there are five men on a panel right but it's about well why are those men sitting there why isn't there a woman why isn't there a representation most of the men being CEOs people also use that to talk about smashing the patriarchy and talk about having most CEO positions there's no abuse happening they're not inherently obviously some CEOs are abusing the environment and their workers but inherently there's no abuse there but it's just purely about why are there so many men there and hardly any women so when I'm talking about feminism again I'm talking about what has touched most of society but I'm also talking about what feminism actually does in fights for so I understand your definition at the same time through example it's very clear that some of them are purely talking about male leadership whether it's abusive not abusive doesn't matter it's about male leadership and that in and of itself being problematic which I think is problematic abuse we can separate out and say that's a problem but I think we have to look critically as to when it's relevant to say men being in power here solely mostly is problematic and when it's relevant to say maybe it doesn't matter Assalamu Alaikum once again that senior moment passed hopefully I can remember what I was trying to say it happens at around age 45 okay what I wanted to point out and maybe this is underlying what you're saying as a background we have what's called western society whatever that is or western civilization whatever that is and the Islamic world view the Islamic world view has certain moral standards that are permanent they don't change this is what Allah has given us in the Quran whereas in the western world what's expedient is what's done so we may have had a rule about something a generation ago but now it's not expedient anymore so we now come up with something else to justify why we're going to change that rule so the point with feminism is some of these issues that western feminism addresses and you're absolutely right a lot of it is white middle class orientation because poor women have always had to work always had to work usually and at any rate so the idea of feminism and what issues are selected from a Muslim point of view there is a feminism within Islam but I think we have to look at what are the issues within the Muslim world and the fact that for instance a father might I'm thinking of India situation I'm aware of many situations where women are forced to marry someone but they're absolutely dead set against marrying because that's what the father maybe even the mother have decided the young woman is going to be forced to do it's this kind of patriarchy that we should be against because women that's not the prophetic way women has to give her consent I don't know how much that's happening here in the US but that's just one example but I'm thinking we have to have a feminism that's Quran based that's Islam based and not just take western concepts and try to somehow push them around this way and that to kind of conform to what we think we can accept okay so so you're saying we need an Islamic feminism I guess the what is it the issues within an Islamic framework that we legitimately need to correct because what Allah has said is there what the Prophet SAW said and in the hadith is there but what's happened historically over the centuries that's been used to justify women staying in the house or wearing the niqab which is completely outside of Islam Allah says in Quran tell the believing men when they look at the believing women lower their gaze when your face is covered up you're disobeying Allah how can you say the qab is part of Islam it's an upper class thing that existed in many societies historically that's what the French the masquerade is the same thing so what I'm saying is we have to look at what issues in the Islamic world and certainly for Muslim women makes sense for instance I'll give one last example when my kids were growing up and this is Southern California they always had when they had the youth group the girls were here the boys were there don't talk to each other don't look at each other the parents were coming from another part of the world what happened all those boys married non-Muslim girls because they never got a chance to talk to Muslim girls in a halal environment in the masjid in a public space not two people in a room where the door is closed without the shaitan is the third party so because of these silly rules and not understanding what the atmosphere is in America we've gone to so many weddings and we've seen so many young people where they're not married to a Muslim because they were told no don't look at each don't talk to each other when you develop friendships with people those are the kind of people you're bound to marry that's a very specific example that a lot of wonderful Muslim women in their 30s and 40s can't find husbands because the men went somewhere else I think it's I don't know I think the idea that we need an Islamic feminism and one sense I could say well why do we need an Islamic feminism right if we know that these issues aren't rooted in Islam why don't we just need to return to Islam if it is truly rooted in Islam is it necessarily problematic maybe not maybe if it was you know Islamic minimalism Islamic environmentalism and you know I don't know maybe those things aren't inherently problematic but I would question if we truly believe which we should as Muslims that these issues are not an outpouring of Islam itself but actually of our not following Islam then why wouldn't we simply turn back to Islam and why do we need to give it a new title and attach it to feminism what would the benefit be just you know rhetorical question Salekum so we talked about feminism from like academic level, political level conceptual level like brass tax like at a family personal level like I've talked a lot of Muslim men and it's very rare when I talk to men that they find like a hard core feminist let's say a feminist female very attractive like it's difficult a whole life family life etc and I'm just wondering if the opposite is also true right like as a female having kind of a more feminine male husband attractive or equally unattractive I guess what I was saying when I talked to other Muslim men about what is unattractive is about I guess kind of the word you had up there about the bogey man like how like everything is the man's fault because like that yeah well I think this is one of the ironies right that we somewhat touched on where there has been such an emphasis on women succeeding in career in school but then there is this sort of strange irony now of men falling behind in both of those realms of life and so who are these women going to marry so yeah of course it can be difficult in general the feminine attracts the masculine and vice versa um so you know I I think the answer is obvious but I think your point is still valuable that those women who are fighting for those feminist rights what are the consequences within their personal relationships and do they really and truly want the kind of man that seems to be ideal um within feminism and I think that's an ongoing conversation but it is valuable to think about it's nice to see you in person I'm actually from Canada and I'm just here for one week and so I'm sorry if I'm not very coherent so I'm a little jet-lagged what's your name? Aisha we're friends on facebook yeah it's your facebook and I always appreciate your input because I like to follow issues of feminism closely on social media and often your name pops up with very very insightful comments so I feel very blessed and privileged to have been able to catch your your thing today because I'm only here for a week so I wrote my question down because again jet lag so I want to make sure that was making sense I want to say what would you respond to the idea that wanting interests and goals outside of motherhood is a result of being like brainwashed by individualism and wanting to make a mark on the world outside of child rearing with the understanding that child rearing is the most valuable thing a woman could contribute to society so I feel like there's this idea maybe also prevailing within the Muslim community that like a man's purpose is to provide and a woman's purpose is to nurture and that we should find like fulfillment within those roles and that everything outside of that is like a distraction so I think also that could play into the whole idea of like feminism being a pushback where women for a long time felt like they didn't have that choice like if they wanted to go be an artist or be a writer like something like that it was something that was like well that's just a distraction from your your womanly duties so what would be a good response or what are your thoughts on this of like you know if a woman has interests not necessarily just even like work as part of a company or anything like just she's an entrepreneur or an artist or something but she's also a mother there's this idea of like oh she must be neglecting her motherly duties if she can find time for hobby or interest so how would you respond to that idea yeah you know as Muslims we shouldn't sort of take the other extreme right so we know that Muslim women have had prominent positions within our Islamic tradition and some have even not been married or not had children all of the prophets except for a few didn't have children or didn't have children from him quite a few didn't even have children our mother did not have children and we know her impact on us as Muslims so we can't we can't fall into the other extreme of sort of being deterministic that our only sole value as women is to get married and have children however as one of the sisters said and it is a really important point we don't live in a society that is well obviously it's not an Islamic society but it also doesn't even have sort of traditional sort of normative family value sort of thing so any woman who wants to pursue a career and is married and has children has a very difficult task on her hand and you know even now you see I've been seeing a lot of feminism focus on this idea of men need to do more in the home and men need to participate more with child here because the older feminist idea of a woman can do it all is actually exhausting is actually not positive or ideal however will men actually take up that slack and again is that actually what women want because there are always their benefits but there are also setbacks the more a man has to do in the home the more a man has to take on child care the less he can pursue in his career the less money he will be making maybe the more that she'll have to make so there's always going to be sort of a positive and negative especially when there's no outside support but if whatever a woman wants to pursue you know if it's valid within Islam of course it is can be valuable I think the Islamic consideration however if she does have a husband and children is about prioritization so if you do have young children if you are married that is going to be more of a priority than a career outside of the home but that doesn't mean that you can't also pursue that yeah I mean that's a good point as well I think the only difference with men is that if they're working harder it's directly positively affecting their family whereas for women even though today it can also directly positively affect their family but it's not their obligation so if he was to work 60 hours and that brings in more money and so they have a better lifestyle that would be more beneficial in a sense like it can lean more in the man's favor to be outside of the home more because of that obligation but still as you said if he has a wife and children he also has an obligation to them yeah so I just summarize it how I started that we shouldn't take the other extreme of believing our only value is in being married and having children I really value your discussion here I think it's such an important discussion that should be I would have loved to have listened to this many years ago and it would have resolved a lot of tension about working and not working being happy being a mother but also being pulled towards a career so this is a fascinating and very important discussion I do want to just say in regards to men as I understand it and see it there was something that came up in your discussion too where you mentioned that you know men don't feel a biological pull towards as much towards the child rearing and taking care of the children and as you discussed over here their role financially I do think that we have to very much acknowledge also the importance of a man's role in helping to raise his children and being part of that family unit and even our prophet Huzad Khadija supported him initially and her role was the one who took had a financial role there so that can be I don't want to see this idea that a man shouldn't be involved because he just has to be this source of income I think is unfair and also creates perhaps a tension within a marriage as well if there's too much burden on one side I mean it's a collaboration and a loving collaboration and respect between two people where there's a give and take and I think each individual situation might be a little different so I just want to your thoughts on that yeah and that is the blessing of Islam that we have these ideals and foundations but there is still a lot of room for the individual right so if someone was married and wanted to the woman had a career where she wanted to pursue and be the sole breadwinner in the man and wanted to take care of the children primarily they could it's not haram to do so even though that isn't aligned with the Islamic ideal it may work for some individual couple the comments I am making in the previous lecture they stopped me because the years do not want to listen to this truth today there are Muslims no Islam at all you have to understand for this first Islam before you discussing all this today there is Muslim countries but no Islamic country there is a difference between Islam and Muslim the whole world will turn to peace there is only start one real Islamic country you have to understand Islam do you know when Islam started who started Islam do you want me to answer that question yes I want to go from me no sir Islam in the true sense of the word of submission to one God started at the beginning of course Adam submitted to Allah everyone there after who were true believers in the larger sense of the word began with the first man just a little bit I just wanted to ask about the equal pay issue in the feminism that you refer to why is it that we can't believe in that as well because if we're going to go work in the workforce because we choose to and I always tell my husband if I choose to all the money is mine so that was Islam gives me but of course most of us we go to work because we want to betterment our family you know and not put too much burden on our husband in the way of cost of living is nowadays so my question is why is it that we cannot believe in the fact that we should get equal pay because as it is we're not getting paid at home so why can't we ask for in the man's world that we're going into get equal pay and why can't we support that as a feminist okay I'm not sure I understand the premise of the question can I paraphrase it so she's asking why we cannot ask for equal pay if we are going out and working because anyways we do not get paid at home so you know if we are making this choice of opting for a career then why we cannot get paid for the same job that men are doing too I think she made a point that men get paid more I think that was I don't remember mentioning pay at all that's interesting the three points that I remember you mentioning was one was work one was the abortion and one was the sexual freedom I'm not interested in the sexual freedom I readdressed the abortion I just want to know about the work aspect that you would prefer to so we were speaking about the consequences the consequences the consequences of this fight to work and some of the some of the consequences to that fight being that women now feel they have an obligation that women now have a social economic have been put in a position where they feel like they have the social and economic obligation but we started I believe we started by saying that but but the working in and of itself isn't necessarily the issue and if you are truly working completely equal to whoever else then I suppose you should be paid equally that's funny because I didn't mention this but what I've written about this topic of gender the gender pay gap is that the way in which it is discussed is not its reality so the reality is not two identical people one man one woman and they're getting paid differently any case that that is happening is already against the law what feminists are talking about and it's been against the law since the 60's the equal pay act what feminists are talking about not the way that they put it they dig into the research is that as a group women make less than men well and I discuss this in the article that I pulled up is that it's not a gender pay gap in terms of again two equal people and you're just not getting paid the same because you're a woman but there are issues that make it difficult for women to make the same amount of money as men so one is that well for one universal child care we don't have maternity leave we don't have on site nurseries so this makes it difficult for women to stay in the workforce when they have young children and obviously the money they have to pay to daycare women also are more risk averse so they don't ask for raises as much as men do there are a couple of issues that I cited as to why there is this gender pay gap between men and women but again it is not as feminist presented if you go into a job and you are literally equally qualified equal everything and they are paying you less because you're a woman that's illegal so women what feminists are discussing this idea of equal pay I'm not even really sure what well let me not say that so some of them have actually said one men also work more slightly more they work more over time so there have been some feminists who actually say we should get rid of overtime I believe that was done at reddit get rid of it because women don't work as much and that will equalize the pay gap well is that just is that fair is that equality so that particular issue that's not a matter of whether or not it aligns with Islam you have to look at it in a lot of detail and see the areas where yes it aligns we believe people should be paid equally if they are truly equal which is rare anyway but if they are truly equal but the details of it that's a different issue should someone not be allowed to work overtime because either people don't ask for it is that just so um yeah those are my comments I'm not sure if there was a question on that issue as to women may not be equal and just as a man and woman may not but we're presuming that in similar work men and women have equal capacity to do good work and should be paid equally of course well that isn't quite what I said um I my point my conclusion is that well let me say it's problematic to be a feminist because we cannot holistically accept it that's not the same as saying that we don't align on every single issue there are issues we align with there are issues we don't so something um more innocuous let's say like environmentalism can we be muslim and be environmentalist well I don't really see any issue that we couldn't align with them on maybe there are some but I don't know of any um whereas with feminists you by issue it's half and half so can you call yourself a feminist and not agree with half of it maybe you can um and one other thing I mention is that I do believe there still is this kind of pressure that if we support you you support us which would also make it difficult to be muslim practicing muslim and fully be in that movement I just uh just thought that occurred to me that like I think the reason is a lot of times like it's sort of people make it black and white like are you feminist or are you not as in feminism means do you support women or not and then whenever you're like well no I don't label myself feminist then usually it like will um have some red flags for people like oh you must have some you know some reasons why maybe you know you don't fully support women or something like that so I think it's just it's more of like um a word thing than an actual like what does feminism actually mean because that used to be the way I used to think if someone said I'm not feminist I'd be like well like you're canceled so you know maybe it's just we just need to be a bit more understanding of what the words we're using actually mean so anyway that was really interesting yeah I think that's that's absolutely right um feminism for some people can simply mean women's rights so if you say you're not feminist why don't you stand up for women's rights um it is a funny thing with words right so in a sense maybe superficially we could all be feminists if we believe in women's rights right um but in any sort of deeper interrogation of the word of its roots of its practices it becomes a lot more difficult to um call one self feminist I mean a similar thing would be if someone asks you know do you support black lives matter and you say no oh well you don't like black people but you could be saying no because they support you know homosexuality in the lbgt community so the reason you're saying no has nothing to do with a more superficial understanding of the movement um so so you're right it could just be a wording thing and sometimes we're using the word differently we have eight minutes until four if you want to go until 4 30 just on that same point just quick comment I think there's a perception a stereotype in the society in which we live that because we're Muslim women we're not empowered and we're somehow oppressed and that's where that word when you're when there's a contradiction to being feminist is equated with us not standing up for human rights whereas nothing could be further from the truth when you actually examine it so maybe that's where some of that tension lies and that's a really good point that yeah that could even also be the motivation for some Muslim women to call themselves feminists to make it clear no I'm not oppressed I'm a feminist so that that's a really good point thank you well first thank you as well I'm a fan of yourself and your whole family pretty much and I just wanted to say I'm thankful to be here not just because it was my job to be here to record and preserve and hopefully share this lecture but also as a Muslim man I'm also happy to see other Muslim in the audience often when you see the word feminism you know it's kind of like a scare term almost and men will feel a kind of a retreat from that because there's a negative assumption sometimes and understandably so we have a lot of media contemporarily speaking that tends to show the male and especially male fathers in a very negative and absent T light and there is a social reality to that but when it's now portrayed as like a dominant this the guy is not absolute males or portrayed as like the idiots in the film or an intelligent in the film you know you can't underestimate the impact that that's having on a generation of men then you combine the on top of that this gender fluidity push and this big question mark about gender and it's like a fear for our future about our kids growing up in that type of culture as presented as the norm so my point is that I preach what I what it makes me appreciate is religion and in particular one such as Islam that I converted to because it gave clarity to me on these issues I really didn't even know what a man was honestly until being presented with it as a Muslim and it frightened me to be honest men was you know as a young guy growing up in this secular culture you know you're just chasing your desires and Islam just shifted that dramatically in terms of this thing that you're after in a woman in terms of your desires you have to you have to number one have God's permission you have to fulfill certain conditions you have to have consent and there's responsibility and that I think that religion really offers what the important thing that religion offers is a compelling force outside of the self and that has an authority over the self whereas my fear with a lot of these movements secular movements is that in itself there's no outside compelling authoritative force other than the self and the self is self-serving and it flip-flops so you can't agree on feminism because the definition flip-flops if I say I'm feminist because I agree I support the rights of women well that's just my understanding of it but that's not this other person's understanding and who's the current authority of that movement it just shifts and so I appreciate that we have outside compelling forces God you know primarily and then these realms called heaven and hell I appreciate the existence of heaven and hell because it compels me in my relationship with my wife on a daily basis it's like do I really want to oppress my wife do I really want to not give her her rights there's times in the relationship yes well I'm kind of self-serving but the religion has always given me that self-check system outside of myself you see I mean all the time and so I know okay if I wrong her in this moment it's not just oh I upset my wife it's like you can go to hell you can get burnt I don't want to get burnt I don't want to go to hell therefore you better act right also paradise is awesome so why wouldn't I want to be with this woman in paradise if I could be with her here why not be with her forever in paradise so why would we want to mess that up so it gives you like forgiveness to give the religion is also repentance to say sorry it's something compelling me to say sorry to God and also to anyone else that I've infringed upon and so I think it's because we're also interacting in a dominant culture does not have this higher authority release system it's easy for that to weaken in terms of our clinging to it and just our mere appreciation of it so thank you it's not a consistent definition so the idea that it's not a consistent definition makes me think about oh wait so every time someone asks me are you a feminist or not I'm like do you have 40 minutes because I have a lot to say so I think highlighting the idea that we believe in women's advancement we believe in women's equality we believe that a woman should work if she chooses to do so those are the important things to do is highlighting that I think we got hung up on the idea of are we feminist or not why and why not I think just understanding that idea and understanding it on a micro and a macro level understanding what is happening in our community are you aware that there are many women living in cross-holds with oppressive men right or just having these discussions in the communities where it really solves this thing not just being hung up on the word feminism yeah shall we wrap it up thank you so much for your contribution and it's 4.30 and she has been talking for 2.5 hours so thank you so much for coming here and I hope when shall I bring Taufiq to your life and it was beneficial and inshallah will come again and many more such interesting programs please do not forget leaving saray salam