 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. So I actually wanted to start with an ayah, and this is ayah 36 in Surah Yasin. Glory be to the One who created pairs from everything, created all of the pairs from what comes out of the earth from themselves and from what they don't know. Because I feel like sometimes we ask this question, what is the wisdom in creating humanity into like these buckets? Like why? But Subhanallah, if you're part of a pair, you are inherently incomplete. And Allah the One is inherently complete and inherently perfect. The existence of men and women on earth, whether we acknowledge it or not, is honoring Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala's oneness, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala's power. Am I doing this wrong? Can you hear me now? What was the sprint commercial? And this is why Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in Surah An-Najm says Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, one of the testiners of who he is, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, I just want to pause. He being a mess, like just a limitation of the language, not a limitation of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is beyond gender, is beyond needing us, hence the oneness of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. The word Allah in Arabic literally means the one and only God. It's a word that inherently cannot be pluralized. Subhanallah. So incredible. But I want to talk about this, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the theory, the current situation that we're in, and then hopefully the remedies from our tradition. So the theory makes a lot of sense. Like in a number of places in the Quran Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says And whoever does good deeds, male or female. Sometimes it says, But over and over again, when Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala mentions male and female, mentions them together and says whoever does good deeds. Again, the focus on the action. Whoever is actually doing these actions, they are equal in the eyes of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Hence the discussion on equality. But there's another ayah, when Sayyidina Maryam A.S. mother is having a child and she's saying Ya Allah, you've dedicated my child and they're going to serve you. And then she has a daughter and she says She's like, Ya Allah, it's a girl. Allah knows what, it's not like Allah didn't know it was a girl. And it says And the male is not like the female. And I feel like there's a beautiful subtlety in that, because as we aspire, we don't aspire for equality in the sense of we're exactly the same, we aspire for equity. And I know it's a subtle difference, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Because if we set men as the standard, it's an inherently losing proposition for women to always try to aspire to be men. I don't want to be a man. Alhamdulillah, I'm very happy being a woman. I don't want to be a man. But also in that moment, Sayyidina Maryam A.S. is such a beautiful example that her mother, she filled a role that only a woman could. And prepared her community for a role that Sayyidina Maryam A.S. would later take on. She was part of that journey. Alhamdulillah. I just think it's so beautiful when you talk about her. I'm just like drowning in all of the things that were said before. When we talk about patriarchy, if I say patriarchy is a hierarchy where I'm holding one group above the other. Allah's Panathana is just. Is it just to create half of humanity inherently subservient to the other? Or is there actually a balance? And Allah's Panathana made us a people of balance. And I want to point out that this lack of balance is not just destructive to women, it's also destructive to men. And there's so many things in the physical universe like most stars are, I'm going to nerd out for a second. Most stars are actually two star pairs that are rotating around each other and they're balancing each other out. You know that game where you hold hands and you go really fast in a circle? If it's an adult and a child, the child is flying. And if you're balanced, you're just going around in a circle. That lack of balance is inherently destructive to both groups. And I want to point this out. In American society, single men usually don't get touched. Like don't get hugged, don't get any kind of physical affection unless if they are in a sexual relationship. How destructive is that to people's psyche? But also how destructive is that for our society that the only outlet they have is a sexual relationship? I'm saying this to say that this isn't just bad for the women, it's also bad for the men. The examples of women during the time of the Prophet's life setup are so endless. And Mashallah, we heard so many of them. I wanted to, subhanAllah, in Mecca, Mecca was a lot more patriarchal because it was based on who got to travel and trade. It was dangerous to trade. The men held all of the power, had all of the political power and the financial power. This is why financial literacy for women is so important, because it balances things out. When they got to Medina, they were people that would, they were farmers and the family would farm together. It was a far more balanced society. It's no surprise that Mecca kicked the Prophet's life out and Medina took him in. That's not a coincidence. And subhanAllah, he arrives in Medina and you can see the cultural shift. SubhanAllah, there's a moment where Umar al-Du'l-Lan told him, he's like, remember when we were in Mecca and we would talk and the women would listen and now we can't get a word in edgewise. Like, what happened to us? He's like, I'm like, his brain's melting. He's like, I don't know what to do with this. It's funny because his wife talks back to him. He's like, wait, what's happening? This is new, what's happening? When she tells him you're not better than the Prophet's life, your daughter talks back to him. And he's like, it's a brain melt. He runs stops. He's like, what are you doing? Just like, we all do that. It's not just me. SubhanAllah, this was the norm. This was the standard. He's saying this to the Prophet's life. It was actually a time where the Prophet's life was really upset. And as soon as he said that, he pulled the Prophet's life out of being upset because he couldn't stop laughing. It's like, yes, but... SubhanAllah, that balance is so beautiful. There was a battle called the Battle of Mu'tah. The Muslims went. There were 3,000 of them. They were fighting the Byzantine Empire. They were fighting like 100,000. It was such an intense battle. SubhanAllah, this is right after Khadim, when he becomes Muslim. They engineer this way to like safely retreat. They run back to Medina. And they're on the outskirts of Medina. And the women of Medina come out to them because this is the first time in Islamic history that the Muslims have left a battle. The women come out and say, Ya furrar, ya furrar. You cowards, you cowards who ran away. You're not allowed home. And the Prophet's life comes out and intervenes. And he says, Balhumul kurrar, balhumul kurrar. There'll be another round. I promise, please let them home. And the Sahama said, we were far more afraid of the women of Medina than we were of the Byzantine Empire. That we were like fighting the day before. Our strength is believing women. This is what made Medina. This is what made the community that took in the Prophet's life. The Prophet's life said, whoever loves the Ansar, the people that took him in in Medina is a believer. And whoever hates the Ansar is a hypocrite. SubhanAllah. This is the weight of the women in our tradition. And stories like this are endless. I want to talk about part of how we ended up where we are now. So right now, I wanted to actually start off with ussulat al-qasas, because part of the trauma that has happened not just in the Muslim community, but really all over the world was this colonialism. Our grandparents kicked out the colonizers, the military colonizers. There's still economic colonization that's happening all over the world. And colonization is not unknown to this particular piece of land. And at the heart of all of this is white supremacy. Allah SWT, when he's describing the pharaonic system in the Quran and surat al-qasas, the surah is actually called sometimes translated to the stories, but usually translated to the narratives. And it takes the narrative of Pharaoh in one ayah, because it's not even complex, it's like this is it, and then the majority of the surahs are in the story of Sayyidina Musa. But in this ayah, it says, Pharaoh rose in the land, he divided people into groups, and here the word that it's using shia versus ta'ifa, it's a group with a distinct identity. He convinced them they were different from each other. And then he oppressed one of the groups. And the word ta'ifa is just a subgroup. It's actually one group from the many groups. They're not actually different. He kills, and he killed the men, and he kept the women alive. He was one of those people who caused corruption. I think it's important to talk about how the system that we have now is actually specifically gendered and treated men differently from women. And sometimes part of the dichotomies we're seeing in our own Muslim community is because the oppression that we experienced and our parents lived through, the trauma that we experienced communally was different whether you were a man or a woman. I also want to point out that this level of oppression is different based on the other rung of society that Pharaoh divided people into. Based on your race, you might experience more or less of this. But because you're put into this group, everybody's competing to be the model minority. I really don't care if Muslims become the model minority. I care if Muslims actually bring justice. Because that's what we're called to do. And if we work to compete in a system that is oppressing to other people, we're never going to win. Why would we? Why would Allah ever put Barakah in a system where we've just wholesale accepted oppression of other people? And because the Muslims in America are actually the most ethnically diverse religious group in the country, that means that we're not just accepting oppression for other people. We're accepting oppression within our own communities. Why would we ever do that? We're not the point of this. And I also want to point out that when we talk about like this post-colonialist reality that we're all living in, oftentimes you see the same objectification of women that Sadr Hussai spoke about just takes, you know, like this religious veneer we're objectifying women, but now we're like, you should wear a hijab and attract the men. This is my act of worship. How do you make this about you? Like really, how do you make this about you? Women are told in society that our values based on what we look like and this is my act of worship to remind me I'm more important spiritually than I am physically. If you find women attractive, you lower your gaze. That's your responsibility. In fact, that's my right upon you. I have a right for you to not objectify me. Subhanallah, how can we twist this? You guys have all seen this. It was like for a while it was this horrendous meme. I hated it. There's like a lollipop that's covered and what you guys know what I'm talking about and then there's a lollipop with ants and they're like, this is why you wear hijab and like women are lollipops, men are ants. Like this whole thing is horrendous. But how are you then taking religious language to do exactly the same system of oppression to try to cover up Pharaoh's system to cover up the white supremacist system? Dalim Gahid recently posted this. She said, we look at beauty and we think it's rare. It's not. It's commonplace. When you look into a mirror of like, ya Allah, the same way that you've beautified my outer, beautified my inner. I'm already saying, ya Allah, you've made me beautiful on the outside. And if you're insulting Allah's Pound of Da'ala's creation, where are you insulting? Also, a lot of our beauty standards in our own community are based on white supremacist ideals. I get into this argument so much with Egyptian women. They're like, curly hair is ugly. I'm like, we're North African. Most of us have curly hair. At what point did you decide this was ugly and they're like, what's your problem? I'm like, I have a problem. When our colonizer says, I am beautiful and you are not and you say yes. They came around and took down cities that were far more civilized than them and called them savages. The tragedy is when we believe we're actually savages. This isn't us going back. When I'm fighting for women's rights, I had a, I actually recently broke up with my therapist, not to find a new one. But because I was telling her, I'm like, I really care about women's rights. She's like, you clearly have progressive values. I'm like, no, I have very traditional values. Like specifically, 1400 years old. They are very traditional. Thank you. I like that. I have curly hair too. No, but this is true across the board. Women all over the world are using this bleach junk like you're actually putting chemicals on your faces that harm you to look like you're a presser and I'm not saying this of like, oh, women aren't beautiful. Every woman's beautiful. White, black and every shade in between. Again, who are you insulting? Are we really going to go around insulting Allah? His beauty and His creation? What are you doing? Sorry, I know I'm not on this. I feel like we wouldn't be here if there wasn't misogyny in the Muslim community. We actually wouldn't have an audience. I'm sorry. It's important to talk about because I've said this before I've gotten kicked out of more masajid than none because if I go into a masjid and you're like, there's no space for women. I'm like, okay, yell at me when I'm done. Allahu Akbar. Because the prophet of Allah, said, you can't prevent me from being here. The narration that mentioned that Subhan Allah after his father passed away, Abdullah the son of Omar went to his mom and said, why do you keep coming back? And she's like, so what's the reason Omar didn't tell me not to come? He got ashamed and turned away because as her son, if the prophet said them spoke, he doesn't have a right to tell you otherwise. And the irony is like, I remember when COVID first happened and they're like, okay, we'll open the masjid and we'll be socially distanced and we'll do this and we'll do that, but the women shouldn't come because it's not mandatory on them. And I'm like, it was never mandatory on you, you can't ban me from the masjid. Your misogyny is showing. And when they're like, oh no, this isn't about misogyny, this is fiqh. I'm like, okay, so how is the commandment of the prophet that I said I'm not fiqh? How is one statement fiqh and not the other one? When we're talking about these things, I think it's so important that Subhan Allah, we are mindful of this is our tradition. Am I submitting to it or am I trying to fit it in a box? And this is where the root of patriarchy in the Muslim community is. If you accept hierarchy at home, you accept hierarchy in society. And this is why a lot of those those quote, I'm not sure, I'll politely call them opinions. We're often published by the political authority of the time. When you look at the scholars in our own tradition that we're supported by the people, by the way the all of our fiqh, so the four imams, the four medahab, Imam Ja'far al-Sadaq, like when you look at all, and they were all interconnected with each other, they usually had issues with the political authority of the time. Because they understood their role in scholarship is speaking truth to power, is checking power, and historically scholarship was the balance that protected, it was the default senate of like, no, we're gonna check your power in case you ever think you get to oppress the people here. And when you look at those scholars far more balanced, because their role was to maintain society. The foundation of every Muslim society is the family. I also want to say that these extremes that we see in western society is just unfortunately an inherent part of western society. A lot of Islam talks over and over about balance. In western societies we have communism or capitalism or individualism, and you don't have anything in between. Islam is like, okay, in a family unit, you are able to be your own self, but you also work within a group. How do I build these balances within our institutions? How do you heal society from the inside out? Again, us showing up as educated, empowered Muslim women, this isn't just for us. This is to bring justice to everyone that is around us. It is to challenge the entire system that said your value is based on white supremacy. It is not a coincidence when you are going to depict Well, I know that Issa didn't have blonde hair and blue eyes. He didn't. But we're going to depict divinity as a white man. That's not a coincidence. And it's an abuse of Christianity. I work with a lot of Christian reverence. By the way, I'm part of an all women's team. I think we're the only one in the country. The rabbis are women, the reverents are women. It's incredible. SubhanAllah, when you talk to them, they're like, Issa didn't look like that. That's not what he looked like. But also, how are you now taking my faith and turning contorting it to something that it's not? We have to have enough life in front of Allah to not be able to tell him. We stood back, watched that happen and said nothing. When we talk about life, let's talk about life in front of Allah. Life is not you sitting in a corner being quiet. All of the women that we learned about, they all had buckets of life. Endless amounts of life. They didn't sit in a corner and be quiet. When someone else was oppressed because they had enough life of Allah to not just take that and not sit back and be quiet. SubhanAllah. How much time do I have? Okay, awesome. Sayyidina Maryam, alaihi salam. Sayyidina Maryam, alaihi salam. When you read her story, we talked a little bit about her, her mom. She's like, Ya Allah, it's a girl. Because she's from Ali Amran, she was able to live within Bayt al-Maqdis, within one of the harems. One of the holiest places on earth. She got to live there and she was the only woman that was allowed to live there. And all she did all day was pray and feed the poor. Like, she was just in a constant state of ibadah. And the angels came to her. And the angels came to her and said, Ya Maryam, oh Maryam, called her out by name. SubhanAllah is so beautiful. You see how Allah, SubhanAllah, calls Maryam, alaihi salam, by name? He calls Sayyidina Musa, alaihi salam, by name. It is to elevate them. And the angels call her by name. Ya Maryam, Allah has chosen you. Oh Maryam. Allah has chosen you. Has purified you. Has chosen you over all of the women. Ya Maryam, O Maryam, be obedient to Allah, SubhanAllah, and make sujud and make ruku'a with those who are making ruku'a. SubhanAllah. This is Maryam, alaihi salam. Allah, SubhanAllah, then gives her a very, very difficult and challenging test. And Jubeel, alaihi salam, comes and he tells her this and he's like, you're gonna have a child. She's like, wait what? And in that moment, as she's about, she's going into labor and she says something that's so profound. She's saying, She said, if only I had died before today and was long forgotten. And I feel like I've read the men who wrote tafasir and they're like, oh, it's because she feared the pain of labor. Like women have had babies and they had more babies. No, that's not what this is. No idea. For someone to say this, there's something inherent and core to who they are that's being threatened. She knew what her people were going to put her through. And mind you, a religious community and what they were going to put her through. As soon as Isa, alaihi salam, is born, he looks up at his mother and he starts to give her, in the qiraat it says, and the one that was below her or from below her, she was called and said, shake the tree. Like be content. And when you meet someone, tell them that you won't speak for three days. When she comes back, carrying Sayyidina Isa, alaihi salam through the city, she's coming back like, mind you, if, I don't know, the woman who basically lives at the masjid and feeds the poor is holding a baby. Maybe she's babysitting. Maybe she found it worth in child. They didn't say any of that. They looked at her because they'd been gearing up to this. They immediately started to slut-shaming her. They told her, your mother was this and your father was this. How dare you shame your family? Sound familiar? How dare you do this? Also, I don't know how long it takes to go like this. Even as she's doing this, they're like, how can we speak to a child? I, like, subhanallah, the amount of just, she knew this was coming. And as soon as she pointed to him, alaihi salam, he says, I am the servant of Allah. He gave me the book, he made me a prophet. He also says, I am righteous and good to my mother. What I expect of men in our community is to follow in the footsteps of Sayyidna alaihi salam and to be allies to women in this fight. This isn't about like men versus women. This is about justice versus injustice. Are we here for Allah or are we here for power? And everyone gets to decide this. We already talked about how there are certain women that unfortunately uphold some of these horrible systems, like, go, know your place. I actually got an email like that once, which I was like, in my mind, and I'm like, if you were a caricature of a misogynist, you wouldn't have hit it this hard. Sayyidina alaihi salam said, I have my mother's back. And this is what we should expect from the demand of our men. When I first interviewed for the job, Dr. Rani was on the call, I'm like, whatever this job is, I'm taking it. And the first conversation I had, I'm like, oh, I had some really difficult conversations with certain people, and she's like, I'm willing to bet they're the same people. I'm like, I love you so much. It's our responsibility to hold them accountable. And I feel like the more spaces I've been in, there was, I can't even remember his name, and I don't care to mention his name. He came, and he was speaking, and I was working for the Muslim Youth of North America. And he came, and the way he was interacting with the teenage girls didn't, like, it just, it sat with me, and I was like, I don't like this. I don't like what, like, I don't like how you're interacting with them. And I went because I was the one in charge of the list of speakers, and I just took, I just deleted him off, like, a Google Sheet, and I was like, he is not coming back. SubhanAllah, ten years later, I realized that the women took down. And I looked at that, and I was like, SubhanAllah, what if I hadn't trusted my intuition? What if I had sat there and said, oh, but what do I know? And blah, blah, blah, blah. No, the way he was interacting with teenage girls was inappropriate. It is my job to protect them. You have no right to be in this space. If you don't know that you shouldn't be hanging out with teenage girls after hours at a campsite, you should never be allowed to come back. And there were enough incidents like that that I'm like, ya Allah, this is so hard. But I want to stand on the footstep, through the footsteps of Sayyidina Malim A.S. I want to meet her in Jannah and deserve to have a conversation with her. I want to meet Sayyid al-Khawla, R.T. in Jannah. I want to live my life according to those things so I can deserve to be there, so they don't look back at us and say we fought long and hard. What did you do? Sit back and do nothing? And I want to say this of like, sometimes the fights isn't like oh, I'm going to sit here and yell at, like, no. I never, alhamdulillah, I don't... No, I've gotten angry. I'm not going to pretend I haven't. But I remember I walked in, this was the message that I was on the board of. I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, if you're saying this to me, I can't imagine what you're saying to other women. But one of the self-appointed people that have the self-appointed angry uncle in the Middle East, bring Masjid as one. By the way, all the churches have him, all the synagogues have like, I was very like, I was so relieved to find out we weren't the only ones that have this person. But the designated angry uncle at Masjid, he comes to me, he's like, let's be clear, I don't want to see you here again. I pointed to the spot, I'm like, here uncle, Allahu Akbar. I prayed, in that spot for two weeks straight. He come in, I point to the spot, Allahu Akbar. I didn't raise my voice. I didn't raise my voice, I didn't argue with it, like, I knew it wasn't going to work. But I was not going to give up that space. I'm not going to give up the space that Sayyidina Maryam, alaihi salam, created for us. I was never going to give up that spot. SubhanAllah, afterwards you would see me turn around. Alhamdulillah, I don't... SubhanAllah. I just, I think it's really important for us to know our own tradition. And to not accept what junk people have told us. I was preparing a talk, we have an interfaith group and I was preparing a talk and I was like, it would be really great if I talked about Rabia al-Adouya, alaihi salam. And everything that I looked up in English was, there is no way women in an Arabian society had power like this. But Rabia had everyone and all the leaders like listening to her. And I'm like, aren't you disproving the point you're actually making? It's so... How are you saying, in one sentence all like Sayyidina Maryam, alaihi salam, alaihi salam, alaihi salam, I guess he's one of the taberns. She decided in one of the sessions that he was sitting with her that he talked too much about the dunya and banned him from coming back. He's one of the greatest scholars of her time. And she's like, I don't like this guy, he doesn't come back. He's never right to my time. They went and asked her for advice. This is not new. We have always been doing this and we handed off one generation after another, whether we know their names or not. The story of Sayyidina Musa alaihi salam actually begins with his mother talks about his sister. We don't know their names and we don't need to know their names because mothers do this. Sisters do this. The men needed to be stated by name because what they were doing was exceptional among the men. Honestly, Alhamdulillah, we have so much dignity from Allah SWT. May Allah allow all of us to live out what Allah has written for us. May we meet the Prophet Sayyidina Musa alaihi salam and all of these women that we talked about, maybe be proud of us. Maybe live our lives in a way that makes them proud of us. I mean, Jusahb al-Naghair and Allah SAW, praise and blessings be on his beloved Prophet Sayyidina Musa alaihi salam. May Allah have mercy on him. May Allah have mercy on him.