 Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem Having said that though, I have been a woman in professional ministry in this denomination for over 35 years, and I do have my own experience to bring to bear. As I thought about this topic, I knew without a doubt that I would have to begin at the very beginning with the life of one woman in particular who was a unique influence on the perspective of the denominations and founders, and she is Susannah Wesley, the mother of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodist movement, which began within the Anglican Church. Susannah became the wife of Samuel Wesley in 1688 in England, and together they had 19 children, nine of whom died in infancy. The day after each child turned five years old, Susannah began their formal education with six hours a day spent in lessons, including the daughter's being taught. On Sunday afternoon, Susannah assembled her children for the singing of songs and for hearing the sermon which she delivered. Up to 200 local people began attending her services because the Sunday morning preacher in quotations lacked the diversity of spiritual teaching, which Susannah services provide. Susannah's husband, Samuel, was a rector at the Epworth Church and who had been away for some time while Susannah assumed this man's role as a preacher challenged Susannah to justify her actions. She responded that she believed the life of the church hung in the balance and no other course of action was left open to her other than to take action. So her son John, who was nine years old at the time, had a very powerful example of the kind of leadership women might exert in the church, and it would influence the role women would eventually have in the development of his Methodist movement. Methodism began as a revival movement within the Protestant Church of England in the 1730s. While attending Oxford University, John and Charles began their holy clubs, which adhere to discipline prayer, study, and service schedules. The name Methodist stuck, though it originated as a derogatory term that students at Oxford used to ridicule the rigorous methods and structures. As holy clubs grew into Methodist societies and the movement spread to North America, women participated in large numbers. Though John Wesley did not encourage women to preach except under extraordinary circumstances, he did recognize their leadership in a variety of other ways. This kind of ambivalence toward embracing women's full authority to lead in the church has remained embedded in our combination, and of course has also been changing significantly over the past two hundred and fifty years. It wasn't until 1956 that women received full clergy rights in the Methodist Church. Today women account for approximately 60 percent of total church membership and roughly 30 percent of clergy positions. Here I have to say that in the United Methodist Church there are two distinct borders for clergy, elders and deacons. Both require seminary training and passing the scrutiny of certifying boards. However, their roles are different. Elders carry the authority to lead or be solo pastors in local churches. Elders preach, they administer the sacraments, and they are responsible for ordering the life of the conversation. Deacons on the other hand serve in team ministry with elders in local churches or in settings outside the local churches such as hospitals or non-profit organizations connecting local churches to the needs of the world. The order of deacons was established in 1996, so it's relatively new, and provides clergy status for those who carry on a legacy begun by lay professionals in specialty fields such as Christian education, music, and outreach ministry. But the order of elder can trace its roots back to John Wesley's ordination of men for service in North America in the 1700s. In 2014, 76 percent of all those ordained as deacons were women and 80 percent of elders were men. I'm a deacon and my colleague, Pastor Henry Kim, is an elder. As is always the case in women's leadership development, having role models who are women has immeasurable value. I chose Christian education as my profession because I felt called to ministry and I was influenced in powerful and delightful ways by Maydell Harris, the children's ministry specialist at the church my family attended in Texas. I'll never know if I would have chosen the ordination on the elder track if Maydell had been the pastor rather than the Christian education. But that was Texas in the 1970s and what's important to note is that the United Methodist Church looks very different in the western United States and particularly here in California than it does in the southeastern United States. The race and gender divide is much more pronounced in places like Mississippi and Virginia, Alabama and Texas for instance than it is in California. In 1984, Bishop Lanteen Kelly was elected the first black woman to become bishop in any Christian denomination and she was elected by the western jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church after she had withdrawn her name with great disappointment from consideration in the southeast where her home church was because it was clear she could not be elected there. The United Methodist Church is an institution that reflects the racism and sexism and homophobia don't get me started of the context in which it is. It also contributes its own layers. A clergy sister once told me that on the first Sunday she led worship in a small church in the Central Valley of California as the first woman pastor in its history. The organist rather than playing a hymn or a piece of sacred music played the theme song from the Miss America pageant as she processed down the aisle of the university. In the decades since women were first born gay elders they have faced many challenges as they have sought to carry their authority authentically. They have consistently asked themselves how do I take authority while leading in a way that empowers others. Over the years as women have continued to live their answers to that question it has become a foundation for leadership style shift throughout the whole church. Today as membership in the United Methodist Church and in other mainline Protestant denominations in the United States continues to decline and as upkeep for aging church buildings become more difficult innovative young clergy are creating new ways of seeking the church by returning to relationship and hospitality as the heart of ministry. House churches are forming around red baking ministries caregiving ministries and workplace based ministries are inviting seekers to an experience of church that holds promise for them and is not the style of church their grandparents attend. I think the influence of women in ministry has been a significant contributing factor to this kind of attendance to the changing needs of society. I also think that generally historically the new contributions of women in the church have been mostly resisted every step and only more fully appreciated in hindsight and as more and more women have become leaders in the church in prominent ways. Women in the church have been and continue to be bringers of food to public summers, visitors to the sick, the preparers of wedding and memorial service receptions, committee members, worshiping and the pews, teaching Sunday school, leading small groups, directing choirs, printing bulletinants, answering phones, advocating for justice, speaking prophetically and pastoring churches. It remains to be seen what new roles and new ways of being in ministry women will create and assume into the future. With that said, the topic for tonight's talk is really something I wanted to first focus on before I actually get into the talk because I'm sure it's been repeated but what is the role of women in your faith and how has it evolved over time? The wording here is important because the focus is on the faith. In my experience, especially post-911 with a lot of the rhetoric that's been sort of permeated in our culture and our society about Islam and Muslims, I found that I'm often in a position where I'm very defensive about not so much what my faith says but what people who claim to share my faith do. I really value opportunities like this where I can actually focus on what the actual faith teaches as opposed to having to explain what other people might do because many times, for example, I've been asked why can't women in Saudi Arabia drive or I'm from Afghanistan and so I can't why can't girls or women in Afghanistan get an education and so again I'd have to defend well it's not has nothing to do with my faith it has to do with the fact that unfortunately people who are getting claimed to be acting on behalf of my faith are not acting on behalf of my faith and they have usurped the rights of individuals and it's often to a different tangent so anyhow like I said I really appreciate the fact that I can actually just focus you know the talk today on what Islam actually says and this topic especially about Muslim women is really one of my favorite topics to talk about I speak regularly on different topics because it takes me back to my own journey coming into the faith see I was born into a Muslim very conservative conservative I would say culturally conservative family it wasn't quite religious we weren't really practicing but we had a very strong identity as cultural Muslims and so it wasn't until my first year in college when I actually started I think having maybe a existential spiritual crisis and started asking a lot of questions about my existence um my purpose I lost my grandfather so that was the very first sort of um you know experience of reality about thinking about existence but after that I had another incident at the school that I attended where um I was actually asked to gather or kind of rally around some Muslims to come to a talk on campus where there would be a female speaker and she was going to talk about female general mutilation she was she was I was told by the teacher or the professor at the time that she was a Muslim woman and it would be really nice to have members of the Muslim Student Association come and attend and just support her and you know to be there with her so I you know I was at actually at that time very active in the club and the Muslims Association so I asked some friends to join me and we attended the talk to go and help support her but we found that she had actually left Islam and she began to talk about um sort of her own personal feelings you know things that she had conflicts with but also same things that were categorically just wrong and flat out untrue and so I found myself in a position of having to speak out and you know um and kind of question what she was doing and it kind of turned into this moment like I felt like it was kind of like the twilight so I really remember that moment because there was an audience full of mostly women and um and they were there to obviously also support her but when they saw me speaking out against her they kind of you know they felt like like I was offensive although I didn't say anything necessarily offensive I was just more defending my faith but in that moment when I saw the response on the audience I started thinking about who am I you know what's my identity as a Muslim woman because I didn't cover as I do now I wasn't doing my five daily prayers I wasn't really you know embody all the things that I believe but I just hadn't arrived at that place where I wanted to really seriously put my faith into practice so when I saw that reaction and I you know I just was in that moment of thinking about deep you know reflection about who am I what's my identity that sort of sparked my journey into studying not just my own faith but also other faiths as well so I started actually shifting my studies into religious studies and I took you know different courses on all world religions but when I landed on Islam it was revelatory for me because I didn't realize how many prejudices and misconceptions I carried about the role of Muslim women and things that you know even growing up in the Muslim family that I thought that I later found out were very cultural practices they were all kind of you know again coming into light as I started studying the faith for example the first thing that I remember um you know I read a list that had a comparison of all the rights that Muslim women were given 1400 years ago compared to women from other faith traditions or just you know around the world and one of the first things um that the list mentioned was the right of Muslim women to marry and to divorce you know all on their own now by show of hands please work with me here how many of you have all have been led to believe that Muslim women do not have choice when it comes to marriage and divorce right very good so again this is something that in that list I started you know reading more and more but there's a story that I'd like to share one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad his name was Ibn Abbas Ibn just means son so the son of a man named Abbas he relates that once a young girl she came to the Prophet Muhammad and she had just been married off forcibly by her father and she was very upset so she came to complain to him now in that moment the Prophet the marriage ceremony had already happened so he paused and he and again it's important to uh to reflect on what you know how he engaged her he asked her now that this is an object you have a choice do you wish to stay in this marriage or do you wish to leave the marriage her response was what do you think her answer yes how many people think she said I want out bring me out of this she complained right okay how many people think she stayed all right she actually said I do wish to stay but the reason I spoke up is so that I let other women know that no man has the right to force them into a marriage so this story to me was really profound because not only is she exercising her own you know choice right in the matter but she's also clearly showing that she is looking out for other women and so she made a really responsible decision to speak out but she could have just you know kept quiet and gone to and stayed in that marriage without anybody ever knowing that she had a mom with it but she wanted to make a clear point and the fact that that was related to just one story of a man who had to sell this myth that some women cannot marry or divorce and that's one like I said but another right that again just you know that it might surprise you is that Muslim women have a right to an education again bunch of hands I mean I come from Afghanistan we went through the war we've heard it all we've seen it all I think there's a very common perception or misconception that girls especially in in Muslim countries are deprived of an education and this might be somehow rooted in the faith right have you ever been led to believe that okay so again another saying of the Prophet Muhammad he said the seeking of knowledge is obligatory upon every Muslim and there's no distinguishing there about male female or even age or backgrounds just to get just a very simple statement but what that you know tells us as Muslim women especially is that at any point in your life you have the right to learn you have the right to go and do whatever you want to pursue however you know whatever your dreams are and it's not just you know the there's no limits you know that it's only this message is only for young girls or single girls so as someone who's married I have children I think you know this is really important to me because the currently yes I have children right here you might see them in the back I'm a stay-at-home mom but I didn't have hopes to go back and possibly finish some school schooling that I I want to pursue and so it just again invalidates this point that this is a myth that unfortunately hasn't been you know perpetuated but another right that might surprise you is that Muslims have the right to own property to work and to earn their own income and there's I mean in Islamic law there's so much about the rights of women in regards to this but one thing that I remember being really impressed by is that a Muslim woman whatever income she receives by working is her own income so there's no obligation on her to actually contribute to the household and she can do with it whatever she wants men I'm sorry to say that's not the case for the for Muslim men they actually that the duty and responsibility to carry the household is on Islam so they do have to work and their income is to go to the household so there's you know this this is something of again a lot of times surprise these people it surprises people to find out most of women have the right in their marriage contract to actually stipulate if they want for example someone to come and cook meals for them or clean their homes they can actually make those stipulations in their marriage contract but these are all ways to again honor the rights and the needs of women especially once we have children as many of you I'm sure to hear no if you have children or grandchildren it's a lot for a single woman or a woman to do it all by herself they say it takes a village but unfortunately I'm sure you've seen that the village is sort of disappeared right in modern times so you have all these women carrying you know not one two three multiple children on their own it's what becomes really hard for them whereas here in our tradition this was taken care of you know before it even had you know had children and that they were given that right to say you know what these are things that concern you can stipulate that and if it's in the marriage contract then the man has to honor it so again another thing that people are surprised to find out about Muslim women they have the right to vote right I mean here in this country suffrage movement right 1920s we got the right to vote 1400 years ago Muslim women were given the right to not only have you know the rights to participate in elections but actually to be elected to be nominated into political office and we have so many examples throughout history of female leaders and then if I weren't actually I'll list a few for you man a little bit but this is something that people don't know often about historically the position of Muslim women currently we have a right to be respected and treated well the saying said the best of you are those who are best in treatment to their wives and there's this is just one statement that many other stories that relate this importance of really honoring the position of a woman in society a woman in her house so a lot of things that people again don't know but like I said in my own journey these were things that I was surprised to find out because you know culturally things are not always in line with the faith and this is something that as someone who now speaks on the tradition I have to again always kind of clear up for people that there's things that you might find out or hear or see in witness that are expressions of maybe someone's personal beliefs someone's cultural beliefs but that's not in the tradition in the faith itself just to kind of I don't know how much time I have but I wanted to just present some famous Muslim women in history to give you clear examples of how these women exercise their rights. Khadija Bint Khoelid is the first wife or was the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him but she her reputation preceded him she was known as a very wealthy and very intelligent business woman she was entrepreneurial she actually had she was a tradeswoman so she had business selling her trading goods that she employed men mostly men who would travel as far as Syria on her behalf and to be a woman in pre-Islamic Arabia at that time doing something like that was pretty extraordinary but it just she's an exemplar in the faith that she's considered one of the four perfect women that that we study in terms of just her story but she even after you know he he received prophecy at the age of 40 they were married at that time but even after Islam she continued to use her wealth in extraordinary ways to help to help Muslims and so she was in her own right very established like a woman which is an icon of the faith um there's another woman her name is Umamara and she was also a female companion of the Prophet Muhammad she was actually went to join one of the great battles at that time as a nurse to tend to some of the wounded but she found herself on the front lines of the battle so she's kind of one of those warrior women who just went right out there and you know fought and she was another amazing example we have Fatima Al-Fahdi she was in the ninth century a woman who established the Qaraweem mosque in Fesgarako which is actually considered to be the very first university in the world this was done by Muslim women so again things that people don't associate with Islam first of all but then with Muslim women are things that are like this we have Lubinah Afqordoba she was an intelligent intellectual and mathematician of the second half of the 10th century and she was famous for her knowledge of grammar and the quality of her poetry we have Muriel Al-Astrolavia Al-Ijivia it's a title because she was a great mathematician and scientist who worked on astrolase which again was in the 10th century invented by Muslims Zaynab el-Shahada from the 12th century she was a great polygraph for a teacher Razia Sultana from the 13th century who was the first female sultan on Delhi Queen Aminah Azaria of the 16th century she was known for her military expertise especially her brilliant military strategy and in particular engineering skills in directing great ball camps during her various campaigns so she's actually credited for doing something that our own president has not yet been able to do she built a wall the famous starry wall in Nigeria so I think you need to let him know about her but there's so many other extraordinary examples throughout history where some women have done amazing things that again just kind of show the role of women in Islam has been inconsistent from the onset it's a matter of you know you know having that strength of knowing who you are knowing what God expects that you have been acting on it so what this question was posed about how has the role changed in Islam for women and I would say in my lifetime honestly it hasn't necessarily changed in Islam it's been consistent but in terms of Muslim women in the public you know spirit of guess it's changed you know when I started speaking publicly about 20 years ago you know there was a in our local mosques and our Islamic organizations we have you know talks just like this or baked wits or you know dinners where they would have speakers that would come and present and very few women were doing it at that time this was just about 20 years right over so ironically though when I was training to be to do to become a speaker I was actually trained under two women who are still here in the Bay Area they're amazing women they do a lot of interfaith work and you might have actually heard of that because they they are you know sort of the trailblazers in terms of Muslim interfaith work in America their organization is called Islamic Networks Group yes there you go custom but at Maha El Bibi and Amina Jandali their personal friends of mine actually worked for IMG for a couple of years but they're amazing women there they kind of started you know a little a shift you know there was definitely a shift that I personally witnessed where more and more of women started training and becoming comfortable speaking not just to female only audiences which was a little bit more common but you know audiences like this where we'd actually come and talk and so now you can find hundreds of female Muslim speakers everywhere in addition to you know speakers who do this type of work we also have famous women I mean just last week I don't know if you were paying attention to the political political scene you know right into our very first two Muslim women in the House of Representatives right Elhan Omar and Rashida Tlaikin so these are just two examples but in addition to them we have so many other people that you might not even know or Muslim that are in the fields of journalism film media music even though you know we had our first U.S. Olympic ambassador who represented the United States and she was in full detail you know full cover if he had Mohammed in 2016 so there's so many examples of Muslim women that are just you know they're coming I think more and more into the public sort of domain because maybe perhaps it's because we kind of are you know more visual as in general in terms of you know media and internet social media that we just kind of use these platforms for I don't know but I do feel that that's where I would say there's been a change and I'm proof of that myself it's my many of my friends who do the same work are proof of that that in recent years we've seen that change but historically speaking as the examples like I shared with you and any others that we didn't have time to go over like I said the role has been consistent