 This is something I've put together for college students really, but I do feel that everything that I'm about to present is so relevant given all that was discussed, that we are living in such contentious times, times where these topics are so politicized, and I've worked with youth, I hear all about it all the time from sisters and young girls that I work with. They're very curious and confused about what Islam has to say about a lot of topics that relate to women, but also just gender, this concept of gender. So whatever conversations we can have around this topic are so relevant, I want to really again thank Imam Ahmad for being so thoughtful and having the foresight to put together such a wonderful presentation and then bringing it to us. So may Allah bless you and of course your beloved father, and may Allah return you to our community again and again and again. This is just the beginning, inshaAllah. So what that said, does this work for me too? Yeah, it does. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. So bismillah. Let's start. You do it down. Oh, do I do it down? Okay. Oh, no. Sorry. Oh, okay. Is it down or up? I don't know why I'm knowing that. No, you were right. You were right. It's down. I think when I hit down it worked. Okay. So the first thing I wanted to share is actually a quote that was posted in The Daily Beast and this is just for us to really understand why we have to talk about women in Islam and really have, be in control of the narrative because this is the reality that we're up against, right? Muslim women have been wrongly painted for decades in our country as universally oppressed and silent. Partly that's because of the outrageous real life policies of Muslim nations like Saudi Arabia, but also it's due to Hollywood feeding us a diet of Muslim women depicted in movies and TV shows as fearful, timid, and covered in a burqa whose only sound is ululating. This is the sound that women from different Arab countries make when they're celebrating. No. I'm sorry? It's down or up? Yes. I'm not familiar with. Okay. Hamda, thank you for that. Yes. So they themselves recognize that Muslim women have been depicted wrongly for so long and it's important again to depict or to help us to discern what is true and what is in and to address those myths. So let's first start off with the facts, what we should know about Muslim women and this is across the board. Men should know this, women should know this, young girls should know this, boys should know this. We should have no difference of opinion on these matters that Alhamdulillah Muslim women absolutely have many rights in Islam. The fact that I'm sitting up here is a proof of that. The fact that there are so many beautiful sisters here, sitting here, all came with their own agency, their own, you know, they were able to come here. It's a proof of that. But there are many other proofs. Another fact is that many Muslim women's rights are actually violated across the world and we have to be honest. We have to have honest conversations around this. We can't just gloss over the realities that our mothers, our grandmothers and even women today of course are dealing with in terms of the oppressive nature of certain cultural beliefs, right, that perpetuate misogynistic rules, customs or unjust laws and policies, all of which directly conflict with Islamic principles about women's inherent values and rights. So we have to be clear that that's a that's a truth. And then that Muslim women disproportionately suffer more consequences from Islamophobia than Muslim men. And that's because we're more visibly Muslim, right, people can see us. So a man can has that privilege of being able to move through society and nobody would know whether he's Muslim or not. Because now, for example, the beard is trending, right? There's a whole that it's what is it? The what is it called? I forgot now, but there's a whole movement, right? Where the hipster, the hipster movement, right? What here? But my name is Ahmed. There you go. So yeah, he could get away with pretending to be just another hipster, millennial, Latino, following a trend. We don't have that luxury work unless you know, I mean, sure, you can style your hijab differently, but most of the time people understand that you are a Muslim and that's your fate. So and then the other things that we also have to be mindful of is, again, the rights that women have in Islam are not always given and they are violated as we mentioned. But let's talk about other things that, in my experience, just hearing from women, from hearing from young girls, that they also feel as a missing piece of the conversation, that we openly address that, yes, there are, for example, double standards, right? So there's a mistreatment that a lot of young girls and women experience due to the gender disparity. So in households, boys will, for example, be given preferential treatment. They'll have more opportunities. They'll be able to have more social mobility, less household chores, raise your hands. Am I talking the truth, girls, right? All of this is real. A lot of us experience this growing up and I could spend a lot of time telling you about my chore list versus my brothers, which there was not basically, but delayed curfews, right? And then girls are also held to a stricter code of conduct. So that's true. That's just a real experience that a lot of Muslim women have. There is, in some cases, denied access to education, Islamic and or secular. I've lived that reality, and I know others have as well, forced marriages without their consent and prevention from divorce, lack of employment opportunities and or financial abuse from family members or spouse, or forced labor without compensation, lack of basic civil liberties or the right to participate in public or social life, forced cultural practices related to female sexuality like FGM, forced hijab or niqab, physical, mental, emotional or spiritual abuse from relatives, including parents, siblings, spouses, extended relatives, we can go on and on. These are the lived experiences of women. And this isn't exclusive to Muslim women, but we have to be real that these things absolutely do occur. Now, with that said, we also have to understand that Muslim women in the US are experiencing unprecedented challenges, right? So when we look at the research here, for example, 57, the majority of Muslim women versus 43% of men, Muslim men, say that it's become more difficult to be Muslim in the US in recent years, because we are burying the burden, right? We are the ones that are attacked. And I mean, I've written, if you follow me on social media, plenty of Facebook posts over the years about the different, you know, either microaggressions or actual attacks or perceived, you know, very, very, I mean, clearly examples of Islamophobia toward myself that I've had to deal with, but I know many others who have had very similar experiences. So that's one thing. And then 83% of Muslim women versus 68%, look at the numbers, look at the difference, said that there was a lot of discrimination against Muslims because they're on the receiving end of that. And then 55% of Muslim women versus 42% of men say that they've experienced at least one of several specific types of anti-Muslim discrimination. So these are, again, we have to familiarize ourselves with this because we need to empathize and also just have, again, honest conversations around the experiences of Muslim women in the world and here at home. Now, to the real stuff, because this is what we have to do. We are, again, living in times where there's a lot of people want to speak on our behalf, but it is so important for Muslim women to be empowered to have their own voice and to basically take back the narrative, right? So that we don't have people just using us, which is what they're doing. In many cases, they use our, you know, our status, right, as a marginalized community or as a member of a society that is often, and in many cases, as we just read, sometimes mistreated. So they will use that to their advantage, but it's very important for us to have our own narrative and to assert our own truth. So this is where, you know, Mashallah, again, you know, Mohammed's presentation was so comprehensive, but it's so important for us to address what it means to be a woman, not from the lens of modernity and politics, but to go back to the ultimate source, which is the Quran and Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la tells us, right? Wa-la-i-sa-dhaqara kal-untha and the male is not like the female. And I think that wording is so beautiful, right? Because, you know, just, I mean, of course, Allah knows in His own wisdom the way that it was phrased what the implication is, but I do think that there's something beautiful about it that says that there are unique traits, right? Which again, Imam Ahmad mentioned, that we have to honor and to, you know, fall into this, you know, idea that we should all just be the same and to negate those beautiful differences is, again, against what we are taught. And then, again, and of everything we've created, pairs that you may remember the grace of Allah. I mean, another powerful verse that reminds us that there is a binary, right? And we are living in a time where this idea of a binary is completely being erased. And, you know, something that Shahamza mentioned, which I think is really we have to keep in mind, that when you affirm this idea that everything is fluid and that there's no, you know, that there is no binary and that you allow for that, who is the only non-binary, right? Who is the only non-binary? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So we have to be very careful to fall into that same language, right? We believe in a binary. This is absolutely a fact. We believe in that. And the idea that someone can be non-binary or that we need to reject these notions is, again, akin to allowing for people to define themselves on the same level or as though they are like God-like. And that is not our worldview, right? We reject that. And so there, Islam, again, the framing around men and women is complimentary. It's not contentious, but we're living in a time where we're being pushed into that direction to just see each other as enemies. There's this constant power grab between us that we should feel threatened as women by men and men should feel threatened by women. And that's why we have all these movements now. We have incels and red pill and then we have feminists and others that are going in the direction where, you know, again, it's just constant infighting and looking at each other as enemies. And that is the complete opposite message of our faith, which is we are a compliment to each other. And we don't need to fight because, Alhamdulillah, everything is already defined for us as, again, Imam Ahmed mentioned. You know, definitions are important. And when you live in a world or in a time where everything is being forcibly redefined or deconstructed, then that's when you get all of this chaos. But our definitions are very clear around these things. So we have to restore that gender balance. And so we go back to the Quran and the hadith, our sacred text to look at what, how do we restore the balance? Well, here, Allah swt reminds us, right, that we are honored by Him. He is the one who's honoring us. Never will I allow the loss of the work of any worker amongst you, male or female, you are of one another. So He is, you know, giving us, you know, precedent, I mean, He's mentioning both of us in this verse to say that you're, the value of what you bring is the same. There's no difference, right? That one is not preferred over the other. And then, and for women, our rights over men, similar to those of men over women. This is real equity. This is the equity that we should look to, right? So we're not, we shouldn't look to lip service equity. We should look to a real equity. This is it. Surely the men who submit and the women who submit. And the fact, I mean, this verse, and this is the verse that I thought you were asking about with Omar Salama initially, but this verse also, right? This idea of, you know, the men and the women being mentioned in the same context repeatedly, repeatedly. It's an honor for us as women. And we should note that because others are noting it. And here at the bottom, I just have a little fun fact that might again, just inshallah, warm your heart to see that Allah SWT is always trying to remind us, right? That there's no competition here. Al-Rajal and Al-Marad, both which mean men and women are mentioned each 24 times in the Quran. Something that, you know, again, a little factoid. Yeah, this is from Dr. Selina Brahim in her book, The Women and Gender in the Quran. So, Mashallah, ended there are 34 ayahs in the Quran where women are speaking directly. I mean, there's just so many other beautiful facts. It's this truth that proved that we are in fact, honored by God. And if you have Allah SWT that your creator honoring you, you don't need to look to anyone else for validation or definitions about who you are. And so this fact that women are prioritized and given this honor is noted by people like Leslie Hazelton who actually observed that the Bible is exclusively, and again, Dr. Ali can speak more to this, addressing men or using the second and third person masculine, but the Quran actually includes women. And this is a distinction that we have to know so that when we're in any way, you know, put in a position where we feel like we're on the defensive, these are the types of responses that you can just immediately shut down anybody who comes and, you know, tries to make a case that women don't have rights in Islam. No, we absolutely do. And, you know, the prophet said, I'm honored by the prophet was him. He said, what? And for all of the parents in here, right? What an incredible, I mean, I look, when I think of this, I have two sons. So, but I still, and my father, Allah, he had three daughters. So, inshallah, I always look to this hadith as inshallah, hopefully that we, you know, we do our part to serve him and to continue to do good so that inshallah, he can reap the benefits of raising us because this is such a beautiful hadith. Whoever has three daughters and he cares for them, he is merciful to them and he closed them, then paradise is certainly required for him. And then, you know, again, this exchange that the prophet was having with his Sahaba and he asks or someone asked, you know, from the companions, what if the person only has two? He said, even two. Some people thought that if they had said to him one that the prophet said some would also have affirmed that, yes, if you raised one daughter and you, you know, did your best that inshallah, that would be your ticket to Jannah. I don't know of a hadith where he talks, you know, again, subhanallah, what a gift that we've been left, right? And his consistent record, again, for advocating for women, the first issues of course that we know that he came to immediately eradicate was a female infanticide. And then by the end of his life in the last sermon, what was he addressing the men? He said, what? Take care of the women, take care of the women. So this is, I mean, there's so many proofs. We're just, again, scratching the surface, but we want to leave you with that confidence that we don't have to look to anything outside of our own faith to know where we stand and what our definitions are. It's all there and it is the best. There's nothing that you can find that will come even close to what Islam teaches in terms of the fairness, the beauty of both the male and the female. And then again, I enjoy you to treat women kindly for their, your partners and committed helpers. Oh, yeah, again, the same advice that we heard, I mean, the same message about being complimentary. The right to an education, we should know this because now, for example, I'm from Afghanistan, born there, I have not been back, but it's certainly, I know in the past week or so there's been so much discussion around what's happening in Afghanistan with regards to the education of young girls and them being prevented. And I saw the videos, it's heartbreaking to see the girl, the women in the university, the girls in the university and schools crying because they are barred from knowledge. This is not Islam. And I'm not gonna get into a political discussion. This is the proof of it. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam says the seeking of knowledge is obligatory for every Muslim and he made the distinction man and woman. He could have just left it ambiguous and then left it for interpretation, but he himself inserted that distinction so that we know it applies to both, right? So that is the proof, alhamdulillah, within our deen again that we have to remember. So the right to own property and work or an income, we're just, again, giving very generic information here. There's much more to this, but it's enough for I think all of us just to have a baseline understanding that yes, we have the right to own property, work and earn an income, but it should be said that we also have the obligation to serve our families, right? You can't, at the expense of the rights that others have over you, just completely go rogue and do your own thing, that doesn't fly. We have social obligations, we have obligations within our family systems that we have to prioritize. And once we do that, absolutely, you can go and fulfill your dreams, pursue your career, do all that, but your dependence and those who have rights over you, that's just, there's no argument or there's no discussion there. And then mentioning here just again that the first wife of the process on which we know, Khadija Ben-Choyled, that she was a very successful businesswoman and his employer before they were married. So just important little things to know if you're not familiar with the Sira, these are things you should definitely know. The right to vote, participate in social and public life, there are just so many proofs, but again, if you're struggling with these concepts, here are the evidences that, yes, women have the right to participate in the social and public life, but all of it has to be done with a sense of what are your priorities, right? You cannot abandon all of the other, your obligations to Allah, your obligations to your family, and then just throw yourself into public service. It actually doesn't make sense if you think about it because where are you going to be asked or what are you going to be asked about first? Your relationship with Allah. So if you don't even have any idea of your farbain, for example, you've never studied the things that you will first be asked about, does it make sense then to devote your entire life and all of your free time to causes? We have to just learn to prioritize and this is again where learning and going back to the foundations and the principles of our faith that prioritize this type of knowledge comes into place, but proofs in the Quran about, again, the men and women are protectors, we already covered that Aya, but also just that we do have precedents and we'll go over examples of women who were themselves politically active, right? The right to choose and to be respected, you know, to be able to have a say in your own future. This is, there's no debate here. This is absolutely a right that women are given and this is a wonderful story that one of the companions of the Prophet's life said I'm named given a best reported that a girl came to the Messenger of Allah, so I said I'm in this, she basically reported to the Prophet's life that her father had forced her to marry someone without her consent. And I love this hadith because everything about it is just so important, especially in this time. But the Prophet's life gave her a choice. When she, when he heard her case, he said, do you want to accept the marriage or should I can nullify it for you right here and there? And she said, look at her words and I want you to think about this and then think about this idea that women don't have rights. She is talking to the Prophet's life and first of all she had obviously the courage to speak to him which says that he created a society where women felt very comfortable, you know, going to him with their complaints, with their grievances. It wasn't this, you know, you don't have any rights you just do as you're told and be quiet that some people, especially Orientalists and others have about Muslim women but he actually allowed for these types of conversations to even occur. But look at her empowerment. She accepted the marriage, okay? But what did she say? I wanted to let women know that parents have no right to force a husband on them. So that's the whole purpose of why she went to the Prophet's life set him. She wanted to empower other women so that they know their rights. But she, you know, she was making her case but at the end of her intention was that so this doesn't happen, you know, unregulated. You know, that people just perceive that this is okay, that you should not do that and that women should speak up. And then the Prophet's also encouraged men to treat their spouses the best way. The best, the most complete of believers in faith are those of the best character and the best of you are what? Those who are best to their women and other, you know, narrations to their family. But there's just so many messages that, again, if you are familiar with it, then you'll know that when it comes to these ideas that again, Muslim women have limited rights, don't have rights, that you would be able to easily defend those arguments. But it is important to dispel the myths that exist. So let's look at some fact versus fiction. This is something that is, you know, again, we can have, we need a whole other presentation on because we're living in times where there is a post-modern agenda and many times what they do is they basically rewrite or reinvent or not even, yeah, they just distort basically everything. And so they may look to different parts of Islamic history and, you know, try to find, cherry-pick certain things and just to make cases and arguments because they're looking at it from their own lens, right? If you're gonna re, like go through history, but you're gonna retroactively, for example, apply modern conventions and sensibilities, a lot of things are not gonna make sense. You have to understand things in their time, not like, oh, because now this is considered taboo and weird, I can go back in time and judge all of history. We are, you know, we've, I mean, it just, but that's how they get a lot of people into these situations where they can't defend themselves because they're making these moral arguments, you know, from this illogical, these illogical positions and people just don't have the way to defend them. So we have to just reject their attempts at doing that by, again, knowing, you know, their angles and knowing their, and a lot of them, they're not very creative, they're not very, they just cut and paste. They'll find, you know, the Islamophobe of the time and then just parrot what they're saying. So they're not really looking into things, they're not understanding things, it's just a very surface level, you know, cursory understanding of anything, but they just try to make Muslims and especially Muslim women or anything related to Muslim women appear as though they're deficient and so just don't fall for their games. Reject those notions and if they're genuine in their inquiry, like they really want to know, you'll know that. But if they're just asking these questions to try to, you know, do gacha, then you're gonna fall into, you know, unnecessary debate and that I think is where a lot of youth anyway I've seen start to feel insecure because it's like they don't know how to defend their positions but you have to see their agenda that they're trying to corner you but they themselves have zero real context, it's ignorance and they're just again, parroting maybe what they read somewhere else. So to be also aware of, you know, if you're in college or even in high school, now all of these things are trickling down at a very, you know, even, I would say middle school likely level where these ideas are being introduced in the way that we're studying religion, as well as just ideas around women and feminism and all of these things, but we have to be careful not to fall into their narrative, you know. I mean, we mentioned the binary but there's other ideas as well that just don't debate these people, know what their agenda is and be very confident in your own understanding of your faith. And then the best way to do that is really to ask, Masha'Allah, Imam Ahmad said, you know, is freedom like they sell this idea of freedom, freedom, freedom and they're even arrogant enough to look to the Muslim world when we have a plethora of our own social ills and problems and plenty of women here who are suffering from all of the disparities of this free society but yet they have the audacity to look at the Muslim world and start to, you know, judge this country or that country's policies and it's just, we just have to reject the hypocrisy and the double standards. And the best way to do that again is look at the facts, right? Am I not moving the slideshow at all? I'm not, I'm, thank you. I've totally lost it on this. I don't even know why I'm holding it. A lot to care for. Just like Khorkhin. So, you know, in the United States, for example, here are some facts again for you to know. More women than men live in poverty. So where's all this freedom getting us, right? As Imam Ahmad said, poverty rates for women and men are nearly even throughout childhood but then the gap widens significantly for women from ages 18 to 44. And this is the demographic or that age where there's really this big push, right? Be the independent woman, just leave everything, go do your own thing. Well, where is it leading? You know, the years where you should be looking inshallah to building a life with someone, right? Having children, building something that's going to pay it forward for you when you get into those older years. Women, you know, are not taught that. They're taught to abandon that and just pursue their own careers or whatever it is on this high of freedom but then they end up suffering in this way. Subhanallah. And between the ages of 25 and 34, women are 69% more likely than men of the same age to live in poverty. I mean, that's just tragic, you know? Women make up 47% of the US labor force up from 30% in 1950 but growth has stagnated. So, okay, we've again been decades hearing this message of freedom but there's only a 17% differential from now in 1950. I mean, that should kind of, you know, cause us all to second question this idea that freedom is everything, freedom. Women's median hourly earnings were $16 in 2016, up from 1248 in 1980, right? And then men earned a median hourly wage of 1923 and 2016 down slightly from 1940. Let's just look at the difference there. So, we have clearly not, you know, been so successful and something's, you know, amiss here. Women working are much more likely than working men to say that they face gender discrimination on a job. So, you give up your family, you give up all of these other things that are actually going to pay, you know, or really benefit you in the long run but then you go and you just end up, you know, serving people who humiliate you, who harass you. Like, it's just, there's really, the trade-off just doesn't seem right, right? But these are the ideas that so many of our young women are sold to push against tradition, to push against religion, and to push against culture. But the proof is in the pudding as they say, look at this and you have to examine. Well, you know, these are, this is what I'm gonna give all of that for, is it really worth it? Much more, but I think the bottom line is that before we have to break, I'm not sure where I'm on time. Oh, almost, okay, I'll quickly go through this. This is the real message here. This is what I wanted to leave you with. There are two lenses, right? I'm wearing glasses right now. We all know what a lens is, but you can either choose to look at your life, the meaning and purpose of your existence through a material lens, which is what this society and what modernity really wants us to see. That there's no greater objective, there's no meta-narrative, there's no grand truth. We're all just gonna die and that's it. That's the world view that they have because they are secular atheists, many of them. They don't have a concept of any, you know, overarching truth. So when you have a very limited world view, then you're up, this is what will likely happen. You'll be exploited as so many women are now, right? They're exploited, they're limited, they're manipulated, they're misunderstood, gaslighted, suppressed. They are treated as being inferior. This is the promise of these open societies. This is what the results are. This is the outcome of ascribing to that world view. Or you can look to your faith and the metaphysical lens, that you want to look through your life with, what meaning you have, why Allah SWT created you. It gives you what? What is the promise? The promise of our Deen is that you will be empowered, you'll be uplifted, you'll be encouraged, you'll be determined, you'll be powerful, pure and advantaged. And if you do everything for the sake of Allah SWT, this is the promise that you will have, right? Or that you will receive. So at the end of the day, what is, I mean, is there even a debate here? Right? Is there even a debate? It should be pretty obvious which one is the better world view or the way that we should see ourselves through. And inshallah, really, we have to break for Aisha, but the last bit here, and I can leave the slides up while we're praying, are just some women that you should know throughout history to, again, affirm your confidence and your faith because we are under attack. There is, and it's not just to Muslim women, it's really women of all traditions, we're being forced out of things that are very natural for us, femininity, just wanting to be home. I've seen so many posts of women who tried to go a certain route but then realized at a certain point, like, I actually just really wanna be home and raise children and have a loving husband and have my family around me and there's nothing wrong with being a homemaker and there's nothing wrong with working. There's no issue here, everybody's different, but the message is that no, reject everything that I, you know, the traditional part and just go the other way, the way where it's all career-driven and it's all, like you said, individual selfish desire and no responsibility to community, no responsibility to family. Just reject, no, you don't need to do that, just do what, you do you. That's not our, that's not our faith. And here are women who were able to do it all. They, in many cases, they had incredible legacies we mentioned, Khadijah Ali-Lahana, but many others who were, first and foremost, servants of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. That was their primary identity. They didn't look to other labels to affirm themselves. They were servants of Allah and then there were, in many cases, wives. They were mothers, they were daughters, they were sisters and they embraced all of those roles and knew that these were valuable roles, not because they were looking to other people to dictate to them, but because Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala told them and they believe in God and that is who they turn to for meaning and purpose. So, these examples are, you know, I mean, there are so many of them, but be familiar with them, feel free to take pictures and then we'll stop, inshallah, for Aisha and we'll come back and hear more from, you know, Ahmed Jazakullah Khidm. Thank you, inshallah. You guys after Aisha.