Green Prophecies

“And when one of them is informed of [the birth of] a female, his face becomes dark, and he suppresses grief. (58) He hides himself from the people because of the ill of which he has been informed. Should he keep it in humiliation or bury it in the ground? Unquestionably, evil is what they decide. (59)” Al-Nahl (The bees)

The above verse is one of the battles of feminism that Quran fought with pre-Islamic Arabs.

Arabs used to bury new-born girls in ground; they used to inherit the wives of their fathers, and were marrying as many women as they wanted. They also had slaves, worshipped idols, and killed each other.

As a message of freedom for people from their idols, their society, and their slave-owners, Islam was also an ardent advocate of feminism.

Due to the nature of life in the Arabian Peninsula at least, people have to stick together and travel in caravans. They didn’t have cities because they didn’t have rivers and constant source of water. They had to travel for water throughout the desert. It’s funny how these people never left desert! They were going in cycles inside this place, and they became accustomed to the way of life before they discovered the “exit.” When they eventually learned how to get out, some of them did, but the rest have already been accustomed to this life, that they didn’t even want to move out.

This lifestyle dictated that people stay connected together with blood, unlike in city life with nationality or anything else.

Centuries of this life led to a very strong social influence and well-established traditions. Arabs became ashamed of women because tribes were priding in the quantity and the quality of men fighters who can defend it.

Women, although were needed for reproduction, recreation, and logistics, were still considered to be a burden on the tribe, not an added value. Woman is a unit of the tribe that cannot defend herself, therefore she is a burden. She is just an extra mass that they have to transport and protect.

A true slavery of women was taking place in the Arabian Peninsula when Muhammad was sent with Quran.

When Islam was established, Arabs stopped viewing women as second class humans. Women were no longer buried, or inherited. In fact, Islam gave women the right to inherit fortunes of their fathers, husbands, and sons, which was not allowed before. Islam allowed women to work, while guaranteeing her right to chose not to. Women played a great role in the development of Islam.

Many people mistakenly believe that Muhammad (PBUH) had more than four wives because he, as a man, wanted to. The same people frequently refer to Aisha, his youngest wife, as the one that particularly shows how he, (PBUH) was pursuing his own desires. The truth is, Muhammad HAD to be surrounded by a big number of women, just like he had to be surrounded by a big number of men, in order to deliver the message to everyone in society. Some of his wives were too old, but no one mentions that, and some were young, and this guarantees that they can deliver Islam to women from their own age category.

Aisha (PBUH), the youngest wife of the prophet, was still to live for a very long time after his death, and she was still to make a huge contribution in shaping Islam as we know it today.

This very woman shortly after the death of the prophet was leading an army, something that wouldn’t have been unimaginable only one generation ago.

That’s how dramatic a change Islam made in fighting for the cause of women.

The problem that was happening in the Muslim world is that most of Muslims were stuck inside a perception of women, as seen through the eyes of religious scholars of the past, or as inherited in society’s traditions. The last few centuries of ignorance and civilizational decline revitalized the pre-Islamic sentiment against women.

Luckily the Muslim world is now changing. Armed with knowledge of their rights, Muslim women are regaining their rights, despite the noticeable resistance especially in tribal communities.

Although Muslim women are able, to a certain extent, to break away from the limits of their societies, they are still unable to completely break free from the limits and stereotypes, imposed on them in the west.

The weird thing is that, although Muslim women have to battle only with men in the Muslim world, in the west it is sometimes women, and even feminists themselves, who violate the rights of Muslim women, see them with stereotypes or treat them with pity or superiority!

If feminists believe that the definition of feminism is stiff, or limited to one culture or religion or civilization, or even to one time in history, then they are also abusing women. If feminism is a definition that is stuck in one “age” or one level of development, and is unable to revise itself passed that level, then it will end up being as limiting and suppressing to women as any other tradition.

Women are part of humanity, and humanity is extremely flexible. What “feminism” means, therefore, should always be flexible as well.

From that perspective, and as a Muslim feminist, I have some things to say.

To all women, stop making each other feel insecure. You don’t need to be sexually attractive to be respected. Your sexual attractiveness is not a commodity; it is something that belongs to you alone. You do not have to share it to be accepted or to succeed. We know that what you are is much more than how you look and what you wear or what you don’t wear. You are valuable as human beings. You are accepted as you are. You are a full member of society, according to your own status. You do not need to do “all the jobs that we do” to prove yourself. You are above that. You don’t need to prove yourself to begin with. You are here. You are the mother, the sister, the daughter, and the wife. You are all those that we love, unconditionally. You are the teacher and the doctor and the writer and the activist, and we need you. We need you to help us. We need you to take care of us, not because you should, but because we can’t otherwise. You have the choice to leave the labor for us, or do it yourself. We do not have that choice, because there are things we simply cannot do. We need to work, that’s the only thing we are good at. It’s our duty to provide for you if you choose to. It’s our duty to do that according to Islam, whether we like it or not, we must do it.

At the same time, there are other responsibilities that no one else can do as well as you can. Some of them we can’t do for biological reasons, others for psychological ones.

The bottom line is that we complete each other. That is why we are made in TWO SEXES. Each man and each woman individually is not the full version of what “humans” are, and no one will ever be. We, as species, are split in halves. Only God is one of a kind. We are not Gods. We are humans, and we need to complete each other, not compete with each other, in order to be happy. There is no point in us competing if we are different. Each of us has his own strengths and weaknesses. We should get over this already.

Also, as a Muslim feminist, living in the west, I know firsthand what Muslim women here go through. Just last month an Iraqi-born mother of five, who used to wear the Hijab, was beaten to death in America with a hate note saying “go back to your own country, you are a terrorist.” Police said they need to investigate about “whether or not this is a hate crime”. Some right wing fanatics went on to say it was “honor killing”, therefore, implicitly accusing the victim’s family of the crime!

Even if this crime is not a hate crime by itself, it should be enough to make us take a stand and pay attention to the increasing suffering of Muslim women in the west.

Feminists in the west should protect the right of women to be different and encourage them to be so. Feminists should support women in their own battles, instead of imposing one dimensional battle that they have to either fight for or fight against!

To say right up front that Islam is antifeminist and, therefore, every woman who adheres to it is oppressed or deluded is wrong, ignorant, and stupid. It is wrong because it fails to see how Hijab is becoming a symbol of defiance and feminism for Muslim women in the west.

It is ignorant because it never examined the role of Islam in promoting feminism in the history of the Muslim world, and the role that it plays now in allowing women in the Muslim world to fight back against traditional oppression.

It is stupid because it is essentially closing one’s mind about something before hearing it, and before even examining it rationally.

As a Muslim feminist I believe that just like Islam was able to make a huge contribution in women’s right in the Arab world, it can offer a lot of contribution to women and the feminist cause today, both in the west and in the Muslim world.

Feminists in the west should stop adhering to the stereotype about Muslim women, as advocated in the media, and reach out to their sisters and ask them why they wear Hijab. Instead of closing their mind on their society’s version of what kind of help Muslim women need, they need to ask Muslim women themselves what kind of help they need, and whether or not they need help in their struggle for their religious freedom. If there is one woman in the whole world that actually wants to wear Hijab not because she is oppressed but because this is her choice, and has to fight the government or society for that right, this should be a cause for every true feminist!

If Islam can give nothing to western feminism except allowing it to be aware of the inevitable diversity and flexibility that globalization requires from it this will suffice. Although I am sure there will be many other benefits.

If you think about it rationally, you will find that feminism needs to show solidarity for Muslim women, as much as Muslim women need that solidarity.

The best way to start doing that is to support the international Hijab-solidarity day on the 4th of September. It’s a day when women all over the world can show their support to the difficulties that Muslim women go through, both in the Muslim world and in the West. In that day every woman can wear a Hijab, even if she doesn’t share the religious belief of Muslim women, in order to show solidarity for them, and walk in their shoes for at least one day.

This way, the two movements can join together to provide more support for women’s cause everywhere, and to diversify the concept of feminism and make it more fitting to the globalized world in which we live.

Islam and feminism share the same struggle, and whether we want it or not, they are partners.