Another View Of Being A Muslim Woman

I think it is pretty clear that, regardless of what may be in the Koran or how women might, in some interpretations, be treated in theory, the lot of women in the Muslim world is pretty grim. Further, when one looks at some of the crimes committed against Muslim women in Europe by other Muslims, it certainly looks as if it is the religion, not local cultures, that is the controlling factor.

However, it is always useful to look at another point-of-view. Author and comparative literature professor Mohja Kahf offers just such a view in today's WPost. In Spare Me the Sermon On Muslim Women Kahf argues that, far from being oppressive the lot of the Muslim women is superior to that of the Western woman.

Here are a few excerpts;

It irks me that I even have to say this: Being a Muslim woman is a joyful thing.

My first neighbor in Arkansas borrowed my Quran and returned it, saying, "I'm glad I'm not a Muslim woman." Excuse me, but a woman with Saint Paul in her religious heritage has no place feeling superior to a Muslim woman, as far as woman-affirming principles are concerned. Maybe no worse, if I listen to Christian feminists, but certainly no better.
[...]
The central blessing of Islam to women is that it affirms their spiritual equality with men, a principle stated over and over in the Quran, on a plane believers hold to be untouched by the social or legalistic "women in Islam" concerns raised by other parts of the Scripture, in verses parsed endlessly by patriarchal interpreters as well as Muslim feminists and used by Islamophobes to "prove" Islam's sexism. This is how most believing Muslim women experience God: as the Friend who is beyond gender, not as the Father, not as the Son, not inhabiting a male form, or any form.
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Marriage is a contract in Islam, not a sacrament. The prenup is not some new invention; it's the standard Muslim format. I can put whatever I want in it, but Muslims never get credit for that.
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I had to sign my name indicating my consent, or the marriage contract would not have been valid under Saudi Islamic law. And, of course, I chose whom to marry. Every Muslim girl in the conservative circle of my youth chose her husband. We just did it our way, a conservative Muslim way, and we did it without this nonsensical Western custom of teenage dating. My friends Salma and Magda chose at 16 and 17: Salma to marry boy-next-door Muhammad, with whom she grew up, and Magda to marry a doctor 10 years her senior who came courting from half a world away. Both sisters have careers, one as a counselor, one as a school principal, and both are still vibrantly married and vibrantly Muslim, their kids now in college.

I held out until I was 18, making my parents beat back suitors at the door until I was good and ready. And here I am, still married to the guy I finally let in the door, 22 years (some of them not even dysfunctional) later.
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And would you guess that we've also been freer to divorce and remarry than Christian women have been for most of history? In medieval times, when Christian authorities were against divorce and remarriage, this was seen as another Islamic abomination. Now that divorce and remarriage are popular in the West, Muslims don't get credit for having had that flexibility all along. We just can't win with the Muslim-haters.
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Of course, I'm still putting in my time struggling for a more woman-affirming interpretation of Islam and in criticizing Muslim misogyny (which at times is almost as bad as American misogyny), but let me take a moment to celebrate some of the good stuff. Under Islamic law, custody of minor children always goes first to the mother. The Quran doesn't blame Eve. Literacy for women is highly encouraged by the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. Breast-feeding is a woman's choice and a means for her to create family ties independent of male lineage, as nursing creates legally recognized family relationships under Islamic law. Rapists are punishable by death in Islamic law (and yes, an atavistic part of me applauds that death penalty), which they certainly are not in any Western legal code. Birth control allowed in Islamic law? Check. Masturbation? Let's just say former surgeon general Joycelyn Elders's permissive stance on that practice is not unknown among classical and modern Muslim jurists. Abortion? Again, allowances exist -- even Muslims seem not to remember that.

It's easy to forget that Muslims are not inherently more sexist than folks in other religions. Muslim societies may lag behind on some issues that women in certain economically advanced, non-Muslim societies have resolved after much effort, but on other issues, Muslim women's options run about the same as those of women all over the world. And in some areas of life, Muslim women are better equipped by their faith tradition for autonomy and dignity.

Of course, the author, while she was born in Syria, came to the US with her family at age four and was raised in Indiana, not Damascus. She works at the University of Arkansas and enjoys the benefits of the "misogynistic" Western/Christian/American culture she dislikes. If life in the Arab-Islamic core is so wonderful and affirming for women, why is she not a professor at the University of Riyadh?

Perhaps, even more importantly, what the author demonstrates in this article is the profound impact the West has had on her and on her version of Islam. The Islam she adheres to is not the Islam that one would find in places like the slums of Cairo or the mountains of Afghanistan. She continues to make comparisons between the West and Islam, with Islam coming out on top. Fine. I obviously think she is wrong, but this is not about arguing opinions; it is about the whole notion of comparing Islam to anything in the first place. Islam is predicated on the notion that it is the one true way of God. That all of its rules are laid down by God. A true comparison between it and another culture or ideology (as opposed to a superficial comparison; i.e., Islam god, the West bad) leads one to have to justify Islam in man-made terms and to accept the possibility that Islam will be shown to be worse than another ideology/cultural construct. Of course, Islam does not allow for this. So even the notion of Islam having to be shown to be superior - as the author attempts to do - is un-Islamic. Either one accepts the truth of Islam and submits to Allah or one doesn't and is damned.

The author, far from showing how great Islam is, only shows that for a Muslim raised in the cultural context of the liberal West, Islam (Western Islam?) can be a rewarding experience. However, she is as much an alien in the Arab-Islamic Core (or the African and East Asian Islamic regions) as I would be.

I can understand her defensiveness. If I were an adherent of a ideology that wanted to create a repressive, global, theocratic state, I would be defensive too. I would want to show how my way of life is superior to that offered by competing civilizations. And, certainly, her attempt to defend Islam shows that she is trying to convince herself that she is not a member of the West, which is ludicrous given that the context of this article depends on Western sensibilities.

However, as with some much in life, things are never black and white. If anything, the author shows that there are variants of Islam that can exist in the larger Western context. The problem, of course, is that few Muslims live like this.

(Source: NYTimes)