A lot of discussion has been going on in Pakistan regarding an incident - I believe in New York - when a woman led a Muslim congregation, of men and women, in prayer. The main thrust of the discussion - which many, many “experts” in Islam have been trying to explain and prove - is that women are not permitted to lead men in prayers; women may lead an all-woman congregation in prayers. Most say that women are not permitted to be an imam (one who leads prayers in this case), which dismisses the possibility of women leading even women in prayers.
One theory that has been stated over and over again is that this was not the work of Muslims: no true Muslim could have done or supported such an action. The true perpetuators of this incident were Zionists and fundamentalist Christians, who encouraged the people involved to do this, in order to create division and a diversion among Muslims. They claim that this is done as part of Zionist and fundamentalist Christian campaigns against Islam.
There is no doubt that the West has a hand in this. Muslim women see the freedom of women in the West, even freedom within religion, and desire the same for themselves in Islam. They see a model and desire it. This, of course, does not mean the West is actively and deliberately trying to “corrupt” Muslim women. Women who are exposed to the West are exposed to a paradigm that women who have not been exposed to the West cannot understand or see. However, it seems that the claims being made are that Zionists and fundamentalist Christians are actively seeking to corrupt Muslim women in order to create divisions amongst Muslims.
What validity, if any, do these claims have? Are Zionists and fundamentalist Christians advocating and sponsoring women to demand their “rights” (put in quotation marks because many people believe what is being demanded is not within their rights) in order to destroy Islam?
It does seem like their interest is rather late…I remember getting those glurge emails about the women in Afghanistan years and years ago. Back then it was no more than an “oh, how sad” situation for the vast majority of people. The idea that we need to come in with guns and liberate those poor women is a fairy new one.
But I don’t think this is any concentrated effort or covert destabilization. It is more of a gloss put on our current activities to make it look palatable to people. It’s almost impossible to argue against- we all want women to have equal lives, right? While the yahoos with web pages go on and on about how we’ve liberated the women of the world, the people in the war room are talking about something else entirely.
Women leading prayer in sessions with other women in Muhammed’s time appears to be well-attested. Women leading men in her family is also attested, though apparently more weakly.
Far as I know ( but granted I am no expert ) there is nothing in the Qur’an and not much more in the hadith that would specifically indicate to the contrary. The biggest issue seems to be one of modesty with strange men, but even there a few scholars ( all, apparently, Shafa’i ) seem to have said it was permissible. The biggest stumbling block are undoubtedly patriarchal cultural issues.
Would you venture to say that “experts” and clerics here are ignoring these facts in order to perpetuate their patriarchality? How would they respond if confronted with these facts?
I totally agree. It’s very sad, but true.
WRS - Vice President, Tamerlane Fan Club, Inc., Ltd., Pvt.
You often hear that female Moslem immigrants to Europe become more conservative when faced with the overwhelming and in-your-face clothing style and general liberation of western women and for instance start to wear veil, which they never done before. I’m told that a much higher percentage of Turkish women in Western Europe wear veil than in Turkey. Force creates opposing force. Anyway I want to know who creates insidious corruption plots without consulting me. Dammit! If there’s going to be any corruption I want in on it.
Hah! I knew the left had its dirty hands in there somewhere. Never trust those little scheming socialist bastards.
Can’t speak for the Zionists, but AFAIK the Fundie mainstream feels that the power of the Gospel itself is enough to “destroy” Islam, that nothing further is required other than to pray and raise money for overseas missions. Nothing’s been preached from the pulpit at the church where I worship on the subject of encouraging Islamic women to stand up for their rights for the purpose of destroying their own religion and their culture. Although I think everybody pretty much agrees, in a vague sort of way, that rights for Islamic women would be a Good Thing, I don’t recall hearing anybody mentioning, “Hey, we gotta get those wimmin organized so as to bring down their evil Mohammedan culture and bring 'em all to Jesus!”
And my pastor’s pretty well plugged into the glurge end of the Fundie mainstream, so I think if the idea was out there, he would have told us about it.
Now, Jack Chick I can see fomenting this kind of thing, but AFAIK it’s not something that’s out there in the mainstream, not even to the extent that the “Keep Israel in the Jews’ hands so Christ can come back again!” idea is out there.
More than likely. Though with some it may not be a fully conscious thing.
With assorted counter-arguments, the most significant of which would be centuries of precedence when women have not been allowed to lead prayer and the likely fact that centuries of legal opinion have upheld that notion for a variety of reasons ( most of which would probably ultimately revolve around the modesty issue, which is always a useful club for excluding women from mixed society ). Prominent scholars that have found otherwise, like Tabari, would be dismissed as simply incorrect outliers, no matter how distinguished otherwise.
The exception might be women leading other women in prayer, which from a cursory glance appears to be much more strongly established and closer to a consensus view.
It’s all George W. Bush’s fault for implementing the Bush Doctrine.
Islam, imo, is doing a pretty good job of creating its own problems. An Islamic reformation is long overdue.
One could make the same argument as presented in the OP that the U.S. is consipiring to destroy Catholicism because the decline in the numbers of priests has caused and increase in the laity (including women) participating in services.
I know some of the people (Progressive Muslims Network) who are behind the woman imam action. I met the imam herself, Amina Wadud, once at a PMN conference a few years ago. She had just earned death fatwas for speaking up at an AIDS conference in Malaysia where she said that religious fundamentalism was helping to make the AIDS epidemic worse. She confided to me that she didn’t care what they said any more. Then I knew she was bound for open rebellion. It’s about time someone challenged those Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of Islam. Amina is a STRONG African-American woman who thinks women don’t need to put up with any more bullshit. The Progressive Muslims Network Zionists and Christians? HA!!! They’re all freakin’ radical leftists, man. They put a lot more of their energy into antiwar in Iraq, anti-globalization, anti-occupation in Palestine, etc. than they even spend on Islamic fundies. As Tamerlane so astutely pointed out, the basis for Islamic feminism is found in the sources of Islam itself, and only patriarchal culture keeps it from being put into practice. The charge that Muslim feminists are subversive running dogs of the West is a very tired old propaganda that they bring out automatically every time women demand their rights. Remember the Civil Rights movement in America? Our right-wing reactionaries tried to tell us it was all the work of Soviet agents. Russian Commies trying to subvert our hallowed Christian system of white domination over blacks. Same thing all over again.
There are also muslim women protesting all by themselves. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali Who stands proud between the 100 most influentual people chosen by Time magazine.
No, the emails were from genuine feminists and concerned people.
It’s the recent “OMG Islam is the religion of oppression” rhetoric that is recent, and that I believe is certainly being perpetuated by fundamentalist Christians (I don’t know anything about these so-called Zionists.) It is being used to popularize our current wars (notice that everyone is up in arms about women’s right in Iraq, where women held government positions and generally didn’t have it too bad, versus our friends the Saudis, where women can’t drive.)
I believe there is a fundamentalist aspect to these wars. They see Islam- the only other evanglical religion- as a competitor, and at least some would like to see the events they imagine will happen during the apocalypse (the rebuilding of the temple, war in the Middle East, etc.) occur during their lifetimes.
Actually, I would be less surprised to discover that Falwell, Dobson, and Wildmon have opened secret negotiations with Ayatollah Khameini and the Imams(?) of Pakistan such as Moosavi to figure a way to get American women to shut up and go back into the kitchen.
I’m sure it will come as a big surprise to Azizah Al-Hibri that conservative fundamentalist Christians and Zionist Jews put her up to doing radical feminism.