Crossposted at Swords Crossed
This is the story of an uppity woman -- which is not a bad thing. In fact, uppity-ness is a commendable trait. Sexy too, at least for some of us men.
This woman was Druze and lived years ago in Lebanon. In 1928 -- in her early 20s -- she wrote a book that rocked the Islamic world.
She had the audacity to suggest that there is nothing in the Qu'ran that gave any sort of legitimacy to requiring women to wear a veil. She also made the case that Islam puts forth a system of gender equality that has been subverted over the years by men who set themselves up as self-proclaimed guardians of religious doctrine and who have imposed patriarchical traditions that have nothing to do with Islam. Sounds a lot like the history of Christianity, doesn't it?
Seventy years ago, in April 1928, a 20-year-old girl named Nazira Zayn al-Din wrote a book called Unveiling and Veiling, saying she had read, understood and interpreted the Holy Koran. Therefore, she said, she had the authority and analytical skills to challenge the teachings of Islam's clerics, men who were far older and wiser than she. Her interpretation of Islam, she boldly said, was that the veil was un-Islamic. If a woman was forced to wear the veil by her father, husband or brother, Zayn al-Din argued, then she should take him to court. Other ideas presented by her were that men and woman should mix socially because this develops moral progress, and that both sexes should be educated in the same classrooms. Men and women, she said, should equally be able to hold public office and vote in government elections.
They must be free to study the Koran themselves, and it should not be dictated on them by an oppressive older generation of clerics, she said. Finally, Zayn al-Din compared the "veiled" Muslim world to the "unveiled" one, saying the unveiled one was better because reason reigned, rather than religion.
Her book caused a thunderstorm in Syria and Lebanon. It was the most outrageous assault on traditional Islam, coming from Zayn al-Din, who was a Druze. The book went into a second edition within two months, and was translated into several languages. Great men from Islam, including the muftis of Beirut and Damascus, wrote against her, arguing that she did not have the authority to speak on Islam and dismiss the veil as un-Islamic. Nobody, however, accused her of treason or blasphemy. They accused her of bad vision resulting from bad Islamic education.
Such uppityness! The nerve of a woman making an independent interpretation of the Qu'ran!
In the introduction to Al-Sufur Wa'l-Hijab, Nazira Zin al-Din writes that although she had always been interested in women's rights, what prompted her to write this book were the incidents in Damascus in the summer of 1927, in which Muslim women were deprived of their freedom and prevented from going out without hijab. `I took my pen trying to give vent to the pain I feel in a brief lecture,' Zin al-Din says, `but could not stop writing and my pen had to follow in the trace of my injured self until the lecture became lectures too long to be delivered or attended.'
She made a very compeling case that was supported by a number of prominent Islamic scholars of her time. To me, she echoes Christian Gnosticism with its rejection of church hierarchy and the authority of bishops.
Zin al-Din argues that Islam is based on freedom of thought, will, speech, and action, and that no Muslim has authority over another Muslim in matters of religion, mind, and will. She cites many verses from the Qur'an to show that God did not want even his Prophet to watch over the deeds or misdeeds of Muslims: `He who obeys the Apostle, obeys God; but if any turn away, We have not sent thee To watch Over their evil deeds' (Sura al-Nisa', Aya 80). God also said, addressing his Apostle: `If it had been God's Plan, they would not have taken false gods: but We Made thee not one to watch over their doings, Nor art thou set Over them to dispose of their affairs' (Sura al-An'am, Aya 107). And then in another sura: `Therefore do thou give Admonition, for thou art One to admonish. Thou art not one To manage (men's) affairs' (Sura al-Gashiya, Aya 21-22). Zin al-Din then argues that if God did not allow the Prophet Muhammad to watch over people's deeds, how do other Muslims assume for themselves such a privilege? Through well-chosen and well-placed quotations from the Qur'an and hadith, Zin al-Din establishes that Islam is the religion of freedom and that Muslims are only accountable to their God. The claims of some Islamists to be the custodians of Islamic practices are therefore against the very spirit of Islam.
So, how did such a book come to be written?
Nazira's background is familiar to me. She was the daughter of a judge, a child of the upper bourgeoisie of Beirut. I can summon up her and her world with ease. In my mind I can see her in the garden of a large house this was Beirut before the high-rise buildings and the urban sprawl) behind a wrought-iron gate in the midst of a family gathering at dusk, being indulged and listened to by an attentive father. She had made an offering of her book, al-Sufur wa al-Hijab (Unveiling and the Veil) to her father, head of the appeals court. Said Zayn al-Din, presented it to him as a "reflection of the light of his knowledge and his belief in freedom. She had not given an inch to the religious obscurantists. There were four veils in the land, she had written: a veil of cloth, a veil of ignorance, a veil of hypocrisy, and a veil of stagnation. She asked for no favors: she was born free and wanted for her land and for the women in her land the freedom of "civilized nations." Muslim men had begun to give up the fez; Muslim women had an equal right, she asserted, to shed their veils.
Now, I am not an Islamic scholar and make no claims as such. I do, however, wish to refute the notion that Islam is entirely a backward religion that, in addition to promoting bloodshed, demands the subjugation of women.
Nasira al-Din's analysis, for instance, describes a religion that promotes gender equality. Islam, is has been noted, is a rather progressive system that was imposed upon a highly patriarchical Arab culture that resisted the notion of gender equality and eventually subverted it.
In "Islam: Ruh Al-Madaniyya" (Islam: The Spirit of Civilization) Shaykh Mustafa Ghalayini reminds his readers that veiling pre-dated Islam, and that Muslims learned from other peoples with whom they mixed. He adds that the hijab as it is known today is prohibited by the Islamic shari'a. Anyone who looks at hijab as it is worn by some women would find that it makes them more desirable, than if they went out without the hijab. Zin Ad-Din points out that veiling was a custom of rich families as a symbol of status. She quotes Shaykh Abdul Qadir Al-Maghribi, who also saw in hijab an aristocratic habit to distinguish the women of rich and prestigious families from other women. She concludes that hijab as it is known today is prohibited by the Islamic shari'a.
Of course, there were also uppity women back during the Prophet's time:
Asma Bint Yazid bin al- Sakan al-Ansariyya is known to have related 81 sayings from the Prophet Muhammad and her uncle Mahmud bin Amr al-Ansari and Abu Sufian and others reported and quoted her. She is also known to have been a woman of science and a defender of women's rights. It is reported that she led a delegation of women to the Prophet Muhammad and said to him, `I am the envoy of women to you. God has sent you to both men and women. We believed in you and in your God, but we as women are confined to our homes, satisfying your desires and carrying your children while you men go and fight, and go to haj and lead holy wars for the sake of God. When one of you goes to the battle field we keep your money for you, weave your clothes and bring up your children. Do we deserve to share your wages?' The Prophet Muhammad acknowledged that she represented women, and he answered her and the women who stood behind her.
And even before the Prophet's time, women were rather assertive.
When the pre-Islamic Arabs went to battle, Arab women seeing the men off to war would bare their breasts to encourage them to fight; or they would do so at the battle itself, as in the case of the Makkan women, led by Hind at the Battle of Uhud.
I know I would certainly be encouraged to fight by such a sight.
Uppity Islamic women do not fare too well today. Fundamentalists have seen to that. Even in 1928, when secularism and Arab nationalism were ascendant, Zin al-Din's work created a firestorm.
One wonders what would have happened to Zin al-Din had she published her books in the 1990s instead of the 1920s? Would she find any shaykh to answer her arguments or would she be silenced in one way or another? One cannot help drawing comparisons with Taslima Nasrin, whose statements on Islam are not yet properly quoted, nor is it precisely known what she actually said. Yet some Islamists have called on Muslims to kill her.
Taslima Nasrin is one of today's uppity Islamic women -- a physician, poet, feminist. She is Bengali and writes compellingly of life for women in Islam today.
She has also written about the so-called great clash of civilizations that Bush and his ilk are attempting to foist upon the world.
Humankind is facing an uncertain future. The probability of new kinds of rivalry and conflict looms large. In particular, the conflict is between two different ideas, secularism and fundamentalism. I don't agree with those who think the conflict is between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam, or Judaism and Islam. After all there are fundamentalists in every religious community. I don't agree with those people who think that the crusades of the Middle Ages are going to be repeated soon. Nor do I think that this is a conflict between the East and the West. To me, this conflict is basically between modern, rational, logical thinking and irrational, blind faith. To me, this is a conflict between modernity and anti-modernism. While some strive to go forward, others strive to go backward. It is a conflict between the future and the past, between innovation and tradition, between those who value freedom and those who do not.'
Naturally, the government of Bangladesh has banned many of her works. She was forced to flee Bangladesh in 1994 after a fatwa was issued for her death. She lives now in Sweden.
Last year, she was booed off the stage at Madison Square Garden by a right-wing Bengali crowd when she tried to read an anti-war poem.
'America' is an anti-war poem which is against weapons of mass destruction while taking a stand for humanity. As she was reading this poem, many from an audience of 6 thousand American-Bengalis booed and did not let her continue after the first few lines of the poem. Taslima had no other alternative but to skip to the end of the poem. She was soon forced by the organizer of the convention to leave the Madison Square Garden area.
People who were present commented that the objections were coming from individuals of the extreme right-wing.