A small group of Muslim women sits in a semi-circle on the floor inside Charlotte’s Masjid Al-Mustafa. The mosque is empty now — Friday prayer concluded minutes earlier — and the sound of their voices resounds throughout the large room.
They discuss how frustrating it is to see images of their Muslim sisters, many of them Afghani women, living under oppressive rules enforced by men under the guise of Islam. It is even more disappointing, they say, to know the stories of those women has warped the truth about the rights and responsibilities Islam gives to women.
The women represent different races and cultures, their diversity obvious even in the way they wear their
hijabs, the Muslim woman’s traditional head covering.
Huda Abdul-Rahim’s pale-colored scarf closely encircles her face like a delicate frame, enhancing the 20-year-old Syrian’s fair features. Her Costa Rican friend, and pre-med student, Marcela Madrigal, who converted to Islam only months ago, wears a black hijab pinned tightly beneath her chin.
Two Pakistani women, Seema Azad and Neelofar Mekani, also wear black hijabs, these loosely draped just behind their hair line. They don beautiful coordinating jilbabs or
jilbobs, full-length prayer clothes — Azad’s is camel and black and Mekani’s is black with embellishments of metallic gold thread.
Between them, Indian fashion designer Shafia Inamdar, who moved to Charlotte only months ago from New Zealand, kneels in blue jeans and a green blouse, her casual clothes accented by a crimson hijab. And across from her sits New York-born Safia Malik, who holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Houston. The black hijab pulled taut around her forehead looks as serious as the woman herself.
Yet they all agree that — whether she is born in Chechnya, China or Cairo —a Muslim woman, under a fair interpretation of the Qur’an and other Muslim writings, should be regarded as a “jewel” whose position in her family and community is just as important as her male counterpart.
Islamic scholars point out that women did not fair well in other pre-Islamic societies. Hindu scriptures in India made it clear that a woman of “high renown in this world” was one whose “mind, speech and body are kept in subjection.” Athenian women were always subject to the males in their family, and Roman Law made a woman “the purchased property of her husband, and, like a slave acquired only for his benefit,”with no political or social clout. English Law held that a woman’s property become that of her husband’s upon marriage to do with it what he saw fit, according to Dr. Jamal
Badawi, director of the Islamic Information Foundation of Halifax, Canada.
Burying a newborn female was a common practice in Arabian tribes cited in Sura 81 of the Qur’an: “When the sun shall be folded up … and when the female child that had been buried alive shall be asked for what crime she was put to death.”
“Girl children were buried alive because they favored boy children,” said Osama Idlibi of Charlotte. “And that is one of the things the prophet asked the people to stop doing” in a hadith — one of a collection of sayings of Muhammad used in addition to the Qur’an — that said, “Whoever hath a daughter, and doth not bury her alive, or scold her, or prefer his male child to her, may God bring him to paradise.”
When Muhammad was in Mecca, the prophet was married and stayed faithful to his first wife
Khadija, who bore him six children, although polygamy was another common Arabian practice. But when he became a great leader in Medina, he was “expected” to have a large harem of wives to whom he was married largely for political reasons. It should be noted that the Qur’an did permit polygamy, justified only during those times when Muslims killed in war left behind widows who needed protection.
Yet “the emancipation of women was a project dear to the prophet’s heart,” said religious historian Karen Armstrong in her book, “Islam:A Short History,” and women in the first Muslim ummah (community) took full part in public life.
“They did not seem to have experienced Islam as an oppressive religion, although later, as happened in Christianity, men would hijack the faith and bring it into line with the prevailing patriarchy,” Armstrong said.
“In fact, when comparing the father and the mother, the mother is three-fold more important,”Rahim said.
Some of Islam’s female role models include: Asma bint Abu Bakr, a woman known for her intelligence and generosity; Aishah bint Abu
Bakr, who became a teacher to other Muslims and a narrator of hadith; Barakah, the only person who was with the prophet from his birth to his death; Fatimah bint Muhammad, the prophet’s daughter was deeply devoted to him, and spent her time in prayer and worship; Nasibah bint Ka’b, a “woman warrior”who fought in the battle of Uhud and others; and Sawda bint
Zama, a widow who was the first Muslim to emigrate to Abbyssinia.
The Muslim women meeting in Charlotte distinguish between Qur’anic law and custom and the laws and customs of Islamic governments. Oppressive “culture does not represent the religion,” said
Rahim, who is pursuing a degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
“When you are talking about Islam, you want to go back to what is in this book (the Qur’an) not in any culture … People say, ‘Look at Syria, look at Egypt. That’s what Islam is.’ But that’s not what it is at all. The majority of people connect the rulers of Arab countries to being religious Muslims when, in reality, they’re dictators … who are trying to oppress. Most Arab countries are dictatorships and monarchies, which goes against Islamic law.”
Muslim women are taught to cover themselves. In the Qur’an, some degree of veiling was set for the prophet’s wives, imitating the Greek Christians of Byzantium, who veiled their women. But the Qur’an doesn’t require veiling of all women, the women meeting at the Charlotte mosque said. These customs were adopted after the prophet’s death.
Women in Islam are taught to veil as a demonstration of modesty.
“God asks us to cover for self modesty, self dignity,” Rahim said. “We don’t show off our bodies. The woman is a jewel in Islam. She’s preserved for her family and her husband.”
Modesty is why women and men are segregated during prayer in mosques. Women pray behind the men to avoid any physical distraction.
In the West, “women feel they’re liberating themselves by taking their clothes off,”said Nifoler Siddiqui and her daughter, Nadia, a dental student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Even before the Sept. 11 attacks piqued Americans’ interest in Islam, Nadia Siddiqui wrote columns for the Salisbury Post about her religion, including its standards of beauty.
“In fact, by showing more leg or more bust we women lower ourselves, giving men just another way to stratify and lower us,” they said. “By covering, we maintain our mystery, deflecting attention from the external to the internal, and preserve our beauty for our beloved at home.”
The Siddiquis said the dress of Muslim women seems more an issue for some women’s rights advocates, especially in the West, who are concerned that a covered woman is an enslaved woman. This concern, though well-meaning and valid in some cases, has led to erroneous conclusions, she said.
“Looking from the outside in, we Americans have made many assumptions,”the Siddiquis said. “Since when does clothing equate with oppression? Nuns, who are covered head-to-toe, are not considered oppressed. The Virgin Mary, in her long, flowing garb, was never considered oppressed. In fact, we honor and cherish these individuals.
“Muslim women dress as historically all women have been asked to dress. It’s just that the rest of us have forgotten the way God has asked us to dress,” the Siddiquis said, referring to the Apostle Paul’s writings in the New Testament of the Bible.
“Now, if we see people dressed as they’re supposed to, we incorrectly assume they’re oppressed. In contrast, we sadly see woman here binge and purge, become anorexic, all in the name of a pseudo-freedom.”
But a Muslim woman has the right of choice, and she can choose not to wear her hijab and
jilbab, Rahim said.
“It’s up to everyone’s own will to do what they believe. It’s hard to cover up sometimes,” she said. “But the question we ask ourselves are, ‘Is this what I want to be for a man, for him to see me as the body of a woman or as a human being?’ In God’s eye, it’s not what you or I think. As Muslim women, we want people to look at us with respect. Sometimes people ask are we hot in our
hijab, and I say, ‘Yes, but then I think of the hot of hell fire.’”
A covered woman can be “very modern and very stylish,”said Inamdar, who said she teaches fashion design for the film industry. Some hijabs even sport designer names like Yves St. Laurent.
“But you are also very decent. You don’t have to expose your figure and curves.”
Not once before they married did Osama Idlibi see Rahim’s curves.
“We were taught that women were really respected,”he said.
His father, a medical technologist, was quite supportive of his wife, an educated woman who operated a day care. His father’s example fostered the utmost respect in the junior Idlibi for his mother, sister and, eventually,
Rahim.
He knew her from the Panama City Advanced School in Florida, where Islamic traditions and history are taught. But they were only teen-agers then and had things other than betrothal to consider. It was only when Idlibi saw Rahim more frequently at religious conferences and related events that his interest in her became serious. He admired Rahim for her devotion to her beliefs and knew he had to follow proper Islamic procedure when asking if she would marry him.
A common misconception is that Muslim marriages are arranged but, Idlibi said, that is not part of Islamic law.
Tradition calls on the the man to first inquire about his love interest’s character, talking to some of her closest friends. Tradition then recommends he discuss his intentions with his parents or family who, if they concur, contact the young woman’s family.
Idlibi said his in-laws-to-be were happy to learn of his feelings for their daughter and immediately planned their engagement. Six months later, they were married in Charlotte.
“She’s like a diamond, a jewel to me,” 21-year-old Idlibi said of his wife of five months. “I tell her this day after day, that I couldn’t live without her love and support …I thank God she accepted, because the woman has the right to reject.”
A Muslim woman also has the right to maintain her maiden name — “Why would you take your husband’s name if he’s not your father?” Inamdar said. She can divorce, although it is not encouraged, and pursue the same educational, social and religious fulfillment as her spouse.
“This is how it shows that women are a gender not oppressed,”Inamdar said.
“I’ve never felt oppressed or unliberated,”Rahim said. “I go to parties, to the movies, to school functions. I travel. But if it takes beer and stripping down naked and going with the drugs passed out to be free, I don’t want to be free. I want to stay in my naive, oppressed world.”
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