On Women and Islam

 أَعُوذُ بِٱللَّهِ مِنَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ ٱلرَّجِيمِ، بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

 Islam isn't just for men, or just for any single group among people, it is there for everyone. One of the most distressing things I have noticed during my time alive is how marginalizing cultures and societies have been to women, regardless of their original background, whether godless or 'God-fearing', somehow, humanity across the board has succumbed to vilification of one half our species by the other half. This was never how Allah intended it to be.

People were made in pairs, each part of the half created, designed, intended, to support the other. Women are not the enemy of men, they never have been, women are the partners that comprise half of our mortal existence. Whether one believes in Islam or not, it remains true that the enemy of all humanity are the shayateen. Their aim is enmity and division and strife, seeking whatever means they can find to sow hatred and distrust. As families crumble, as marriages end, as any alternative to sacred relationships is found, people may lose sight of this and point to cultural heritages of how women are 'supposed' to be kept apart and never seen, just hidden away. It is easy to point to the finger at those we can see, decrying their forms or speech or tendencies, to lay the blame at their nature and say that women are best kept behind a veil, inside a house, unheard from, unseen, unspoken to. Without question, this is the coward's approach, the thoughtless man's idea.

In the early days of Islam, women of the faith had just the physical barrier in place when discoursing with men, a simple screen to shield the eyes, but never was this screen an intellectual one, never one of inflicting servitude. This early physical barrier was there to protect each of their hearts, that neither side may be drawn to what may bring them harm. Women were not conceived of as inferior, or incapable, or intrinsically limited. They helped spread the knowledge of Allah's deen, they propagated the sunnah of His beloved Messenger (saw), they were partners alongside their husbands, maintaining their homes and safeguarding their children. Alas, this ideal was not something meant to last. Cultural influences and prejudices held of women, as ancient and ingrained likely since our first ancestors, crept in and slowly the ideal role women could play diminished, bit by bit, until women once again had lost the purpose and protection and true freedom granted by Islam. It would seem various Muslim societies across world, roughly independent of each other, had once again shackled, pigeonholed, decided for women who they were and all that they could be. 

Perhaps one of the most straightforward means by which we challenge the decay of life, the loss of the good, the increase and proliferation of evil, is by establishing reasons and purposes for unity instead of division. As men were intended to be the protectors, maintainers, caretakers of women (in Arabic, "qawwamoon"), it is ironic and ignorant beyond measure that we should in this role become as oppressors of our other halves. As one scholar I came across put it, it is as if in today's age Muslims have once again brought back into practice the ancient jahilli (pre-Islamic era) custom of burying women alive...this time not as infants necessarily, but through neglect of their education and upbringing, by constricting their existence into a few forms scripted by men without any understanding or wisdom or grasp of the truth behind their religion. Thus we have had, for generations now, women whose very existence has been so overlooked, so crippled, that today they would look at the West and see their liberation in that. How utterly sad is this...Islam is not that which was ever backwards, it was the pitifully limited and blind sight of men, that kept us from keeping our religion alive like it should be. 

Women are our mothers, sisters, daughters, cousins, they are our beloved partners that give this life brightness and meaning whereas alone we would find it dull and lifeless. Consider that Allah knew the wisdom of His creation before we existed, He made us and our natures, each interdependent on the other, that we become as shelters and clothing/protection (Arabic, 'libaas') for one another. This was no shallow move by Him, so why then are men so willfully bent on deriding and suffocating and destroying the essence of women? Allah's purpose is so vast, so encompassing, it does not end where our sight ends, but we take it for granted, we shortchange and oversimplify it into terms our meager minds can understand, until we have boiled women down into the simplest common denominators, created biases and preconceptions to bottle them up as we have been deluded into thinking women should be. 

Without question, women are beautiful, and men are drawn to it. Such is His design, His test for us all, to see which of us gives in to our lesser selves and pursues that which He has forbidden instead of what He has permitted. This fact of our existence is not a lament of women, it is not their doing how Allah created all of us. It simply means that men must be better, stronger, more secure, less arrogant, more submitting to Allah, than our previous generations have been. The moment we take the easy way out, looking for the simplest answer or method of pointing fingers elsewhere instead of at the weaknesses present in our own selves, is the moment men have lost the battle with their shayateen, the moment they have lost rank in the sight of Allah. 

Fortunately, if one is reading this, then hope remains. While life is still breathed, Allah permits us another chance to reflect and remember, to perhaps find reasons to be joined together instead of at each other's throats, figuratively or literally. Men and women should be educated, all of them, not just in religious sciences, but in worldly ones as well. 'Established tradition' that isn't from the sunnah of Allah's Messenger (saw) should never be used as pretext for patriarchal insecurity, dominance, oppression. If knowledge and understanding are sought, if questions are asked, the only responsible reply is to give it if known, to allow the answers to be sought. If in this process the previous fabrics of old societies crumble, then let them fall. Of course, only the brave could understand and accept this. Truly though, it isn't this life where our journey ends, so why fear its consequence?