Islamic history – Feminism and Religion

Shariah is not a Law by Esther Nelson

I will never forget the day Nasr Abu Zaid (1943-2010), an Islamic Studies scholar and teacher extraordinaire, told me, “Shariah is not a law.” In spite of his assertion, many people—both Muslims and non-Muslims—are convinced that Shariah is synonymous with archaic legal rulings that are at odds with democracy and modernity.

What is Shariah, then, if not a law? When we see or hear the word Shariah, the word “Law” almost always follows. Shariah literally means a path—a well-trodden path such as animals use on their way to a watering hole. Shariah, then, can be understood as something that when embraced has potential to give life and sustenance.

Muslims believe that the Qur’an was revealed to Prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel circa 600 C.E. That revelation—Muslims believe it to be God’s actual speech—took place over a period of approximately twenty-one years. The Qur’an contains Shariah (path) in the form of information, narrative, and poetry. Since Shariah is essentially a path that leads to life, the critical question centers on how Shariah can be appropriated, leading us to the water that sustains.

Continue reading “Shariah is not a Law by Esther Nelson”

Reconstructions of the Past 5: Hafsa bint Sirin (“Women’s Withdrawal in the Literature”) by Laury Silvers

silvers-bio-pic-frblog - Version 2 As I mentioned in the last entry, the textual idealization of women’s pious withdrawal extends to secluding women from public exposure in the texts themselves. Sufi and pious women were mentioned in very early sources, then dropped almost in their entirety. They do not (re)appear until the fifth century, and then only in two biographical sources in significant numbers: Sulami’s Early Sufi Women and Ibn al-Jawzi’s Characteristics of the Pure. As is the case with all biographical literature, their accounts reveal the editorial impulses of their compilers, both of whom emphasize pious withdrawal from social engagement in many of the narratives.

It would be wonderful if someone would do a full study on these gendered editorial agendas. To date, I have only seen Rkia Cornell’s account in her introduction to Early Sufi Women and heard Aisha Geissinger’s analysis of Ibn al-Jawzi’s biographies in a paper she gave at the American Academy of Religion in 2014. Meghan Reid’s excellent work is not discussed here because she does not take up a gender analysis of the sources.

Cornell argued that Sulami chose to emphasize the spiritual vocations of these women to strengthen their spiritual authority, whereas Ibn al-Jawzi tended to portray the women as emotional thus undermining them. Geissinger argued that Ibn al-Jawzi tends to present women’s interactions with the Qur’an in ways that reinforce stereotypes of women as less knowledgeable and their piety as more experiential, domestically focused, and individual. I have suggested that some transmitters and editors were protecting some women’s reputations by distancing them from their social contexts and their female bodies.

Looking at the historical context, although many Sufis believed themselves to be in the mainstream of the developing Islamic sciences, non-Sufis (and some Sufis) did not always agree. At times they faced serious threats. Many Sufi works, including that of Sulami (d. 1021), reflect an effort to explain or justify their rituals and beliefs and emphasize their sobriety (and marginalize male or female ecstatics). Sufis may have dropped women or portrayed them in a cautious manner to protect their communities from accusations of impropriety and to control a “proper” expression of Sufi experience.

Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201) was virulently critical of Sufis. Nevertheless, he admired those aspects of Sufism that he saw as universal to Muslim piety and included stories of those Sufis who exemplified them in his biographies. He wrote from a position of scholarly power which might explain why he included so many biographies of women in greater detail than Sulami and in a more ecstatic light. Nevertheless, since sobriety was highly valued among scholars, his portrayal did not risk giving those women any institutional authority.

The only thing I can be sure of is that no matter the respect Sulami and Ibn al-Jawzi had for the women they depicted, they were not challenging the primacy of male authority. The primary mode of transmission and guarantee of Sufi knowledge or religious piety was through men. So while they chose to acknowledge women’s piety and their spiritual authority, they did so from within well-established androcentric parameters.

In their distinct ways, both Sulami and Ibn al-Jawzi emphasized modesty and seclusion in their stories of women. Hafsa’s biographies are a case in point. Because other accounts of Hafsa’s life and work are available in a number of sources, we can see how their accounts of Hafsa end up either erasing or backgrounding her engaged scholarly life by so strongly emphasizing her seclusion and immaculate modesty.

Sulami and Ibn al-Jawzi’s Portrayal of Hafsa

Sulami’s entry on Hafsa is one of the most austere treatments in his entire book (see Cornell, 122). He mentions that Hafsa was a renunciant, scrupulous, and known for “signs” and “miracles.” Then, he relates only one story about her:

Hafsa bint Sirin used to light her lamp at night, and then would rise to worship in her prayer area. At times, the lamp would go out, but it would continue to illuminate her house until daylight.

He does not mention her highly respected knowledge of Qur’an and Hadith, her ability to reason legally from these sources, nor that male students came to study with her. I agree with Cornell that Sulami is primarily interested in calling attention to women’s spiritual vocation in these reports, portraying them as “career women of the spirit.” It is telling, though, that honoring women’s spiritual vocation seems to require removing them from their social contexts such that, for example in Hafsa’s case, there is no trace of a woman left, just a pure soul that kindles lamps.

Ibn al-Jawzi has a fuller treatment that allows Hafsa some bodily humanity and cites her intellectual and pious achievements (see Cornell, 270-74; IJ #585). But the narrative flow of the accounts ultimately portrays Hafsa as a learned woman whose interpretive choices and piety kept her at a remove from others. Ibn al-Jawzi opens his entry on Hafsa with several accounts that act as the lens through which one reads the others. One pays tribute to her as a scholar of the Qur’an and its legal interpretation; but more importantly, it assures the audience of the reliability of her opinions by pointing out her scrupulous modesty even in her old age.

ʿAsim al-Sahawal said, “We used to visit Hafsa bt. Sirin [to study with her]. She would pull her outer wrap in such and such a way and would veil her face with it. So we admonished her, ‘May God have mercy on you. God has said, ’Such elderly women as are past the prospect of marriage, there is no blame on them if they lay aside their outer garments, provided it is not a wanton display of their beauty (24:60). [ʿAsim explains], This refers to the outer wrap known as the jilbab.

She queried us then, “And.. what comes after that in the verse?”

We answered “But it is best for them to be modest (24:60)”

Then she replied “That part of the verse is what confirms the use of the outer wrap.”

The two other accounts establish her as a woman of extraordinary piety and a committed recluse.

Hisham b. Hassan said, “Hafsa used to enter her prayer area and would pray the midday, afternoon, sunset, evening, and morning prayers. She would remain there until the full light of day; then she would make a single prostration and leave. At that time, she would perform her ablution and sleep until the time for the midday prayer. Then she would return to her prayer area and perform the same routine as before.”

Mahdi b. Maymun said, “Hafsa remained in her place of worship for thirty years, not leaving it except to answer the call of nature or to get some sun.”

All of the other accounts depict her likewise. She is scholarly, standing at length in prayer, fasting, patiently bearing up under the grief she felt over the death of her beloved son, and most of all secluding herself from others.

Then Comes My Portrayal

In the following blog entries, I will share my “feminist reconstruction” of her life from the available sources. Suffice to say, I’ll be portraying her life as more socially engaged than the way she has been portrayed by Sulami and Ibn al-Jawzi.

(to be continued…)

Laury Silvers is a North American Muslim novelist, retired academic and activist. She is a visiting research fellow at the University of Toronto for the Department for the Study of Religion. Her historical mystery, The Lover: A Sufi Mystery, is available on Amazon (and Ingram for bookstores). Her non-fiction work centres on Sufism in Early Islam, as well as women’s religious authority and theological concerns in North American Islam. See her website for more on her fiction and non-fiction work.

Reconstructions of the Past 3: Hafsa bint Sirin (“Hafsa’s Hadith”) by Laury Silvers

silvers-bio-pic-frblog - Version 2 If you’ve read Part 2, then you know we’ve been talking about how the literature demonstrates that there were attempts in the early period to bar women from mosque attendance and even attendance at the prayers for the two `eids. Our hero, Hafsa bint Sirin, seems to have been part of winning women the right in Basra to attend the `eid prayers. She does so by making a legal argument through the transmission of a hadith.

Hadith are typically transmitted with a narrative frame that describes the circumstances that prompted Muhammad’s reported words or actions; sometimes that narrative frame also includes the circumstances for the transmission of the report itself. Hafsa’s hadith is the second kind. Since Hafsa’s hadith can be reliably traced back to her place and time, and since we can triangulate its circumstances with other evidence, I am going to accept that her narrative frame is a reasonable account of her telling of it.

I am going to unpack the frame to give some sense of how she argued for women’s right to attend the `eid prayers. And here is where my imagination comes most into play and I will begin to significantly part ways with careful historical writing. To be sure, my imagination is historically grounded. But I’m going just going to tell it like I think it was. And in later blogs, in the reconstruction of her life story, I’m going to tell it as I would have it be.

I will quote the hadith in full at the beginning, then unpack it in parts showing how the narrative frame tells us something about 1. how these reports were used in legal conversations, 2. Hafsa’s role as a discussant in this particular legal question, and 3. the intellectual and ritual lives of women at the time.

Hafsa said: We used to prohibit our girls from going out [for the `Eid prayer]. But then, I went to visit a woman who had come to stay at the palace of the Bani Khalaf [the governor’s palace]. The woman was telling people about how her brother-in-law fought alongside the Prophet and that her sister [Umm `Atiyya] had nursed the wounded. She reported that her brother-in-law fought alongside the Prophet in twelve battles, and that her sister had been there for six of them. Her sister said, “We used to care for the sick and treat the wounded.”

Once [the sister] asked him directly, “Oh Messenger of God, is there any harm in a woman not going out [to the `Eid prayer] if she has no outer wrap (jilbab)?”

“He replied, ‘Her neighbor should loan her one of her own wraps to wear, so that she may also be present to take part in the good works and the gatherings of the believers.'”

Hafsa added: So when Umm `Atiyya [herself] came, I asked her about what I had heard.

Umm `Atiyya replied, “On my father’s life may he be sacrificed for the Prophet’s sake, peace upon him, yes.” [Hafsa added:] She never mentioned the Prophet without saying, ‘On my father’s life may he sacrificed for the Prophet’s sake, peace upon him’.”

‘The Prophet said, ‘Adolescent girls who are only seen by related men and servants—curtained off [from non-mahram men]–or adolescent girls and those who are curtained off [from non-mahram men], Ayub [the transmitter of Hafsa’s report] was not certain–and menstruating women should go out on the ʿeid. The menstruating women should keep away from the prayer area. But all of them should be present to take part in the good works and the gatherings of the believers.'”

Hafsa said: So I said to Umm `Atiyya, Even those who are menstruating?

Umm `Atiyya replied, “Yes. Are they not also present at `Arafat [during the pilgrimage], and for this [ritual] and for that?'”

Hafsa visited well-known female and male scholars and was a well-respected scholar of hadith and Qur’an who taught male and female students out of her home. Perhaps while sitting in one of these scholarly circles, a discussion arguing for excluding women from attending the mosque was raised and an argument was made for it. Hafsa disagrees. She has heard a Hadith that can be used to argue for the exact opposite. In fact, this report demonstrates that women not only attended the mosque for `eid prayers during the Prophet’s day, but that Muhammad insisted that women attend even if they are menstruating or sexually vulnerable. But Hafsa does not just relay the hadith to her companions and hope for the best, rather using the hadith as a proof-text, she argued brilliantly for women’s right to attend the prayer.

She starts out by rhetorically taking the side of those arguing against women attending ʿEid prayers. It is a disarming ploy. She begins by saying, “We used to prohibit our girls from going out [for the `eid prayer].” “But then!” she adds. The “but then” indicating that something changed her mind. It is as if she is saying, “Really, fellows, I’m on your side!” It is a rhetorical claim that sets the whole story up as her objective discovery of the facts of the matter.

After that move, she establishes her own authority and that of the secondary transmitter of the hadith by pointing out (1) their connections to political elites. (2) Then she points out the unassailable moral authority of the primary transmitter as a woman who went into battle with the Prophet, (3) which also demonstrates the transmitter had the opportunity to hear these words directly from the Prophet thus guaranteeing the accuracy of the tradition itself. In other words, these are women whose opinion should be taken seriously.

Hafsa said: We used to prohibit our girls from going out [for the `Eid prayer]. But then, (1) I went to visit a woman who had come to stay at the palace of the Bani Khalaf [the governor’s palace]. (2) The woman was telling people about how her brother-in-law fought alongside the Prophet and that her sister [Umm `Atiyya] had nursed the wounded. She reported that her brother-in-law fought alongside the Prophet in twelve battles, and that her sister had been there for six of them. Her sister said, “We used to care for the sick and treat the wounded.”

(3) Once [the sister] asked him directly, “Oh Messenger of God, is there any harm in a woman not going out [to the `Eid prayer] if she has no outer wrap (jilbab)?”

Here is where she begins laying out her argument. The Prophet’s response to Umm `Atiyya’s question establishes three points: (1) Umm `Atiyya’s question and Muhammad’s answer begin with the assumption that women had already been attending the ʿeid prayer. After all, the question would make no sense if women were not already attending. So it sets a precedent. (2) Attending `eid benefits women’s moral character. And (3) While acknowledging the need for modesty, it asserts that women are not simply permitted to attend, but Muhammad urged them to attend.

Once she asked him directly, “Oh God’s Messenger, is there any harm in a woman not going out [to the `eid prayer] if she has no outer wrap (jilbab)?”

“He replied, ‘Her neighbor should loan her one of her own wraps to wear, so that she may also be present to take part in the good works and the gatherings of the believers.'”

Now, while any reliable hadith narrator would seek out confirmation of the report, the rhetorical tenor of the opening to her argument–taking the side of the opposing opinion–suggests that she continued to use this device. In this next part, she sounds like she nevertheless remained wary about this permission. She is letting her listeners know that she cannot be swayed from prohibiting women’s mosque attendance so easily!

Hafsa added: So when Umm `Atiyya [herself] came, I asked her about what I had heard.

When she asks Umm ʿAtiyya, Umm `Atiyya confirms the report, swearing on her father’s life, and relays what she heard directly from the Prophet to Hafsa. This direct report from Umm `Atiyya shortens and strengthens the line of transmission making the report even more reliable. The version of the report she hears directly from Umm `Atiyya builds on the argument that the Prophet insisted all women go to the mosque as he insists that even sexually vulnerable women and women who are menstruating should go.

But Hafsa continues to play the part of the skeptic in her transmission!

Hafsa said: So I said to Umm `Atiyya, “Even those who are menstruating?”

In other words, how can it be that menstruating women who cannot even perform the prayer itself should go?!

In the closing words of her case, Hafsa shares Umm ʿAtiyya’s answer to this question sealing her argument with a legal analogy. Umm `Atiyya states with clarity that the attendance of menstruating women is certainly permissible because it is legally analogous to their attendance at other rituals.

Umm `Atiyya replied, “Yes. Are they not also present at `Arafat [during the pilgrimage], and for this [ritual] and for that?'”

The narrative frame of Hafsa’s hadith gives us some insight into scholarly women’s experience in legal discussions of the day. Asma Sayeed writes in some detail about a number of female hadith transmitters whose transmissions demonstrate their active engagement in legal discussions. All evidence points to Hafsa’s close involvement in the scholarly circles in Basra and that her opinion was taken seriously. I believe that Hafsa helped women retain the right to attend the `eid prayers in Basra at least. But the report also indicates the kinds of struggles women were facing in their public ritual lives, and so it gives a sense of the gravity of the efforts to disenfranchise women from the public ritual life of the community at that time.

(To be continued…)

Reconstructions of the Past 2: Hafsa bint Sirin (“Women’s Mosque Attendance”) by Laury Silvers

silvers-bio-pic-frblog - Version 2 There is significant historical scholarship demonstrating that women’s public lives were coming under increasing restriction during the first few hundred years of Islam. Despite the differing modes of analyses and conclusions of such scholarship, there seems to be agreement that the Qur’an, Hadith, legal, and biographical literature advocate for increasingly restricted public social and religious engagement for women.

While piety and Sufi literature may have called for and depicted women in seclusion, in practical terms, the available historical sources suggest that women’s “secular” public activities–such as manual labor, buying and selling, teaching, and socializing–could not be controlled. Likewise unofficial religious activity such as pious and Sufi men and women visiting each other, attending mixed-gender gatherings, and, in some extreme cases, women setting up camp at the Kaaba or even preaching in the streets was not uncommon. Continue reading “Reconstructions of the Past 2: Hafsa bint Sirin (“Women’s Mosque Attendance”) by Laury Silvers”

Why I am an Islamic Feminist by Shehnaz Haqqani

While Islam has undoubtedly granted women many rights—some of which were radical for much of the world in the 7^th century, such as the rights to divorce, consent in marriage, education, and financial independence—many Muslim women around the world are denied those rights in practice. That these rights were “radical” for the 7^th century is significant: one would think that this is an indication that our rights should be “radical” in all times. What Islamic feminism does is to help us deal with this tension of the existence of women’s rights in theory but their denial in practice.

I understand Islamic feminism to be a response to the mistreatment of Muslim women, whose rights have been marginalized, or completely denied, because of interpretations of Islam that do not acknowledge their full humanity and view them as inferior to men; Islamic feminism therefore requires re-visiting the Qur’an to re-interpret it from a standpoint that does not favor any one gender over another and sees all as equally valuable. Needless to say, Islamic feminism, or any other form of feminism, does not claim that women and men are “the same”; men and women need not be the same in order to be viewed as and treated equally and fairly. Continue reading “Why I am an Islamic Feminist by Shehnaz Haqqani”