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July 28, 2006
Islamic Activist Says 'Islam gives many rights to women' - Yet The Real Issue Is Islam's Need For Reform
Aalima Nowhera Shaikh, president of the newly launched Muslim women's organisation, At-Tawheed International Dawah Centre for Women, says that the Quran does not give permission to kill innocent people and that women should know about their many rights under Islam.
Speaking to The Hindu before addressing over 400 Muslim women who had travelled from distant suburbs to listen to her, this religious teacher from Tirupati said, "If there are a few bad people, you can't call all people of that community terrorists."Aalima Nowhera is convinced that Muslim women will realise how much their religion offers them by way of rights if they can first understand what is written in the Quran. She says that most women barely know the Quran and what they are taught is in Arabic. As a result, they are not aware of their rights and cannot question the interpretation of the Quran by male clerics. "I want a day to come when women can speak up for their rights", she says.
To this end, the Aalima, who received her training in religion in Chennai but now runs the Jamia Niswa al Alifiya Women's Arabic College in Tirupati, says educating women is essential. Originally from Kallur in Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh, she says, "In our district, they don't send girls to school. So we set up a madrassa with a regular school curriculum. We want to give women the courage to fight."
The Dawah Centre is the first all-women Muslim organisation that is not affiliated to any other existing organisation. Men cannot be members. Even at the meeting in Mumbai, men were not permitted to attend although they were allowed to listen in from an adjoining room. "Women think they are suffering because they are women. They don't realise that Islam gives us so many rights."
Perhaps the rights she speak of are not known by the women Aalima Nowhera Shaikh is speaking of, but I'd be interested in knowing what rights she speaks of that isn't both present in virtually all other faiths and also in all free societies. However, she does have a constructive point regarding the use of exclusively Arabic language in the mosques and especially the interpretation of the male clerics. As to the women "fighting" I hope she means it in the context of fighting for their rights, as I believe she does.
But doesn't the matter of the male clerics and the use of Arabic bring up another more important matter - a need for reforming Islam, a faith that presently has no heirarchy and no "supervised" guidelines, both or which have contributed to the ability of so many male clerics being able to come up with their own interpretations and the preaching of violent jihad instead of peace and love? Dr. Bassam Tahhan, a Syrian-born French professor of Arabic literature, who teaches at the prestigious Henri IV secondary school in Paris and is an expert on the Koran, says in his numerous lectures and interviews that he advocates something like a "Protestant Islam," which he defines as Islam that allows freedom of thought and permits questioning the Sunna, abrogating hadiths not grounded in the Koran, and reinterpreting the Koran in light of modern values. He goes further than that in saying that "To Be a Rationalist is to Acknowledge That the Orthodox Approach is Fundamentally Wrong."
I would think that at the very least, in the case of Islam in which the faith of believers rests on the interpretation of untrained (except in what is more often than not - a very fundamentalist ideology) clerics with no heirarchy under which there are guidelines and a heirarchy to oversee their interpretations, and if "orthodox" means fundamentalism, then Tahhan's suggestion of a Protestant Islam should be taken under serious consideration. Another approach would be something like what the Islamic imams and preachers in Australia are doing. There, clerics will have to register their credentials and adhere to a strict code of conduct under proposals put forward by a government-backed group of moderate Muslims to curb "extremists".
Regardless of the changes, there can be little doubt among rational people with open minds that Islam is in very serious need of reform in order that its followers be able to practice their faith as they so desire, but within the norms of the modern world with true peace and tolerance for all others who do not follow the Muslim religion. How odd that in a faith as old as Islam (albeit the newest of the monodeist faiths), a majority of its followers are being overshadowed by a minority of fundamentalists.
Posted by Richard at July 28, 2006 9:07 AM
