| Imagine my pleasant surprise when the preface promised a manifesto for women based on the true faith of Islam, and it turned out to be just that. Having been disappointed by the local (American) Muslim clerics, instead of screaming, "Fascist backwardness!", she tried to study Islam by going to the roots of the original writings as understood by the companions of the Prophet. It transpires from her research that the Prophet was actually the Muslim world's first feminist! |
| Her research on the debate between reason and blind faith fought by Muslims in the early days of Islam threw up various liberating injunctions for all, including women and non-Muslims. The concept of blind faith is what the guardians of all religions depend on to ensure their and societies' status quo. All classical languages wherein religious precepts are laid down, be they Latin, Hebrew, Arabic or Sanskrit, are taught by ageing, harsh, illiberal men. Nor for them is genuine questioning thinkable. The result is the prevailing male chauvinism, which is the hallmark of all religions. Unfortunately for Muslims, the focus today is on the backwardness of only Islam, thanks to Bush, the Zionists of Israel and the Hindutva vadis of our own country. |
| This poses immense problems leading to self-hate, denial of one's identity, all of which Jews, in their time, have faced when they were the target of the Christians. Puritans of all religions impose rules as dogma whereas they are only controls by men on women. Confusion and lack of knowledge about rites are almost universal. Witness the priestly slokas on marriage, death, etc. Do we even know what the priest chants? |
| According to Nomani, the insistence on rules regarding women always divert from more pressing issues. Take the purdah, for instance. The Quran does not enjoin upon women to observe it. All it asks for is modesty, and not only from women! On the issue of women in mosques, she finds evidence that it is un-Islamic to bar them from praying alongside men. |
| The issue of barbaric punishments on wayward women, leading to cases of punishing even blind women who have been raped""surely no religion permits this. But if the point is to save some man/men, then any rule can be concocted and/or bent to suit the occasion. There are priests galore who will quote the relevant Hadith. These are examples of the sayings and practices of the Prophet. Some of them are spurious. Most of the woman-hating ones have been found to be so. But for knowing that, you have to be informed and sensitive enough to question the prevailing wisdom. Asra Nomani feels the need for a conscious and mindful faith. Only then will the lot of women improve, not only in Islam but in all religions. |
| Nomani does not accept the prevailing wisdom. She seeks answers from known Muslim liberal academics, from such varied people as the Dalai Lama, her father, her Jew friends and, finally, she relies on her common sense and gut feeling, which often exposes the fake and excites her curiosity to reach the genuine. She is able to get women to pray in the same mosques as men, not in some excluded corner but alongside them. She is even able to challenge the prevalent disallowance of women as prayer leaders at least in some parts of America. |
| There are some questions that arise. That she read the Quran is indicated. Then surely she should have deciphered the difference between haram (sacred space) and haraam (illegal, immoral). Further, since she was able to storm the last male bastion, why was there not an outcry loud enough for us in India to hear of it? Could it be due to the all-pervading culture of silence by the powers-that-be, which even in America would naturally side with the worst elements in Islam""witness the love affair between the American establishment with the Saudi monarchy, between the Indian establishment and the mullahs ... |
| Standing Alone in Mecca A Pilgrimage into the Heart of Islam |
| Asra Q Nomani HarperCollins Price: Rs 395; Pages: 413 |
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