Barring Muslim women from education and religious authority, Akram argues, is akin to the pre-Islamic custom of burying girls alive. “I tell people, ‘God has given girls qualities and potential,’ ” he says. “If they aren’t allowed to develop them, if they aren’t provided with opportunities to study and learn, it’s basically a live burial.”
February 25, 2007
"A potent debating strategy: he compares the status quo to the age of al jahiliya, the Arabic term for the barbaric state of pre-Islamic Arabia."
Mohammad Akram Nadwi teaches about the history of women and Islam:
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Good luck with that. Even the author writes:
"Akram’s work has led to accusations that he is championing free mixing between men and women, but he says that is not so. He maintains that women students should sit at a discreet distance from their male classmates or co-worshipers, or be separated by a curtain. (The practice has parallels in Orthodox Judaism.) The Muslim women who taught men “are part of our history,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you have to follow them. It’s up to people to decide."
It goes to show how steep the hill Islam has to climb when we are left hoping for a day when mainstream Islam is only as open and tolerant as Orthodox Judaism (a decidedly minority and shrinking cohort within Judaism). If reason had its sway, I'm pretty sure much of the troubles resulting from Islam's incompatibility with the modern world would not plague us. And while change invariably results from small steps becoming larger, it isn't immediately apparent how Akram’s work is going to find much support from the allegedly "moderate" Muslims, who have seemingly found every possible way to disclaim their existence, for fear of having their heads violently separated from the rest of their bodies by less "moderate" Muslims.
Frankly, I'd have more confidence were the "moderate" Muslims to have their own militias to fight back, but then they wouldn't be moderate, would they...?
In the meantime, please excuse me for not holding my breath on this one.
The quote and reaction to it shows the very real problem of Islam as practiced by the majority in Ilsamic nations.
There is not one ME majority Muslim nation that doesn't have an Islamic based radical violent minority which is openly tolerated or by a large portion of the remaining population.Sometimes the radicals are dominant as Iran is.
When I first got into Iraq and saw what was going on I gave Islam the benefit of the doubt and attributed what I saw as "just" tribalism and factioning. After some distance and perspective I find that the overriding factor in all of this is Islam as it is practised by the dominant cultures of Islam.
Saudi Arabia is where it starts, where the radical Sunni Wahabbi sect runs the religious show. Where Mecca is. Where Muslims go on Hajj for Eid, a religious holiday.Where no infidels are allowed.
Imagine the Pope saying that non-Christians were not allowed in the Vatican. Or that when non-Christian women set foot in Rome that they had to dress according to Catholic doctrine or they would be arrested, whipped and/or deported?
This is the elephant in the room that no one seems to want to address. Instead we get pieties about the 'Religion of Peace" when Islam actually means to "submit".
There is no secularism allowed in Saudi Arabia or much of Islam. Their societies show it. Dominant Islam purports to have the Answer to all of lifes questions and disallows anything counter to the Koran on pain of severe punishment or even death. Just as with any other group of people, its what they DO, rather than what they SAY, is how this should be looked at and judged. There are of course exceptions but that, as usual, only proves the rule.
Or that when non-Christian women set foot in Rome that they had to dress according to Catholic doctrine or they would be arrested, whipped and/or deported?
I've made this point many many times, about the Vatican.
However, it was the case until recently TTBOMK, that a woman entering the Vatican must wear a veil, and must not be wearing trousers. Men couldn't wear shorts.
This actually goes to the point of my reply to Ann's post about the quote, "pre-Islamic Arabia".
Much of these traditions that we have, are not exactly religious in nature.
Separating men and women by a curtain is not stated in the Haditha, nor indeed is the wearing of the veil (it simply says that all Muslims must dress 'modestly').
This is also the case with educating females.
In neither the Western case, nor in any other nation's case, I am almost positive, does it conclusively state that women must be kept in ignorance.
What they need to do, to change things, is not to posit this argument in a religious context.
They need to re-examine their cultural values -- but me saying this is really no good.
Any suggestion or introspection of a society has to come from within, however gradually as it was in our case.
And I simply do not see that happening today.
Cheers,
Victoria
Well said, Sgt. Ted. Let's hope Akram is not silenced by being attacked verbally or worse.
As for the NYT, misogyny is good! "Strangely enough, Akram found that this kind of exclusion also helped women become better scholars. Because they didn’t hold official posts, they had little reason to invent or embellish prophetic traditions."
The media are of course helping the radicals, not Akram, but we must not criticize other cultures about gender, and then everything will be okay.
"Well said, Sgt. Ted. Let's hope Akram is not silenced by being attacked verbally or worse."
It's not the verbal attacks that worry me. Free speech is free speech.
e pre-Islamic custom of burying girls alive
Well thats white of him. Bless his heart.
I hate to make my first comment here seem so extreme, but I've been reading about Islam lately, and I've concluded that it is unique among all "religions" as having been founded not by one who strove to be good, or to find or imagine God's vision of goodness, but by one who strove to get laid. The more you learn about Islam, the more it's about sex. I'm not kidding about this.
extaneous: Prophet Muhammad was worse than that. He was a serial rapist and pedophile, mass murderer, warmonger, thief, and slave trader. Amongst other nice things.
And one of the main problems with the Koran, in contrast with the Bible (where it's gospels "accordng to" mere humans), is that it is said to be dictated word-for-word directly from Allah to Muhammad. Thus, Muslims seeking to reform Islam, and to move it away from the cultural practices of Arabs in Muhammad's time, have a very difficult time convincing other Muslims that the Koran is not dictated word-for-word from Allah after all.
I saw Hisi Ali on Real Time w/ bill Maher this weekend, and she has the guts to talk of what Muhammad was really like even though assasins are trying to murder her. We should make it easier for her by also telling the truth, so she is not so lonely in doing so. Because I don't think Islamo-fascist assasins can murder us all, however much they'd like to.
Extraneas
Yes there are verses in the Koran justifying Mo getting laid. However, there are many more verses justifying robbing caravans and even more verses justifying murdering opponents.
Seems like many commenters gloss over the cultural evolution that’s gone on in the western world over time. Remember the deity jealous enough to inflict serial torture on his most loyal subject, or the favoritism for the lying, grasping Jacob, or the expressed desire to dash the heads of our enemies’ children against a rock? Or religious persecution, or civil wars? I mean no disrespect either to Judaism or Christianity; these things don’t describe us today, and testify, if anything, to how far we’ve come. But no, our evolution has not been entirely through introspection; in fact, it’s been very messy, very political, and very bloody.
Stipulate, if you must, that the Western world is farther along in this than is the Islamic world. Even if you can’t relate to Islam or accept a lot of what is being done in it’s name—can’t say I really do, either—it is a substantial phenomenon in the minds and hearts of a third of the world’s people. The world is pretty small, and we have a long and messy dialectic with Islam in our future. That’s what there is to do. The alternative is pretty grisly.
"Thus, Muslims seeking to reform Islam, and to move it away from the cultural practices of Arabs in Muhammad's time, have a very difficult time convincing other Muslims that the Koran is not dictated word-for-word from Allah after all."
You're right. Muslims believe that no legitimate interpretation of the Koran can conflict with the most literal and apparent belief. But you have to realize that much of what Muslims base their religious practices on, isn't the Koran but the hadiths, sunnah, and legends of what Mohammed said.
For example - the Koran only urges women to dress modestly so that man don't after lust them. Commandments to wear the hijab, niqba, etc are only found in non-Koranic sources.
When I lived in Saudi Arabia, an Arab guy boasted to me about how modern and civilized his country (and Islam) was.
His rationale?
He said they no longer buried female babies alive, thanks to the Muhammad's teachings.
That was 1,400 years ago.
Paxxthoughts, I wish I could share your optimism.
Victoria's point was that no matter what the Vatican says about dress or anything else, the West has moved away from it. Right from the getgo European kings were asserting their independence from the Vatican. Later, when it was time to assert the rights of people against kings it was a question of overturning the concept of the divine right of kings.
Maybe our media aren't covering this, but I don't see any signs of change in Islam. This young man in the article is pointing back to a past when Islam was more open than it is now. Mohammed established a government, not just a religion. The history of Islam since then has been about bringing government and religion back together. There are places where more tolerant Islam has prevailed, but they seem to be slipping away.
It is really sad to see, as reported by the media, young Muslims in Europe, rightfully angry at a society that does not afford them equality, who want to help those who would establish a caliphate. How is it that young men born, brought up, and schooled in England could be so willing to unleash suicide bombs in crowded subway trains? How is it that a young man brought up in the tolerant and easy-going Netherlands could butcher a film-director like a pig on a public street?
This is not like the IRA or ETA. Those groups have specific ethnic grievances that they have pursued with abhorrent tactics. Governments have been able to address those grievances, and the tactics of the IRA and ETA have been loudly and generally condemned by the very people for whom they claim to be fighting. Where is the evidence for this in Islamic society?
I hate to say this, but I think, were it not for the oil, the rest of the world would informally cordon off Islamic society and leave it to its own devices.
"Moderate Islam" is a contradiction in terms. There is no moderate Islam, as Westerners would have it, because the Koran expressly forbids its existence. The very few "Westernized" Muslims who are willing to speak in public are, rightfully according to "pure" Islam, candidates for extermination. They are polluted and no longer entitled to be called Muslim. To believe anything else is naive.
"Paxxthoughts, I wish I could share your optimism."
Thanks, cokaygne, you make some thoughtful points.
I wouldn't describe myself as optimistic, necessarily. But consider some other possibilities. Perhaps the militant Islam we see is much like the regressions of relatively civil and Christianized western societies into fascism, communism, etc. That was something of a big deal, and wasn't quite so long ago. We didn't exactly "see" any progress, for example, in the Axis powers until we imposed it upon them by force of arms. Ditto communism, until they were contained and went hungry.
In any case, Islam is not one monolithic place, one people, and it won't be walled off. Won't happpen. Neither will we exterminate them, nor will they likely be joining the Christian church en masse anytime soon. So, we have to hope for evolution in the world of Islam; in the meantime, expect plenty of conflict. This might get pretty ugly.
But have a little faith, at least. There's no serious dissonance nor insecurity in the liberal west about who we are; not really, although we like to pretend for the sake of our politics. But there's a lot within the Islamic world. Take a closer look.
I used to believe what many of the commenters are saying here. That there is no such thing as moderate muslims, the religion is in direct conflict to peace, etc, etc.
That is, until I started talking to Muslims themselves, until I started having muslim friends. I have conservative muslim friends, and some that are far more liberal and outspoken (many of them women). Some of my women Muslim friends wear the hijab (the veil) not because they are forced to, or eve believe that that is what the Qu'ran meant, but because they view it as a kind of commitment to God, and a visual expression of pride in their beliefs. They think suicide bombing is abhorrent, and have no problems being friends with a Protestant and a Catholic (myself and my roommate).
Even the instances cited here in the Qu'ran are given rigorous debate as to their meaning in the Muslim world. Just like any religion, people will use it to their own extreme ends. It is not a monolithic evil entity, it is a religion with many factions and different opinions.
Furthermore, many of the practices we have come to associate with the practice of Islam (forced wearing of the veil, domestic harems, the seclusion of women, FGM, etc) were cultural practices that were around before Islam, and as Islam became a part of the culture, it's hard to distinguish between Islam and the pre-Islamic cultural practices. FGM, etc, is NOT Islamic.
MOST MUSLIMS AREN'T TERRORISTS. Get over that assumption right now, and don't freak out everytime some brings Arabic script or a hijab (veil) near an airport. And don't call a Muslim a terrorist. They are going to be insulted. Why? Because, MOST MUSLIMS AREN'T TERRORISTS. And I think it's time we stopped talking as if they were.
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