Matthew Kaemingk:
Welcome to Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment Magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Together, we research politics, religion, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life.
Shadi Hamid:
We are writing a book together. This podcast represents an informal space where we can talk about how to live with deep difference. Thanks so much for joining us.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Welcome back, friends, and please do make sure to subscribe wherever you listen. Leave us a review, and feel free to join the conversation. You can ask us questions and hit us up on Twitter. Use the hashtag, #zealotspod, if you’re on Twitter or you can email us, zealots@comment.org.
Once again, Shadi and I, we’re good friends. We have some deep differences on politics and theology and life in general, and this is our space where we work out those issues and we bring on guests to help us think about them as we write this new book around faith, politics, and deep difference. Today, we have a special guest. Shadi, would you please introduce our guest?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, yeah. So I’m excited about this. We’ve been saving up this topic for the end of season two of Zealots at the Gate. It is obviously a controversial topic, the role of women, gender in Islam, and we have one of the leading scholars on the topic to help us through some of these difficult debates, Hadia Mubarak. She is an assistant professor of religion at Queens University in Charlotte, and she specializes in Quranic exegesis, Islamic feminism, and gender reform in the Muslim world.
She is also a former classmate of mine. We went to grad school together. She also has a new book out, which is really incredible. It’s called Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands: Controversies in Modern Quranic Commentaries. Great title. It’s from Oxford University Press. We will include a link to the show notes. So if you want to learn more about this topic, check out the book, get it from your library and so forth.
With that, Hadia, welcome. Maybe just to get us started, what made you decide to go into a field as challenging as this? I mean the role of women in Islam is obviously a sensitive topic. It’s one that arouses considerable passion and divide not just between Muslims and non-Muslims, but within the Muslim community itself. Maybe tell us a little bit about your personal journey and how you brought maybe some of your own presuppositions or your own context into your work because I think one of the key things that you argue in your book is that we can’t approach scripture without our own baggage.
That’s pejorative, but it could be good baggage, bad baggage, and it could just be neutral. But none of us are neutral observers. So maybe tell us a little bit more about how you come at these issues and to what extent you try to maybe suspend some of your own personal preferences or maybe you allow them to show in your work.
Hadia Mubarak:
I grew up in the panhandle in Panama City, Florida. I have a interesting true story. My parents came as immigrants to the United States in the late ’70s. They moved to New Jersey. I was born in New Jersey. My older sister was born in New Jersey. My parents, as conservative Muslims, immigrants to a new society, they were really concerned about how do we raise our kids in this new country really knowing their faith and practicing their faith? So, of all places, they decided to move to the Bible Belt, a true story. They’re like, “The Bible Belt, that’s the place we’re going to go.”
I grew up really in the Bible Belt. It was funny because I tell my Catholic friends, pre 9/11, growing up in the South, it was better to be Muslim than Catholic. My high school friends would say, “What are you?” And I’d say, “I’m Muslim.” They’re like, “Okay, as long as you’re not Catholic.” So I would tell my Catholic friends, pre 9/11, it was quite, I guess, funny in some ways, but also not necessarily a great thing.
Some of my best friends in high school, honestly, were conservative Christians, and even I had a very good conservative Jain friend. I think we could all identify with each other in terms of just the centrality of faith in our lives and respect each other for that. So I was briefly on the JV soccer team, and my nickname was Magic Muslim. That’s what they called me. I don’t know why.
Panama City, Florida, does have, I truly believe until now, has a unique Muslim American community. I hope one day a historian will go capture the story of that community because it started out primarily as an Egyptian American Muslim physician moving down to the South to start what he wanted to be the first Muslim hospital. It was going to be attached to a school and a mosque. The hospital failed. It was the wrong place to start a Muslim hospital.
There were only two other hospitals. Until now, there are only two other hospitals. It’s a really small city, and it was just too much competition. So the hospital failed, but it attracted a unique set of people who moved to be a part of this community. It attracted highly professional, mainly physicians, until now. The medical field in Panama City is, it has a highly significant number of Muslims even compared to other cities.
To give you an example, the first female pediatrician in that city was an Arab American from Syria, Dr. Albibi, who when she retired, the News-Herald, the Panama City newspaper, did a whole thing about her because she had been practicing since the early ’80s, and she was the first female pediatrician who happened to be an Arab American.
So it attracted a unique kind of demographic, I think, with highly professional, educated, and people who were committed to their faith. I think that informed my understanding of Islam. I saw, growing up, a orientation of Islam that, in my mind, especially as it came to the question of women and gender, was quite progressive. I’ll give you an example. Our community, until now, it’s called the Bay County Islamic Society. It’s one mosque. It’s been one mosque since the very beginning.
They have this system where whoever gets the most votes during whatever annual elections, I don’t know how often they do it, whoever gets the most votes becomes president. So, in fact, when they first established this community, early on, the person who got the most votes was a female. Her name was Amal El Qadi. she was highly respected. One of the other members, who was also voted on the board, said, “I’m not going to be on the board if the president is a female,” and they told him to leave. They’re like, “Well, we don’t care then. If you have a problem with a woman being the president of our community, you can resign from the board.” And he did.
I remember as a young kid growing up, men and women would sit side by side in our meetings. There was no curtain between the men and women, even in the place of worship. There was no curtain between the men and women, ever. It was one open space. Interestingly, gradually, especially when I left high school and I moved to Tallahassee for college. There was always this question. It happened later, and I think it was just a reflection of the time and the growth of the Muslim American community where you have people coming into the community from other places, bringing their own ideologies, and there was a lot of resistance.
In fact, another interesting story. So they had an Egyptian imam come to this community to lead this community. I think, for me, it was post grad school. He had a more Salafi orientation. Salafi is a more literal interpretation of text. He decided one day to put up a curtain. The women actually pulled it down. They told me. They said the women pulled it down, and they said, “No, we don’t do this in our community.” He just threw his hands up. He said, “Okay.” So it is a unique community, I think, and it affected and informed by understanding of Islam.
When I moved to Tallahassee, just two hours away, for college, Florida State University where I did my undergrad, I started attending another mosque where the women were placed in a shed, literally, in another building. It was a shed that was converted to a women’s prayer space. We couldn’t see anything. We were hearing things from a crackling microphone from the other building. Moreover, although my friends and I were very active and very engaged in that mosque, and obviously 9/11 happened when I was an undergrad and they leveraged our speaking skills and whatnot to go with them to all these meetings to meet the mayor, to meet the chief of police, to be “spokespeople,” quote-unquote, for the mosque.
Elections come around, and they tell us women are not allowed to vote. They literally turned us around. it was six of us, all of us from Panama City, all six of us from Panama City, who basically would not leave. We said, “This is ridiculous. Show us your bylaws. Show us your constitution.” They had nothing that said, “We discriminate against women.” Obviously, they won’t put that on paper. So we put up a fight. We still walked away that day without voting, but they promised us that they were going to put together a committee, which is ludicrous to think about, to research whether or not women could vote in Islam. It was ridiculous.
A lot of women would have this experience and say, “I don’t want to have anything to do with the mosque again. I never want to go back to a mosque.” Or they’d have this really disappointing experience and say, “Islam is just misogynistic or patriarchal.” My experience was they don’t own Islam. These misogynistic men, Islam does not belong to them. That’s their own upbringing and their own orientation that they’re bringing to their understanding of Islam and, in fact, they’re wrong. In my opinion, there was no question that they are wrong.
Shadi Hamid:
Could I ask, did you feel that they were wrong because of what you read in the Quran or the prophetic tradition? Or was it a more instinctual kind of moral intuition that you felt that there’s no way this can be right? There’s no way that this can be just because if God is the most just, He would not put women in such a subservient place? Or did you only get to the scriptural backing when you started to study this more closely?
Hadia Mubarak:
That’s a really good question. I hated going to a Muslim school at a certain point in my life, but I do thank my parents. I’m grateful that they gave me that background that I had the religious literacy to some degree, and also linguistic literacy, that I could read the primary text in Arabic. So I am grateful to my parents that they gave me that educational opportunity as much as at a certain point in my life, I was like, “I need to leave this school.”
So I do think that, obviously, they didn’t want to debate us, at least a segment of them. Because I was maybe 20 years old when this happened and I will say there was one man. I don’t remember his name, but I’ll never forget his stance. He was also Egyptian American, and he was, I think, a PhD student. He said, “If they’re not going to vote, I’m not going to vote,” and he stood up and left with us. I admire that stance. I was like, “Where are the rest of the men?”
One man who was elected president came to our apartment. A lot of us single ladies, we shared one big apartment together. He came knocking at our door. We were so mad at him. We’re like, “We’re not going to answer the door. You didn’t stand up for us. We’re not going to open the door for you.” We left him hanging, knocking at our door until one of us opened the door. He said, “Yeah, we’re going to change this policy. I’m so sorry.” He came after the elections to apologize. But still, for us, it wasn’t good enough.
In terms of why did it not push me away or make me “un-mosque,” quote-unquote, someone who doesn’t even believe in really going and engaging with mosques, is because I knew that if you read the primary text, and especially if you read precedents from that formative Muslim community in seventh century Arabia, there are so many historical precedents we can find of women actually being encouraged to dissent, to say their truth, speak their truth.
I have a chapter coming up where I talk about two perfect examples. It’s in the exegetical literature that says, for example, there’s a verse in the Quran, verse 33:35, that it’s a bunch of attributes of men and women. For every single one, it says, “The men who fast, the women who fast, the men who pray, the women who pray, the believing man, the believing woman.” The exegetes say this verse was revealed because a woman dissented and said, “Why is the Quran speaking only to men?”
Some believe it was the wife of the prophet. Some believe it was a group of women. Some say it was this other woman. . . Regardless, they say that a group of women complained and said, “It seems like this divine discourse is speaking to men and privileging men.” According to this narrative, in response, God reveals this verse to affirm to women that this scripture is speaking to them as well.
What I find interesting when I reflect, regardless of the historical authenticity of this interpretation, all of that aside, what all these narratives point to that you can find in all the medieval commentaries, is that these women’s dissent was affirmed by God, and God’s saying, “I’ve heard you. I’m responding, and I’m affirming that you are included.” They’re never reprimanded. It’s never seen as a negative. So I think there’s so many precedents for Muslim women to-
Matthew Kaemingk:
So yeah, if I could just jump in there.
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah, I’m sorry.
Matthew Kaemingk:
No, no, no. This is awesome. I want you to keep going. But just I think I want to just press on that because I think it’s really powerful if the case is that you’re actually saying that not only can women, and I think I’m hearing you, that women are not simply able to protest to their husband, but even to the prophet and even to God, and the prophet and God respond to that protest. is that what you’re saying? And if that’s the case, that’s a big thing.
Hadia Mubarak:
Absolutely. I mean, in fact, the word you use is perfect, protest. There’s a upcoming chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Islamic Ethics where I mention a second example. Also, there’s no debate among scholars that this chapter in the Quran, chapter 58, which is actually the title of the chapter, is named after, I would say, her act of disputation or her act of protest. It’s called Al-Mujadila. Al-Mujadila is the feminine adjective of she who disputes.
Interestingly, a lot of translators will translate it as the disputation, and that would be a different word. It would be [Arabic 00:16:43], not Al-Mujadila. But most say, “No, it’s actually Al-Mujadila, meaning she who disputes.” But there’s this discomfort, I don’t know why, with us embracing the fact that, no, there’s a title affirming that she disputed, and she disputed with the prophet, in fact.
Matthew Kaemingk:
That’s wonderful. I mean, for me, as a Christian, of course, we have stories in the Bible of women crying directly out to God and God responding in powerful ways and that I think it’s so wonderful that you point to that because, to make that case, once you’ve made the case that women can dispute and cry out to God and that God responds, it’s very difficult to develop a religion in which women are not allowed to dispute men. Because if they’re allowed to cry out to God and to press God for an answer or for clarification, then certainly they’re allowed to do so with mortals.
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah. If I can mention this one story that I always find so ironic when Muslim preachers mention the story. It’s a story that they use to talk about the justice of Omar, who was the second caliph. He ruled between 634 to 644 in the Common Era. Shadi, I’m sure you’ve probably heard the story, visiting different mosques, which is, basically, he stood up and he issued a new policy that there was a cap to how much a woman could request from her prospective husband as a marital gift, what they called mahr.
They mention the story a lot, that an older woman stood up, and she dissented. She quotes a verse from the Quran that indicates that a woman could request as much as she wants and that you, Omar, cannot put a cap on this. And then he stands up, and he rescinds his policy. He says this famous quote that a lot of people like to quote and say that Omar was wrong and a woman was correct, something to this degree. It’s paraphrased in different ways.
The story is often mentioned to talk about how Omar was this just leader. But the question I have is, well, what about today? I mean, today, forget about a caliph who is a political leader. I mean even an imam, if he says something, do we as women have the right to stand up and argue? Can we even be heard if we did? Would we even be given the mic? Would we even be given that platform? And the reality is no, because a lot of mosques today have the women in a completely different section where they wouldn’t even be heard if they wanted to protest something the imam was saying or even offer an alternative explanation.
We wouldn’t even be heard because we’re not even in the same spaces. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, where more than half of the mosques have a completely separate section for women. The mosque I attend called Muslim Community Center of Charlotte, one of the few that have women on the board, that have women in the same space, behind the men, but we’re in the same space, I’m actually invited to speak a lot there to the men and women.
A lot of other mosques tell me, “We want to invite you, but you’re only going to speak to the women.” In fact, recently I declined. I just said, “No. If you think I’m qualified enough to speak to your community, you need to have the men listen as well.” And I just said, “No.”
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, that’s great. But I do want to push you, and we’ll get to some of the specific examples in more depth. But you can also go to the Quran, to the Islamic tradition, and find things that support a different view, a more patriarchal view. This brings us back to the issue that we have, oftentimes, preconceived conclusions. We already have decided what we want Islam to say about a particular issue. Then we go to the text and, as it happens, we find something that supports the view that we already had.
This is the challenge of any kind of interpretive act. How do we suspend our own projection? But there are verses that have been more controversial and have attracted a lot of debate and attention, and some Muslim women have felt quite challenged by these verses and have not found a way to reconcile themselves to these verses. We’ll talk about the specifics, but did you ever experience your own struggle where you would read something, not necessarily in the Quran, but, say, hadith of the prophet or something one of the companions said? Well, we mentioned Omar right here, but where you felt like how does this work?
This seems to be the position of, quote-unquote, “Islam,” but I’m just not comfortable with it. Did you ever have to wrestle with doubt or a kind of questioning or just you were able to find a way?
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah. I mean I think that’s a good question. Yes, absolutely, I’ve struggled. This is actually one reason why I decided to engage with classical modern exegesis, which is basically commentaries of the Quran. If you remember, we probably had a mutual professor, Dr. Professor Barbara Stowasser, who passed away in 2012. She was really my formative mentor in this field of exegesis. It was the first time I was formally introduced to medieval Quranic commentaries was in her class at Georgetown University.
In fact, she is the first Western scholar to write about women and gender in tafsir, in Quranic exegesis. I remember sitting in her class during my MA program before I did my doctoral degree and reading these medieval texts and their views on women, and I was like, “What in the world?” ? I mentioned to both of you, my upbringing in the Panama City Muslim community being very open-minded and in some ways progressive towards women. And then I read these medieval texts in her class and some of them had very patriarchal views of women and interpretations that did not sit well with me at all.
So my first published article is called Breaking the Interpretive Monopoly, and it was actually about verse 434. And a lot of it is, unlike the book where in the book, I’m trying to just kind of highlight the spectrum of views, in that article, I’m very critical and deconstruct. And not only deconstruct, but show how certain views develop historically. So for example, verse 434, that is probably one of the most controversial verses when it comes to women’s treatment, for multiple reasons. But there’s this word in there that says men are [foreign language 00:24:00] over women and it’s difficult to offer a translation of the word [foreign language 00:24:06] without interpreting that word. And one fun activity we do in my class is I have my students compare eight translations of that word. And it varies from, men are the supporters or even friends of women or their wives, to men are in charge of women. So there’s this whole spectrum of just translation alone, if you look at how this first has been translated.
But one of the things I did in that article was just demonstrate how a 10th century exegete is interpreting this word in much more… What’s the word I want to use? Not necessarily pluralistic. Okay, let’s say pluralistic, offering different possibilities of what it could mean. That’s one thing that I think over time we lose some of that pluralism. Where a lot of the earlier exegetes would say the same one, this 10th century, exegete Al-Tabari, when it comes to, and men have a degree over them. Also, that’s the second one that’s very challenging for both men and women sometimes, “what does this mean, men have a degree over them?” Chapter seven of my book is just about that verse. And so, Al-Tabari, who’s a 10th century exegete from Iraq will say, “Here are five possible meanings that word could have. And this is the opinion I think is correct.”
So over time, what you find is that gets narrowed down where exegetes will say, “This is the correct interpretation.” And it’s just one, where there’s this kind of humility that some of the earlier exegetes will bring and say, “We believe this is divine language. We don’t really know for sure, but this is what we think.”
Shadi Hamid:
So before we get into some of those specifics, I do want to maybe set the stage a little bit and give listeners and viewers some context that before the modern period, the role of women or gender in Islam is not a predominant issue. It is not central in any way. It’s only in the modern era, as you write in your book, where this becomes a kind of touchstone, it does somehow enter into the heart of debates around modernity. And part of this is because of the encounter with colonialism, with secularism, with liberal ideas around women’s equality and empowerment. So what you have in the early 20th century is a new crop of so-called modernist scholars who are trying to basically tell people or tell Muslims, but also more broadly, that Islam isn’t backward, that Islam actually doesn’t have as much of a problem with women as the Christian missionaries say, or as the British colonialists say. Because the colonialists would often justify their civilizing mission by pointing to the subservient position of women in Muslim societies.
So it became a task then for these scholars to say no. And it becomes very defensive. It’s almost like they’re overcompensating. They’re trying really hard to prove to people that Islam is modern and rational and in line with progress and that sort of thing. So obviously they’re bringing their own, out of biases, they have a goal. And maybe on this question, I’m kind of torn myself because should the goal of exegesis be reconciling Islam to modernity or should the goal of interpretation be finding true divine intent? Those are two different goals when you approach a text. I would guess that the more important thing, you want to find the so-called true meaning of Islam, you want to get to, “forget about what we think, what does God think or what is God really trying to say to us?” And sometimes those two goals can be in conflict because if you’re doing apologetics, you just want to present Islam in a better way because you feel like you’re under attack.
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah, I think that’s a really good question. And that’s one thing I try to highlight with these four modern exegetes Muḥammad Abduh, Rashid Rida, who were early 20th century, and then Sayyid Qutb say it’s mid 20th century executed by the Nasser regime in 1966. And then the fourth one Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr, who I label as a neo traditionalist. And one thing I try to highlight is their different methodology. How does your method in your commentary influence the readings you’re going to derive? But I would say that even when exegetes are trying to answer this question of divine intent and what does God really mean, and even Muslim feminists today who some of them adopt the feminist label, some don’t, but Amina Wadud, Asma Barlas, these women who are trying to untangle divine intent from a lot of these patriarchal interpretations that we have in our tradition, the reality is commentaries of the Quran, I argue, are a dialectic between the interpreter and a lot of things happening in that contemporaneous society.
We’re not only engaging with scripture, so as much as we believe we are unearthing divine intent, we still are bringing our subjectivity and positionality. But I do think that there are certain methods. So I highlight Mohammad Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr, the Tunisian Mufti and Scholar as a really interesting example, who really elevates the role of language as the primary arbitrator of this divine discourse, because he says the argument is that there are exegetes who believe that certain methods will bring you to a higher probability of unearthing divine intent without having ever any definitive conclusion.
And I think that’s one thing I really try to highlight is that unlike this genre of Islamic law or jurisprudence where for some traditional scholars, it was like, “okay, the gates of legal reasoning or our closed, we never experienced this in the genre of Quranic interpretation.” And that is why throughout the centuries it was absolutely acceptable and valid until today for scholars to produce and new commentaries of the Quran because it was this understanding that this is divine discourse. And no exegete could claim finality to his or her interpretation, that we could have to continuously reinterpret the text.
Matthew Kaemingk:
But just to press you gently just a little bit on this, just specifically for you, not for these other exegetes and these other scholars, how do you personally wrestle with the temptation to be defensive or say “Muslims are just as liberated as modern people or Muslims care just as much about women as modern people do. And let me go to the text and go to the tradition and find lots of examples so that you’ll think I’m as liberated as you are.” How do you personally wrestle with that temptation or I don’t know how you would articulate it and feel free to tell me this question is terrible, but this is what I’m wondering as well.
Hadia Mubarak:
I think you’re absolutely correct. I think there is this defensive posturing and it’s important to own up to the patriarchy in my tradition. So that’s one way I try to, circumvent that. At the same time, as a very visible Muslim woman, I deal with gendered Islamophobia on I wouldn’t say daily basis, but a weekly basis. This idea that I walk into a space and there are already all these assumptions projected upon me in terms of being oppressed, being someone who’s not a critical thinker. This idea that somehow the cloth I wear on my head is stifling my thinking, my independent thinking. And I deal with that even in academic circles sometimes where I walk into a classroom and jaws drop. And I remember one of my earliest experiences teaching as a lecturer at Davidson College, which we call the Harvard of the South, that’s what people in North Carolina like to call Davidson.
And I was very fortunate that my first year of teaching, I taught there and at UNC Charlotte and I taught a class, women and gender in Islam, I think we called it. And the class was fully packed at this very elite liberal arts college. And then the second class I taught was called the Quran and it’s interpreters. It was in that class until now, I’m not sure why, this was the second semester. So I think they had heard really positive things about my first class. And so this class was also packed. It completely filled up, and it was out of 30 students, primarily white male for whatever reason. I remember there were very few females in that class, and I still remember the first time I walked into that class, I think they had heard about me, but they didn’t know what I looked like necessarily.
And I walk in there and I think some students just couldn’t help themselves. Their jaws dropped and I had to pretend I felt like some of them were looking at me. I came off planet Mars, I just came down in an alien costume off a UFO. I mean, those were the kind of looks I was getting. And I had to disarm them in the sense, just have a conversation with them. And I asked them questions. I tried to be engaging, and slowly you could see those chips of ice melt away. But the reality of gendered Islamophobia is that we are talking about a history of western representations of Islam, not even post 911. We’re talking about all the way back to Orientalism, all the way back to 17th, 18th century representations of Muslim women that are really embedded in this idea that Muslim civilization is the antithesis of Western civilization, that they are, in the words of Huntington, “everything we are not,” that they being Muslims.
And I think we forget how this impacts Muslim women in particular because I’m sure you’re both very familiar with these orientalist depictions when it comes to even paintings of women. So Lila Abu-Lughod, I love Lila Abu-Lughod, she’s an anthropologist. She wrote this book called “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?” She talks about how western representations of Muslim women were of one of two extremes. It was all either of this very over sexualized, sensual representation of women in a harem. You see these images a lot in a lot of paintings. And then you had this other extreme of this completely clad woman, you can’t see anything, barely see her eyes. It was very downtrodden, abused, oppressed, has no voice. And that seeps into, I believe, our western pop culture, even films, I believe, until this day. And so I teach a class called Muslims and pop culture, and my students, once they’re introduced to these theories and ideas, they catch it themselves that even a film as late as American Sniper, when it comes to representations of Muslim women, it’s always these women in black who are just beating their chest crying.
There’s no real representation in terms of them having a voice, having an opinion. Which is why in 2023, a student of mine can write an essay saying “Women in the Middle East have no…” I can’t remember the exact words, but no opinion about anything. And I’m just like, which woman in the Middle East are you talking about? They have no opinions? Just please go and talk to some of these women in the Arab world who are in parliament, who are doctors, who are lawyers and creating. They were part of the Arab Spring. They were, look what happened in Sudan, where the fall of the regime was because of a bunch of women protesting.
Shadi Hamid:
Or talk to my mom.
Hadia Mubarak:
Exactly.
Shadi Hamid:
If I can just add something to Matt’s question, and if I could do some of my own exegesis about what he may have been getting at, and Matt, feel free to push back if you disagree with this characterization. But my sense is that Matt is probably a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of Islam trying to fit into the box of modernity. And if Islam is trying to be liberal, it’s losing a part of itself. And I think you’re seeing a movement now, especially young men who are trying to, if you will, bring back some of the more patriarchal approaches that we associate with the Islamic tradition. And some of these views are even gaining ground in Christian circles and what might be called the whole trad movement in the US kind of right wing intellectuals who are kind of preoccupied with the question of tradition. That’s why we call them trads sometimes.
And of course, there’s the example of Andrew Tate, and we had a whole episode on Andrew, not just on Andrew Tate, but on what he represents this kind of desire for a kind of masculine gendered approach that has a clear structure to the family with women kind of responsible for raising a new generation of morally upright people. And then the father has a different role. And I think it is, it does reflect this yearning for structure and constraint that I think is actually growing on some parts of the American right and also some parts of the far right in Europe. So I’m curious if you have any, forget about Andrew Tate because he is obviously a pretty bad person, but just this idea that isn’t there a risk of going too far where we try to make Islam so modern and so liberal and progressive that we actually lose some of what Islam is trying to say about the nature of the modern family, or for that matter the medieval family, but the idea of family wasn’t as prevalent in the pre-modern period, but that’s a different story. But anyway-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Shadi, I think you’re getting me there. I mean, just to add a little bit more here is I think both Christianity and Islam are reservoirs of wisdom and meaning and purpose that are deeper than modernity and older and wiser in some very important ways. And so I always feel uncomfortable when I hear Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Christians trying to fit in with modernity when I feel like you have something really important to offer. And so what it means to flourish as a woman, for example, I think modernity is pretty messed up in some ways when it thinks about how to flourish as a woman.
And I would like to hear an Islamic perspective and a Christian perspective and a Jewish perspective on what it means to flourish as a woman. And I would get sad if all of them are just trying to fit in with a modern understanding of being a woman, because I don’t think women are particularly flourishing right now. I see anxiety and depression and body issues and all kinds of issues for modern women today. And so I would love for Islam to offer a strange view of a different view of what it means to flourish as a woman. And so sometimes I get nervous when I listen or I get kind of disappointed, not nervous. I get just kind of disappointed because I think that discussions about feminism or anything else would be improved if we bring our strange religious beliefs to the table.
Shadi Hamid:
I love that. I’m glad that you expanded on that, Matt. I mean, I guess in some ways you’re saying to us the two Muslims on this, “actually, guys, can you be at least a little bit more traditionalist?” So Matt often pushes me on this when we had an episode on the case for the Caliphate with [foreign language 00:41:40], who I’m sure you know, Matt was seen more sympathetic to the revival of the caliphate than I did, and he was not to overstate that too much. I love this dynamic because that’s something that I think our Christian friends can maybe push us on. But Hattie, feel free to respond to any of that as you see fit.
Hadia Mubarak:
And just to bring it back to the book really quickly, one of the exegetes I highlight, and I think one reason I try to talk about his methods is because he actually is trying to bring back the relevance, not only of tradition, but specifically traditional methods when it comes to Quran interpretation. And that’s Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr, who was this 20th century scholar in Mufti. And he actually starts out as a modernist in his early career. He’s very much influenced by Muḥammad Abduh and Rashid Rida and this idea of Islamic reform. And he was one of the really proponents of reforming the religious seminary, the foremost religious seminary in Tunisia called Zaytuna. But then he has a shift, it is a gradual change that happens with him and specific, which is when Habib Bourguiba takes over. And I know Shadi with your book, you talk about the way he was secular in the fundamental sense where there was almost repression of religion and religious practices, and ibn ʿĀshūr who was part of this class of religious elite and scholars who actually historically always enjoyed autonomy from the state.
He sees a dangerous way this is going, and he becomes this illusion with what reform means for the Muslim world. So I label him as a neo traditionalist because he uses tradition to show us how it can be a corrective to certain things that maybe tradition got wrong. And what I mean when I say tradition got wrong, so we have, as Muslims, we’ve inherited this corpus of tradition of interpretation when it comes to the Quran of legal rulings, when it comes to jurisprudence. Let’s stick to these two disciplines like Islamic law and Quranic interpretation, which are fundamental in terms of shaping Muslim lives and specifically Muslim majority states or shaping Muslim interpretations. So he uses very traditional classical methods, but will actually push back against certain interpretations and say, “actually, according to the scripture, or according to the text, and according to these methods, they got it wrong in this case.” So I don’t want to get into too much detail, but-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, maybe just to point the question as directly as I can, if you were in a room of secular Western feminists and you take your own Islamic understanding of women and their freedom and flourishing, how might you push or challenge, or how might your understanding of women differ from a bunch of white secular western feminists? How might your understanding of gender and flourishing challenge or push or open up new meanings?
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah, I think one of the controversial questions, let’s say is this idea of what does equality actually mean? What does gender justice actually mean? Does it mean being the same? It’s something feminists have struggled with. Does equality rest upon the same treatment of men and women in all circumstances? And obviously with third wave feminism, they’ve actually moved a little bit away from this idea that equality means treating men and women as gendered identities or gendered beings, like exactly the same because it can actually be a disservice to women. And I would actually align with that perspective that I want equality, but I don’t necessarily want to be treated the same as a male because there are differences. And I don’t know if you’ve heard of Jessica Crispin and she wrote this book. She’s, I think, a really interesting thinker and intellectual who is a feminist thinker, but she talks about some of the discrepancies in feminist thought. This idea that we actually, a lot of feminists use male benchmarks that we just want to be included and included meant being men to our own detriment. And she talks about we… Maybe there’s part of tradition that we do want to keep this idea of support networks or the idea of these nourishing roles that we play in different… It’s not only about male female, but that there’s sort of this familiar structure that maybe was worth preserving and not just in terms of the nuclear family, but broader than the nuclear family. And I think she makes some really interesting arguments. She also makes this argument that feminism doesn’t necessarily have to be white middle class, that there are different forms of feminism.
She talks about Muslim women who want to cover as an example, and she says, “Who are we as feminists to tell them we’re going to liberate them by forcing them to uncover when this is so central for some Muslim women to their spiritual fulfillment and this idea of living a God centric life.” So, I agree with you, Matthew, as a woman, for example, who a lot of people would look at me as an anomaly. Like, “How can you wear a headscarf and say you’re a feminist?” And I actually embraced the feminist label even though a lot of Muslim women or Muslims will push back and say, “You can’t be a Muslim feminist, those two things are at odds.” And I think a lot of it comes down to semantics, like “What do we mean when we say feminism?” For me, I mean fighting against structural inequalities, empowering women, pointing out injustices.
But for me, it doesn’t mean being treated like a man. I don’t want to be treated the same as a man. So, I think there are nuances. I think Muslim women actually, and specifically Islamic feminists, could contribute to this debate in positive ways because we believe there should be a role for religion in this discourse. We believe that when we talk about women’s rights, part of that are our spiritual rights. If you want to tell me that I have to live a life that is void of the things that bring me spiritual fulfillment, that are void of the things that theologically make sense to me. Because I think one thing Muslims and Christians have a lot in common is this belief in a life beyond this world.
That’s something that’s so central to the New Testament and to the Quran. This idea of an afterlife, an idea that there is a day of accountability, a day of recompense, and it’s so central to both texts that I think we can’t really make sense of the way a lot of Muslim women live their lives without thinking about this theology, this idea that if you truly internalize this idea that there’s a day of recompense, that God doesn’t lose sight of any good you do and won’t lose sight of any bad you do. Then that influences choices we make and our behavior, and we can’t just… So, I don’t believe in a feminism that discredits all of this, right? And discounts all of that. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, Matthew?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, I’ve got a couple things I wanted to try out with you [inaudible 00:49:37], I’m hoping you can edit or add or shift weight, whatever you’d like. But specifically on the hijab and the head covering, in my readings around contemporary debates, a number of things have really perked my interest. One was a young woman needed to defend herself for wearing her headscarf in court, I believe this was in France. And she was advised and told that when she would go into the courtroom, she needed to say that the reason she wanted to wear the headscarf was to personally express her private religious beliefs, and that the headscarf was a way of empowering herself. So, she had to use this sort of modern liberal language to describe why she was wearing it, even though the true reason why she was wearing it was out of submission to God and out of sort of faithfulness to her interpretation of the text.
But in public spaces, she was being required to use modern liberal language that the head covering was personal expression, it was personal empowerment. It was sort of her way of self-actualizing, if you will. And I’m wondering if you could speak a little bit to, as someone who wears the headscarf and how you articulate it, to those kinds of tensions or maybe your own reading on that particular situation.
Hadia Mubarak:
So, personally, I understand the problem with the way maybe they’re framing it, but personally, if I was in that position, I wouldn’t have a problem with framing it in that way, even though internally maybe I feel like, “Yes, this is something, if I didn’t believe that God was requiring this of me, I wouldn’t wear it,” because obviously it comes with, it comes at a cost, whatever that cost happens to be. So, even though in my heart I might feel that way, I don’t think I would have a problem with framing it in that way because of understanding the history of the way the Quran, sorry, the way the headscarf has sort of been politicized and used and abused by people on both ends of the spectrum, even Muslim extremists.
We do have a situation, it’s a minority situation. I try to remind people that out of 57 countries in the world with majority or substantial Muslim populations, there are only two currently that enforce legally, require the headscarf, which is Iran, and now Afghanistan after the Taliban took over, even Saudi Arabia no longer requires a headscarf. And I was there last December. Women are free to wear whatever they want. Obviously there’s some modesty required, but they don’t have to cover their hair. And yet, there are many places in the world today that ban the headscarf, but the media really disproportionately focuses on the places where it’s required, not where it’s banned, and in both cases, we are denying women their agency to decide what to wear.
But because of this history and because of the fact that the headscarf and Muslim woman’s dress has been weaponized and politicized, I can understand that anxiety might bring some secular liberals that, is this sort of, does the headscarf represent this hegemonic sort of fundamental representation of Islam as we see with the Taliban, or as we see with, obviously ISIS is another extreme, but as we see with the Iranian regime, the current Iranian regime. So, because of this reality, and I think Islam, I see Islam as a religion that’s very realistic and pragmatic and I think depending on the situation, you find yourself as a minority, as a Muslim minority living in the West, that you may have to reframe certain parts of your religion.
So to, I guess, counter those other extreme representations that unfortunately get a lot of media coverage even though they are minority, really, we’re looking at an extreme minority, extreme fringe of Muslims that impose a headscarf that have these very Draconian interpretations of Islam.
Shadi Hamid:
Matthew, what do you think?
Matthew Kaemingk:
I understand it as a pragmatic choice as being prudential and making sense of the situation. I guess what I would appreciate is a court system and a culture in which you could bring forth the true reason why you wear the headscarf, and you would not have to translate into a liberal language or a modern language in order to have your rights and dignity. I think that the public square would be healthier if Muslims, Jews, and Christians could be forthright about why they wear the things that they wear or do the things that they do, rather than translating themselves into a modern, rational liberal language.
Shadi Hamid:
But we don’t live in that world, and we probably won’t.
Hadia Mubarak:
And I just want to add one thing. I think depending on the setting, so if I was in an academic setting or a church group, I get invited to speak to church groups or synagogues. And I think in those spaces, I find a lot of sympathy when I talk about God and how central that is to my life. However, I think on a political level, one thing I want to point out is that there’s a real fear among Muslims. A real fear of for how long will our religious freedom exist? I think these are things that Muslim minorities in the west can’t take for granted. When Trump came to power, it was a very scary time for so many of us where we were hearing about the shut mosques being shut down. We were hearing about Muslims having to hold registration and carry registration cards.
I experienced personally on the day Trump was inaugurated a group, two trucks full of guys. I was at a park with my kids and two trucks full of guys screaming at me, screaming profanities at me, and then writing F U on the back of my truck, which I mean a back of my van, which I didn’t notice till after I left, including… And I worked in at UNC Charlotte at the time. So, I felt so fortunate that I was in this “liberal environment” in the sense that at least I wasn’t going to be assaulted. But I have a friend in Charlotte who was pulled over in a parking lot in an Indian grocer to pick up yogurt, and she had a newborn, and she stopped to breastfeed her baby in a car and found a guy literally pulled over in the spot next to her and pointed a rifle at her.
She ran as fast as she could to the store like zigzag, carrying her baby. So, there was real fear that a lot of us experienced, especially I would say for Muslim women. You can find a lot of studies about gender Islamophobia for women who are visibly Muslim, they do bear the brunt of a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment because with Muslim men, unless they really look visibly Muslim, you can’t really tell. And so there’s this fear, Matthew, that I just wanted to point out. And even in places like France, I can imagine that they’re just trying to hold onto whatever rights they still have.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. I just want to name that that translation is happening because there is a dominant language that we are all, as people of faith, we’re expected to speak that dominant language in order to attain our rights and our dignity. And I don’t want that to go off as unseen.
Shadi Hamid:
So, there was one topic or question that I wanted to bring in that’s a more 50,000 feet view, and it’s something that I’ve been struggling with, and I’m maybe a little bit more of a relativist on this than say Matt is. But I’m increasingly wondering, when we talk about the nature of truth, can two things be true about God’s intent simultaneously? So, is it possible that a patriarchal interpretation of a Quranic verse is true, but also an egalitarian interpretation of that same verse is also simultaneously true? They could be true in different time spaces. So, something that was true in the seventh century and appropriate for that period may not be the right way to approach something now. And we had Jonathan Brown on, our mutual friend, and I still won’t forget that debate that we had at BYU where we just for quite a long time got into a pretty charged but also fun debate about how to understand slavery.
And I would say to listeners, I would highly recommend going back to that episode. If you missed it, we’ll include a link in the show notes, but that I think in Jonathan’s work on how Islam views slavery, slavery can be prohibited islamically now, but it obviously wasn’t prohibited islamically 10 centuries ago. And I wonder if a similar approach could be applicable here, but I’d even take it one step further. Is it possible that patriarchal and egalitarian interpretations could both be true now? If context is so important that obviously we’re bringing our own subjectivity to the text, wouldn’t God presumably take that into account when he’s assessing how we made decisions about what was important to us? If I’m born and raised in a liberal society, I’m probably going to have more progressive views about the role of women. And someone who’s born and raised in Pakistan is going to have a very different approach.
Does that mean that one of us is bad and the other is good because of completely different contexts and because of the accident of birth and what country we end up being in? Which is all to say that… And I wanted to bring up also the Hadith, that if there are two interpreters of Islamic law, [foreign language 01:00:53] that if they strive for the truth, they are both… Even if they end up at the wrong answer, they would still be rewarded by God. It’s the journey of trying to divine divine intent that God is rewarding. In some parts of the tradition, God seems less interested in this idea of being right. So, I don’t know, I guess I’m just thinking about this out loud and I don’t know. But Matt, do you want to add anything to that? Does that make sense to you how I’ve described this?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, I think it was coherent until the end there.
Shadi Hamid:
Wait, wait, wait. Sorry. Say that… What do you mean?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, at first you were asking, “Can something be true in different ways at different times?” And then you said, “Well, really you’re wrong. But at least you had good intent.” And I think that maybe we should focus on the first question. I’d love to hear Hadia’s response on the first question, which is, is Islamic truth growing or changing over time? Or is it sort of a fixed thing?
Shadi Hamid:
Can I add just a clarification, Matt?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
Because I think I’ve also heard this approach that at least on some issues, it’s not even about being right, that if there are two interpreters that… How do I explain this? That there isn’t actually a true answer that God has in mind, and both could be basically co-equal. Now that might be on secondary issues. So, I guess there’s that issue, but let me be more explicit on an issue such as this. Is it not possible that there isn’t one correct way to approach the question of the role of women in Islam?
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah, so I think if I can, I’ll respond in two ways. First, I want to do the big picture part, which is oftentimes when I talk about Islam, I like to distinguish between three broad categories. One is Islamist text as specifically the Quran, the primary source for Muslims, the most authoritative source for Muslims, which we believe is divine discourse reveal to human beings as the Torah, as the New Testament, as the Psalms. The Quran mentions that the Quran is the last of many revelations that God set to humanity, or you can think of as divine speech. So, we don’t think Muslims are the only ones that have received divine speech. In fact, the Quran is very much affirming that this is God’s way of speaking to humanity, including the Christian and Jewish communities. So, Islam is divine discourse or as texts, and then we have obviously the prophetic tradition, and then Islam as the interpretive tradition.
So, these texts throughout Muslim history have been subject to interpretation, which is a human process. Yes, it has a certain level of authority because of the knowledge that these scholars have brought, but it is ultimately the project of human interpretation, what I call the interpretive tradition. And then third, I try to think of Islam as living communities, what Muslims actually do and how they behave and how they’re influenced by state policies or a host of other factors. And so, when we say the word Islam, or we use the word Islam, I try to be very careful as to what exactly are we talking about. And in my mind, I very much distinguish between the text and between the interpretive tradition. And that’s why it sits very well with me to say what you said, Shedi, right? That yes, there are patriarchal interpretations and there are egalitarian interpretations, and I don’t necessarily have to… That they can mutually coexist.
And I don’t necessarily… So, I don’t know how to say this in a way that makes sense, because I used to get really upset. I used to get really upset, and I still do sometimes, but I used to get really upset with the patriarchal interpretations. But I think I’ve reached a point to say, if we look at the entire tradition from beginning to end, even in the medieval period, by the way, we find egalitarian interpretations as we find patriarchal interpretations. And I don’t need to feel compelled to say this one’s right, and this one’s wrong. Personally, as long as you’re not trying to impose your patriarchal interpretation on me personally, that’s when the tiger in me is going to come out. Because I’m like, “No, I’m not going to submit to no man out there.” If it’s me personally, right? I’m going to submit to God, but I’m not going to submit to a male’s interpretation of my religion.
And I had an interesting experience in Saudi Arabia back in December, 2022. There was a group of us women, we were just standing in front of this cemetery called [foreign language 01:05:49]. It’s one of the most, it’s probably the most sacred cemetery in the Muslim world where many of the prophets companions are buried. My own grandfather, paternal grandfather is buried there. So, for me it’s this really important space. But the Wahhabi [inaudible 01:06:03] have an interpretation that they selectively use a text, a prophetic tradition to deny women the right to visit the cemetery. And so, we’re not allowed to visit the cemetery, but the Imam we were with, he’s a well known imam from Sterling, Virginia, led a group of men there. And so, we stood outside the gates and we were wearing these headphones so we can continue listening to his talk. And these male guards came to us and started telling us to move.
And I was like, “No.” And then I got into a debate with them about this opinion they have, that women are not allowed to visit cemeteries. And I said, “You’re wrong.” I said, “I want you to think about something.” I said, “Why is Saudi Arabia the only Muslim majority country out of all these other majority country Muslim majority countries that don’t allow women to visit cemeteries? And all these other Muslim majority countries do.” And the guy actually stood there and looked at me with this look of confusion. I want to believe that for a split second, he actually started to think about what I’m saying to him. But he kept saying, “No, this is Sharia.” He said, “This is Sharia.” I said, “This is your interpretation of Sharia. This is not Sharia. What Sharia really means divine law.” And then another man out of nowhere starts getting into this debate, and he said, “This is God’s law. You can’t argue with it.” And I said, “This is not God’s law. This is your interpretation of God’s law.”
And after this conversation, the women came up to me, they said, “You’re so brave.” I said, “No, I’m not brave, because this is just about standing up for what our religious texts actually say, and pointing out the fact that they’re just interpreting the text in a certain way.” So, what I finally, I guess, have come to this conclusion that there’s no singular interpretation of Islam, and that’s okay.
It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, I guess, to arrive to the subjective, I guess, reality. And I want to say, Matthew, I just want to point out that even when the Bible, you have that same debate when Paul says in Corinthians that the men have authority over women. And this idea that women is created for man, but man is not created for women. I think you have also Christian women grappling with these tensions in the Bible, but then you have Galatians that have a more egalitarian view of men and women’s relationship, even back to the very beginning, like Genesis one versus Genesis two, where in Genesis one, men and women were created in God’s image at the same time. But in Genesis two, woman is made for man. And in fact, Adam names her, gets to name. So, I think you have tensions in religious texts overall, and it’s about which texts to proceed… Which passages get to supersede the others? Do we read the patriarchal passages against the egalitarian ones and say, “These egalitarian ones should frame the holistic picture, or is it vice versa?”
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the things that I liked about how you ended your book, which is different from Shadi’s question about maybe truth changes over time or history. But the argument you close with is that essentially, with a respect and deference, that God’s truth is bigger and beyond our ability to contain it. And so out of respect and deference for the size and scope of God’s wisdom, we should have a posture of humility in our interpretation of our text. And it seems to me that you do have some real strong convictions about how women should be treated and some real strong convictions about what women are owed.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Could I just add to that? Forget about human subjectivity and interpretations, but when we talk about… Oh, this is tough. I got to think about this a little bit more. But do you think there is one truth on this question? Ultimately? I think what Matt is saying that we should be humble because we don’t have direct access to God’s will. But that’s different than saying we should be humble because there isn’t one truth even-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Exactly.
Shadi Hamid:
… with God himself. I just want to make that distinction clear.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, so an example: I read the Bible as a largely egalitarian text, and I think that is a more faithful reading of what is going on in scripture. And so I think that I am largely right and patriarchal readings of the Bible are largely wrong. I’m not relativistic in the sense that I think we’re both equally right or… I really think my reading is on the whole better than patriarchal readings of the Bible. And I think that over time I have some level of confidence that my reading will stand up as a more faithful reading.
But I hold my posture with some humility, understanding that God’s truth about gender flourishing and freedom is bigger than mine, and I still have a lot more to learn. But I still have a confidence that my reading is better than patriarchal ones that would say that women are less than or less valued or should be contained in destructive ways. And so that’s the distinction I would make for myself, and I’m wondering does that resonate with you and how you read Islam?
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah. I love how you frame it as a more faithful reading because I would also argue in a similar way. But I guess, just to pedal back for a second, I think when there are… I guess I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t control what Muslims think about our tradition, our scripture. So yes, it does bother me when I see these Muslim influencers on YouTube talk about certain verses in the Quran and really mischaracterize, in my opinion, the correct reading or really impose a very, very patriarchal interpretation. I do get upset, but at the same time, I reconcile the fact that there’s space where these interpretations, I guess, can mutually exist.
I do believe, like you, Matthew, however, that a more egalitarian and a more just interpretation is more faithful to divine intent. So to Shadi’s question, I do believe that yes, there is a truth with a capital T with God. So to what extent can Muslims differ in their interpretation and still be equally true? I think it depends on what they’re differing on.
You mentioned your views versus someone who grew up in Pakistan and talked about how your sensibilities differ because of the environments in which you grew up. And a passage came to mind that talks about this word, [foreign language 01:13:33]. And I think the way [inaudible 01:13:36] understood this word is so interesting because it actually allows space for human beings’ behavior or their notions of good behavior or what it means to be good to one another, to some extent, that there is some room for our sensibilities to play a role in that. So that verse, for example, talks about women have rights like those against them, “[foreign language 01:14:06],” according to honorable norms, is the best way to understand it, according-
Shadi Hamid:
Or custom?
Hadia Mubarak:
Custom is one way to think of it, but the idea that should the husband throw out the trash, or should the woman throw out the trash? In certain societies, it’s like, “No, it’s demeaning for the woman to throw out the trash. It’s just a husband’s job to throw out the trash,” maybe because it’s heavy or whatever.
So the idea is what it means for a man to be good to his wife or a woman to be good to her husband, yes, there are some fundamental basics, but perhaps God is giving us space for the fact that yes, I’m going to have very different sensibilities and expectations of what my husband should be providing for me than a woman living in a different time period in history with the fact that yes, there are some basic fundamental rights, and there are certain words that we have or certain concepts of [foreign language 01:15:02], of excellence, having excellence to one another, that God wants us to be upright, good human beings. Or the notion of [foreign language 01:15:12] or [foreign language 01:15:13] which comes up a lot in the Quran; this idea that God is demanding justice from us. And if he’s demanding us to be just, that includes gender justice as well. And so for me, I think this movement by Muslim women to advocate for gender justice, they actually get the mandate from the Quran itself because God is asking us to be just.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, but justice is not constant over time.
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah, absolutely. So I think what do we mean by gender justice, right? That’s where actually filling in the blanks. And obviously we have Muslim women differing on does gender justice include women being imams or women leading men in prayer? Is that part of gender justice? Or can I feel that praying behind a male religious leader, that’s okay with me, and I’m still being dealt with justly as a woman?
So I think the details, the contours, I guess, of that differ from one person to another. And I think that’s okay. I think that’s the way God created us, that we have different views of what… But I do think that-
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Hadia Mubarak:
We have this concept in Islam called [foreign language 01:16:28], this innate human disposition for goodness and for knowing God. So I think human beings were wired to know when something is unjust. Right? There’s certain things that regardless of your religion, regardless of your race, we can all identify this as being unjust.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, but that’s only on very clear cut matters like murder, theft, kidnapping, rape, and so forth, and killing innocent civilians. Those are the things that we can reach with our natural moral intuition. But obviously we don’t come to the same conclusions on things that are less central than murder and theft. And that’s why we as Muslims, we all have the [foreign language 01:17:11], we all have this innate disposition, but we come to wildly different conclusions on what it means to have gender justice.
So I think there’s a limit to what our innate disposition can actually do for us because it’s always mediated by our context. There’s no pure [foreign language 01:17:31] unless you’re talking about a child or someone… And this is actually an argument that a number of Islamic scholars make that we’re born free, but then society corrupts us. [inaudible 01:17:44] in his commentary on the Quran, I think, makes this clear.
But on the question of truth, it’s a little bit different, as far as I can, tell between Islam and Christianity. So Matt’s conception of truth isn’t really related to, and correct me if I’m wrong, to good deeds or bad deeds. This question of whether there’s one truth or multiple truths in the eyes of God becomes practically relevant for Muslims on the question of who will receive punishment or will have something negative on their balance if they take the wrong position on an issue like gender justice. So this isn’t just about an abstract notion of what is God’s truth. How we perceive this affects how we’re going to conduct ourselves in our own lives, and there are stakes.
And so patriarchal folks will argue that the egalitarians are actually committing sins in having the wrong interpretation, and then vice versa, that argument can be made in reverse. So I do think it’s different in this way, where Matt, I guess this is why we’ve always differed a little bit on this question of the multiplicity of truth, because the question of being punished or held accountable for sin simply doesn’t exist in Christianity the way that it does in Islam, right?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, I think that’s right. So if I’m wrong about something or I’m making a terrible interpretation of scripture, I am comforted that God’s love and God’s grace and God’s mercy sustain me despite my being wrong. Whereas my understanding for you, Shadi, is you actually have comfort in that you’re trying to do the right thing, so even if you’re wrong, God gives you a little something for trying your best to discover the right thing. But still it’s more on you to have that good motivation, whereas I think I experience a little bit more release in knowing that my salvation does not depend on my actions or my motives; it depends on God’s faithfulness to me. And that’s very simplistic, but I think that’s what you and I have been talking about.
Hadia Mubarak:
I would just add to that that I do think, for Muslims, I would go back, Shadi, to the prophetic tradition you mentioned where two scholars could arrive at a different legal ruling, but one of the legal rulings was more correct or the correct one, but yet both would be rewarded. So I would say that as long as we are actually really trying to faithfully understand the text, that it doesn’t matter really at the end which interpretation we arrive at, specifically we’re talking about women and gender, whether it’s egalitarian or patriarchal, as long as we’re not actively engaging in injustice or advocating for. And the way they really talked about justice was about rights, that there are basic rights men owe women, and women owe men and human beings owe one another. And that was very central, even to medieval Muslims’ conceptions of justice. And they really took justice very seriously.
So I guess what I would say is that one thing when it comes to Muslim theology is yes, actions matter just as faith matters, but we don’t know in the eyes of God the worth of one action versus another. And there’s so many prophetic traditions that allude to this.
For example, people might think, oh, praying, praying all your five prayers or fasting all of Ramadan, these are things that weigh a lot in the eyes of God. But we have prophetic traditions where a woman who was a prostitute, for example, is promised Paradise, she’s promised heaven because she found this thirsty dog and gave him water, and that that act alone was enough to wipe out her other sins and enter her into the grace of God. Or on the vice versa, we have a prophetic tradition that’s also about treatment of animals, but in this case it’s about animal cruelty where there was a woman, they said that she prayed so much and she fasted so much, and so she was doing all the rituals, but that this one action of hers was going to lead her to the hell fire, which is she took this cat and starved the cat to death by locking it into a room and that that one terrible act of animal cruelty was enough to wipe out all of her prayers and fast.
And so I find a lot of liberation and in that and a lot of mercy in that, in the sense that we as human beings cannot judge one another, right? Because I look at someone, I don’t know what their worth is in the eyes of God. Maybe they’ve done that one action that will be way beyond and above all those prayers and fasts that I’ve done; that those fasts and prayers are worth nothing maybe to this one person’s act of righteousness. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I think there’s a lot of hope in that.
Shadi Hamid:
It totally does. It also just does make me a little bit nervous that you can be quote, unquote “good” your whole life, and then if you slip up towards the end and you don’t have a chance to repent or to make things right again… I also don’t think that necessarily these traditions are meant to be taken exactly literally. I think they’re meant to tell us something important about God’s mercy instead of us counting our sins and deeds and thinking about how the balance works in a very narrow human sense. So that’s just worth keeping in mind.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I, for one, am certainly going to be kinder to my neighborhood cat now. I think that’s big for me. So here’s my last question for you, Hadia. This is my last question. By the way, I heard you say you have children. Do you have daughters? Do you have any daughters?
Hadia Mubarak:
I have a 12-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son. Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay. So my question for you is I’d love just to hear just a window into the kinds of advice that you give to young women, maybe to your daughter, about being a Muslim woman in America. What kinds of advice or encouragement or scolding or whatever it is, what you say to them… Yeah, just what words do you share with young Muslim women here in America?
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah. For me, one of the most important, I guess, principles or concepts I want my daughter to understand is to be able to distinguish between Islam or divine intent and between how humans interpret this. And so I take her with me to the mosque. There’s one mosque where she and I and maybe two other women, we went and prayed in the men’s space behind the men. And there were many reasons for it, one of which the woman’s space was really unkempt, we could barely hear anything, the men’s space is constantly being renovated. And I took her there, and I said to my daughter, Jinan, “If anyone comes and tells you that you’re not allowed to pray here, you need to let them know that yes, you are allowed to pray here, and they should give you their evidence for why you can’t pray here. Put the onus on them to show you, to give you textual evidence.
And I try to familiarize her with the textual evidence so that she is empowered, because I know religious patriarchy’s not going anywhere; it’s always going to be a part of our realities as women. And I want her to feel confident and empowered to counter it, not from, like you said, a modern liberal perspective, but to actually counter religious patriarchy from a position that is more faithful to the text than their position is.
And so we also… There’s another mosque where her school is sometimes once in a while, it’s this constant back and forth, someone puts up the partition, someone takes it down, someone puts it back up. It’s really interesting because you have people who go to that mosque on both sides of the fence, some who want it… So I let her know that we have textual evidence that there should not be a partition here. And I’ll be one of those women who remove it, and then later we come back and we find it there.
I guess I just want her to know that even when she encounters religious patriarchy, that does not mean that that is God speaking, right? Or that they don’t represent God’s voice. And I just want her to know this so that she feels empowered to, later on in her life, go back and investigate for herself with the texts are saying and what they mean for her.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. On the other side of the spectrum though, do you have any worries about the challenge that she’s entering into a world and a society that is increasingly secularized, especially among well-educated elite types, academia, whatever it might be, especially in major urban centers where ideas around family, marriage, gender identity do appear to be changing quite rapidly? And it’s all around us in the culture. And I think it is becoming more and more of a point of contention in the American Muslim community about what should observant Muslims do about that? And I’m curious, probably right now the fear of patriarchy is probably more present because she’s present in the Muslim community, but when she goes out into the world, to college afterwards, she’s going to be exposed to, let’s say, almost the opposite.
Hadia Mubarak:
Yeah, I think she… I do have concerns. What I believe is that I think the world has always had its challenges. I think sometimes we like to think that… I mean different set of challenges, of course. I think we tend to have a very utopian view, at least for Muslims, of the past. And I think that’s not necessarily accurate. I think even during what Muslims would identify as the Golden Age of Islam, there were problems, and they had their own sets of challenges.
And so I believe that if she just really cultivates a relationship with God, I think that’s the most important thing for me. I think a lot of times, Muslims, we talk about Islam and we forget to talk about God. Because at the end of the day, like Matthew said, it’s this idea of love for God. If you don’t have love for God, then nothing is worth it. And why do anything if it’s not propelled by this love for God?
And I think for Muslims, we could actually learn from our Christian friends and really talking more about the love of God that he has for us and that we have for Him. And it’s in the Quran. There’s this beautiful passage that says “[foreign language 01:29:20],” that those who believe are even more intense in their love for God. And I think it’s a beautiful passage. And so I think if she has that in her heart and she cultivates that relationship with God, that it can help her navigate these really radically evolving times that we’re in right now.
Shadi Hamid:
That’s a great note to end on. Honestly, Hadia, this was incredible. And I’d be tempted to go on and on. So thank you so much for joining us. And I just want to remind listeners that you can find out more about Hadia’s work through her book and her other writing. I’ll just remind folks, it’s called Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands. And for those of you who are husbands, try not to be neglectful. I suppose that’s worth keeping in mind.
Hadia Mubarak:
Great note.
Shadi Hamid:
We’ll have a link to the book in the show notes, and we’ll also try to include couple of Hadia’s other articles. So with that, thanks again, Hadia.
Hadia Mubarak:
Thank you so much. Thank you, Shadi and Matthew. I really enjoyed the conversation, and I look forward to hearing some comments and responses from folks who listen. Thank you so much.
Shadi Hamid:
And thanks to all of you for listening to Zealots at the Gate. If you like what you heard, check out our other episodes and also check out our host, Comment magazine at comment.org. And again, we’d love to hear from you. You can find us at Twitter at my name, Shadi Hamid and Matthew Kaemingk; please note the Dutch spelling. Or you can use the hashtag #zealotspod on Twitter. You can also feel free to send us an email at zealots@comment.org. We do read all of them. Sometimes we take a little bit of time to respond, but we are keeping an eye on those, and we will respond eventually if we haven’t already.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Our thanks as well to our sponsor, Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith in Public Life. Zealots at the Gate is hosted by Comment Magazine, produced by Ali Crummy, audience strategy by Matt Crummy, and editorial direction by the wonderful Ann Snyder. Until next time, friends, I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
And I’m Shadi Hamid. Thanks for joining us.
