Assalamu alikum sisters,
Here's a great article written by a non muslim who interviewed six Muslim British women. These sisters go on to explain how wearing the hijab and studying and following Islam allows them to be free. When covered up, the voice and mind of a woman become her points of attraction as she is not reduced to be judged by the curves of her body.
This non muslim author who is also a female nicely relays the struggle of Muslim women who are trying to bring back the Islam that was so liberating to women in the 7th century.
Here's an excerpt from the article:
Again and again, the women emphasise these two themes, evoked in richly poetic Koranic metaphor: first, the equality of the sexes in the eyes of God (the most meaningful equality of all, they argue), and second, the complementarity of the sexes. As the Koran puts it, "I created you from one soul, and from that soul I created its mate so that you may live in harmony and love."
It is true that there is plenty of material in the Koran that is more egalitarian than the western Christian tradition, which was heavily influenced by the misogyny of Greek thought. Perhaps the most fundamental is that the Islamic God does not have a gender. Arabic may refer to him by use of the male pronoun, but he is never described as "father" or "lord" as he is in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, the Islamic God has characteristics that are expressly feminine; one of his most important "names" is al-Rahman (the All-Compassionate) from the Arabic rahma , which comes from the word rahim , meaning womb. In Islamic mysticism, the divinely beloved is female, unlike in Christian mysticism - for example, Bernini's famous statue in Rome of St Teresa of Avila is in love with the male Christ. As one Muslim women, Sartaz Aziz, writes, "I am deeply grateful that my first ideas of God were formed by Islam, because I was able to think of the Highest Power as one without sex or race and thus completely unpatriarchal."
Click here to read the full article
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