[Reader-list] Fwd: My Brief Review of Women and Islam on the Shelfari Page

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Dear Venugopalan
 
Just a few comments on what you have written:
 
- Mohammed's son-in-law was Ali (not Umer)
 
- Slavery is institutionalised in Islam through the Quran. It comments on it and gives no injunction against it as being unacceptable
 
- There is no advisory favouring the HIJAB in the Quran other than ONLY for the wives of Mohammed (this is open to interpretations). 
 
- Certain controversial advisories in the Quran and specifically the Law for Evidences, makes suspect a claim of 'equality between the sexes' as may be understood in secular terms
 
- You err in referring to the 'monotheistic universal faith is absolutely egalitarian' of Islam as being a VISION of Mohammed. It is the VISION of ALLAH and not Mohammed.
 
While on this subject; Most commentators on Islam including Muslims do wrong when they try to read the Quran in combination with the Hadith. The Hadith are sectarian and indeed political and may not always be in-line with the Quranic word, which makes some doubly suspect.  
 
Even in the reading of the Quran (and this is solely my own understanding), it would help both Muslims and Non-Muslims to understand things better if they were to identify the following aspects:
 
- Self-declatory by Allah. A generalised commentary on  Creator and the Creations and expectations of Creator from Creations
 
- Advisories for Mohammed alone 
 
- Advisories for everyone
 
- Advisories for specific times
 
- Advisories valid in perpetuity for ever after
 
- Commentaries of the times before Mohammed that may or may not be advisories  in perpetutity for ever after 
 
Kshmendra
 
  
--- On Wed, 4/22/09, Venugopalan K M <kmvenuannur at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Venugopalan K M <kmvenuannur at gmail.com>
Subject: Fwd: My Brief Review of Women and Islam on the Shelfari Page
To: "sarai-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 6:25 PM





---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Venugopalan K M <kmvenuannur at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:23 PM
Subject: Fwd: My Brief Review of Women and Islam on the Shelfari Page
To: 



Respected friends,
Kindly send in your comments; I expect to be benefited by them as I shortly intend to publish a translation of the work  in Malayalam, which is my mother tongue.
Warmly,
Venu.







Women and Islam: An Historical and Theological Enquiry
by Fatima Mernissi
In this book the author, who is both a feminist and a Muslim, aims to shed light on the status of women in Islam by examining and reassessing the literary sources as far back as 7th century Islam. She portrays how, far from being the oppressor of women that his detractors have claimed, the Prophet upheld the equality of all true believers. Here is a bold reconciliation of feminism with the... (more)

     kmvenuannur
         o Rated 0 stars

     “ Fatima Mernissi has done an epoch making and scholarly exploration of the Suras (original Quranic verses) and the Hadits (accounts by the Companions of the Prophet about how the Messenger of God responded to challenging moments in the lives of first generation of believers,methodically cross checked and compiled by religious scholars who lived in the first two centuries of Islam) along with the interpretations since then. The major findings of the author are the following:
     1. The Prophet undoubtedly wanted no separation between the public and private realms of life.
     2. His vision of a monotheistic universal faith is absolutely egalitarian and that is a world in which women could shoulder equal roles with that of men in political, social and economic realms with a view to creating a new world that would assure peace and happiness to all humans.
     3. While Islam would not sanction the practice of slavery among the believers, continuation of that institution for several centuries was possible in the actual islamic regimes thanks to the denial of option (to the new religion )to the prisoners of wars, who were mostly women from the pre Islamic kingdoms. However,their chidren were considered free persons. These women were treated as slaves and they were traded off or exchanged as booty.
     4.The descend of Hijab,the physical as well as the symbolicl separation of private and public spaces happened as a response to the grave crisis in the Medina priod,which corresponded to the later phase in the life of the Prophet. Years between Hejra 3-8 (AD 625- 628) were crtical periods of crisis characterized by severe losses and uncertainity both on the side of military expetitions and on the socio-economic life of people.
     5. Evenwhile the Prophet together with his wives and many of the articulate women in the Medinese city continued adherence to the principle of equality( between men and women) , they encountered lot of social abuses on account of this.
     6. The prominent of the male Companions led by his son in law Umer continuously pressed on the Prophet to impose restrictions for women. They persisted on the view that solution to the above crisis of credibility and above all the insecurity, was in the separation of the Muslim space into two- public space was to be preserved as exclusive domain of men, and the private space as the secluded space for women- both these spaces to be separated by a Hijab-
     7. The Hijab ultimately descended from the Heaven as revealed to the Prophet during the night of a wedding dinner in connection with his first night with Zainab in the year Hejra 5 (AD 627). The immediate provocation of the incident, according to a Hadith, was boorish behaviour of three men who continued to linger there chatting, sitting in the room without leaving the place even after the dinner; Prophet was eagerly waiting to be left alone in the company of Zainab,his new bride sitting in the same room. ”
     kmvenuannur wrote this review 1 minute ago. ( reply | edit |permalink )