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

[Venugopalan K M]

Dear Kshmendra,

I'm highly obliged to your comments; particularly for the  correction
regarding Umer.
It was a big mistake on my part, to have mentioned Umer as Mohamed's son in
law; actually Umer was his father in law .(I must rush to  correct it there)
While I particularly thank you for pointing out the above factual error in
my post, I  the rest of your contentions are quite debatable , though I feel
restrained by a host of things to elaborate  my points of view. I had just
tried to outline the most impressive arguments I found in this work.

Regards,
Venu.

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>wrote:

> 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
> )
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
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