Who better than Dr. Kecia Ali to open the afternoon session with the topic of Gender Justice in Islam? An Associate Professor of Religion at Boston University, and published author of Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Professor Ali started by acknowledging the weighty responsibility that comes with framing questions.
Read MoreWhen I first heard about Shaykha Fest, I, a seeker of knowledge, could not wait to sit at the feet of my learned mothers. Featuring Muslim female scholars from Germany, the UK and America, Shaykha Fest was born out of a need to revive female scholarship by setting and giving the stage to contemporary scholars, activists and thinkers, while simultaneously bridging the gap between different schools of thought and sects.
Read MoreWhen my mom told me that we were going out, I was thrilled, which was unlike me, given that I was a shy six-year-old who dreaded meeting new people. My mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, Sahar, and I piled in the car and drove to the village clinic where my father would meet us. When we arrived at the brightly lit, cold “operation room” with its two hospital beds that sat only four feet apart, our parents ordered my cousin and I to lie down and remain still.
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I put Lil D on the bus this morning, like I do most school-day mornings. We walk out to the bus, often in semi-darkness before the day has broken, and I escort him to the steps of the bus. The bus matron takes over from there, guiding him to his seat and attaching his harness to the seat. Sometimes he is agitated, upset and crying. Other times he is calm and eager to go. As I silently pray Aytul Kursi (a verse from the Qur’an), I wave goodbye, tell him I love him, and wish him a good day at school. He jerkily waves back. And then he’s gone.
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In April of 2011, 20 year-old Jessica Mokdad was allegedly gunned down by her stepfather Rahim Alfetlawi. The media uproar over the murder was immediate and, unsurprisingly, cloaked under the sensationalized trope of “honor killing.” While Mokdad’s family, including her biological father, stressed that Alfetlawi had issues of control and was not acting out of some religious convictions, the use of “honor killing” continued and served, also, most poignantly as a source for protest against even attempted popular normalization of Muslims a la TLC.
Read MoreI am someone who defies convention. I converted to Islam shortly after 9/11. But that didn’t mean I would become a conventional Muslim. I wanted to know God in a way that made sense to me. Every time I pick up the Quran, I’m in awe and feel even more sure that this revelation is how God wanted me to become closer to Him. But that epiphany is far from beautiful and inspiring for the majority of non-Muslims and Muslims I meet. There’s a simple explanation: I don’t wear the hijab (headscarf). My decision not to wear it is not out of defiance, but because it doesn’t work for me.
Read MoreWestern etiquette dictates that there are three topics never to be discussed at a dinner party – personal finances, politics and sex. Somehow my Indo-Pakistani /Muslim compatriots missed the memo on the first two topics. At parties I am routinely asked what my husband makes and how much we paid for our house. Fostering an air of ditziness (which, worrisomely, my questioners find eminently believable) I evade their nosy inquiries. The third topic of sex rarely arises.
Read MoreI was born in Pakistan, grew up in the United States, lived in Canada, then shifted to the U.S., only to return to Canada and now I’m back in the good ol’ U.S.A. (for now). That’s quite a mouthful when someone asks me where I am from. To avoid the detailed geography lesson, I give them the cliff notes version, replying I’m from “here” (here being where ever I happen to be at the moment).That response earned me quite the evil eye from a corpulent ‘auntie’ the other day.
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<< From the AltMuslimah Archives >> Now, whenever I come across something within early scholarship on the Qur’ān that calls for liberating women, I usually brace myself for someone who will come along and try to undo it. I naturally assumed, after reading al-Farrā’, that Ṭabarī was going to sell us out. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t! He affirms his predecessor’s reading: “This reading, with the kasrah on the qāf, is the one I consider to be most correct, for, if it is from waqār as we have chosen (‘alā mā akhtarnā), then there is no doubt that the reading must have a kasrah on the qāf.”
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<< From the AltMuslimah Archives >> One of the most titillating of post-Ottoman Turkey’s “modernization” efforts was the institution of the beauty pageant. The pageants were one way to show that Turkish women were not locked up in their houses; Turkish women were educated, modern, stylish and HOT! If the Muslim “establishment” today had a scholar pageant, Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 923) would walk away as Mr. Universe. We wouldn’t want to dislodge the turban with a crown, of course. However, the great sage would definitely win at least a sash – “Mr. Sunnī Universe.”
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