Chapter 1
Amit’s Tale.
Amit Rai is a barrister. When the surname ‘Rai’ metamorphosed into ‘Roy’ and ’Ray’ at the insistence of the English language, what it lost in elegance it gained in variety . To keep its uniqueness intact, Amit endowed it with a novel spelling. So novel was it that Amit’s numerous English friends both male and female- turned it into ‘Amitt Raaye’.
Amit’s father had been an all- conquering barrister. The enormous wealth he had left behind was enough for the moral degeneration of the next three generations. But Amit, despite the cataclysmic conflict potentially present in his patrimony, had managed to stay on course.
Before he had even registered for the undergraduate programme at Calcutta University, he was packed off to Oxford.
There seven years flew by- taking and not taking exams. Highly intelligent, he had got by without much study, yet one would be hard put to spot any lack in the ultimate product. His father had no high expectations from him. He had merely wished his son to acquire the true-blue Oxonian stamp, which would remain indelible even under the debilitating distractions of various indigenous influences.
I like Amit. Excellent chap. I’m a young writer. My readers’ circle is limited, and Amit easily tops my readers’ list. The flash and glitter of my literary style has really caught his fancy. He holds that those foremost in fame in our country’s literary market cannot lay claim to style. Like the camel, with its uncoordinated, awkward gait and uncouth proportions, plodding its way through desert wastelands, our litterateurs exhibit similar traits while wandering through wordy wastelands. Here I hasten to put in a timely, personal interjection for any critic- this is not my opinion.
For Amit, ‘fashion’ is a mask. An expressive face flares with ‘style’. He hardily insists that the lords of literature, writing to please only themselves, have cornered style. Those who write to tickle the palate of others, are mere slaves to fashion’s dictates. Bankimchandra’s Bishabriksha blazes with the highly original ‘Bankimi’ style. Nasiram’s Monomohaner Mohanbaganey is just
A copy-cat version- he has totally succeeded in deadening Bankim. Under the gaudy festive canopies and bright lights, a natchwali looks very glamorous. But for that first, holiest-of-holy exchange of glances in wedlock, the bride’s face has to be framed with a Banarasi veil: the special has to be seen in a special light. The garish canopy expresses fashion, the Banarasi veil conveys style. Amit declares that in our country, people are not over-fond of style. They are nervous about moving off the well-beaten, tested track leading to easy popularity. The Puranic story narrating Daksha’s great sacrifice bears testimony to the truth of this statement. The fashionable gods, Indra, Chandra, Varuna, got invited everywhere- even at Daksha’s sacrifice. Siva had style, his inimitable originality scared off the patrons. They instinctively fathomed Siva’s unconventionality and shunned him. I like listening to such pontifications from an Oxonian, for I certainly believe I’ve got style. The proof lies in the single-edition life –span of my books –they never reappear.
Nabakrishna, my brother-in –law, found Amit’s opinions infuriating. He would often dismissively snort, ‘Hang your Oxford graduates !’ As the proud owner of a post-graduate degree in English Literature, he had been taught to grind away at learned tomes, not to understand them. Only the other day he complained to me, ‘Amit delights in elevating the small-fries of literature merely to belittle the better-known ones. His hobby is to drum up support for his deliberate insolence, and you’re his drummer-boy.’ Unfortunately for him, his sister happens to be my wife. She heard it and vociferously objected to such prejudices, much to my intense satisfaction. I have further noted her wholehearted support for Amit’s views, though she has not received much education. The natural intelligence of womankind is truly remarkable!
Occasionally though, I too have felt a niggling doubt about Amit’s opinions, particularly when he waves away even great names in English Literature- the kind whose presence simply looms over the market! One can get away with blindly singing their praises without ever opening a page! Amit also considers reading their literary efforts unnecessary for the holy act of criticism. He holds well- known authors to be too establishment-prone, rather like the waiting-room at the Bardhaman railway station. Characteristically, the authors he has discovered for himself he considers exclusively his, much like private salons in special trains.
Amit is addicted to style. This shows not just in his literary proclivities, but also in his sartorial tastes and general attitude. He is what you would call ‘distinguished’. He is sure to catch your eye in a crowd. A clean-shaven, glossily dark face sparkling with merriment, bright eyes, bright laughter, restless movements and a gift for quick repartee: a flint-like mind which emits a veritable shower of sparks at a tap. He is into indigenous clothes because no one in his social circle wears them. He sports a white dhoti, carefully pleated in the old-fashioned manner, as his age-group considers such grab unthinkable. He wears quaint kurtas, with buttons running down obliquely from the left shoulder to the right side of his waist, and with sleeves slit picturesquely from wrist to elbow. A broad, brown –and-zari- worked band encircles his waist. His pocket-watch rests within a small, patterned pouch; slug from the band’s left side. White leather sandals with inserts of red leather-strips encase his feet.
A shawl dangles from his left shoulder to his knee when he sails forth from his house. When out visiting friends, a white Muslim Fez from Lucknow completes this ensemble. I won’t call this dandyism, but Amit’s special brand of uproarious laughter. I don’t profess to understand Western Sartorial styles.
But the knowledgeable assure me that Amit’s carefully-achieved disheveled appearance is considered to be in the right mode. His eccentricities are not adopted to enhance his personal charms. but to mock prevailing fashions. You may see many who are formally classified under ‘youth’ because of their age. Amit’s youth springs from pure youthfulness, totally reckless, holding nothing back, uncalculating, sweeping all before it like a tidal wave.
He has two sisters- Sissy and Lissy, new products in the market – gift – wrapped in the latest fashion from head to toe. Complete to a shade in high heels, stringed coral and amber beads peeking from tightly- fitting lace-edged jackets, saris obliquely and closely hugging their bodies. They move clickety-click, speak in high tones, laugh in musical octaves, shoot flirtatious glances and quick, shy smiles and certainly know the value of deep, meaningful glances. They also flutter their pink fans before their faces, perch on sofa-arms where their men-friends lounge, and to their playful daring they retaliate with men-friends lounge, and to their playful daring they retaliate with equally playful scolds, accompanied by light taps of their fans.
Male hearts fill with envy at Amit’s success as a ladies’ man. He has no particular partiality for any one- indeed; his enthusiasm generously includes the entire sex. Amit is not short of feminine company, so he isn’t frantic for it. He is a regular at parties, participates in card-games, deliberately loses bets, pleads soulfully with particularly tone-deaf ladies for more songs and is mustard-keen to know, from women wearing really garish colors, the names and location of the shops they patronize. His tone takes on a special inflection for each and every female acquaintance. Yet nobody is deceived – they all know his is an impartial partiality. A person sincerely devoted to many Gods and Goddesses, elevates each secretly to the top. The divinities are wise to the maneuvers but are also but also pleased. Hopeful mothers continue hoping, but the daughters have figured out the elusive and tantalizing quality of this constantly receding horizon. Amit ponders the feminine mystique, but is unable to come to a conclusion. He can nonchalantly strike up friendships with all and sundry and remains totally intrepid while treading the dangerous path to female friendship. Because of this, he never ever runs the risk of getting singed, despite his close range to such highly inflammable material.
Just the other day at a picnic,
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Fitra.
About Fitra.
Disposal of Fitra, important rules .
(As per Ayatullah Seestani's 'Islamic laws)
1. It is Wajib to give Fitra to the needy in your hometown first. It is not necessary to tell that the money given to the needy is of Fitrah.
2. Fitrah from a non-Sayyid cannot be given to a needy Sayyid; the reverse is permissible.
3. A needy should be given at least oneFitrah.
4. FITRA
CAN BE GIVEN TO:
Any Shia Ithna Asheri who is poor; but preferencehas been given to:
a. Needy blood relations;
b. Needy neighbors;
c. Needy scholars.
5. Fitrah for a person is given on a weight of three kilograms (one sa'a) on
any foodcommodity like wheat, rice.
6. The money for Fitrahcan be given to any Organization who undertakes the responsibility of buying the grain and passing it on to the people who are liable for receiving Zakaat.
CAN WE GIVE FITRAH IN ADVANCE?
Giving Fitrah before the eve of Eid ul Fitr is not permissible. However, if you wish to
send Fitrah earlier so that it reaches the needy on Eid day, then send it out
as a temporary loan to the needy and then change your intention to Fitrah on
the eve of Eid.
Disposal of Fitra, important rules .
(As per Ayatullah Seestani's 'Islamic laws)
1. It is Wajib to give Fitra to the needy in your hometown first. It is not necessary to tell that the money given to the needy is of Fitrah.
2. Fitrah from a non-Sayyid cannot be given to a needy Sayyid; the reverse is permissible.
3. A needy should be given at least oneFitrah.
4. FITRA
CAN BE GIVEN TO:
Any Shia Ithna Asheri who is poor; but preferencehas been given to:
a. Needy blood relations;
b. Needy neighbors;
c. Needy scholars.
5. Fitrah for a person is given on a weight of three kilograms (one sa'a) on
any foodcommodity like wheat, rice.
6. The money for Fitrahcan be given to any Organization who undertakes the responsibility of buying the grain and passing it on to the people who are liable for receiving Zakaat.
CAN WE GIVE FITRAH IN ADVANCE?
Giving Fitrah before the eve of Eid ul Fitr is not permissible. However, if you wish to
send Fitrah earlier so that it reaches the needy on Eid day, then send it out
as a temporary loan to the needy and then change your intention to Fitrah on
the eve of Eid.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Does the Quran command us to wear Hijab?
Women in Islam: Hijab
In the name of Allah the most Beneficent, the Most Merciful
Literally, Hijab means "a veil", "curtain", "partition" or "separation." In a meta- physical sense, Hijab means illusion or refers to the illusory aspect of creation. Another, and most popular and common meaning of Hijab today, is the veil in dressing for women. It refers to a certain standard of modest dress for women. "The usual definition of modest dress according to the legal systems does not actually require covering everything except the face and hands in public; this, at least, is the practice which originated in the Middle East."
While Hijab means "cover", "drape", or "partition"; the word KHIMAR means veil covering the head and the word LITHAM or NIQAB means veil covering lower face up to the eyes. The general term hijab in the present day world refers to the covering of the face by women. In the Indian sub-continent it is called purdah and in Iran it called chador for the tent like black cloak and veil worn by many women in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. By socioeconomic necessity, the obligation to observe the hijab now often applies more to female "garments" (worn outside the house) than it does to the ancient paradigmatic feature of women's domestic "seclusion." In the contemporary normative Islamic language of Egypt and elsewhere, the hijab now denotes more a "way of dressing" than a "way of life," a (portable) "veil" rather than a fixed "domestic screen/seclusion." In Egypt and America hijab presently denotes the basic head covering ("veil") worn by fundamentalist/Islamist women as part of Islamic dress (zayy islami, or zayy shar'i); this hijab-head covering conceals hair and neck of the wearer.
The Qur'an advises the wives of the Prophet (SAS) to go veiled (33: 59).
In Surah 24: 31(Ayah), the Qur'an advises women to cover their "adornments" from strangers outside the family. In the traditional and modern Arab societies women at home dress quite differently compared to what they wear in the streets. In this verse of the Qur'an, it refers to the institution of a new public modesty rather than veiling the face.
...When the pre-Islamic Arabs went to battle, Arab women seeing the men off to war would bare their breasts to encourage them to fight; or they would do so at the battle itself, as in the case of the Meccan women led by Hind at the Battle of Uhud. This changed with Islam, but the general use of the veil to cover the face did not appear until 'Abbasid times. Nor was it entirely unknown in Europe, for the veil permitted women the freedom of anonymity. None of the legal systems actually prescribe that women must wear a veil, although they do prescribe covering the body in public, up to the neck, the ankles, and below the elbow. In many Muslim societies, for example in traditional South East Asia, or in Bedouin lands a face veil for women is either rare or non-existent; paradoxically, modern fundamentalism is introducing it. In others, the veil may be used at one time and European dress another. While modesty is a religious prescription, the wearing of a veil is not a religious requirement of Islam, but a matter of cultural milieu.2
"The Middle Eastern norm for relationships between the sexes is by no means the only one possible for Islamic societies everywhere, nor is it appropriate for all cultures. It does not exhaust the possibilities allowed within the framework of the Qur'an and Sunnah, and is neither feasible nor desirable as a model for Europe or North America. European societies possess perfectly adequate models for marriage, the family, and relations between the sexes which are by no means out of harmony with the Qur'an and the Sunnah. This is borne out by the fact that within certain broad limits Islamic societies themselves differ enormously in this respect." 3
The Qur'an lays down the principle of the law of modesty. In Surah 24: An-Nur: 30 and 31, modesty is enjoined both upon Muslim men and Muslim women 4:
Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that will make for Greater purity for them: And God is Well-acquainted with all that they do. And say to the believing women That they should lower their gaze And guard their modesty: and they should not display beauty and ornaments expect what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that They must draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husband's sons, or their women, or their slaves whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex; and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their ornaments.
The following conclusions may be made on the basis of the above-cited verses5:
1. The Qur'anic injunctions enjoining the believers to lower their gaze and behave modestly applies to both Muslim men and women and not Muslim women alone.
2. Muslim women are enjoined to "draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty" except in the presence of their husbands, other women, children, eunuchs and those men who are so closely related to them that they are not allowed to marry them. Although a self-conscious exhibition of one's "zeenat" (which means "that which appears to be beautiful" or "that which is used for embellishment or adornment") is forbidden, the Qur'an makes it clear that what a woman wears ordinarily is permissible. Another interpretation of this part of the passage is that if the display of "zeenat" is unintentional or accidental, it does not violate the law of modesty.
3. Although Muslim women may wear ornaments they should not walk in a manner intended to cause their ornaments to jingle and thus attract the attention of others.
The respected scholar, Muhammad Asad6, commenting on Qur'an 24:31 says " The noun khimar (of which khumur is plural) denotes the head-covering customarily used by Arabian women before and after the advent of Islam. According to most of the classical commentators, it was worn in pre-Islamic times more or less as an ornament and was let down loosely over the wearer's back; and since, in accordance with the fashion prevalent at the time, the upper part of a woman's tunic had a wide opening in the front, her breasts were left bare. Hence, the injunction to cover the bosom by means of a khimar (a term so familiar to the contemporaries of the Prophet) does not necessarily relate to the use of a khimar as such but is, rather, meant to make it clear that a woman's breasts are not included in the concept of "what may decently be apparent" of her body and should not, therefore, be displayed.
The Qur'anic view of the ideal society is that the social and moral values have to be upheld by both Muslim men and women and there is justice for all, i.e. between man and man and between man and woman. The Qur'anic legislation regarding women is to protect them from inequities and vicious practices (such as female infanticide, unlimited polygamy or concubinage, etc.) which prevailed in the pre-Islamic Arabia. However the main purpose is to establish to equality of man and woman in the sight of God who created them both in like manner, from like substance, and gave to both the equal right to develop their own potentialities. To become a free, rational person is then the goal set for all human beings. Thus the Qur'an liberated the women from the indignity of being sex-objects into persons. In turn the Qur'an asks the women that they should behave with dignity and decorum befitting a secure, Self-respecting and self-aware human being rather than an insecure female who felt that her survival depends on her ability to attract or cajole those men who were interested not in her personality but only in her sexuality.
One of the verses in the Qur'an protects a woman's fundamental rights. Aya 59 from Sura al-Ahzab reads:
O Prophet! Tell Thy wives And daughters, and the Believing women, that They should cast their Outer garments over Their Persons (when outside): That they should be known (As such) and not Molested.
Although this verse is directed in the first place to the Prophet's "wives and daughters", there is a reference also to "the believing women" hence it is generally understood by Muslim societies as applying to all Muslim women. According to the Qur'an the reason why Muslim women should wear an outer garment when going out of their houses is so that they may be recognized as "believing" Muslim women and differentiated from street-walkers for whom sexual harassment is an occupational hazard. The purpose of this verse was not to confine women to their houses but to make it safe for them to go about their daily business without attracting unwholesome attention. By wearing the outer garment a "believing" Muslim woman could be distinguished from the others. In societies where there is no danger of "believing" Muslim being confused with the others or in which "the outer garment" is unable to function as a mark of identification for "believing" Muslim women, the mere wearing of "the outer garment" would not fulfill the true objective of the Qur'anic decree. For example that older Muslim women who are "past the prospect of marriage" are not required to wear "the outer garment". Surah 24: An-Nur, Aya 60 reads:
Such elderly women are past the prospect of marriage,-- There is no blame on them, if they lay aside their (outer) garments, provided they make not wanton display of their beauty; but it is best for them to be modest: and Allah is One who sees and knows all things.
Women who on account of their advanced age are not likely to be regarded as sex-objects are allowed to discard "the outer garment" but there is no relaxation as far as the essential Qur'anic principle of modest behavior is concerned. Reflection on the above-cited verse shows that "the outer garment" is not required by the Qur'an as a necessary statement of modesty since it recognizes the possibility women may continue to be modest even when they have discarded "the outer garment."
The Qur'an itself does not suggest either that women should be veiled or they should be kept apart from the world of men. On the contrary, the Qur'an is insistent on the full participation of women in society and in the religious practices prescribed for men.
Nazira Zin al-Din stipulates that the morality of the self and the cleanness of the conscience are far better than the morality of the chador. No goodness is to be hoped from pretence, all goodness is in the essence of the self. Zin al-Din also argues that imposing the veil on women is the ultimate proof that men suspect their mothers, daughters, wives and sisters of being potential traitors to them. This means that men suspect 'the women closest and dearest to them.' How can society trust women with the most consequential job of bringing up children when it does not trust them with their faces and bodies? How can Muslim men meet rural and European women who are not veiled and treat them respectfully but not treat urban Muslim women in the same way? 7 She concludes this part of the book, al-Sufur Wa'l-hijab 8 by stating that it is not an Islamic duty on Muslim women to wear hijab. If Muslim legislators have decided that it is, their opinions are wrong. If hijab is based on women's lack of intellect or piety, can it be said that all men are more perfect in piety and intellect than all women? 9 The spirit of a nation and its civilization is a reflection of the spirit of the mother. How can any mother bring up distinguished children if she herself is deprived of her personal freedom? She concludes that in enforcing hijab, society becomes a prisoner of its customs and traditions rather than Islam.
There are two ayahs which are specifically addressed to the wives of the Prophet Muhammad (S) and not to other Muslim women.
These are ayahs 32 and 53 of Sura al-Ahzab. ".. And stay quietly in your houses," did not mean confinement of the wives of the Prophet (S) or other Muslim women and make them inactive. Muslim women remained in mixed company with men until the late sixth century (A.H.) or eleventh century (CE). They received guests, held meetings and went to wars helping their brothers and husbands, defend their castles and bastions.10
Zin al-Din reviewed the interpretations of Aya 30 from Sura al-Nur and Aya 59 from sura al-Ahzab which were cited above by al-Khazin, al-Nafasi, Ibn Masud, Ibn Abbas and al-Tabari and found them full of contradictions. Yet, almost all interpreters agreed that women should not veil their faces and their hands and anyone who advocated that women should cover all their bodies including their faces could not face his argument on any religious text. If women were to be totally covered, there would have been no need for the ayahs addressed to Muslim men: 'Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty.' (Sura al-Nur, Aya 30). She supports her views by referring to the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (S), always taking into account what the Prophet himself said 'I did not say a thing that is not in harmony with God's book.'11 God says: 'O consorts of the Prophet! ye are not like any of the (other) women' (Ahzab, 53). Thus it is very clear that God did not want women to measure themselves against the wives of the Prophet and wear hijab like them and there is no ambiguity whatsoever regarding this aya. Therefore, those who imitate the wives of the Prophet and wear hijab are disobeying God's will.12
In Islam ruh al-madaniyya (Islam: The Spirit of Civilization) Shaykh Mustafa Ghalayini reminds his readers that veiling pre-dated Islam and that Muslims learned from other peoples with whom they mixed. He adds that hijab as it is known today is prohibited by the Islamic shari'a. Any one who looks at hijab as it is worn by some women would find that it makes them more desirable than if they went out without hijab13. Zin al-Din points out that veiling was a custom of rich families as a symbol of status. She quotes Shaykh Abdul Qadir al-Maghribi who also saw in hijab an aristocratic habit to distinguish the women of rich and prestigious families from other women. She concludes that hijab as it is known today is prohibited by the Islamic shari'a.14
Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali in his book Sunna Between Fiqh and Hadith 15 declares that those who claim that women's reform is conditioned by wearing the veil are lying to God and his Prophet. He expresses the opinion that the contemptuous view of women has been passed on from the first jahiliya (the Pre-Islamic period) to the Islamic society. Al-Ghazali's argument is that Islam has made it compulsory on women not to cover their faces during haj and salat (prayer) the two important pillars of Islam. How then could Islam ask women to cover their faces at ordinary times?16 Al-Ghazali is a believer and is confident that all traditions that function to keep women ignorant and prevent them from functioning in public are the remnants of jahiliya and that following them is contrary to the spirit of Islam.
Al-Ghazali says that during the time of the Prophet women were equals at home, in the mosques and on the battlefield. Today true Islam is being destroyed in the name of Islam.
Another Muslim scholar, Abd al-Halim Abu Shiqa wrote a scholarly study of women in Islam entitled Tahrir al-mara'a fi 'asr al-risalah: (The Emancipation of Women during the Time of the Prophet)17 agrees with Zin al-Din and al-Ghazali about the discrepancy between the status of women during the time of the Prophet Muhammad and the status of women today. He says that Islamists have made up sayings which they attributed to the Prophet such as 'women are lacking both intellect and religion' and in many cases they brought sayings which are not reliable at all and promoted them among Muslims until they became part of the Islamic culture.
Like Zin al-Din and al-Ghazali, Abu Shiqa finds that in many countries very weak and unreliable sayings of the Prophet are invented to support customs and traditions which are then considered to be part of the shari'a. He argues that it is the Islamic duty of women to participate in public life and in spreading good (Sura Tauba, Aya 71). He also agrees with Zin al-Din and Ghazali that hijab was for the wives of the Prophet and that it was against Islam for women to imitate the wives of the Prophet. If women were to be totally covered, why did God ask both men and women to lower their gaze? (Sura al-Nur, Ayath 30-31).
The actual practice of veiling most likely came from areas captured in the initial spread of Islam such as Syria, Iraq, and Persia and was adopted by upper-class urban women. Village and rural women traditionally have not worn the veil, partly because it would be an encumbrance in their work. It is certainly true that segregation of women in the domestic sphere took place increasingly as the Islamic centuries unfolded, with some very unfortunate consequences. Some women are again putting on clothing that identifies them as Muslim women. This phenomenon, which began only a few years ago, has manifested itself in a number of countries.
It is part of the growing feeling on the part of Muslim men and women that they no longer wish to identify with the West, and that reaffirmation of their identity as Muslims requires the kind of visible sign that adoption of conservative clothing implies. For these women the issue is not that they have to dress conservatively but that they choose to. In Iran Imam Khomeini first insisted that women must wear the veil and chador and in response to large demonstrations by women, he modified his position and agreed that while the chador is not obligatory, modest dress is, including loose clothing and non-transparent stockings and scarves.18
With Islam's expansion into areas formerly part of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, the scripture-legislated social paradigm that had evolved in the early Medinan community came face to face with alien social structures and traditions deeply rooted in the conquered populations. Among the many cultural traditions assimilated and continued by Islam were the veiling and seclusion of women, at least among the urban upper and upper-middle classes. With these traditions' assumption into "the Islamic way of life," they of need helped to shape the normative interpretations of Qur'anic gender laws as formulated by the medireview (urbanized and acculturated) lawyer-theologians. In the latter's consensus-based prescriptive systems, the Prophet's wives were recognized as models for emulation (sources of Sunna). Thus, while the scholars provided information on the Prophet's wives in terms of, as well as for, an ideal of Muslim female morality, the Qur'anic directives addressed to the Prophet's consorts were naturally seen as applicable to all Muslim women.19
Semantically and legally, that is, regarding both the terms and also the parameters of its application, Islamic interpretation extended the concept of hijab. In scripturalist method, this was achieved in several ways. Firstly, the hijab was associated with two of the Qur'an's "clothing laws" imposed upon all Muslim females: the "mantle" verse of 33:59 and the "modesty" verse of 24:31. On the one hand, the semantic association of domestic segregation (hijab) with garments to be worn in public (jilbab, khimar) resulted in the use of the term hijab for concealing garments that women wore outside of their houses. This language use is fully documented in the medireview Hadith. However, unlike female garments such as jilbab, lihaf, milhafa, izar, dir' (traditional garments for the body), khimar, niqab, burqu', qina', miqna'a (traditional garments for the head and neck) and also a large number of other articles of clothing, the medireview meaning of hijab remained conceptual and generic. In their debates on which parts of the woman's body, if any, are not "awra" (literally, "genital," "pudendum") and many therefore be legally exposed to nonrelatives, the medireview scholars often contrastively paired woman's' awra with this generic hijab. This permitted the debate to remain conceptual rather than get bogged down in the specifics of articles of clothing whose meaning, in any case, was prone to changes both geographic/regional and also chronological. At present we know very little about the precise stages of the process by which the hijab in its multiple meanings was made obligatory for Muslim women at large, except to say that these occurred during the first centuries after the expansion of Islam beyond the borders of Arabia, and then mainly in the Islamicized societies still ruled by preexisting (Sasanian and Byzantine) social traditions.
With the rise of the Iraq-based Abbasid state in the mid-eighth century of the Western calendar, the lawyer-theologians of Islam grew into a religious establishment entrusted with the formulation of Islamic law and morality, and it was they who interpreted the Qur'anic rules on women's dress and space in increasingly absolute and categorical fashion, reflecting the real practices and cultural assumptions of their place and age. Classical legal compendia, medireview Hadith collections and Qur'anic exegesis are here mainly formulations of the system "as established" and not of its developmental stages, even though differences of opinion on the legal limits of the hijab garments survived, including among the doctrinal teachings of the four orthodox schools of law (madhahib). 20
Attacked by foreigners and indigenous secularists alike and defended by the many voices of conservatism, hijab has come to signify the sum total of traditional institutions governing women's role in Islamic society. Thus, in the ideological struggles surrounding the definition of Islam's nature and role in the modern world, the hijab has acquired the status of "cultural symbol."
Qasim Amin, the French-educated, pro-Western Egyptian journalist, lawyer, and politician in the last century wanted to bring Egyptian society from a state of "backwardness" into a state of "civilization" and modernity. To do so, he lashed out against the hijab, in its expanded sense, as the true reason for the ignorance, superstition, obesity, anemia, and premature aging of the Muslim woman of his time. He wanted the Muslim women to raise from the "backward" hijab into the desirable modernist ideal of women's right to an elementary education, supplemented by their ongoing contact with life outside of the home to provide experience of the "real world" and combat superstition. He understood the hijab as an amalgam of institutionalized restrictions on women that consisted of sexual segregation, domestic seclusion, and the face veil. He insisted as much on the woman's right to mobility outside the home as he did on the adaptation of shar'i Islamic garb, which would leave a woman's face and hands uncovered. Women's domestic seclusion and the face veil, then, were primary points in Amin's attack on what was wrong with the Egyptian social system of his time.21 Muhammad Abdu tried to restore the dignity to Muslim woman by way of educational and some legal reforms, the modernist blueprint of women's Islamic rights eventually also included the right to work, vote, and stand for election-that is, full participation in public life. He separated the forever-valid-as-stipulated laws of 'ibadat (religious observances) from the more time-specific mu'amalat (social transactions) in Qur'an and shari'a, which latter included the Hadith as one of its sources. Because modern Islamic societies differ from the seventh-century umma, time-specific laws are thus no longer literally applicable but need a fresh legal interpretation (ijtihad). What matters is to safeguard "the public good" (al-maslah al'-amma) in terms of Muslim communal morality and spirituality. 22
In The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam, the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi attacks the age-old conservative focus on women's segregation as mere institutionalization of authoritarianism, achieved by way of manipulation of sacred texts, "a structural characteristic of the practice of power in Muslim societies." In describing the feminist model of the Prophet's wives' rights and roles both domestic and also communal, Mernissi uses the methodology of "literal" interpretation of Qur'an and Hadith. In the selection and interpretations of traditions, she discredits some of textual items as unauthentic by the criteria of classical Hadith criticism. In Mernissi's reading of Qur'an and Hadith, Muhammad's wives were dynamic, influential, and enterprising members of the community, and fully involved in Muslim public affairs. He listened to their advice. In the city, they were leaders of women's protest movements, first for equal status as believers and thereafter regarding economic and sociopolitical rights, mainly in the areas of inheritance, participation in warfare and booty, and personal (marital) relations. Muhammad's vision of Islamic society was egalitarian, and he lived this ideal in his own household. Later the Prophet had to sacrifice his egalitarian vision for the sake of communal cohesiveness and the survival of the Islamic cause. To Mernissi, the seclusion of Muhammad's wives from public life (the hijab, Qur'an 33.53) is a symbol of Islam's retreat from the early principle of gender equality, as is the "mantel" (jilbab) verse of 33:59 which relinquished the principle of social responsibility, the individual sovereign will that internalizes control rather than place it within external barriers. Concerning A'isha's involvement in political affairs (the Battle of the Camel), Mernissi engages in classical Hadith criticism to prove the inauthenticity of the (presumably Prophetic) traditions "a people who entrust their command [or, affair, amr] to a woman will not thrive" because of historical problems relating to the date of its first transmission and also self-serving motives and a number of moral deficiencies recorded about its first transmitter, the Prophet's freedman Abu Bakra. Modernists in general disregard hadith items rather than question their authenticity by scrutinizing the transmitters' reliability.23 After describing the active participation of Muslim women in the battlefields as warriors and nurses to the wounded, Maulana Maudoodi24 says " This shows that the Islamic purdah is not a custom of ignorance which cannot be relaxed under any circumstances, on the other hand, it is a custom which can be relaxed as and when required in a moment of urgency. Not only is a woman allowed to uncover a part of her satr (coveredness) under necessity, there is no harm."
In the matter of hijab, the conscience of an honest, sincere Believer alone can be the true judge, as has been said by the Noble Prophet: "Ask for the verdict of your conscience and discard what pricks it."
Islam cannot be properly followed without knowledge. It is a rational law and to follow it rightly one needs to exercise reason and understanding at every step.25
In the name of Allah the most Beneficent, the Most Merciful
Literally, Hijab means "a veil", "curtain", "partition" or "separation." In a meta- physical sense, Hijab means illusion or refers to the illusory aspect of creation. Another, and most popular and common meaning of Hijab today, is the veil in dressing for women. It refers to a certain standard of modest dress for women. "The usual definition of modest dress according to the legal systems does not actually require covering everything except the face and hands in public; this, at least, is the practice which originated in the Middle East."
While Hijab means "cover", "drape", or "partition"; the word KHIMAR means veil covering the head and the word LITHAM or NIQAB means veil covering lower face up to the eyes. The general term hijab in the present day world refers to the covering of the face by women. In the Indian sub-continent it is called purdah and in Iran it called chador for the tent like black cloak and veil worn by many women in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. By socioeconomic necessity, the obligation to observe the hijab now often applies more to female "garments" (worn outside the house) than it does to the ancient paradigmatic feature of women's domestic "seclusion." In the contemporary normative Islamic language of Egypt and elsewhere, the hijab now denotes more a "way of dressing" than a "way of life," a (portable) "veil" rather than a fixed "domestic screen/seclusion." In Egypt and America hijab presently denotes the basic head covering ("veil") worn by fundamentalist/Islamist women as part of Islamic dress (zayy islami, or zayy shar'i); this hijab-head covering conceals hair and neck of the wearer.
The Qur'an advises the wives of the Prophet (SAS) to go veiled (33: 59).
In Surah 24: 31(Ayah), the Qur'an advises women to cover their "adornments" from strangers outside the family. In the traditional and modern Arab societies women at home dress quite differently compared to what they wear in the streets. In this verse of the Qur'an, it refers to the institution of a new public modesty rather than veiling the face.
...When the pre-Islamic Arabs went to battle, Arab women seeing the men off to war would bare their breasts to encourage them to fight; or they would do so at the battle itself, as in the case of the Meccan women led by Hind at the Battle of Uhud. This changed with Islam, but the general use of the veil to cover the face did not appear until 'Abbasid times. Nor was it entirely unknown in Europe, for the veil permitted women the freedom of anonymity. None of the legal systems actually prescribe that women must wear a veil, although they do prescribe covering the body in public, up to the neck, the ankles, and below the elbow. In many Muslim societies, for example in traditional South East Asia, or in Bedouin lands a face veil for women is either rare or non-existent; paradoxically, modern fundamentalism is introducing it. In others, the veil may be used at one time and European dress another. While modesty is a religious prescription, the wearing of a veil is not a religious requirement of Islam, but a matter of cultural milieu.2
"The Middle Eastern norm for relationships between the sexes is by no means the only one possible for Islamic societies everywhere, nor is it appropriate for all cultures. It does not exhaust the possibilities allowed within the framework of the Qur'an and Sunnah, and is neither feasible nor desirable as a model for Europe or North America. European societies possess perfectly adequate models for marriage, the family, and relations between the sexes which are by no means out of harmony with the Qur'an and the Sunnah. This is borne out by the fact that within certain broad limits Islamic societies themselves differ enormously in this respect." 3
The Qur'an lays down the principle of the law of modesty. In Surah 24: An-Nur: 30 and 31, modesty is enjoined both upon Muslim men and Muslim women 4:
Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that will make for Greater purity for them: And God is Well-acquainted with all that they do. And say to the believing women That they should lower their gaze And guard their modesty: and they should not display beauty and ornaments expect what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that They must draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husband's sons, or their women, or their slaves whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex; and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their ornaments.
The following conclusions may be made on the basis of the above-cited verses5:
1. The Qur'anic injunctions enjoining the believers to lower their gaze and behave modestly applies to both Muslim men and women and not Muslim women alone.
2. Muslim women are enjoined to "draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty" except in the presence of their husbands, other women, children, eunuchs and those men who are so closely related to them that they are not allowed to marry them. Although a self-conscious exhibition of one's "zeenat" (which means "that which appears to be beautiful" or "that which is used for embellishment or adornment") is forbidden, the Qur'an makes it clear that what a woman wears ordinarily is permissible. Another interpretation of this part of the passage is that if the display of "zeenat" is unintentional or accidental, it does not violate the law of modesty.
3. Although Muslim women may wear ornaments they should not walk in a manner intended to cause their ornaments to jingle and thus attract the attention of others.
The respected scholar, Muhammad Asad6, commenting on Qur'an 24:31 says " The noun khimar (of which khumur is plural) denotes the head-covering customarily used by Arabian women before and after the advent of Islam. According to most of the classical commentators, it was worn in pre-Islamic times more or less as an ornament and was let down loosely over the wearer's back; and since, in accordance with the fashion prevalent at the time, the upper part of a woman's tunic had a wide opening in the front, her breasts were left bare. Hence, the injunction to cover the bosom by means of a khimar (a term so familiar to the contemporaries of the Prophet) does not necessarily relate to the use of a khimar as such but is, rather, meant to make it clear that a woman's breasts are not included in the concept of "what may decently be apparent" of her body and should not, therefore, be displayed.
The Qur'anic view of the ideal society is that the social and moral values have to be upheld by both Muslim men and women and there is justice for all, i.e. between man and man and between man and woman. The Qur'anic legislation regarding women is to protect them from inequities and vicious practices (such as female infanticide, unlimited polygamy or concubinage, etc.) which prevailed in the pre-Islamic Arabia. However the main purpose is to establish to equality of man and woman in the sight of God who created them both in like manner, from like substance, and gave to both the equal right to develop their own potentialities. To become a free, rational person is then the goal set for all human beings. Thus the Qur'an liberated the women from the indignity of being sex-objects into persons. In turn the Qur'an asks the women that they should behave with dignity and decorum befitting a secure, Self-respecting and self-aware human being rather than an insecure female who felt that her survival depends on her ability to attract or cajole those men who were interested not in her personality but only in her sexuality.
One of the verses in the Qur'an protects a woman's fundamental rights. Aya 59 from Sura al-Ahzab reads:
O Prophet! Tell Thy wives And daughters, and the Believing women, that They should cast their Outer garments over Their Persons (when outside): That they should be known (As such) and not Molested.
Although this verse is directed in the first place to the Prophet's "wives and daughters", there is a reference also to "the believing women" hence it is generally understood by Muslim societies as applying to all Muslim women. According to the Qur'an the reason why Muslim women should wear an outer garment when going out of their houses is so that they may be recognized as "believing" Muslim women and differentiated from street-walkers for whom sexual harassment is an occupational hazard. The purpose of this verse was not to confine women to their houses but to make it safe for them to go about their daily business without attracting unwholesome attention. By wearing the outer garment a "believing" Muslim woman could be distinguished from the others. In societies where there is no danger of "believing" Muslim being confused with the others or in which "the outer garment" is unable to function as a mark of identification for "believing" Muslim women, the mere wearing of "the outer garment" would not fulfill the true objective of the Qur'anic decree. For example that older Muslim women who are "past the prospect of marriage" are not required to wear "the outer garment". Surah 24: An-Nur, Aya 60 reads:
Such elderly women are past the prospect of marriage,-- There is no blame on them, if they lay aside their (outer) garments, provided they make not wanton display of their beauty; but it is best for them to be modest: and Allah is One who sees and knows all things.
Women who on account of their advanced age are not likely to be regarded as sex-objects are allowed to discard "the outer garment" but there is no relaxation as far as the essential Qur'anic principle of modest behavior is concerned. Reflection on the above-cited verse shows that "the outer garment" is not required by the Qur'an as a necessary statement of modesty since it recognizes the possibility women may continue to be modest even when they have discarded "the outer garment."
The Qur'an itself does not suggest either that women should be veiled or they should be kept apart from the world of men. On the contrary, the Qur'an is insistent on the full participation of women in society and in the religious practices prescribed for men.
Nazira Zin al-Din stipulates that the morality of the self and the cleanness of the conscience are far better than the morality of the chador. No goodness is to be hoped from pretence, all goodness is in the essence of the self. Zin al-Din also argues that imposing the veil on women is the ultimate proof that men suspect their mothers, daughters, wives and sisters of being potential traitors to them. This means that men suspect 'the women closest and dearest to them.' How can society trust women with the most consequential job of bringing up children when it does not trust them with their faces and bodies? How can Muslim men meet rural and European women who are not veiled and treat them respectfully but not treat urban Muslim women in the same way? 7 She concludes this part of the book, al-Sufur Wa'l-hijab 8 by stating that it is not an Islamic duty on Muslim women to wear hijab. If Muslim legislators have decided that it is, their opinions are wrong. If hijab is based on women's lack of intellect or piety, can it be said that all men are more perfect in piety and intellect than all women? 9 The spirit of a nation and its civilization is a reflection of the spirit of the mother. How can any mother bring up distinguished children if she herself is deprived of her personal freedom? She concludes that in enforcing hijab, society becomes a prisoner of its customs and traditions rather than Islam.
There are two ayahs which are specifically addressed to the wives of the Prophet Muhammad (S) and not to other Muslim women.
These are ayahs 32 and 53 of Sura al-Ahzab. ".. And stay quietly in your houses," did not mean confinement of the wives of the Prophet (S) or other Muslim women and make them inactive. Muslim women remained in mixed company with men until the late sixth century (A.H.) or eleventh century (CE). They received guests, held meetings and went to wars helping their brothers and husbands, defend their castles and bastions.10
Zin al-Din reviewed the interpretations of Aya 30 from Sura al-Nur and Aya 59 from sura al-Ahzab which were cited above by al-Khazin, al-Nafasi, Ibn Masud, Ibn Abbas and al-Tabari and found them full of contradictions. Yet, almost all interpreters agreed that women should not veil their faces and their hands and anyone who advocated that women should cover all their bodies including their faces could not face his argument on any religious text. If women were to be totally covered, there would have been no need for the ayahs addressed to Muslim men: 'Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty.' (Sura al-Nur, Aya 30). She supports her views by referring to the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (S), always taking into account what the Prophet himself said 'I did not say a thing that is not in harmony with God's book.'11 God says: 'O consorts of the Prophet! ye are not like any of the (other) women' (Ahzab, 53). Thus it is very clear that God did not want women to measure themselves against the wives of the Prophet and wear hijab like them and there is no ambiguity whatsoever regarding this aya. Therefore, those who imitate the wives of the Prophet and wear hijab are disobeying God's will.12
In Islam ruh al-madaniyya (Islam: The Spirit of Civilization) Shaykh Mustafa Ghalayini reminds his readers that veiling pre-dated Islam and that Muslims learned from other peoples with whom they mixed. He adds that hijab as it is known today is prohibited by the Islamic shari'a. Any one who looks at hijab as it is worn by some women would find that it makes them more desirable than if they went out without hijab13. Zin al-Din points out that veiling was a custom of rich families as a symbol of status. She quotes Shaykh Abdul Qadir al-Maghribi who also saw in hijab an aristocratic habit to distinguish the women of rich and prestigious families from other women. She concludes that hijab as it is known today is prohibited by the Islamic shari'a.14
Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali in his book Sunna Between Fiqh and Hadith 15 declares that those who claim that women's reform is conditioned by wearing the veil are lying to God and his Prophet. He expresses the opinion that the contemptuous view of women has been passed on from the first jahiliya (the Pre-Islamic period) to the Islamic society. Al-Ghazali's argument is that Islam has made it compulsory on women not to cover their faces during haj and salat (prayer) the two important pillars of Islam. How then could Islam ask women to cover their faces at ordinary times?16 Al-Ghazali is a believer and is confident that all traditions that function to keep women ignorant and prevent them from functioning in public are the remnants of jahiliya and that following them is contrary to the spirit of Islam.
Al-Ghazali says that during the time of the Prophet women were equals at home, in the mosques and on the battlefield. Today true Islam is being destroyed in the name of Islam.
Another Muslim scholar, Abd al-Halim Abu Shiqa wrote a scholarly study of women in Islam entitled Tahrir al-mara'a fi 'asr al-risalah: (The Emancipation of Women during the Time of the Prophet)17 agrees with Zin al-Din and al-Ghazali about the discrepancy between the status of women during the time of the Prophet Muhammad and the status of women today. He says that Islamists have made up sayings which they attributed to the Prophet such as 'women are lacking both intellect and religion' and in many cases they brought sayings which are not reliable at all and promoted them among Muslims until they became part of the Islamic culture.
Like Zin al-Din and al-Ghazali, Abu Shiqa finds that in many countries very weak and unreliable sayings of the Prophet are invented to support customs and traditions which are then considered to be part of the shari'a. He argues that it is the Islamic duty of women to participate in public life and in spreading good (Sura Tauba, Aya 71). He also agrees with Zin al-Din and Ghazali that hijab was for the wives of the Prophet and that it was against Islam for women to imitate the wives of the Prophet. If women were to be totally covered, why did God ask both men and women to lower their gaze? (Sura al-Nur, Ayath 30-31).
The actual practice of veiling most likely came from areas captured in the initial spread of Islam such as Syria, Iraq, and Persia and was adopted by upper-class urban women. Village and rural women traditionally have not worn the veil, partly because it would be an encumbrance in their work. It is certainly true that segregation of women in the domestic sphere took place increasingly as the Islamic centuries unfolded, with some very unfortunate consequences. Some women are again putting on clothing that identifies them as Muslim women. This phenomenon, which began only a few years ago, has manifested itself in a number of countries.
It is part of the growing feeling on the part of Muslim men and women that they no longer wish to identify with the West, and that reaffirmation of their identity as Muslims requires the kind of visible sign that adoption of conservative clothing implies. For these women the issue is not that they have to dress conservatively but that they choose to. In Iran Imam Khomeini first insisted that women must wear the veil and chador and in response to large demonstrations by women, he modified his position and agreed that while the chador is not obligatory, modest dress is, including loose clothing and non-transparent stockings and scarves.18
With Islam's expansion into areas formerly part of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, the scripture-legislated social paradigm that had evolved in the early Medinan community came face to face with alien social structures and traditions deeply rooted in the conquered populations. Among the many cultural traditions assimilated and continued by Islam were the veiling and seclusion of women, at least among the urban upper and upper-middle classes. With these traditions' assumption into "the Islamic way of life," they of need helped to shape the normative interpretations of Qur'anic gender laws as formulated by the medireview (urbanized and acculturated) lawyer-theologians. In the latter's consensus-based prescriptive systems, the Prophet's wives were recognized as models for emulation (sources of Sunna). Thus, while the scholars provided information on the Prophet's wives in terms of, as well as for, an ideal of Muslim female morality, the Qur'anic directives addressed to the Prophet's consorts were naturally seen as applicable to all Muslim women.19
Semantically and legally, that is, regarding both the terms and also the parameters of its application, Islamic interpretation extended the concept of hijab. In scripturalist method, this was achieved in several ways. Firstly, the hijab was associated with two of the Qur'an's "clothing laws" imposed upon all Muslim females: the "mantle" verse of 33:59 and the "modesty" verse of 24:31. On the one hand, the semantic association of domestic segregation (hijab) with garments to be worn in public (jilbab, khimar) resulted in the use of the term hijab for concealing garments that women wore outside of their houses. This language use is fully documented in the medireview Hadith. However, unlike female garments such as jilbab, lihaf, milhafa, izar, dir' (traditional garments for the body), khimar, niqab, burqu', qina', miqna'a (traditional garments for the head and neck) and also a large number of other articles of clothing, the medireview meaning of hijab remained conceptual and generic. In their debates on which parts of the woman's body, if any, are not "awra" (literally, "genital," "pudendum") and many therefore be legally exposed to nonrelatives, the medireview scholars often contrastively paired woman's' awra with this generic hijab. This permitted the debate to remain conceptual rather than get bogged down in the specifics of articles of clothing whose meaning, in any case, was prone to changes both geographic/regional and also chronological. At present we know very little about the precise stages of the process by which the hijab in its multiple meanings was made obligatory for Muslim women at large, except to say that these occurred during the first centuries after the expansion of Islam beyond the borders of Arabia, and then mainly in the Islamicized societies still ruled by preexisting (Sasanian and Byzantine) social traditions.
With the rise of the Iraq-based Abbasid state in the mid-eighth century of the Western calendar, the lawyer-theologians of Islam grew into a religious establishment entrusted with the formulation of Islamic law and morality, and it was they who interpreted the Qur'anic rules on women's dress and space in increasingly absolute and categorical fashion, reflecting the real practices and cultural assumptions of their place and age. Classical legal compendia, medireview Hadith collections and Qur'anic exegesis are here mainly formulations of the system "as established" and not of its developmental stages, even though differences of opinion on the legal limits of the hijab garments survived, including among the doctrinal teachings of the four orthodox schools of law (madhahib). 20
Attacked by foreigners and indigenous secularists alike and defended by the many voices of conservatism, hijab has come to signify the sum total of traditional institutions governing women's role in Islamic society. Thus, in the ideological struggles surrounding the definition of Islam's nature and role in the modern world, the hijab has acquired the status of "cultural symbol."
Qasim Amin, the French-educated, pro-Western Egyptian journalist, lawyer, and politician in the last century wanted to bring Egyptian society from a state of "backwardness" into a state of "civilization" and modernity. To do so, he lashed out against the hijab, in its expanded sense, as the true reason for the ignorance, superstition, obesity, anemia, and premature aging of the Muslim woman of his time. He wanted the Muslim women to raise from the "backward" hijab into the desirable modernist ideal of women's right to an elementary education, supplemented by their ongoing contact with life outside of the home to provide experience of the "real world" and combat superstition. He understood the hijab as an amalgam of institutionalized restrictions on women that consisted of sexual segregation, domestic seclusion, and the face veil. He insisted as much on the woman's right to mobility outside the home as he did on the adaptation of shar'i Islamic garb, which would leave a woman's face and hands uncovered. Women's domestic seclusion and the face veil, then, were primary points in Amin's attack on what was wrong with the Egyptian social system of his time.21 Muhammad Abdu tried to restore the dignity to Muslim woman by way of educational and some legal reforms, the modernist blueprint of women's Islamic rights eventually also included the right to work, vote, and stand for election-that is, full participation in public life. He separated the forever-valid-as-stipulated laws of 'ibadat (religious observances) from the more time-specific mu'amalat (social transactions) in Qur'an and shari'a, which latter included the Hadith as one of its sources. Because modern Islamic societies differ from the seventh-century umma, time-specific laws are thus no longer literally applicable but need a fresh legal interpretation (ijtihad). What matters is to safeguard "the public good" (al-maslah al'-amma) in terms of Muslim communal morality and spirituality. 22
In The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam, the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi attacks the age-old conservative focus on women's segregation as mere institutionalization of authoritarianism, achieved by way of manipulation of sacred texts, "a structural characteristic of the practice of power in Muslim societies." In describing the feminist model of the Prophet's wives' rights and roles both domestic and also communal, Mernissi uses the methodology of "literal" interpretation of Qur'an and Hadith. In the selection and interpretations of traditions, she discredits some of textual items as unauthentic by the criteria of classical Hadith criticism. In Mernissi's reading of Qur'an and Hadith, Muhammad's wives were dynamic, influential, and enterprising members of the community, and fully involved in Muslim public affairs. He listened to their advice. In the city, they were leaders of women's protest movements, first for equal status as believers and thereafter regarding economic and sociopolitical rights, mainly in the areas of inheritance, participation in warfare and booty, and personal (marital) relations. Muhammad's vision of Islamic society was egalitarian, and he lived this ideal in his own household. Later the Prophet had to sacrifice his egalitarian vision for the sake of communal cohesiveness and the survival of the Islamic cause. To Mernissi, the seclusion of Muhammad's wives from public life (the hijab, Qur'an 33.53) is a symbol of Islam's retreat from the early principle of gender equality, as is the "mantel" (jilbab) verse of 33:59 which relinquished the principle of social responsibility, the individual sovereign will that internalizes control rather than place it within external barriers. Concerning A'isha's involvement in political affairs (the Battle of the Camel), Mernissi engages in classical Hadith criticism to prove the inauthenticity of the (presumably Prophetic) traditions "a people who entrust their command [or, affair, amr] to a woman will not thrive" because of historical problems relating to the date of its first transmission and also self-serving motives and a number of moral deficiencies recorded about its first transmitter, the Prophet's freedman Abu Bakra. Modernists in general disregard hadith items rather than question their authenticity by scrutinizing the transmitters' reliability.23 After describing the active participation of Muslim women in the battlefields as warriors and nurses to the wounded, Maulana Maudoodi24 says " This shows that the Islamic purdah is not a custom of ignorance which cannot be relaxed under any circumstances, on the other hand, it is a custom which can be relaxed as and when required in a moment of urgency. Not only is a woman allowed to uncover a part of her satr (coveredness) under necessity, there is no harm."
In the matter of hijab, the conscience of an honest, sincere Believer alone can be the true judge, as has been said by the Noble Prophet: "Ask for the verdict of your conscience and discard what pricks it."
Islam cannot be properly followed without knowledge. It is a rational law and to follow it rightly one needs to exercise reason and understanding at every step.25
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Ramazan
Ramadan, the greatest religious observance in Islam, is an annual month of fasting. It is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. Muslims consider this whole month as a blessed month. They fast during the days of this month and make special prayers at night. People also give more charity and do extra righteous deeds. Also, in this Holy Month, The Prophet Muhammad (SAW) received the first revelation of Al-Qur’an (in one of the last ten odd nights of Ramzan). Ramazan/Ramadhan is the month of celebration as well as the month of discipline and self-control.
"Islam is one of those great brotherhoods, which has been given to mankind by prophet Muhammad of hallowed memory."
Fasting is means of purification and developing the consciousness of our relationship with Allah. This Taqwa, is a protection against the schemes of Shaitan, and this world. Allah (SWT) has informed us that, "Whoever keeps his duty to Allah (has taqwa), He ordains a way out for him and gives him sustenance from where he imagines not. And whoever trusts in Allah, He is sufficient for him. Surely Allah attains His purpose. Allah has appointed a measure for everything." (65:2) Ramadhan should be a time of increased activity wherein the believer, now lightened of the burdens of constant eating and drinking, should be more willing to strive and struggle for Allah (SWT).
Such was the month of Ramadhan in the time of the Prophet (pbuh). It was a time of purification, enjoining the good, forbidding evil, and striving hard with one’s life and wealth to make the word of Allah the highest and Islam the dominant Deen.
Significance of Ramzan fasting
1)The most important consideration in undertaking a fast, as in any act of devotion, is to seek nearness to God, and seek His pleasure and Forgiveness. This itself generates a spirit of piety in man.
2)Creating the conditions of hunger and thirst for oneself, simply in obedience to the Divine order, measures the faith of man in God and helps strengthen it by putting it to a severe test.
3)Fasting enhances through creation of artificial non-availability, the value of the bounties of God which man often takes for granted. This inculcates in man a spirit of gratitude and consequent devotion to God. Nothing else can bring home to a man the worth of God's bounties than a glass of water and a square meal after a day long fast. This also reminds man that the real joy in enjoying God's bounties lies in moderation and restraint and not in over indulging.
4)Fasting makes us deeply conscious of the pangs of hunger and discomfort suffered by the less fortunate among our brethren. They have to put up with difficult conditions all through their lives. It thus kindles in man a spirit of sacrifice leading to change towards his suffering brethren.
5)Fasting gives man an unfailing training in endurance, a spirit of acceptance. This could well prepare him to put up with the unchangeable situations in life in the same spirit of resignation as cultivated during the fasts.
6)Fasting develops courage, fortitude, and a fighting spirit in man to surmount the heavy odds in life with a cool and tranquil mind. It sharpens his power of concentration to overcome obstacles through a vigorous exercise all throughout the month, leading to a steeling of his will power and resolve, that could help him in challenging situations in life. It is seen than many an undesirable habit which is difficult to give up, is more easily given up during the days of fasting.
7) Fasting teaches man reliance on God, and confidence in Him. Just as the vigorous state of fasting for a whole month is undertaken with His assistance, bitter situations in life could also be surmounted with His help.
8) Fasting develops a spirit of patience in man, with the realization that the days of fasting, though seemingly unending, do have a successful and happy end. Thus is life. All bitter situations pass, and come to an end.
9) Fasting is meant to conquer anger and develop self-control in man. The vigorous effort required to put up with hunger and thirst can well be extended to conquer other infirmities of human character that lead man into error and sin.
10) Fasting inculcates a spirit of tolerance in man to face unpleasant conditions and situations without making his fellow beings the victim of his wrath. Many people, when facing discomfort and deprivation, become irritable and annoyed. This anger is then vented on those around them. Fasting helps a man become more tolerant despite his own discomfort.
11)Fasting mellows a man and enhances his character, giving a jolt to the human instincts of pride, haughtiness, jealousy and ambition. Fasting softens his character, and clears his heart and mind of many negative emotions.
12) Fasting exposes the weakness of man in the event of his being deprived of two basic bounties of God; food and drink. It infuses into him a spirit of weakness and submission, generating humility and prayer in an otherwise arrogant being.
13)Fasting breathes the spirit of forgiveness in man towards others, as he seeks God's forgiveness through fasts and prayers.
14) Fasting gives lessons in punctuality. Man has to adhere to a strict schedule of time in the observance of the fast.
15)Ramadan dates – Peace And Happiness On Ramadan!
Peace And Happiness On Ramadan!
Fasting could affect the economy of the individual as he is less wasteful on food and meals.
16)Fasting demands a rigid sense of discipline, mental, spiritual and physical. This forms characteristics which are an essential ingredient to success in life.
17) Fasting creates spiritual reformation in man, infusing him with a spirit of enthusiasm and zest to change and become a better human being in the eyes of God. This is an excellent opportunity, given to believers each year, to change themselves and consequently their destinies.
Ramadan dates – Shine In His Divine Blessings!
Shine In His Divine Blessings
On the physical side, fasting cleanses the human system of the accumulated impurities of uninterrupted eating throughout the year. It prepares the body to face diseases or conditions of scarcity. The rigid abstinence of a fast regulates man's health, sharpens his intellect and enhances the qualities of his heart.
Muhammad gave this Sadhana with a deep significance attached to it.
In the Gita we have a Sloka:
Yaa Nishaa Sarva-bhutaanaam Tasyaam Jaagarti Samyamee
Yasyaam Jaagrati Bhutaani Saa Nishaa Pashyato Muneh.
"That which is night to all beings, then the self-controlled man is awake; when all beings are awake, that is night for the sage who sees."said by Swami Chidananda.
SHARIQ HAIDER NAQVI.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The land of Scorpions
India has been a land of Rulers and Kings who traveled from far off lands and came here with the desire of wealth that India has beheld since ages. The motive of these foreign invaders was greed but most of them stayed here mesmerized by this strange exotic land till their last breath. These invaders who ultimately settled here and contributed heavily to the culture, architecture and add to the general blend of Hindu and Muslim cultures.
And such amalgamation of cultures and religion lead to many stories and legends to be born. Adding to the mystic quality of this land, which through centuries had sustained its mythologies and beliefs. Even till today in spite of the modern technology and lifestyle, people still go back to their beliefs and faith.
One such instance is the small town of Amroha situated in Uttar Pradesh, 134 kilometers from Delhi. This town was established by King Amarjodha around 474 BC.
This town has great historical importance not only in respect to its age and ancient heritage, but also to this strange legend of the spiritual belongings. As legend goes, it was on 30 June 1272 AD when a saint came to this small town from a town Wasit in Iran via Multan. He was the Holy Saint–Syed Husain Sharafuddin Shahvilayat–. This town–Amroha–became his place of residence and prayer.
After his death his place of burial in Amroha came to become a famous place for pilgrimage and spiritual importance. It still draws huge believers and the non-believers equally. A strange phenomena occurs here. The grave site has a large numbers of scorpions, –a deadly venomous insect– they surprisingly don’t bite in the vicinity of the grave. This miracle has made many people to travel to this place even from far off lands for the authentication of the word of mouth. It is the inhabitants of this town– the Naqvi clan–who have their family tree traced - to Syed Shahvilayat proudly boast that one can carry the scorpion out of the shrine’s vicinity with the permission of the saint for a promised time, in which the scorpion will obey his master and not harm the carrier. If the time passes by, then there is no guarantee if the same scorpion stings.
It is also said that this shrine has medicinal cures for some ailments. Like in the case of corns which till date have no cure in modern medicine. It is said that if anyone suffering from corns brush their feet with broom that is used in the dargah the corns will be healed. Also adding to mystique of this place is in the autumn season that glucose pills fall from the tree which has sprouted from the grave of Bibi Bakhoi (daughter of the syed vilayat). And the same dissolves in the mouth instantly.
This area where the holy saint rests is also shared by his family members. His wife–Hazrat Kaneez Fatima urf Tahira–his son–Syed Amir Ali urf Doodha Dhari–his daughter–Bibi Bakhoi–his Grandson–Dade Raje– are some of the members of the family who rest here. Syed Amir Ali urf Doodha Dhari never ate food or drank water. He existed on milk alone. Therefore, another medicinal ability of the shrine shared by Syed Amir Ali urf Doodha Dhari is to provide milk to animals and women who are unable to lactate.
The Land of Scorpions. by Shariq H Naqvi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Many people from different walks of life, all religions, any caste visit this shrine for the blessings of this Holy Saint for their wishes to come true. Amroha has been a center of spirituality for ages attracting many till date and the crowd of people will still throng to this place which is called “The Land of Scorpions”.
By: - Shariq Haider Naqvi.
And such amalgamation of cultures and religion lead to many stories and legends to be born. Adding to the mystic quality of this land, which through centuries had sustained its mythologies and beliefs. Even till today in spite of the modern technology and lifestyle, people still go back to their beliefs and faith.
One such instance is the small town of Amroha situated in Uttar Pradesh, 134 kilometers from Delhi. This town was established by King Amarjodha around 474 BC.
This town has great historical importance not only in respect to its age and ancient heritage, but also to this strange legend of the spiritual belongings. As legend goes, it was on 30 June 1272 AD when a saint came to this small town from a town Wasit in Iran via Multan. He was the Holy Saint–Syed Husain Sharafuddin Shahvilayat–. This town–Amroha–became his place of residence and prayer.
After his death his place of burial in Amroha came to become a famous place for pilgrimage and spiritual importance. It still draws huge believers and the non-believers equally. A strange phenomena occurs here. The grave site has a large numbers of scorpions, –a deadly venomous insect– they surprisingly don’t bite in the vicinity of the grave. This miracle has made many people to travel to this place even from far off lands for the authentication of the word of mouth. It is the inhabitants of this town– the Naqvi clan–who have their family tree traced - to Syed Shahvilayat proudly boast that one can carry the scorpion out of the shrine’s vicinity with the permission of the saint for a promised time, in which the scorpion will obey his master and not harm the carrier. If the time passes by, then there is no guarantee if the same scorpion stings.
It is also said that this shrine has medicinal cures for some ailments. Like in the case of corns which till date have no cure in modern medicine. It is said that if anyone suffering from corns brush their feet with broom that is used in the dargah the corns will be healed. Also adding to mystique of this place is in the autumn season that glucose pills fall from the tree which has sprouted from the grave of Bibi Bakhoi (daughter of the syed vilayat). And the same dissolves in the mouth instantly.
This area where the holy saint rests is also shared by his family members. His wife–Hazrat Kaneez Fatima urf Tahira–his son–Syed Amir Ali urf Doodha Dhari–his daughter–Bibi Bakhoi–his Grandson–Dade Raje– are some of the members of the family who rest here. Syed Amir Ali urf Doodha Dhari never ate food or drank water. He existed on milk alone. Therefore, another medicinal ability of the shrine shared by Syed Amir Ali urf Doodha Dhari is to provide milk to animals and women who are unable to lactate.
The Land of Scorpions. by Shariq H Naqvi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Many people from different walks of life, all religions, any caste visit this shrine for the blessings of this Holy Saint for their wishes to come true. Amroha has been a center of spirituality for ages attracting many till date and the crowd of people will still throng to this place which is called “The Land of Scorpions”.
By: - Shariq Haider Naqvi.
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