The subtle micro aggressions of islamophobia
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Anonymous
So, not voting then? Glad we finally sorted it out.
Actually, yes, Esposito is fully owned by Al-Saud. Bought and sold. Al-Saud does that very well.
I don't believe anyone argued that Islam did NOTHING at all to improve the status of women. it was a step in the right direction but it falls far, far short of what the standard is today. The whole discussion was about about the extent of that improvement (was it really as good as people say?) and the starting point pre-Islam (was it really as bad as people say?). So, let's set Mr. Esposito straight: - women owned property and engaged in commercial transaction before Islam - the contractual nature of marriage in Islam privileges the husband with regard to terminating the contract - re: Aisha. I don't know if her authority extended to medicine. I should also point that no other wife of Muhammad became as famous or as heavily quoted as she did, and I suspect the fact that her daddy - Mr. Abu Bakr - became President #1 upon Muhammad's passage, had a little something to do with it. Daughters of Middle Eastern rulers generally do well in life. Unless they are Al-Saud. I have no hatred of Islam. I'm Islam-neutral. But to you, any criticism or disagreement must be hatred-driven. That's your thing. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Reposting for formatting
Can we *agree to disagree* on all of the following, and leave it at that? - women's equality means equal legal rights in divorce, marital property, inheritance, value of testimony (western posters on DCUM) vs. unequal legal rights balanced by different responsibilities for men and women (OP) - Islam in the U.S. is growing faster by conversion than by immigration (this is OP's claim; western posters will use Pew numbers showing conversion rates are 1/4 of immigration rates until OP brings her own sources) - women war captives are freed on pregnancy (OP) vs. on the death of the slave master (non-Muslim PP and OP's BBC link) - consultation = voting rights (Muslim OP and Muslim 2:29 think this is the case. Non-muslims disagree that consultation is the same as voting rights, and bringing in the ancient Greeks doesn't change this disagreement) - consultation didn't exist before Islam so this was something "new" - there was massive fornication, resulting in illegitimate children, before Islam (OP said this) - the purity oath was definitely administered to men (Muslim OP and Muslim PP claim this, non-Muslims have asked for proof) - the purity oath was looking backwards (OP argues that women were arriving with many illegitimate children of uncertain paternity and this is why men were not asked to take the purity oath) vs. looking forward (non-Muslim posters argue that men could make a forward-looking oath) - men didn't have to make the purity oath because it was looking backwards (OP's many women with illegitimate children) vs. looking foward but of course men had to make the oath (here I think OP was arguing with herself) - women had no rights before Islam (see Khadija) - it's necessary to talk to "multiple" Muslim scholars to understand Islam (Muslim OP said this, not sure where Muslim 2:29 is on this, non-Muslims disagree) - non-Muslims cannot understand Islam (Muslim OP said this, but the Muslim above at 2:29 and non-westerners disagree) - Whether the monotheistic deity should be called God or Allah (Muslim OP and the Muslim poster above disagree) - disagreeing with OP makes one an "islamophobe" (OP) or not (western posters) - there is most likely an unnamed islamophobe organization behind all the posts disagreeing with OP; this can be identified with the moderator's help; and this will make a great topic for an article in the mainstream press (OP) vs. don't be ridiculous (paraphrase of everybody else's words and emojis) Have I missed anything? Gotten anything wrong? Disagreement *should* be fine. Yet, the fact that OP shows up here every night with a handful of new arguments and more name-calling about "islamophobe" suggests that, to OP, disagreement is not only wrong, it is equivalent to a hate crime. And, of course, OP's latest rounds of midnight posts spark a new day full of retorts. Trying to get the last word is not going to change the fact that we all simply disagree! |
Anonymous
| Again, disagreement is fine. Intentionally publishing misleading information is wrong. These islamophobes have an agenda. |
Anonymous
When rebuttals are rejected simply because the speaker is Muslim, or scholarly works are rejected simply because the author is Arab or Muslim, or opinions are rejected simply because the speaker is acquainted with a Muslim, one has to wonder about your "neutrality."…. |
Anonymous
Not the PP you're arguing with, but... Again and again you interpret any disagreement with your statements as an intentional publication of "misleading information" by people you claim must be "Islamophobes" by sheer dint of disagreeing with you. That is a huge problem on your part. |
Anonymous
No one argued this is about equality. You argued it's voting and I don't happen to agree. It's a very particular sort of chatteldom in jahiliya that lets women own and manage property, run their own business and marry men of their choosing (see Khadija). Poor, poor women of jahiliya. I'd weep for them if I could.
Here's what's accurate: whatever Al-Saud bought and paid for, I distrust.
Not at all, I am referring strictly to Islam's letter, not practice. You are entitled to view Islamic rules as an equitable system. I am entitled to disagree with that viewpoint.
I don't consider Esposito a scholar. When a speaker brings evidence, Muslim or not, I will listen. I have brought forth perfectly valid arguments - that women had rights before Islam, that Islamic contractual marriage denies women certain rights extended to men, and that Aisha's rise to power may have had something to do with her father since no other wife achieved anything like her prominence - and you did nothing to comment on them. That's OK. Whoever disagrees with you is Islamophobic. We know. |
Anonymous
I'm not the PP you're disagreeing with, but the new parts in bold are utter BS. - The point is, western women DO think that legal equality is a necessary part of womem's equality. That's called a DISAGREEMENT. You're free to make up whatever labels you want, like calling western ideas of women's equality involving legal equality "linear" thinking or whatever other term you care to invent. Yet whenever some western poster says they look for legal equality, you write paras upon paras about the Islamic system being different, and then you wind up calling everybody Islsmophobes. This is an obvious DISAGREEMENT. Why can't you just leave this disagreement alone??? - PP never said that no Muslim and no Arab can be trusted. Point to where she said this, please. Instead, she said people in the pay of al Saud can't be trusted. I agree. I hope you see the difference now and that you'll stop making up utter tosh like this. |
Anonymous
I'm the PP you're describing. I have to add that yes, I distrust the Islamically inspired (meaning Muslim scholars and historians) claims about the pre-Islamic period because it's an article of faith in Islam that its advent lifted Arabs from the darkness. It's based on ideology and not evidence. Actual historical evidence about that time is quite scarce. But it does fit the Muslim narrative because it makes Islam look good. It's perfectly OK for Islam to look good because there are many good things about, but the comparison should be based on historical record, and not on a broken one that sounds like "during jahiliya women were buried alive had no rights wah wah and then Islam came and they ascended into greatness and equality". Islam did bring improvements were women but were they as revolutionary as Muslim discourse would have you believe? Probably not. They were a good step forward in the context of time, but an incremental step, not a leap from darkness to enlightenment. |
Anonymous
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Here, for instance, is a more neutral analysis of the status of women in pre-Islamic Arabia. It's authored by scholars who happen to be Muslim, mind you, but they look at actual evidence instead of just nodding their head to the beat of "jahiliya bad! Islam good!"
1) Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press 2) Al-Fassi, H.A. (2007). , Women in Pre-Islamic Arabia, British Archaeological Reports (BAR) Archaeopress, Oxford. Synopsis: http://musfem.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/status-of-women-before-islam-between-personhood-and-thingness/ |
Anonymous
| It's curious that OP jumped enthusiastically on the Gospel of Thomas bandwagon wrt the Trinity. But if you try to refer to nob-Muslim scholars on Islam, she goes ballistic. There's a teensy contradiction there.... |
Anonymous
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Nice little quote from the first book:
"Ahmed believes that women’s contribution to early Islamic literature is proof that “at least the first generation of Muslims – the generation closest to Jahilia days and Jahilia attitudes toward women – and their immediate descendents had no difficulty in accepting women as authorities” (p. 47). This diminished as Islam spread. In Mecca “even before Islam it was apparently the custom for women to inherit” (p.53). Women were keepers of Kaaba’s keys – two famous examples given are those of Sulafa, and Hubba the daughter of Hulail. Women were kahinas (female soothsayers) and priestesses, prophets, participants in warfare, nurses on battlefield, and individuals who initiated and terminated marriages at will. They were “fiercely outspoken, defiant critics of men; authors of satirical verse aimed at formidable male opponents”; they were rebels and independent and hence “protested the limits Islam imposed on that freedom” (p.62). The author also mentions the names of two women– Salma and Sajah – who collected women and rebelled against Islam after the Prophet’s death “because of the limitations Islam had brought to them.” Hind bint Utbah was another famous rebel against whom Umar Ibn Khattab said the following couplet: The vile woman was insolent, and she was habitually base, since she combined insolence with disbelief. May God curse Hind, distinguished among Hinds, she with the large clitoris, and may he curse her husband with her. The prophet’s own “great-granddaughter Sukaina, who, when asked why she was so merry and her sister Fatima so solemn, replied that it was because she had been named after her pre-Islamic great-grandmother, whereas her sister had been names after her Islamic grandmother” (p.60). The author points out that the most important question Arabian women asked the Prophet about the Quran was “why it addressed only men when women, too, accepted God and his prophet. The question occasioned the revelation of the Quranic verses explicitly addressing women as well as men (33:35) – a response that unequivocally shows Muhammad’s (and God’s) readiness to hear women. Thereafter the Quran explicitly addressed women a number of times” (p.72). HERE IS THE IMPORTANT PART: So why are we consistently told that pre-Islamic pagan women suffered greatly before the rise of Islam? Ahmed has this to say: “Islamic civilization developed a construct of history that labeled the pre-Islamic period the Age of Ignorance and projected Islam as the sole source of all that was civilized – and used that construct so effectively in its rewriting of history that the peoples of the Middle East lost all knowledge of the past civilizations of the religion. Obviously that construct was ideologically serviceable, successful concealing, among other things, the fact that in some cultures of the Middle East women had been considerably better off before the rise of Islam than afterwards.” (Underlining mine) (p.37). Like I said in the beginning, these books have been an eye opener and shattered myths I entertained about pre-Islamic women. I knew that stories about pre-Islamic women were not entirely true, but the works of Al-Fassi and Ahmed (both are Muslim women, Al-Fassi is Saudi Arabian) are very detailed and show pre-Islamic women in a new light. These books are very well-referenced and are seriously scholarly. I honestly don’t know where my ideas about Islamic feminism stand now that I am being told that “women had been considerably better off before the rise of Islam than afterwards.” I will have to reformulate my premise to claim a future direction for Islamic feminism in the light of these evidences. |
Anonymous
| Thanks, PP, for taking time to write up these interesting findings. |
Anonymous
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More on al-Fassi's book
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/05/01/us-saudi-women-idUSL136115520080501 She's a woman scholar, Muslim woman scholar, SAUDI scholar for chrissakes. And she's perfectly fine questioning the jahiliya myth. Maybe that's the reason she's been banned from teaching for years. |
Anonymous
They also seem to disagree with foremost religious scholars and that should tell you their opinions may be suspect. They can not possibly have access to more accurate historical information than historians, archeologists, and renowned religious scholars, all of whom contradict their negative portrayal of Islam. |