Reply to The subtle micro aggressions of islamophobia

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
The mockery exposes your immaturity and lack of understanding of Islamic history, which is precisely why you should not be posting excerpts from books you have not read. Grownups read books before they discuss them. Youngsters who want to show off read the cliff notes version and try to sound as if they read the book. For goodness sake, read the book. Leila Ahmed clearly stated in some ways, women had more rights and freedom pre Islam, but that these rights were predominantly in the area of sexual autonomy. Moreover, she clearly states in her book (the part not in the google preview you viewed) that Muhammads relegation did elevate the status of women overall. The rights that they lost after the Prophets death were due to culture and not Islamic principles. Shame on you for twisting this to propagate hate toward Islam simply because of your own personal experience with Muslims in another country. [/quote]
Uh-huh.  That's exactly why she contrasted the lives of Muhammad's wives before and after Islam.  That's exactly why she used words like "political leadership".  Hey, maybe in some language "political leadership" is the same as "sexual autonomy".

It's kind of funny how you make up stories to support whatever argument you want to put forward.   Let's refresh.  Let's let Dr. Ahmed speak for herself, shall we? It's kind of funny, isn't it, how I post quotes, and you post only your own summaries of what you read.

"However, the argument made by some Islamists – that Islam’s banning of infanticide established the fact that Islam improved the position of women in all respects, seems both inaccurate and simplistic. In the first place, the situation of women appears to have varied among different communities of Arabia. Moreover, although Janilia marriage practices do not necessarily indicate the greater power of women or the absence of misogyny, they do correlate with women’s enjoying grater sexual autonomy than they were allowed under Islam. [b]They also correlate with women’s being active participants, even leaders, in a wide range of community activities, including warfare and religion. Their autonomy and participation were curtailed with the establishment of Islam, its institution of patrilineal, patriarachal marriage as solely legitimate, and the social transformation that ensued.[/b]"
[/quote]

Here you go:

Page 32-34: "…Nevertheless, it should be noted that [b]only women of the most privileged classes benefited from the property laws[/b] and that the society included slaves, a group that did not benefit from any of these laws…[b]The situation of women of the property owning classes in Egypt thus appears to have been thoroughly anomalous in this region and time period.[/b] Egypt was a male dominated society…" But she adds, as Greek and Roman mores and laws spread, "Egyptian women lost most of their rights…the [b]decline of the position and rights of women in Egypt occurred under the influence of European dominance and laws[/b]. This decline occurred long before Egypt was conquered by the Arabs and was apparently in place in the Christian era…"

Page 35: "Whatever the cultural source or sources, [b]a fierce misogyny was a distinct ingredient of Mediterranean and eventually Christian thought in the centuries immediately preceding the rise of islam[/b]. One form it took in the pre Christian era was female infanticide…Greeks and Romans authors reported it as custom of their compatriots..[b]In the early Christian era it was also practiced in Arabia, where it was later banned under Islam.[/b]"

Page 41: "[b]Neither the diversity of marriage practices in pre Islamic Arabia nor the presence of matrilineal customs, including the association of children with their mother's tribe, necessarily connotes women having greater power in society or greater access to economic resources. Nor do these practices correlate with an absence of misogyny; indeed, there is clear evidence to the contrary. The practice of infanticide, apparently confined to girls, suggests a belief that females were flawed, expendable. The Quranic verses capture the shame and negativity that Jahilia Arabs associated with the sex[/b]."

By the way, this directly contradicts Islamophobe's assertion that Muslims made up female infanticide, that the Quran never prohibited female infanticide, and that there was no Jahilia period. Clearly, Leila is referring to "Jahilia Arabs" here, not simply pre-islamic Arabs.

But let us move on...

So all of this is from the first chapter of her book. However, in all fairness, and let it be known that I am not a liar or twister of truths such as islamophobe is, Leila Ahmed also states in the first chapter:

"Islamic civilization developed a construct of history that labeled the pre islamic period of 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 their past civilizations of the region. Obviously, theat construct was ideologically serviceable, successfully 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 afterward."

Note that she said "some" cultures of the Middle East, not all.

Moving on, however, here is what the author states in chapter 4:

"There appear to be to distinct voices within Islam, and two competing understandings of gender, one expressed in the pragmatic regulation of society, and the other in nthe articulation of an ethical vision. Even as Islam instituted marriage as a sexual hierarchy in its ethical voice - a voice virtually unheard by rulers and lawmakers - it insistently stressed the importance of the spiritual and ethical dimensions of begin and the equality of all individuals. While the first voice has been extensively elaborated into a body of political and legal thought, which constitutes the technical understanding of Islam, the second - the voice to which ordinary believing Muslims , who are essentially ignorant of the details of islam's technical legacy, give their assent - [b]has left little trace on the political  and legal heritage of Islam[/b]. [b]The unmistakeable presence of an ethical egalitarianism explains why Muslim women frequently insist, that Islam is not sexist. They hear and read in its sacred text, justly and legitimately, a different message from that heard by the makers and enforcers of orthodox, androcentric islam." 
[/b]

Ahmed goes on:

"However, [b]thoughout history, it has not been those who have emphasized the ethical and spiritual dimensions of the religion who have held power. The political, religious, and legal authorities in the Abbasid period in particular, whose interpretive and legal legacy has defined Islam ever since, heard only the androcentric voice of Islam[/b], and they interpreted the religion as intending to institute androcentric laws and an androcentric vision in all Muslim societies throughout time."

The author adds:

" In the following pages, I contend, first, that the practices sanctioned by Muhammad within the first Muslim society were enunciated in the context of [b]far more positive attitudes toward women[/b] than the later Abbasid society was to have, a context that consequently tempered the androcentric tendencies of Islamic practices; those tendencies were further tempered by the emphasis the religion placed on spiritual egalitarianism. Second, I argue that the decision to regard androcentric positions on marriage as intended to be binding for all time was itself an [b]interpretive decision, reflecting the interests and perspective of those in power[/b] during the age that transposed and interpreted the Islamic message into the textual edifice of Islam. Finally, I argue that the social context in which this textual edifice was created was far more negative for women than that in Arabia, so [b]the spiritually egalitarian voice of the religion would have been exceedingly difficult to hear[/b]. The practices and living arrangements of the dominant classes of the Abbasid era were such that at an implicit and often an explicit level, the words woman, and slave, and object for sexual use came close to being indistinguishably fused. Such practices, and the conceptions they gave rise to, informed [b]the dominant ideology and affected how Islam was heard and interpreted in this period and how its ideas were rendered into law[/b]."

And now, I leave the islamophobe with this request - please stop vilifying the Islamic faith. From the beginning you have confused the practice of Islam with Muhammads true revelation.  You clearly have not read Leila Ahmed's book and have no right to be quoting passages that appear on a google preview. Learn Islamic history and then come back to debate from a position of knowledge. You are not in that position now.[/quote]

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