Let those voices be heard!

I was recently invited to speak at a meeting called in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The meeting, in Johannesburg, was called by a coalition of women’s organisations and was for women only.

I felt quite pleased and honoured, for a number of reasons. One reason is that there have been numerous attempts over the years to form such coalitions of South African Muslim women that would serve the interests of and speak in the name of these women.

The Muslim Youth Movement (MYM) Gender Desk (as one speaker at another meeting held by a rival coalition noted) had, for many years, held the formation of a national Muslim women’s coalition as one of its objectives and I, as a leader in the MYM, had vigorously supported the idea. So, knowing that there are some attempts being made in this direction were very pleasing (this was before I realised there were rival coalitions – but that’s the subject of another discussion). It was also exciting that women were getting together to talk not just about “women’s issues” but about the “affairs of the ummah”. And, of course, I was honoured to be invited to address this gathering of women. (I must add that I was thrilled when I saw what a large gathering it was: hundreds of women from various parts of Gauteng, from organisations doing all kinds of great work.)

Then, a couple of days before the event, I noticed an announcement of the meeting with a list of speakers. (I usually check when I’m invited who the other speakers might be; this time I didn’t.) And, shock, horror, I realised that all five speakers that were to address this exclusively female congregation were men! I couldn’t believe it; it didn’t make any sense.

Were there no (Muslim) women that could speak about Palestine? There must be, for I have met and heard many of them. I have even heard some of them speak in a mosque. I am sure they were not a figment of my imagination, my fantasy that women actually can speak about politics and other such things. Some of them, as I recall, have really loud voices and shout as if no one was listening to them. Well, maybe no one was, judging from the speakers’ list for this event.

To say that I was disappointed would be a bit of an understatement. Not that I have anything against men, of course. I’m all for men taking a stand and talking politics and other important issues that the world has to face. Too few do. But, this was an event organised by women, for (only) women, and yet there would be no women’s voice to be heard.

Perhaps I’m overreacting; perhaps these women were just tired of listening to each other and needed some fresh voices. Well, my ego would likely prefer that interpretation; it’s nice to think of one’s self as having a “fresh voice”. But my head – which tries to outwit my ego and usually succeeds – said that couldn’t be it.

So, there we were, five male speakers, in this hall packed to capacity with women. Two of the speakers spoke from behind a curtain. I thought it might be because they didn’t want to share a platform with me. (On this occasion, my ego clearly won the tussle and wiped the floor with my head.) The other three of us ignored the curtain. (Incidentally, when the two purdah-ed speakers concluded their talks, they emerged from behind the curtain and walked through the female audience towards the exits at the back of the hall.) A good thing too, since one speaker had a slide presentation which would have lost its power and its point behind the curtain and another had a set of brilliant posters to show the audience.

But, the make-up of the panel was not the only insult to the women. One of the speakers – and I’m not saying whether he was a veiled speaker or not – began his presentation with a patently anti-woman and Islamophobic “joke”. You must have heard the one about the Afghan (although the speaker said Iraqi) man who, before the war, used to walk so many paces in front of his wife but now walks even more paces behind her. When asked about the change, he said, “landmines”. As I said, profoundly sexist and profoundly Islamophobic. But, the audience laughed. As they did for others of his sexist jokes.

Why would women want to listen to a man who insults them and then expects them to laugh at the insults? Why do they then laugh? I suppose one could ask, in another context, why a black person would listen to a white person making racist jokes, expecting him to laugh and why he would then laugh. Power, perhaps? The belief that this man (or white person) is more knowledgeable and, hence, his jokes must be worthy of a laugh? Of course, with an all-male panel, one should expect that women start to believe that men are the more knowledgeable.

Following this event, I reflected a little on the need for groups like the MYM Gender Desk, forcefully promoting the notion that women have a right to speak and be heard. A brochure from that organisation, for example, says, under the heading “Let the women be heard!”: “Women have not had much of a say in the interpretation of Islam, and their voices have been suppressed in mosques and other institutions. There therefore exists a ‘voicelessness’ of women in Islam. We work towards ensuring that the woman’s voice is heard.”

Interesting concept, that: the idea that the woman’s voice must be heard. We might remember that, barely 10 years ago, a Muslim radio station went to court to try and ensure that it could merrily have its programming without a single woman’s voice being heard on air. When the powers-that-be at the station realised that this might result in their losing their licence, they quickly found a fatwa that said it was halal for a woman’s voice to be heard.

But allowing Muslim women’s voices to be heard is more than an exercise of having female tongues moving; it means that women should be able to express themselves and be listened to by all of us on issues that affect the community, on our political, economic and social lives. Many, many Muslim women, in their daily lives, are very influential in the work that they do, shaping the lives of people and influencing the structures of societies. It’s such a pity, then, that they don’t get the same reception in the Muslim community. We do ourselves – as a community – a great disservice by silencing them.

Lessons of freedom from a Muslim past

Anyone visiting some of the Southern areas of Spain cannot help but feel uplifted and humbled. I had the opportunity recently to be uplifted and humbled when I was in Spain for a conference. The fine splendour of Al-Hamra, the majesty of the excavation of Madinah al-Zahra, the overwhelming beauty of the arches of the Great Mosque of Cordoba are all awe-inspiring - despite the ugliness that has been caused to some of these by Spanish rulers over the centuries. For me, one of the less spectacular sights that touched me in a very special way was a life-size statue in one end of Cordoba’s old city.

In what used to be the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, in a small square about 5 metres by 5 metres, is a statue – little more than life size. The statue is of a man whose Hebrew name was Moshe ben Maimon; Arabs referred to him as Abu ‘Imran Musa ibn Maimun; he is known around the world by the name the Greeks gave to him: Moses Maimonides.

Maimonides was a product of the period of Muslim rule in Spain: a Jewish rabbi, scholar, philosopher and political advisor who thrived under Muslim rule and who served and was served by the Muslim culture that he found himself in. A prolific writer, he wrote mostly in Arabic. This includes his famous theological-philosophical work The Guide for the Perplexed and some of his exegeses of the Torah and Talmud, mostly written in Arabic and later translated into Hebrew. His writings and his innovative thought - on issues as diverse as theology and medicine - were produced during the period that Jews refer to as the Golden Age of Jewish Culture - during Muslim rule in Spain. He is regarded as the most influential figure in Medieval Jewish philosophy. He remains the most widely debated and controversial Jewish thinker among modern scholars.

While Maimonides’ writings on philosophy influenced a number of Muslim philosophers, he acknowledged a great debt that he himself owed to Muslim philosophers who were also children of the same period and who spent at least some of their time in the same city – Cordoba – that he is famously linked with: especially Ibn Rushd, Ibn Farabi and Ibn Sina. After Cordoba, Maimonides lived some part of his life in Morocco and then in Egypt, where he became a physician and adviser to Salahuddin Ayyubi. He became known as the greatest physician of his time.

It was a glorious period in history; a period which saw often sharp debate between many luminaries who have shaped how we today view the world, some of whom I have mentioned above. It was a period and a context of intellectual growth, based on an intellectual freedom that was fostered and protected by the Andalusian society and its Muslim rulers, a freedom that was regarded as paramount in the development of civilisations.

Maimonides’ statue is particularly poignant because he, a Jew, is a symbol of a kind of religious and intellectual tolerance that allowed such civilisational growth and fostered such development in human thought and such scholarly endeavour. He is a symbol of an Andalusian society that freed the mind and acknowledged and rewarded those who exercised these minds in the service of knowledge and of people.

How sad, then, that Maimonides and his family were forced to flee their homes in fear of the new rulers, the fundamentalist Almohades (or Al-Muwahhidun), who were intent on converting everyone to Islam. How tragic, that that period of religious and intellectual freedom (and thus growth) which is an example for all civilisations, was followed soon after by a period that we can look back on as one of the worst examples of religious intolerance and persecution – the Christian conquest and the Spanish Inquisition, which resulted in a genocide against Jews, Muslims and Unitarian Christians.

The rule of the Church that followed Muslim rule in Spain saw some of the most horrific human rights abuses that we know of. That period witnessed the unrelenting persecution of religious minorities (including Christian minorities), the brutal suppression of independent intellectual exercise and the fiery attacks against women who dared to think or speak for themselves. It was also a period when - as often with such contexts - words and labels took on different and particularly horrific meanings and implications. Terms like “witches”, “heretics”, and “Moors” were all employed skilfully as part of the agenda to suppress any independent thinking and action.

No Jewish Maimonides could arise in such an environment, no Muslim Ibn Rushd.

Andalusia, during its heyday, presents an important lesson for the world today - especially for Muslims. The critical importance of free thought for the development of Islamic scholarship, the Muslim ummah and humanity more generally, cannot be taken for granted. The fear that often inflicts Muslim thought and debate today - on minor jurisprudential as well as on major philosophical matters - is an unhealthy feature that suppresses our growth and development as individuals and as communities. The fear of being called a feminist or a kafir by fellow Muslims is more characteristic of the Spanish Inquisition than it is of Muslim Andalusia.

For those of us that live in Muslim minority contexts, even the period after the fall of Andalusia - when Muslims there became a minority - presents important lessons. The fatawa that fuqaha of the period gave for the persecuted Muslim minority are fascinating to read as one witnesses their grappling with changing circumstances, with their attempts to relate the shari’ah to an entirely new and previously unheard-of context.

It is this heritage of Andalusia - along with the heritage reflected in Al-Hamra and the Grand Mosque in Cordoba - that has resulted, over the past few decades, in a number of Spanish people questioning their own identities. Their need to reclaim the Muslim heritage of Spain as Spanish heritage has resulted in many of them converting to Islam and seeing in Islam a continuation of the Andalusian tradition. Many other Spaniards who see the same need to reconnect with that tradition, but without becoming Muslims themselves, also play a role today in the reclamation of Spain’s Muslim past and in restoring respect to the period of Muslim rule in Spain