In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful,
Normally I try to stay away from these kinds of posts, as if I had to call this issue out every time I saw it, this is all I would write about. But I was doubly struck today by the issue of having to answer to the Islamic "experts" that keep popping up all over the place.
Edited to add: I've discussed this issue with this person and found out she did not mean it this way, and I definitely accept her apology and that she was exhausted when she wrote the email. So yet again I'd like to reiterate that the following is not directed specifically to her, but I don't want to delete it because I think it stands as a response to the larger issue.
Someone that I have known for awhile and blogged with, and whom I really like and respect in a lot of ways, sent me an email telling me to check out an anti-Islamic post, but not unless I was ready to "give some very critical thought to Islam and hijab." That person will probably be reading this post and I apologize to her if this seems to be directed at her. This post is not meant to offend her, but to illustrate something that's a larger problem, in my opinion: the fact that it's acceptable to insult women who make this their life, and their life's work, by implying that what we do is thoughtless. It's not that I am not willing to read informed, articulate anti-Islamic discussion, particularly (as in this case) by ex-Muslims with, of course, valid reasons for leaving the deen. But at the same time, like many Muslims, I get sick of being referred to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to Daniel Pipes, to the rest of the list, and expected to answer for that. That is not my Islam. It is like, in my humble opinion, emailing someone like Renegade Evolution and telling her that she needs to read Maggie Hays' work and "critically think about sex work."
I risked most of my support system and friendships in my reversion, since almost my entire support network of friends is Buddhist, including my partner, and I had no idea how they would react. I have no family to speak of. I don't live in an area where there are many Muslims, so I do not have a close Muslim support group here. I am the only woman I have ever seen in real life wearing a niqab; it's even quite rare to see another woman wearing a headscarf here. While I know many people who know my history may consider me a bit flaky, as my conversion to Islam was not the first time I have changed religions, becoming a Muslim meant changing everything about who I am and risking pretty much everything that matters to me. I experienced being marginalized as a feminist before because of my identification as a submissive, but the feminist backlash against M/s is nothing on the mainstream feminist backlash against Muslim women, so that is something else I had to contend with in my reversion. And my own personal evaluation of what it means to be a feminist and whether or not I can even identify as one took many sleepless nights of worry and thought, and still often does. On top of that, putting on hijab is not just putting on a piece of cloth. It is a complete change in one's outlook on life - in one's outlook on the body as well as how one interacts with others and creates personal boundaries. It is completely impossible to cover yourself every single time you walk outside your door, sometimes with niqab as well, and not have thought about it. As much as I "thought critically" about paganism, as much as I "thought critically" about Buddhism, and as much as I still do, becoming a Muslim, I have had to think beyond critically. I have had to redefine my entire life and to come to terms with the possibility of losing a lot of what is important to me.
My point is this: I could not think more critically about Islam if I heard every argument against Islam and against hijab on the face of the earth.
This is not particularly in response to the person who brought this up to me, but it is in response, in general, to the idea that believing, practicing, covering Muslim women must not have thought critically enough about Islam and hijab. We have. We have just come to different conclusions, and these are conclusions that work for us. There are many beautiful, often covering, Muslim women whose work is powerful and liberating, living in both the Middle East and the West, whose blogs I have the blessing of reading (to read some, you might want to check out my previous post). All of them have thought critically about this deen. All of us have to think critically every morning that we wake up and put on our clothes. To merely walk out of the door in a headscarf exposes many of us to othering, marginalization, and discrimination (I have a job interview on Wednesday and I'm already trying to figure out how to best minimize my Muslim identity to make myself more palatable). Every encounter we have, often daily, brings the issue of hijab to our attention. And although we love it, or at least, I do, we do not wear it mindlessly.
Another case of instapunditry came to my attention about thirty minutes after reading this email, when I went to the bookstore to pick up my last book for summer classes. I take pretty much all religion classes now, with a few women's studies classes from time to time, so that's the section I gravitate to in the textbooks, and often I'll buy textbooks for classes I'm not registered for if they look interesting. So I was checking out the other available textbooks for this semester, and two things really bothered me. The first is that for our lowest level introduction class, which is called Intro to World Religions, there were three books: two on world religions and one massive copy of Qur'an for modern world or something like that. The fact that an introductory religion class needs two overall books and then an entire third of textbook space devoted wholly to Qur'an is just...wow. There are no words. Not to mention it's a massive, non-mainstream translation. I didn't have the heart to open it, but it bothers me that Intro to World Religions has become World Religions + Islam Instapunditry 101.
The other thing that bothered me is our former department director has his specialty in just war theory, particularly in Islam, and has written at least one book on the subject. He's teaching a class this semester on just war, and almost all of the books are Islam-related; particularly focused on the War on Terror. Some of the books look like the kinds of Islamic instapundit books you see on political studies shelves at Borders these days, which bothered me a bit. This isn't a commentary on his teaching in particular; he's an excellent scholar and writer, far more qualified than me or pretty much anyone I know, so I cannot criticize him in that area. But it scares me that the coverage of Islam we have is dwindling to several Islamic Instapunditry classes versus, like, one actual history or textually based class (such as the Muhammad and Qur'an class I'll be taking in the fall, which will look at primary texts). And this when we only have one full-time professor of Islam, which we share with three other departments, and a couple of other professors who sort of teach Islam on the side (of religious law) or teach it in other departments (like women's studies). It worries me that we spend more time teaching about whether or not Islam is the root of all the world's problems than teaching about what Islam actually is, which disenfranchises Islamic studies vis a vis Christian studies, Buddhist studies, Judaic studies, or any other form of religious studies.
I just had to share this because I was reminded recently of the way in which other groups of feminists have been approached and I am continuously bothered by the way in which Muslim women and Muslim feminists are approached about the subject of Islam (Izzy Mo has two great articles about this problem here and here). And I love my religion department and put my heart and soul into it, so although my academic specialty is Buddhism I feel it's necessary to look at the problematics of how we are approaching the study and teaching of Islam.
Posts
