Know thy place | 4.04.05

This is how Aisha Tahira Stacey answered her self-posed question “Women in Islam: Oppression or Liberation?” on islamonline.net:

The natural inclination of women is to please, comfort, and support their men, their husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons. The natural inclination of men is to protect, support, and provide for the women lawfully in their lives—wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. Islam, the only true religion and infallible guide to life, requires that we follow such natural inclinations. It allows us to abandon ideas that are intrinsically foreign to human nature and supports us in developing and sustaining natural family relationships that spread out to form part of the wider Muslim community.

A Muslim woman knows her place in society and knows her place in the family infrastructure. Her deen (religion) is her first priority; therefore, her role is clear-cut and defined. A Muslim woman, far from being oppressed, is a woman who is liberated in the true sense of the word. She is a slave to no man or to any economic system; rather, she is the slave of Allah. Islam clearly defines women’s rights and responsibilities spiritually, socially, and economically. Islam’s clear-cut guidelines are empowering; they raise women to a natural and revered position both in their families and in the eyes of the Muslim Ummah.

Indeed she answered her question, though perhaps not in the way she had intended.

An anecdote: In my Chinese class at Peking University, we once had a reading material that touched upon gender roles. Positively proud of the fact that women “work” as much as men do in China, the teacher started asking us international students whether that was the case in our home countries. My Korean and Indonesian classmates (the latter were non-Muslim ethnic Chinese) sheepishly replied that women in their countries quit their jobs upon marriage to tend to the house and the children, which pleased the teacher (in this little game we students and teacher play in the class, the prize is your country’s social or cultural supremacy). I had to step up and argue that housework and parenting are work, too, and the full-time home worker should not automatically be deemed inferior to others. (Would you rather be a cleaning lady inside your own home or outside?)

But, of course, I was defending the women who choose that role, and not restricting them (naturally and divinely!) to it. That’s the difference between me and Ms. Stacey.

21:01 ▪ miscellanea

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