The Oppression of Women - Kamal El-Mekki

The Arab Image

The Arab was always a crazy guy wanting women. Even until more recent ones, there's a movie with this horrendously horrible actor, Van Damme, right? And blood sport. And you remember there's a guy with a ghutra, he looks Cambodian, but they put a ghutra on him.

And he's the Arab guy. And he wanted to take the white woman up to his room and everything. And then they had that game where they take the coin out of his hand.

Again, it was that image of the Arab being crazy like that.

The Western Evolution: From Medieval to Modern

Then what happens? So, we're looking at the, like this is continuing now. And even until like 50 years before the birth of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam) bishops were gathering in France to debate whether or not the woman had a soul.

Yeah. Then the West starts to go through a number of things that bring them to where we are now.

The Enlightenment Era

One of them being the Enlightenment era. And in this period of time, they went through a number of different, like re-examining a lot of thoughts. Some of them being scientific, and that's when they start to say that's the earth that revolves around the sun and not the other way around. Some of them being theological, Martin Luther King protesting against some issues in the Catholic Church.

And some of them being social. And the social issues dealt with women. And so now, for the first time, we start to see some kind of writings.

Even though, still, even despite this, we see the philosophers like Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which is like a Genevan philosopher. And he writes a book entitled Emile. This was written about 1757.

They say it's written between 1757 to 1761, anywhere in that time period. And in it, he writes about they should have education for women, but it needs to be according to their lower intellect, and according to what they could understand.

The Industrial Revolution and Women's Rights

And then later on, in the 1800s, you start to see others, like Mary Wollstonecraft and so on, writing about women's rights and so on.

But then comes the Industrial Revolution. And in the Industrial Revolution, you have, especially in England, a lot of women entering the workforce. And you start to, for the first time, hear about demand of equal pay.

They're working the same number of hours as the man, so we should get equal pay. You start to see these as, these are just briefly some of the stepping stones.

The Sexual Revolution

And then after that, the West also goes through, in the 60s, 70s, they go through what is known as the Sexual Revolution.

So after the Sexual Revolution, they see promiscuity, there's nothing wrong with it, all kinds of deviance, there's nothing wrong with that. So now what happens, so when they were far to the right, and the Muslims were in the middle, they looked at the Muslims and they said, you guys are so far to the left, you guys are extreme. Then the West, after the Sexual Revolution, goes so far to the left, and then they look again at the poor Muslims, who are still in the same place, and say, you guys are so far to the right.

So now after the Sexual Revolution, they're saying, you Muslims, you're too uptight, there's no intermingling, the women are covered. Now sisters, you understand why, if a nun is walking in front of someone, and she's dressed like a Muslimah, nobody says anything. Then a Jewish woman walks by, and she's dressed again like a Muslimah, an orthodox Jewish woman, and nobody says anything.

And the minute the Muslim woman walks by, they're like, she's oppressed, poor thing, they're forcing her to wear that. Why are you the only one forced to wear that? It goes back to this idea here. So after the Sexual Revolution, they start to tell the Muslims, that you guys are too uptight, you guys are not relaxed enough in your society.

So the Muslims were always in the same place, but they're moving around right and left. So now you understand why there's always this issue with the Muslim woman wearing hijab, and so on and so forth.

Questioning Values vs. Attacking Islam

So now, they got to the point, they got to this point by questioning values. You question the writings of Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas of Aquinas, again, was one of those writing, again, degrading the women, the arguments of, is a woman a full human being or not? All these issues, they got to a point where they start to question all these values and all these ideologies.

The Gender Extremes

And then they went to another extreme, like in the 90s, when they brought up the issue of gender, that there is actually no difference between the male and the female, it's just all about upbringing. And if they're brought up the same way, they'll be exactly the same.

And in Islam, we don't have a problem with differences between men and women, because that's part of being fair. When you're fair, you recognize differences. When you're unfair, you assume that everyone is exactly the same and should be treated exactly the same way.

I'll give you an example. There was like a mayor or some governor, someone in charge in California. And this man, he was a pervert and an idiot.

He was, you will see why. Because he said, why is it that a man can go topless in the beach and the woman can't? One more time. He was a pervert and an idiot.

Now you understand. It's very clear, right? So, I mean, you don't know why? You don't know why? You don't see that they're physically different? That's why. So in Islam, to treat two different things as equal in every respect is a form of injustice.

Fairness vs. Equality in Islam

Imagine in Islam, the woman in her final trimester in pregnancy still had to fast like everybody else. No excuses. You're all equal.

Yes, we're all equal in the sense that this is a human, this is a human. This will be held accountable, this one will be held accountable. But to say that, yes, you have to fast, the man fast, you fast.

Would that be fair? It wouldn't be fair. So to treat different things as exactly equal is a form of injustice. That's why we have different fiqh rules and regulations for men and for women.

But in the other sense, of course, no one would argue that they're equal. So then they got into the extreme of saying the whole gender issue and that there's no such thing as sex. It's just basically the gender and how you raise the individual.

This was another extreme.

The Problem with Attacking Islam

So what's happening is that the way women, Western women, or women in the West got to the point that they are today is by challenging these values and challenging these ideologies.

One of the problems is that we know, of course, and we all will agree that the Muslim woman today is not in a good situation if you consider the Muslim lands.

They're not in a good situation, but it has nothing to do with Islam. It has to do with cultures, it has to do with ideologies, it has to do with all kinds of other things that keep women down, not because of the teachings of the religion. But unfortunately, many women who want to quote-unquote liberate the Muslim woman, they use exactly the wrong tactic.

They want to attack the religion which is exactly the vehicle that is supposed to get them out of the situation that they're in. This worked for the West because the values they had were written by men and humans. But our values were from Allah (جَلَّ وَعَزَّ - jalla wa 'azza) and His Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ - sallallahu alayhi wasallam). We don't challenge these values.

That's the same vehicle that will get you out of the bad situation. You don't destroy that vehicle.

The Hijab Experiment: True Liberation

So, with this issue then of women being liberated, are they truly liberated today? And this is one of the things, for example, let's just pick hijab.

People want to attack hijab. And so, why are you wearing hijab? You're oppressed. All these arguments.

And leave the hijab. Let's see what happens when you remove the hijab. Are you liberated when you remove the hijab? And I always quote this student at UCLA University in California.

And she was a senior, a psychology major. And she made an experiment. She was a Chinese American lady who was not a Muslim.

And she experimented with hijab. Maybe some of you have read what her experiment was. She put on hijab and then she went out.

And then she wrote this article. And it was really incredible, her insights and the things that she discovered when putting on hijab. So, she says, by covering myself, I did not cover my femininity.

The only thing I covered was my sexuality. She said, covering the latter allowed me to express more the former. And the more I covered my sexuality, the more I could be free and be an individual and be a human being.

The Sexual Object Problem

And this is exactly the problem today. So, if hypothetically a woman enters into a meeting room, there's a meeting, and the woman is not dressed properly. Let's say she's quote-unquote attractive and she's dressed very, very improperly.

She walks into a meeting room. What is the first thing the men will think? Oh, she's very intelligent, mashallah. This will be a productive meeting.

No, they're going to look at her as a sexual object. That's all they're gonna do. That's all they'll see.

So, no matter what she does, no matter how hard she studies and reads and how eloquent she is, she still is looked at as just a sexual object. The minute she covers that, she'll be looked at as an individual. And there were many studies that were done.

Scientific Studies on Objectification

The University of Brussels Study

There was a university in Brussels that did a study on the inversion effect, something called the inversion effect. It's basically the inversion effect deals with the human being's inability to recognize faces when they're upside down. And you've probably all seen images upside down, a face upside down.

And you have a tough time recognizing the individual. Now, we don't have a problem as human beings in recognizing objects that are upside down. You see any object upside down and you know exactly what the object is.

But when you see a face upside down, you have to struggle and sometimes you can't figure out who the individual is. So, in the University of Brussels, they made this study and they found out that men had a hard time recognizing faces of other males upside down, but they had no problem recognizing the faces of women when they're upside down, just like they could see objects when they're upside down. So, they concluded in this study that men view women as objects.

The University of Kansas Study

Men view women as objects. Likewise, there is another university, University of Kansas, and they did a similar study. And they actually tested women and they came to the same conclusion that women saw other women as objects as well.

Because that's what the society trained them. Splash of colors on their faces and wear this and wear that and do all kinds of things to their appearance. So, even women would see other women as objects.

The University of Michigan International Study

Now, in the University of Michigan in 1989, they had a similar study. This is obviously a lot older. This study was conducted in 37 countries.

And in these 37 countries, they also found all people throughout these countries saw women as objects as well. So, what if someone says, well, this is proof that it's not just the West who has this issue. This is proof, we're using it as an argument to say hijab.

When you don't have hijab, that's how men look at the women. Because the woman, the man, Allah created the man, he is attracted or he is aroused by looking. So, if he sees a woman as an object, no matter what country and what religion he's from, that's what she will be, an object.

The Androgynous Solution in the West

And that's why if you look at, for example, let's just pick on the United States of America. In America, we cannot accept a woman in a high leadership position if she looks like a woman, if she's effeminate. So, she has to look what we call androgynous in the English language, right? So, the androgynous woman,

that's the one that has short hair, that wears these business suits, that doesn't show her emotions and acts more like a man, right? So, if you look at Western women in very high and powerful positions, you'll always find that they have this look.

Examples of Western Female Leaders

Let's start with your Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. And because she recently passed away, a lot of you, even though you're too young to remember her time, you've probably watched her documentaries about her life, and you've probably noticed that part where, in the beginning, in her political career, she was very effeminate, and her voice was very high-pitched. Any of you remember that? I mean, from the documentary, yeah? So, her voice was very high-pitched, right? And then her advisors told her to make her voice deeper, yeah? And that's why, if you listen to her videos, she's always like, I met with the president of Pakistan, and it's like deeper then.

Then she retires from politics, and her voice is high again, because now I don't have to do this for men anymore. So, the men couldn't accept her when she had this high feminine voice. So now, she's got short hair, she's wearing these business suits, walking around like this, deep voice, because a man can't accept a woman in the West if he sees her beautiful, if she sees that she's effeminate.

Because that's, for him, that's a sexual object. I'm not gonna take orders from a sexual object. I need you to look more like me, like a man.

And let's go through a lot of the Western women leaders. For example, we had Madeline Albright, for example. Again, short hair, frown, that business suit.

We had one that all the comedians were constantly making fun of her as being a man during the Clinton era as well. Who was it? No, Clinton. No, Clinton era.

So basically, Janet Reno, thank you very much. And Janet Reno was always a man for the comedians. And she had short hair again.

She came in like a man like that. Then you have Hillary Clinton. And again, short hair, these business suits.

When she was running against Obama in the presidential elections, you would read what they write about her. Their critiques of her is that she was stoic, meaning she did not show emotion, she was very dry, didn't cry, all these things, not very woman-like. Then one day, she choked a little bit as she was speaking.

I actually think she was faking. It didn't even look real. But she pretended to choke just to show that she had some feelings.

And guess what? Immediately the next day, do we really want a woman who cannot control herself for her... So, like as they say in English, damned if you do and damned if you don't. So what do you want

from this lady in the end? Then we also had Condoleezza Rice, but she was a real man, of course. So, she was.

The Ongoing Trap

So, what's happening then was that we start to see that people are not able to accept the woman in a place, in a leadership position because for in a lot of countries now, not just picking on the West anymore, for in a lot of countries, the woman is just a sexual object and you can't take orders from a sexual object.

So then, even though women think they've been liberated, they are still trapped and they're still stuck. They still have these problems.

How can you escape that? And what we argue to people is that the escape and the way out of that is through Islam. And for Muslim women, it's through Islam. That's the only way you will win over all these millions and millions of oppressive men.

Yeah, that's the only way to use Islam. But like I said, some women, they start to attack Islam.

Attacking Islamic Sources

They start to attack the hadith of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ). They even start to question the meanings of the ayat of the Quran.

There was a woman in the United States, a revert, who doesn't speak Arabic, but she said she's going to re-evaluate the sahih hadith of al-Bukhari. They asked her, how are you gonna do it? She said, basically I'm going to read the hadith and I'm gonna think about it. And if it does not agree with the woman's point of view, it's weak.

Okay, so she's gonna... Okay, first of all, like I said, she doesn't... It's interesting, she doesn't speak Arabic. So she's going to rely on the translation of some man overseas who is paid minimum wage. And she's gonna use that to decide of the hadith.

The second thing, did we have like a vote and the majority of the world's sisters liked you and said, yes, we want you to do this for us. So the problem is they try to re-evaluate and they try to challenge some of the known established values of Islam. So if we couldn't agree on what the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) said, what on earth makes you think we can agree on what some strange sister said?

The Camel Analogy

And I always liken this when you want to attack Islam, which is the vehicle that will save you, to having to make this long journey across the desert and you only have your camel.

And then after two days into the journey, you stop, you slaughter, and you eat your camel. You basically just killed the vehicle that's supposed to get you across. So how you expect to make this? And we've seen some crazy things written by some people claiming this is how to get their freedom or to get their rights.

They think that their fight is with Islam. Islam never ever oppressed women. Your fight is not with Islam.

Your fight is with all these cultures, it's with all these men, it's with all these, whatever these are, whoever it is, wherever they are, but it's not Islam. And people sometimes don't know like where the problem is and they don't know how to pick their battles.

Attacks on Hadith and Companions

So there was one and she was saying that, she was challenging the authentic hadith and she said that there are certain hadith of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) in Sahih Bukhari that are misogynistic.

And you know what misogyny is? It's hating women and hating girls. So she said the hadith of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) are misogynistic and therefore they need to be thrown away. And others in their way of understanding this is they attack the narrations of the hadith.

Every time I'm going down a road and there's a hadith in the middle of the road, let me just chop it down. That's the most unintellectual way of dealing with an issue. Hadith says this, oh, that's the only thing standing in my way now, this hadith, it's weak.

To the point where, and this is very recently where we're reading this, we're at a conference and someone presented this paper at the conference saying that some of the hadith have narrators from the companions that were not trustworthy. And you look at the muhaddithin, they say that the companions are all adul, the companions are all trustworthy. We don't say this companion was not trustworthy narrator because these are the people who brought us the Quran.

And the Quran was preserved in the same way as the sunnah. So if we start to throw doubt on the companions, then it's going to open a door to attacking the Quran, all kinds of other things. So they said that Abu Bakr, and it narrates a hadith, they said Abu Bakr was untrustworthy and to quote them, that he was also a convicted felon.

But is that the situation? First of all, no one said he was untrustworthy. Abu Bakr radiallahu anhum, he was a companion. And basically what he had seen was that he thought he saw al-Mughir ibn Shu'ba committing fornication or zina.

The Story of Abu Bakr and Al-Mughir ibn Shu'ba

But what had happened is al-Mughir ibn Shu'ba was married to this woman, but he was married to her in secret. And Umar radiallahu anhum forbade getting married in secret. So he couldn't say this to my wife, so he kept it to himself.

So Abu Bakr came with some of the... His name was Nufayy ibn Harith, and he came with some of the companions. Then one of them withdrew. So now we don't have four witnesses, there are three.

So he was punished for that. And the Quran says that his testimony is not to be accepted. And Umar would tell him, (تُبْ أَقْبَلْ شَهَادَتَكَ) That make tawbah, I will accept your testimony.

But he didn't want to refuse or like recant his testimony. So basically what happened is that in this issue, yes, his testimony would not be accepted in court. That doesn't make him a not reliable narrator of the hadith.

Issues of Jahiliyyah vs. Islam

The point is that the attempt to get women out of a bad situation is now through attacking Islam, attacking hijab. Oh, hijab is just a custom of the Arabs. And you see this like debates, women debating is it hijab or niqab or what is the other thing? Convertible, whatever.

There are all kinds of hijab, right? All kinds of different names. The convertible is the one that comes up and down, yeah. It's a lot of times it's up, you know.

Then there's hijab that we call sample. That's the one where it's a proper hijab, but there's a hair sample sticking out. And then there's useless hijab.

That's when the woman covers every little bit of hair and she's wearing very very tight clothing. So who on earth told you that the hair strand is not as dangerous as body parts being finely defined? Anyways, and these things make, especially Muslim sisters dressed improperly like this in that kind of hijab, they make life difficult for people like, you know, brother Farhan Noor and others. You will regret ever giving me your name and telling me to make this joke.

Anyways, so the problem then, so these are issues of jahiliyyah. The issues now that oppress women today, they're issues of jahiliyyah. They're not issues dealing with Islam.

All the, whatever it is, you just make your list. I don't even know the list. Honor killings and how, you know, the dowry is given to the man.

You guys got it good, man. Recently I was in Europe and this lady came to me. She said, this guy, this doctor, we're engaged and he's demanding that my father buys him a house and furniture.

Excuse me? He's a doctor and your father has to buy him a house? I said, yeah, that's how we do it. I'm like, I need to get married from this type of the world. Anyways, the point is, these ideologies have nothing to do with Islam.

That's your fight. And of course this is our fight too, right brothers? And we're okay with that. We're okay with women being in a bad situation today.

And this is one of the problems that people just want from their religion what will make them comfortable. And they don't want from their religion what will take from them and make other people comfortable.

Conclusion: The Persistence of Oppression

Recently we were sharing some male chauvinist jokes with Sheikh Walid Basyoni.

And Sheikh Walid said something very interesting. He said, we don't have such extremely mean jokes in the Muslim lands about women. I'm not even going to repeat them.

Like very, very mean jokes, yeah? And it's interesting, we don't. I can speak for the Arab world at least. In the Arab world, we don't have such incredibly cruel and mean jokes.

And that reflects something. So for the women who are in the West, they're still oppressed. They're still shackled.

They cannot break free from being objects and objectified because that's how they are in the magazines, in the newspapers, on television, every commercial. Even if it has nothing to do with a woman, you put a woman on it. So they can never escape that.

It's impossible for them to escape that. And these women who are shackled are coming to you who are semi-liberated. Because Islam liberates you from that side.

And then your culture and your society and your community puts you down from another side. So you're still semi. That's why I argued in the beginning that there's only a brief period of time around the time of the Prophet (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) and years after that where women were liberated.

And after that, it just went downhill again. So these who are shackled are coming to you who are semi- liberated and telling you, don't be oppressed. So the solution really is Islam.

That's our argument. I'll stop here inshaAllah. BarakAllahu feekum.

Jazakumullahu khair. Very much for being an attentive audience. I would like to say that if you benefited and enjoyed this lecture, my name is Kamal al-Makki.

If you did not find this useful at all and you did not enjoy this, my name is Abu Isa ni'matullah. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.