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| Liberating Fatma: The Centrality
of the Need to Address the Rights and Roles of Women in Muslim Societies Anisa Abd el Fattah During a conversation with a friend whose
father had served in the US Foreign Service in Morocco during the 1960s,
she mentioned how easy life in Morocco had been for her mother compared to
life in the United States. This ease she attributed to the domestic
service one could purchase in Morocco for very little money. She told me
that the first thing the wives of foreign diplomats would do, on arrival
in Morocco, was inquire about "Fatmas," Muslim women who worked
as servants for the diplomats and their families, cleaning homes, caring
for children, cooking and doing other similar work. I asked why these women were called Fatmas,
and she had no answer, except to say that the name Fatma was easy to
pronounce and that every female servant, regardless of what her name
actually was, was called "Fatma." I wondered if these "Fatmas"
knew that by permitting themselves to be called by one and the same name,
one stereotype, they were effectively consenting to being depersonalized,
having their personalities and their dignity buried alive. Following current events in Afghanistan,
and the emphasis being placed on the new-found "freedoms" of
women there, it is obvious that the West is using the situation of Afghani
women under the Taliban to attack Islam. Unfortunately, it is true that
some Muslims have tended to be oppressive of women, and to abuse Islam for
that purpose, just as extremists of other religions have done. Christian
and Jewish extremism have also committed gross abuses against women, and
many of their religious doctrines and practices teach or imply the
inferiority of women. Irreligion and immorality have also proven dangerous
to women. There are few examples of oppression and exploitation of women
that rival the abuse of Western women during the period of
industrialization in the West under the banner of capitalism. It seems that women, regardless of our
faiths, nationalities and cultures, have historically been the prime
targets of social and religious engineers who sense the enormous power of
femininity yet, rather than allow this strength to influence and shape
societies positively, seek either to suppress it or exploit it. Our
historic experience as Muslim women holds some of the most poignant
examples of exploitation and repression, including as it does the savagery
of pre-Islam, as well as a recent history that includes the repressive
laws of the secularized Muslim world that deny women their basic human and
gender-specific rights. In the contemporary Islamic movement,
Muslims have placed great emphasis on the fact that Islam is indeed the
original liberator of women. Yet few have been willing to recognize, let
alone challenge, the erosion of Islamic rights and practices pertaining to
women, the re-emergence of pre-Islamic attitudes and customs in the Muslim
world, and the effects of these dark traditions on generations of Muslim
women, their children and societies. Perhaps the greatest failing of many
Islamic scholars has been their apparently deliberate failure to correct
gross distortions of the faith, such as the idea that women’s voices are
harâm because they are seductive, or that women are the property of
husbands or other male family members. One need not look far to correct
these and other misconceptions. In Sûrah al-Azhab, it is clear that
women’s voices were not condemned or prohibited, nor were women blamed
for whatever evil lurked in the hearts of those men who could be seduced
by the mere sound of a female voice. This Sûrah begins: "O Prophet, fear Allah, and hearken
not to the unbelievers and the hypocrites: verily Allah is full of
knowledge and wisdom. But follow that which comes to thee by inspiration
from thy Lord: for Allah is well acquainted with all that you do. And put
thy trust in Allah, and enough is Allah as a disposer of affairs."
(33:1-2.) Verse 33 of the same Sûrah reads: Most Muslims will tell you that the wives
of the Prophet (saw) were held to a higher standard of conduct than other
Muslim women, yet here we do not find them prohibited from speaking to
men, but only cautioned that they should speak "justly": in
other words they should not speak seductively, or with an intent to incite
affection, or stimulate interest that was unseemly. Nowhere do we find
that Allah prohibited their speech, or implied that their voices were
haram. Interestingly, little emphasis is placed on
the part of this verse that tells us that those who are seduced by
women’s voices are those "in whose heart is a disease." This
puts the burden squarely on the men to cleanse their hearts, rather than
on the women to be silent. Yet for decades, if not centuries, Muslim women
have been taught that our voices are "prohibited," implying that
they have some hidden capacity to make men sin, blaming the women for the
weakness and immorality of men, and so relieving men of any responsibility
to purify their "diseased hearts." As men’s hearts increase in disease so
does the repression of women, to the extent that in some places women are
not even allowed an education. They are covered from head to toe in
public, or shut up in houses, and denied the right to speak and be heard.
All this is only one step short of burying them alive, the pre-Islamic
custom that found its justification in the idea that women’s sexuality
was such an uncontrollable evil that, to avoid the dishonor that her
immorality might bring upon a family, it was better to kill her. There are other examples of attempts to
limit the impact of Muslim women on their societies by repressing and
demonizing women, and things associated with women, including the sounds
of their voices. We should consider that perhaps the reason for this
repression is that women throughout history have served humanity as
"civilization builders." If we look at the Muslim world, a
civilization that has been all but cleansed of women’s influence, we can
appreciate how important women’s freedom, inclusion and influence is to
the social and cultural advancement of societies. Nearly every attempt to advance the Muslim
world by various economic and political schemes has failed to bring about
any significant amount of social development. Perhaps by a process of
elimination we will come to what seems an obvious conclusion, that the
area of women’s rights and the roles of women in Muslim societies is
what must be developed and reformed before there will likely be any
substantive change. In Sûrah al-Nahl, the Qur’an sets out a
warning to Muslims: The Sûrah go on to say: If one were planning the destruction of a
society, it would be simple to render its women illiterate so that their
children, the future of societies, would also be illiterate and
uncultured, all on the basis that religion dictates this. Demonize the
sexuality of women to confuse and complicate men’s natural attraction
and affection for women. Then introduce homosexuality into these
societies, and replace pious women in the society with irreligious women,
and put prostitutes into their husbands’ beds, or the thoughts of such
things into their minds. Add to this other forms of immorality, drug
abuse, intellectual repression, religious fanaticism, ‘honor killings’
and a myriad of unjust laws, and you have a civilization that is ready to
collapse from the weight of its sin, ignorance, and injustice. As I thought about "Fatma" it
came to me that the re-liberation of Muslim women, in Afghanistan or
elsewhere, has little to do with removing a veil or working in a public
office. The freedom of Fatma will be found in the words of the Qur’an
that make it clear that God’s intention towards women was that they
should and must stand side-by-side with men, hearts joined in mutual
respect and affection, as equal and natural mates and companions; that
these two would procreate, and educate, and build and sustain Islamic
values, Islamic society and Islamic civilization together. Before "Fatma" can be freed, we must acknowledge our crimes against her, listen to her story, and seek guidance from the Qur’an on the ways and means to restore her status in Muslim society. Most importantly, we must help her to recreate her vision of herself as a being of personality and dignity that is loved and respected by men, and protected by God.
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