There is no clear-cut Quranic verse or authentic hadith to the effect of making the face veil obligatory. The conclusions drawn by scholars are based upon their interpretations (human work) of practice by wives of Prophetﷺ (mothers of believers) and other women who followed them. The honourable wives of Prophetﷺ are not like ordinary women (Quran;33:32), their status is much higher. Some instructions are peculiar to them, i.e they were not allowed to remarry after death of Prophetﷺ. Other women may like to emulate them after death of their husbands but its does not become obligation for others. If the wives of Prophetﷺ covered their face, it would only become obligatory for all other women if it was commanded in Quran or by the Prophetﷺ otherwise it remains optional practice.
Showing posts with label Muslims. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslims. Show all posts
Do Arab men hate women?
"Our political revolutions will fail, unless we have social and sexual revolutions that push them into the home."
With one question, journalist Mona Eltahawy unleashed a harsh critique of women's rights in the Arab world. | |||
With these five words in a controversial magazine article, Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy shot to fame, unleashing a devastating critique of women’s rights in the Arab world. In the season premiere of Head to Head , Mehdi Hasan challenges Eltahawy on her views regarding the status of women in Arab states. Are Arab or Muslim societies inherently patriarchal? And how does the narrative of Islam as sexist play into geo-politics and Western stereotypes of the Middle East? Joining the discussion is Dr Aitemad Muhanna of the London School of Economics’ Middle East Centre; self-proclaimed progressive Imam Dr Taj Hargey; and Dr Shuruq Naguib, a British-Egyptian academic from Lancaster University.
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| http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2014/02/do-arab-men-hate-women-201421282224596667.html |
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A lesser sistet
On Feb 1, some TV news channels ran a harrowing video of a man (in the city of Sukkur) kicking, slapping and dragging a helpless woman from inside a van. According to reports, the brute was the woman`s husband.
After about two to three minutes into the video, a shocked me thought why wasn`t anyone jumping in to stop the man from pulverising his wife in full view of the media and the public? Some 25 years ago when I was in my early 20s, I saw a crowd gathering around a man mercilessly beating a young child on a street in the PECHS area ol` Karachi.
Instinctively I jumped in and pulled the child away from the man, who then attacked me saying that the child was his son and that I had no right to interl`ere.
During the scuffle, I reminded him that the child was first and foremost an innocent and fragile human being.
Soon other people got involved and ultimately we handed over the man to the police. Then with a black, swollen eye, (along with two other gentlemen), I deposited the bruised, shocked and traumatised boy to his mother and grandparents who lived nearby.
According to the mother the boy`s fault was going to a park in-stead of a madressah, and his father had caught him playing football with other kids in the park before deciding to hand him a pitiless public beating. The child could not have been more than seven years old.
On Feb 1, 2014, as I ever-so-reluctantly saw the man beating the woman on TV, I angrily wondered why the cameraman who was filming the scene wasn`t jumping in to stop the man.
One can rationalise his position by suggesting that he was already involved by covering the event and, more so, exposing the man`s misdeed and face in front of millions of TV viewers. Because after all, it was this footage that ran on a number of TV channels that prompted the Sindh government to order an inquiry.
But what about the dozen or so men who gathered there; what were they up to, apart from simply watching? Not a single person decided to jump in, to at least pull back the rampaging man. As one can see in the video, the men who gathered at the site of the shamef ul episode just stood there, staring.
What a contrast, I thought it was, compared to the common spectacle of mobs of men who, even at the slightest wink of encouragement, become the everwilling multitudes of destruction, butchering and lynching those ac-cused of heresy or `blasphemy` or who, at the drop of a hat, set fire to the homes and places of worship of those they believe had insulted their faith.
It is a fact that many-a-time nothing insults faith like the mostfaithful, but in this particular case one is right to question the whole hoopla of what a grand `ghairatmand` (honourable) nation we are.
The same evening one saw the usual set of `liberal fascists` andmoderates` outrage against the beating of the woman on Twitter.
But I was more interested in reading the tweets of three young women who are always quick to lambast me every time I tweet anything whatsoever about a hi-jab, nigab or whatever they believe is a `woman`s symbol of social piety.
Thrice I tweeted about the said event expecting these three angry young women to respond to my tweets because after all there was a helpless (Muslim) woman involved on the receiving end of a brutal act.
All of them follow me on Twitter and (thus) can see my tweets on their timeline (TL).
There was silence. So I checked their Twitter accounts to see whether any of them was active at the time I was tweeting about the beating.
Two of them were. But one of them was having a conversation with another lady about TV host Aamir Liaqat`s choice of clothes, while the other was passionately tweeting about the best brands of halal perfume`.
There is a no way that they could have either missed the footage of the woman`s beating (that was widely shared by many on social media), nor could they have missed my three tweets.
Their Twitter timelines are usually full of those ubiquitous images where hijabless women are explained as lollipops covered with flies; or with laments against western hypocrisies and discrimination against appropriately dressed Muslim women in the West.` But not a squeak came from them about a fellow Muslim sister beaten mercilessly in full view of the public by a man in their own country.
This reminds me of a rather eventful seminar I once attended back in 1992 on `Women and Islam`. The panel, apart from hav-ing some intellectuals, also included a soc a l 1 e d I s I a m i e scholar (a f o r m e r member of` a reli gious party).All was well until at one point the scholar`s lecture declared that a woman who wore seductive clothes invited men to dishonour them`.
Some women in the audience after exhibiting their disgust, stormed out of the auditorium.
But there were two women who snatched a microphone from an organiser and began shouting insults not at the lecturer, but at the women who had walked out! They can`t bear to listen to the truth!` One of the women shouted, until she was asked to settle back into her seat. I was shocked.
Was a woman actually justifying an act of violence (by a man) on another woman? Nevertheless, the most stunning moment of the seminar arrived when, after the scholar ended his speech and asked if the audience had any questions, a woman journalist (belonging to an Urdu weekly) asked for the microphone.
She cleared her throat, said her salam and asked a question that was so basic that I have totally forgotten what it was. But what happened next, I can never forget.
The moment the scholar began to answer the question, the woman shouted (in Urdu): `Khabardar! Apni nazrien neechi kar kay mujay jawah doh!` (Beware! Lower your eyes while answering me!).
Shaken, it was now the scholar`s turn to storm out. He felt `insulted`.
By Nadeem F Piracha. DAWN.COM
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