veiled4allah: 'laying down the white woman's burden' veiled4allah: 'laying down the white woman's burden'Western feminists seem to believe they have a moral obligation to save the Arab-Muslim woman by molding her into their own image. But if the oppression of Arab-Muslim women results from local traditions and not from religion or ethnicity, then it is possible to respect Islam and Arabs without disrespecting her. By abandoning the assumption of superiority, Western feminists can say to the Arab-Muslim woman, "we don't disparage your religion or your ethnic origins. We only want you to have choice."That is something I am completely in favor of. Check out my blog entry Islam and individual freedom to hear my take on the issue of choice in Islam.
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Awhile ago I joined a wonderful email discussion group called CoveredWomen4God. It's a place where women of all religions who dress modestly can talk and share. There are a number of Christian women from various denominations there and several Jewish women as well as Muslim women. You might want to check it out, God willing. The group is for women only.
In reference to Carrie's and sister Munaqaba's comments, hijab is liberating in some social senses. I don't feel that my body is the object of anyone's attention besides my husband. I receive loads of respect and polite attention from MEN when I am out of my house shopping, working, etc. Women, on the other hand, do seem to have the white woman's burden, as the article put it, and feel the need to stare, be less than nice (and ranging to downright nasty), and ask me about my political opinions.
Thanks for the nice posts!
First, I'd like to respond to Carrie's statement that she's not a feminist. If you believe in the "radical" notion that men and women are equal, you are a feminist. That's what feminism is. See http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=feminism . Like all beliefs, the most radical and outspoken get the most attention and cause inaccurate stereotypes to be made. Example: All muslims are not waiting for their chance to blow someone up. All pro-lifers are not planning their next abortion clinic bombing. All environmentalists do not blow up machinery. All Feminists are not man-hating lesbians. These are the extremists and are a very small portion of their groups.
Your statement of, "but thanks to the 'feminist movement' I am expected to do these things" really confuses me. The feminist movement is for equal rights for men and women. You doing all the work at home has nothing to do with a feminist movement. Quite the opposite. A feminist would be for your husband or boyfriend sharing that work with you. If you're a single mother and only adult in the household, of course you're expected to do those things. It has nothing to do with feminism and everything to do with responsibility for yourself and your children.
To Al-Munaqabah. Thank you for creating this site. I know very little about Muslim women but want to know more. It's hard to understand different cultures and customs from your own and I think many times people draw their own conclusions. I know I have. I want to hear from Muslim women about their faith and why they choose to wear veils. I believe your site will help. Thank you.
However, I think the reason for the false assumption that Western feminists are somehow bringing liberation to benighted Muslim or Arab women, is that feminism has been progressing fairly steadily in the West for the last 200 years.
In contrast, many areas of the Middle East, Africa and Asia have tended to see stagnation or even regression in women's equality.
The Taliban's restrictions on women, for example, were something new and unknown to urban women whose mothers had been educated and chosen how modest they wanted to be, because the Taliban brought the rural traditions of inequality and imposed them on the entire country. Although some conservative segments of Western society fantasize about forcing all women back into the kitchen (the Christian extremist parallel to Islamic extremists), I don't believe they have been successful in the West because feminism in the public sphere has become so entrenched.
(But it's still an uphill battle in the private sphere, as Carrie notes.)
"Women belong in the House... and the Senate."
Originally posted by Michelle -
First, I'd like to respond to Carrie's statement that she's not a feminist. If you
believe in the "radical" notion that men and women are equal, you are a feminist.
That's what feminism is. See
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=feminism . Like all beliefs, the most radical
and outspoken get the most attention and cause inaccurate stereotypes to be made.
Example: All muslims are not waiting
for their chance to blow someone up. All pro-lifers are not planning their next
abortion clinic bombing. All environmentalists do not blow up machinery. All
Feminists are not man-hating lesbians. These are the
extremists and are a very small portion of their groups.
Your statement of, "but thanks to the 'feminist movement' I am expected to do
these things" really confuses me. The feminist movement is for equal rights for men
and women. You doing all the work at home has nothing to do with a feminist
movement. Quite the opposite. A feminist would be for your husband or boyfriend
sharing that work with you. If you're a single mother and only adult in the household,
of course you're expected to do those things. It has nothing to do with feminism and
everything to do with responsibility for yourself and your children.
To Al-Munaqabah. Thank you for creating this site. I know very little about
Muslim women but want to know more. It's hard to understand different cultures
and customs from your own and I think many times people draw their own
conclusions. I know I have. I want to hear from Muslim women about their faith
and why they choose to wear veils. I believe your site will help. Thank you.
If people judged you as being lazy or uneducated because you CHOSE to be a stay-at-home mother, they must not be familiar with the tenet of feminism that women should be as free to choose as men are. "Choice" is the watchword of feminism: choice about education, profession, marriage, family, health care, etc., because for so long women were not allowed to be educated and were not allowed to hold jobs outside their homes.
A feminist would ask why you have to do all the housework and childcare, instead of sharing these duties EQUALLY with your husband. Talk of being a "submissive wife" is hardly compatible with feminism.
Originally posted by carrie -
I have never said that I think all Muslims blow people up. I have never made any statements referring to pro-lifers, lesbians, or environmentalists. Thanks to the "feminist movement" I am expected to bring home bacon, cook it, feed it to the children, and clean up the mess. That is pretty clear-cut. I am married and I am a submissive wife. People now-days expect you to work outside of the home and to keep up your home and family, because of the "feminist movement". If you are a stay-at-home Mom, people judge you as being lazy or un-educated...therefore unable to hold a job. I know from experience that this is the case, I was a stay-at-home Mom for many years.
Additionally, middle-class families have been losing purchasing power for many years. There was a long slide from the first energy crisis (1973) through the Reagan years, and a second slide starting in the Bush administration. Therefore many women work to help make ends meet, not to make a feminist statement.
I myself returned to work after my son was born, to make ends meet, to do a job I enjoy, and also because I am aware that my legal and financial personhood in this society is inextricably bound up with wage-earning. This is not the work of feminism, but capitalism.
PG nailed it on the head. It’s all about choice and equality. That a woman can choose to be a homemaker or choose to work outside the home. Because of financial constraints, many need to work outside the home. But that doesn’t mean she should still have to do all the house work when she gets home. It should be divided between the husband and the wife. Men who expect their wives to do all this work will scoff when asked to help and say, “That’s women’s work.” Meaning it’s beneath them, meaning you’re beneath them. They’ll quickly back peddle if you point that out because they themselves can’t make that connection but if you think about it, it’s true. And how is cooking, cleaning, and helping the kids “women’s work”? Doesn’t he eat the food? Doesn’t he make the dishes, his clothes, and the house dirty? Aren’t they his children who he loves? It’s called taking responsibility for yourself, not “women’s work”. And any man who cannot take responsibility for helping his wife clean up the mess that he himself made is obviously still a child and needs to grow up.
Really think about it. You come home from a busy day at work. You are expected to make dinner for the family. Fine. This would be the time when your husband is doing what needs to be done with the children, setting the table, maybe throwing in a load of wash. Dinner’s over. Cleanup should be done by everyone if the children are old enough. Or, the husband cleans up and the wife does what needs to be done with the kids, throws the wash in the dryer, etc. I don’t have kids so I don’t know what else needs to be done but you get my point. The work should be split. Clean the house together. You’ll be amazed at how fast it gets done. It’s not the wife doing everything while the husband watches TV.
It sounds to me like you’re doing two jobs, (work outside the home and work inside the home) and your husband is only doing one.
Here are some sites dealing with feminism:
Specifically about the stay-at-home mom
Wendy McElroy, the author of the article that started this thread, runs this site
link
link
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link
note: comment edited to add hyperlinks
As a recovered feminist (I am now a Humanist) and as a white American-born Muslim revert who has lapsed in her practice, I want to thank you dear sister (and of course The/Our God) for this opportunity to participate in this dialogue. This discourse is wonderful, and critical.
As I understand it, the “feminism” of Islam mandates that men and women are equal, but, quite obviously, different. Western feminism proposes the principal that we are equal and “the same”.
Thus, in Islam our biological differences should be taken into account. Thus, a woman would not be expected to do construction work (though nothing prohibits her from it, except from a practical standpoint), and a man would not bear children (though nothing prohibits him from participating in their care). Islamic marriage adheres to the convenience of "roles", But there are many nuances to that. For instance, Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) first wife Khadejah (may Allah be pleased with her) was a wealthy business woman who often supported him while he meditated in the hills to enhance his spiritual persona. She was also the first Muslim, the first Believer in his message. In marriage, the Quran tells us, we (the wife and husband) are to be "garments", or protection, for each other.
Of course, God’s ERA of the Quran (Surah 33, Ayat 35) has not been allowed to be implemented in most Islamic societies . Literacy rates for women, and leadership for women in masjids and Muslim countries is quite miserable, for example. The double standard in application of responsibility for fornication, is not equally applied. the list goes on and on. God-given rights to women are ignored almost worldwide.
However, one should be submissive to their husband (and God in the Quran commands us to be submissive only to our husband, not to all men), possibly as a way to establish order in the family (a car can only have one driver). But, in Islam, the man is required to support the family. If the woman works outside the home, her money is her own, and if she chooses to spend it on the family, it’s a form of charity.
Freedom, as we are learning in Iraq, is in the eye of the beholder. For instance, most Muslim women would not consider freedom to wear a bikini to be an important right.
What I see as the most important is that men and women have an equitable balance of rights and responsibilities, even if their roles are different. Neither of them should be oppressed by not having enough rights nor burdened by having too many responsibilities. In a marriage with a family, I feel that the biological differences between men and women (i.e., women can bear and nurse children) mean that complementary roles are the most equitable solution.
It's also important for feminists to remember that a true commitment to freedom of choice for women means respecting those women who choose to stay at home, to have large families, to dress modestly, or yes even to allow their husbands to have a leadership role in the family.
But for how long? Obviously, a husband can't breastfeed, so that's a task that can't be shared. But babies grow up. The typical modern woman has between 40-50 years of adulthood, unlike our predecessors who were more likely to die in childbirth, or of disease at a younger age. What do you do with the rest of that time?
I agree that it's equally valid under feminism to choose to be a stay-at-home mom, so long as you aren't imposing that lifestyle on other women. But I'd return again to the mistaken idea of work being equal to feminism, because women have always worked.
When most people were farmers and had flocks, women worked on the family farm and made cheese, butter, and cloth for both the family and for sale if there was enough. They have always worked in family businesses, if not owning and running them. Just because this work was not always formally paid, it doesn't mean they weren't working. And taking in sewing, washing, or other domestic work for pay has a long history.
A woman who generates no income for her family is a relatively modern phenomenon that was once restricted to the very upper classes of western society.
I've written about marriage dynamics in Islam in an article elsewhere on my site. I'll try to summarize that here. Women are the ones who bear and nurse children. They are usually the primary caretakers of the children during these earliest years and often remain so until the children are of school age or older. If a woman has several children, she can spend a goodly part of her married life doing "mother's work".
In order to allow women to do this without their being oppressed with other responsibilities, Islam gives the husband the complete responsibility of financially supporting the family. Even if the wife is independently wealthy or has her own source of income, she is not required to spend any of it to support the family. If she chooses to do so, it counts as charity for her. Then, to balance out the husband's responsibility of support he receives a right as well, that of leadership.
Islam sees the ideal family structure as one in which the wife cares for the children while the husband works to provide support. It attempts to balance these duties with privileges: the wife's privilege not to have to spend any of her money and the husband's privilege of leadership. Although the rights and responsibilites of the husband and wife are different, hopefully there is an equitable balance and neither feels that they are doing all the work and not getting anything back in return.
There are a couple of other things I didn't mention in that article, in order to keep it focused on one point. Women are not required to nurse their children. The Quran explicitly says (2:233) that a woman cannot be forced against her will to nurse the child. At the same time a man cannot be forced against his will to pay for a wet nurse (or some modern equivalent). Instead, the couple must consult about how the child will be weaned.
Even if the mother is not nursing the child, she is still not required to work or to spend money to support the family. She could do nothing if she wanted. She is giving up "brownie points for the Hereafter" that she could be earning by nursing her children (which is very strongly recommended) but she is not lining up punishment for herself just by that act either.
Women are also not required to do housework. There is a consensus of the scholars on this. Housework is not one of the wife's obligations in marriage. In many cases, she has to do it anyway, because they can't afford for someone else to do so, but it is not considered a religious obligation. If her husband agreed to pay somebody else to keep house, she could again sit around doing nothing. Certainly not recommended, but permissible.
Quite frankly, I think that this set-up has if anything the potential to favor women at men's expense. The husband is required to spend as much time as is necessary working to support the family. The wife is not required to work, inside the home or out. She is not required to do childcare and can never be forced to it against her will. She is not required to do housework. All she has to do is accept her husband's leadership, not deny him from her bed without good cause (this has been defined by the scholars), and protect the family secrets. She gets major spiritual rewards if she does do childcare, some fairly substantial rewards for housework, and even some rewards if she donates money she gets from work to support the family.
I don't know, maybe the idea of accepting the husband's leadership is just anathema to some women, but I personally think it's a fair deal.
Quite frankly, I think that this set-up has if anything the potential to favor women at men's expense. The husband is required to spend as much time as is necessary working to support the family. The wife is not required to work, inside the home or out. She is not required to do childcare and can never be forced to it against her will. She is not required to do housework. All she has to do is accept her husband's leadership, not deny him from her bed without good cause (this has been defined by the scholars), and protect the family secrets. She gets major spiritual rewards if she does do childcare, some fairly substantial rewards for housework, and even some rewards if she donates money she gets from work to support the family.
Hello,
I am a non-muslim stay-at-home mom, new to your site. I find it very interesting & admire the way you animate the debates!
I had a "high flying" career before having children and choosing to stay at home. I had an MBA and was involved in international financial markets. I have to say two things....
(a) deciding to be a stay-at-home Mom was the best choice I ever made - I'm enjoying every day of it (for the past 18 months since my 2nd child was born)
but
(b) I am SOOO glad that I also had the choice and possibiilty to be a financial executive before, go on business trips and do important projects with important people....
I don't think I would appreciate the one without the other.
I also pity Carrie, who seems to have gone back to work "because of what other people expect of her" - poor thing! Think about your own needs first! Who cares what others think!
Anyway, to bring this posting back to Islam. I have a question. Now that I have 2 children and a rewarding experience as a stay-at-home Mom, I can understand the validity of the reasoning behind requiring the man to earn the money and "allowing" the Woman to stay at home in her "nurturing" role.
However, it is my understanding (perhaps wrong) that in Islam, in the event of a divorce the woman does not get custody of her own kids, the ones she devoted her entire life to raising? And the man can divorce on any grounds, thereby taking the kids away, while the woman can divorce only under certain circumstances? Is this understanding corrrect, and if so, how can you possibly find it "fair"? I mean, besides pointing out the fact that single moms are the poorest people with the worst life. It seems to me that another alternative - the mother getting custody of the kids + alimony to support them - is a MUCH more humane approach than taking the kids away to be raised by their mother -in-law.
I don't know, maybe the idea of accepting the husband's leadership is just anathema to some women, but I personally think it's a fair deal.
Another comment then I'll sign off...... it all depends on the husband! If you are married to a fair, wonderful terrific man who loves you (like me), you will find it fair to accept his leadership. I have no problem accepting my husband as a leader. We have a great relationship and we respect each other very much.However, if you are married to a rat, you'll really be in trouble. That's the problem with this kind of global guidelines. They don't take into account the possibility that the man could be a cheating liar - the woman has to bend down to him no matter what. That is why it scares me. Ever read the "Cairo Trilogy" by Naguib Mahfouz? That's what I mean.
First, under Islamic law, a woman is not trapped in a bad marriage (unfortunately, these laws are not followed properly in many Muslim countries today). If her husband is violating her rights, she may seek and receive a divorce from him from the court. Even if she just doesn't like him or doesn't think she can be a good Muslim or a good wife while married to him, she can obtain a divorce by returning the bride-gift that he gave her when they married. This method of divorce is mentioned in the Quran (2:229) and the Prophet (peace be upon him) granted a divorce for exactly the reason I mentioned: she said she had no complaint about his character or religion but didn't think she could remain a good Muslim while married to him. She gave back a small piece of property that she had received upon the marriage.
Women are also not required to obey their husbands if the husbands tell them to do something wrong. The idea of "accepting the husband's leadership" really means that the couple consult on matters of importance and if they disagree, then the wife should accede to her husband's wishes as long as what he asks is religiously acceptable.
You also asked about child custody. The first point to keep in mind is that the father is always obligated to provide financial support for his children. Quran 65:6 mentions that if the couple divorce while the child is being weaned, there are two choices that the couple have to consult about. Either the mother nurses the child, in which case she is entitled to full support from the father (and in which case she does not remarry) or the father receives custody of the child and provides support for some other woman who will nurse the child. This period may last up until the child is two years old.
During the period between the age of weaning and the age of discretion (usually around age seven) the mother is favored to retain custody. Again, while she is taking money for the children, she cannot remarry.
Once the child has passed the age of discretion, custody (referred to in the Islamic texts at this point as "sponsorship") is determined based on the choice of the child. Here is a ruling by a conservative Saudi scholar about this matter.
Finally, you talked about the experience of working. As I said before, women are not prohibited from working, they are just not required to do so. If a woman has taken on the responsibility of childcare, then she should not work except as compelled by necessity. Before the couple have children, and after the children are out of the house, the woman is free to work. This is also the case before she is married.
Women are actively encouraged to work in fields such as medicine, so that women can go to female doctors, and in other fields where they interact with women who are seeing to their needs. In a more recent post I talked about women in the time of the Prophet (pbuh) who served as support staff in the army. Women are also encouraged to do work to help less fortunate members of the community. These are all religiously-approved fields for women to work in. And women may work in other fields as well, as long as the work is lawful for Muslims (for instance, providing alcohol or interest-bearing loans to people are not acceptable professions for any Muslim, male or female).
No, this is not the reality in many Muslim countries, but I believe that we can improve the status of women there by encouraging these societies to implement the correct Islamic rules, and that Islam, properly understood, provides them with a fair deal.