First off, I know it has been difficult for some of you to access this blog. Typepad, my host, has had a very rough week. Commenting has been very difficult for many — but we are told, deo volente, that the problems have been solved. Thank you for your patience.
First off, Caitriona, one of my most regular and favorite commenters, has a request for help. No, it’s not as much about money as it is about ideas — check out this post and offer thoughtful suggestions. Prayer for the success of her ministry is also an excellent idea!
I note that Sheryl Swoopes, one of the the two or three best female basketball players of all time, and an athlete whom I’ve followed since her Texas Tech days, has come out of the closet. She instantly becomes the highest profile professional athlete in a team sport to come out while still playing. It’s a brave move for the woman who was the first female athlete to have a Nike shoe named for her, the "Air Swoopes." May she encourage others with her example.
And no one likes to send "grist for my mill" more than Jonathan Dresner, my fellow Cliopatriarch. He emailed me a link to a post from the HU Islam blog, a community for progressive Muslim women. It’s entitled "A Female Perspective on the Modern Muslim Man", and though it’s not well-formatted, it’s a powerful and entertaining piece. Written by a "Fatima J.", the post begins:
It seems to me that there are a lot of books and articles circulating around our Muslim communities that contain advice for Muslim women. Nearly all of these books are penned by male authors who explain to women how to be a proper Muslim wife, an ideal Muslim woman, what a woman’s place is according to Shari’ah, and so forth… find it very interesting how so many Muslim male authors have so much to say about their understanding of the role of Muslim women. I thought it would be interesting to turn the tables a bit and ponder the issue of what makes a good modern Muslim man and husband from a female perspective, specifically in the eyes of a progressive minded, modern Muslim woman.
I read the rest of her piece through the eyes of a pro-feminist Christian, and one who has only a rudimentary familiarity with Islamic teaching. But Jonathan did a service when he sent it my way, because by the end of her essay, I found myself cheering Fatima on. More to the point, the model of modern Islamic manhood she espouses fits nearly perfectly with the sort of pro-feminist Christian ideal I’ve been working on.
Fatima suggests that the modern Muslim man will be, like his fathers, a devout believer. But he will be able, she writes, to distinguish true Islam from the outdated, indefensible cultural mores that too many have confused with the true faith of Muhammed:
What distinguishes the “modern” Muslim man from a good and religious man of any time period is that he is abreast of the issues of today. He is not influenced by cultural mores that are contrary to Islam like the old-fashioned man is. Also, he does not accept puritanical and/or patriarchal ideas about the inferiority of women or the limitation of their roles and contributions to society.
A modern Muslim man does not have a speck of doubt in his mind about the equality of women and men. He knows that males and females are equally valuable members of society. He knows that both sexes have the same religious duties and are judged equally before Allah. He also recognizes that while many women are physically unequal to most men in terms of size and strength, and that each sex may have other slight characteristic differences, intellectually, men and women have the same potential abilities.
Preach it, sister Fatima! (Of course, I never like hearing we shouldn’t have a "speck of doubt." Faith and feminism, for me, often involve doing the right thing despite my doubts, which is a very different thing from being without doubts altogether!)
Fatima moves on:
The old-style Muslim men are mother-lovers. They acknowledge that paradise lies at the feet of mothers, and that a child’s first duty is to his/her mother, three times more than even to the father, as per the ahaadith.. The problem with being a mother-lover is that certain men feel that good women express true love by a mother-like coddling of their husbands. A mother selflessly serves her children and caters to their every need. The old-fashioned man feels that all women, especially his wife, should be equally self-sacrificing, and display her love by subservience and deference. She should not eat until he has eaten, prepare a cup of tea for him when he enters the house, prepare foods to suit his preferences and tastes, serve his plate personally by hand at meal times, iron his clothes, fetch items for him, tidy up after him, and perform every other duty that a mother would lovingly do for her child. What the old-fashioned man fails to see is that mothers do these things for their offspring because children are helpless and are unable to perform these duties by themselves. Also, just because a mother shows love by doing these things for her children, this display of self-sacrifice and servitude is not the appropriate way for a wife to display love to her husband. Modern, enlightened men should hold their own mothers in the highest possible esteem, but they should not expect their wives to continue to coddle and suckle them as their mothers did. They should know that they are loved when they are in an open and trusting relationship, with good communication, mutual respect, and understanding as a foundation. These are the qualities of marriage expressed in the Quran.
Hurrah! If there’s one key belief that pro-feminist men men and the mytho-poetic men’s movement share with the likes of Fatima, it’s the conviction that far too many men have tremendous difficulty distinguishing between their wives and their mothers. While Western men may not be as likely to demand that a wife wait until he has eaten before she eats, far too many do expect their wives to to nurture them like small children. It’s a difficult struggle for many, many guys not to slip back into child-like behavior, demanding mothering behavior from their wives and girlfriends.
And when it comes to sexual morality, Fatima demands — as authentic Christians always do — total congruence between the standards for men and for women:
A modern Muslim man lowers his gaze and protects himself from the lascivious and haraam influences that are flaunted as part of today’s so-called liberated society. Such activities include watching lewd performances of music and dance, watching entertainment media that depict sexual and violent scenes or debase women by showing them dressed in objectionable clothing, or listening to music with overtly sexual and vulgar lyrics. The backwards Muslim man enjoys these things himself but forbids his wife and female children from engaging in them.
A modern Muslim man protects his chastity before and after marriage. The old fashioned Muslim man believes that chastity and modesty are more important virtues for females than for males. That a man’s honor lives within his female family members’ bodies is an idea that is completely contrary to what the Quran tells us. It is ignorant to think that young men can play and experiment with their sexuality, or that it is only natural for men to have extra-marital affairs, while girls and women who do so should be scorned and even corporally punished. Such ideas come from being culturally rather than Islamically socialized. In the Quran, Allah puts the same requirements on females as on males in terms of guarding oneself from unchaste behavior. To think otherwise is purely based on cultural notions of sexual propriety and in direct conflict with Islamic belief. The modern Muslim man will uphold high standards for his own chastity, and encourage both his male and female children to do so.
Though I might quibble with Fatima’s interpretation of chastity, I’m heartened by her insistence that men hold themselves and each other to the same high standard to which women have traditionally been held. Modernity, in the minds of some secular folks, often is about inviting women to begin to behave with the same degree of sexual freedom that men have traditionally enjoyed. Fatima suggests the opposite — modernity is about men holding themselves to the same standard to which they have previously only held their wives and daughters.
Do read her whole post.
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