Open Discussions/ Gulf Cultural Club
At the Frontline
Religious women challenge those who question divinity
*Latifa Abouchakra (School teacher, trade unionist)
**Sister Catherine Jones smsm (Roman Catholic Sister)
*** Jenan Al Oraibi (Teacher, human resource specialist)
It is inaccurate to assume that the consequences of Islamophobia are confined within the realm of Islam. The religious phenomenon is the main target of those seeking to undermine divinity, the role of religion in life or the notion of the Kingdom of God on earth. Because of the distinctive dress of Muslim women they have become a target for Islamophobes who sometimes become violent. What role for Muslim women in Western societies? Who will defend the girls in hijab on campuses, the tube or shopping centres? Islamic history contains stories of women activism; how relevant is that to contemporary discourse? Among the notable women is Zainab, daughter of Ali who presented a distinctive leadership model at times of crisis. Can this be emulated by those seeking to challenge Islamophobia and stereotyping?
22nd October 2018
Chairman: It is my pleasure and perhaps there is a little bit of trepidation that all three panellists are female. I live with four generations of females so perhaps I am a bit used to it: my mother, my daughter and my granddaughter so I am quite used to it. It is good to have three females. It is good to have three female panellists to speak about this important issue this afternoon.
The topic this evening is women at the frontline. I suspect that women whether or not they wear the hijab, are always at the frontline being mothers, sisters and daughters. At the frontline religious women challenge those who question divinity.
It is inaccurate to assume that the consequences of Islamophobia are confined within the realm of Islam. The religious phenomenon is the main target of those seeking to undermine divinity, the role of religion in life or the notion of the Kingdom of God on earth. Because of the distinctive dress of Muslim women they have become a target for Islamophobes who sometimes become violent. What role for Muslim women in Western societies? Who will defend the girls in hijab on campuses, the tube or shopping centres? Islamic history contains stories of women’s activism; how relevant is that to contemporary discourse? Among the notable women is Zainab, daughter of Ali who presented a distinctive leadership model at times of crisis. Can this be emulated by those seeking to challenge Islamophobia and stereotyping?
Among the women who are revered in Islam are prophet Moses wife, Khadija the wife of the Prophet Mohammed and the daughter of Prophet Mohammed, Fatima. So there has always been a role definitely at the front line for women. Prophet Moses who was brought up by Asiya the wife of pharaoh who was protected when all the children were killed by pharaoh. That again shows the role of women in protecting the future.
This evening’s topic comes at a very poignant moment in Britain, in London where there is a daily barrage of Islamophobia which is targeted at Muslims. I remember growing up in London in the 1960s. At that time it was pakis and blacks who were targeted. My father tells me that at that time there were distinctive signs in houses: no blacks or dogs allowed when it came to tenants. Tenants of a non white colour were not seen in a very pleasant way. Slowly we moved on from that and Muslims were targeted. Now Islam as a religion is completely targeted. We need to have some discussions, some conversations about where we are going and what sort of society we want and how we can manage these challenges.
Latifa Abouchakra: I begin in the name of the most high and salam aleikum to you all. I would also like to send a special thanks and blessings to the Prophet and his own family. Today I would like to talk about women on the frontline in this society where racism is becoming very, very blatant. All types of discrimination: sexism, anti Semitism etc. As women we first need to look at how God has given us amazing role models. The brother spoke about quite a few of the ladies in our history that I am going to talk about. I want to discuss them in the way that I know them.
The two other important things that I wanted to bring to this discussion are the benefits of being a British Muslim woman as well as the challenges that I find growing up in this society and working in this society. InshaAllah you will benefit from these topics.
Allah came to create a safe environment for women where they are acknowledged as contributors to society in varying but equal capacities as men. As someone who came to religion in my late teens I felt hugely empowered by the examples of female activism in our rich history. It is a huge shame we do not hear about their contributions as frequently as those of the males. The men fought on the battlefield and are glorified for it. But the women also fought in some cases alongside them on the battlefield and in others as nurses, providers and educators.
I draw my inspiration from the examples of Khadija the breadwinner of her family and also the primary financer of Islam. Also the example of Lady Mariam who fought for the right of the women to practise their faith at the same level and on the prestigious holy grounds that the men of her time did.
Lady Asiya who battled for the rights of the oppressed in Egypt against her tyrant husband: a battle which many women still face in secret. Saida Fatima who fought for the right of women to inherit and on the same platform her daughter Saida Zainab who fought the oppressive sectarian politics implemented by the oppressor.
We also have a beautiful example of religious activism from a lady who we rarely hear about. She refused to denounce her faith, her belief in God, and this led to her death, her martyrdom Sumeia Bin Hadat was the first martyr of Islam.
A poignant side note that is in our history. It is built upon the heroic activism of women and although we say in our religious songs to our children and we educate them in a way that we tell them, your mother, your mother and then your father. Often in our society men still dominate to the detriment of women who only see their worth when it is linked to a man as a daughter, as a wife or as a mother of male heirs.
What I would like to talk about now is my own personal experience being a British Muslim and the experience of many people like myself participating in the media and in public life. It does have its benefits and its challenges. In terms of its benefits I find that here I am given my right to privacy to practice my faith in centres and the right to wear what I want and how I want.
This may be heavily criticised by the far right and even attacked under politically or race related events but the right is undeniably there. As veiled women we are also positively discriminated against in employment and in other fields. I am acknowledged as a minority that is consistently treated unfairly in all fields and the system in this country paves an equal path for me through the equality act of 2010 to be considered ahead of others provided I am as good a candidate as the others in experience and qualification.
On secular issues that affect society like politics, education and health care, as British Muslim women we are given the platform to share our experiences but moral men and women from all backgrounds hear from us too little. When a woman finds herself confident enough to talk in my experience everyone does listen. Whether this has an impact is another issue.
And lastly I find that we empower other women. The right of a woman to chose for herself how she dresses and acts for herself is being accepted in public opinion and legislated on all over the world. There was the case in Saudi Arabia where in 2011 King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and stand in the 2015 municipal elections which are elections in small towns and districts.
To Ireland, most recently where women are now able to have abortions legally. Now to give some context (I know this is a very sensitive issue). Even women who were suffering from health related issues in their pregnancies were still not allowed to abort. This year Irish women (and I heard first hand from victims of this oppressive rule) had to wait until their foetuses died in their stomachs and they still could not abort. Instead they would have to suffer from the dead child shrivelling and decaying in their womb.
This practice of giving a woman the right to abort if it affects her health is something that exists in fikr. It is Islamic in nature because there is no compulsion in religion and if God has not forced us to practise in his way and obey him who is mankind to do so to each other.
Now in terms of the challenges. There are quite a few challenges and I hope to be quite systematic in explaining them for myself. In society there are gender inequalities. And this affects all women whether they are women or not, whether they have faith or not and it is very clear in our communities. It stems from our submission to culture and customs both Eastern and Western.
They exploit women for their own agenda. For example the United Nations 2010 World Women report found that women in developing and developed countries worked longer hours than men – paid or voluntary for the same position. The Geneva Report of 2016 found that women accounted for 70 percent of the world’s hungry yet they are responsible for more than half of the world’s global food production and within the UK we find that there is a huge gender pay: for every pound a man earns his female counterpart earns 91p.
These are not far away figures and we see their impact in our daily lives and in the West. The crisis Muslim women face is two- fold. They are discriminated against because of their gender and their faith in wider society by being denied employment in most cases or access to opportunities to advance as well as being verbally abused in public and physically attacked in the open.
On the other hand they are being discouraged from participating in public life, from their own community. “It is not a women’s place to be on tv, you should be at home.” It is not surprising that hijabi women are considered the most oppressed group in western society according to government statistics.
When the limitations come from all angels. Hijabi women, women of faith who express their faith visibly are seen as flag bearers and are called upon to combat this climate of fear. We need to be at the forefront of society to wear complete hijab, to practise modesty as an act of love for our faith and for ourselves and crucially for other sisters who are empowered by the mere sight of us. We need women to feel proud of their religious identity and not feel the pressure to conform to Western values and ideals of beauty.
Hijab is resistance, it is strength and we have plenty of hijabi representations in the fashion and make up industry. However if we are to dream of women of faith in power we need to put down the brushes and pick up the pens.
Arguably this inequality makes it mandatory for women of faith who are visibly representing their religious values through modesty and other practices to be at the forefront. Inshaallah we can use opportunities like these events at Abrar and yesterday’s Muslim women’s conference was also an excellent opportunity for dialogue from women to men and vice versa where we can create a unity among our own circles but also a sisterhood that can slowly encourage each other to be at the forefront in our own fields. Thank you very much for listening. Salam Aleikum.
Catherine Jones: Aslam Aleikium. My particular thanks to the two sisters at the end of the table. I loved your expression Latifa, it is time to put down the brushes and take up the pens. In other words keep their ears open and have the courage to speak and to write. I would like to start off by telling you a story. I think you realise I speak a strange kind of English. I will try to make myself understood. It comes from New Zealand.
You may be surprised to learn that I have a twin called Rehana Ali. We share the same birthday but not the same year and the story I would like to share with you over the next few minutes is how we have journeyed together: a Muslim woman and myself as a Christian woman, a Roman Catholic nun how we have journeyed together standing at the frontline – we have had some interesting frontlines, mostly in New Zealand.
She is a New Zealand born Muslim – Fijian of Pakistani origin, Khan, whose mother is Dutch from the Netherlands. And they met when Mr Khan went to study in the Netherlands, they married , they did not feel free enough to return to Fiji and they migrated to New Zealand where their children were born and where I have worked very closely with Rehana for the last nine years.
Together we have worked at living our faith in a multi cultural and in a multi religious society. As I was preparing for something to say tonight I remembered a famous theorist of religious development, if I could call it that, by the name of James Fowler who writes about stages of faith.
Rehana and I and some of our Jewish colleagues and Buddhist, and Bahai had some good discussions about the development of faith. What does it mean to live as a Muslim woman, as a Christian woman as Bahai and so on.
When we look at Folwer’s stages we see that there are six of them. You are all familiar with the way little children up to the age of about six can engage in religious stories. They love hearing stories about Noah and the flood and Moses going up the mountain and picking up the ten commandments and having a big fight when he came down. There are stories that are rich there in the Christian tradition and also in the Muslim tradition. They have a great imagination.
And then children move into about the age of seven or eight. And if you have taught children at that stage you know what I mean. They move into a literal phase of faith, in other words the flood was a flood. The creation in seven days was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and on Sunday God rested, in the Jewish/Christian tradition. They are very literal in their faith. This continues for a period of five or six years until the third stage when there is the peer pressure of teenagers. You all have to go off to the mosque, you all have to go off to Sunday school, you all have to trot of to the synagogue or other religious events and you do it because everybody else goes. It is a kind of cultural group faith.
I highlight those three because the next phase is from the mid twenties. You mentioned Latifa that you came to religion in your late teens. That is perfectly on target. Late teens, mid teens, early twenties we move into either a personally chosen faith or we take the risk of putting it aside. Oftentimes with great anguish on the part of our families of parents.
I can remember several years ago working in France, living in a fairly Muslim Qatier on the outskirts of Lyon and our neighbours were predominantly Muslim. And one day we got into a conversation and the man’s name was Mohammed and his wife’s name was Maria. They said it is just terrible about our kids. They do not want to hear anything about religion anymore. They don’t want to be Muslim anymore.
This is perfectly normal and the struggle is the same whatever faith. Rehana and I were blessed in our late teens, early 20s to have made a choice about faith. And it was that time that she chose to wear the hijab. A visible sign of her profession of faith shehada. And at about the same time in a different part of the country I made my religious profession, as we call it, as a sister. I am not a nun, I am a sister. And while we used to wear a veil thirty or forty years ago we wear civies and our visible expression of our faith and our commitment is a very small, you may say insignificant, cross that we wear as a sign of our profession.
That is the time when I heard some very said news about a former colleague of mine in New Zealand who has been diagnosed with advanced cancer who said I want to make it to my eldest sons’s 21st birthday at Christmas. He is only 53 and he has three boys, one coming up 21, two teenagers. I want to make it for his 21st birthday. And his son said if this is the way God is treating my father I don’t want to have anything to do with religion. I am an atheist. Age 21. The rebellion phase. And only God knows, and I mean that sincerely, what will happen to this young boy. Maybe he will come to faith. Maybe the trauma of his father’s death. It is an irreversible cancer. What happens may heal him or it may embitter him. That is a choice we all face. I think you will be able to look back to your own history in that mid late teens, mid 20s and upwards. You know the ambiguities, you know the risks, but this is something I want to do.
And from that we all move into a fifth stage which James Fowler indicates as mystical. It is a bit of an unusual word but it highlights the interiorisation and this is one of the tremendous gifts that Rehana has been for me because we have been able to talk about how we live our faith. How do we experience God in our lives through interpersonal relationships, through the signs of God’s presence in nature around us and in the life of the community, of the ummah.
We also come to realise that the community is not just my immediate family or religious group. It is a community of all people that God has created. Some are Muslim, some are Christian, some are Hindus, some are Buddhist but we all share a common humanity and we live it in different ways through different cultures, through gender orientations, through different religious practices.
And the challenge of early adulthood in our early 20s and 30s, 40s is to live this reality in daily life and making a contribution in society. I have been several times to Rehana’s very posh office right in the heart of Wellington, New Zealand. She is an IT developer of some sort. I don’t understand IT but she does. She has a beautiful big office and she has got the kibbla facing Mecca. There is almost an air of a sacred space there and in the corner is all her IT stuff. But she is deeply involved in the world in which she is living and deeply rooted at the same time in her own faith.
I would like to affirm something that Latifa has already said: that our religious choices are both profoundly personal but in community and in the public sphere. We need to claim that right to be able to express our faith publically whether it is for myself by a small cross, whether it is sometimes when I dress more formally whether one chooses a head gear, or some kind of external manifestations of their faith.
We had great discussions in New Zealand about the Sikh community. The men wear the turban. Are they allowed to wear that when they work in a hospital? Are they allowed to wear it when they work in the police force? And the decision was rightly I think made that they can and that the uniform of a policeman is adjusted to take into account this religious choice. So we have a right to claim it, us as woman. We have a right to claim the public space that is ours because no one is going to give it to us on a plate.
And then there is a final stage that they talk about. It speaks about a sacrificial element of religious faith development and a key identification with truth and justice as we search for it, as we realise that the definitions, the boundaries, the limits are a bit porous at times, there is no such thing as absolute justice or absolute truth – we need to work at these, we need to work at understanding them with one another. And again Rehana through her friendship, through the friendship with her family and local community has helped me to do that.
Not long before I left New Zealand we had a Jewish, Christian Muslim evening sharing our appreciation of someone of another faith. I chose a Jewish woman by the name of Etti Helsim, a young woman in her mid 20s who was put to death in the concentration camps in WW2. And the Jewish speaker thought who is he going to speak about. He spoke about the major of London Sadiq Khan and he said at first I thought I am never going to like this man, he is a Westham supporter. What is a Westham supporter? But this Jewish man appreciated the major of London.
And Rehana took us on a journey of two Christian women who I have never heard of the – the Marapolsa sisters from Honduras who took a stand against an autocratic, violent government and paid the price with their lives. They were one of the disappeared. That is extraordinary. It is a radical commitment that comes either later in our lives and is expressed visibly that we are prepared to take a stand for what we believe.
So just running through those stages of faith you have the child and adolescent phase, the imaginative and the literal and then the sense of peer pressure and then part of being an adolescent and breaking out of that including our parents, sometimes. Moving into a faith of personal choice, a faith that gives of oneself to others and is ready to stake a bold step.
With Rehana and her community we work together on projects for the good of society in refugee resettlement and that is something I am privileged to do here in London as well. We did a lot of work on environmental protection. We are establishing the shore line round the south of Wellington where we lived making sure that the people were able to use the ground and grow their crops and so on.
On one of those occasions I had a pair of tramping boots that were going to wear out and all of a sudden the sole gave way, flop, flop, flop and the sole came off when were up a cliff. So the first aid guy put a bandage around it so here I was with my foot wrapped up with a bandage outside my boot. And someone said to me you must not lose your soul in an interfaith collaborative work. We have had a few laughs about that but again it was our commitment to making the reign of God real where we live.
Rehana and I have also shared the spiritual experience of silent retreat days, particularly the Quakers and the Bahai who teach you what silence is and how to find God in that silence. And finally the observation, and I use the word observation, of others at worship. When Christians go to a mosque, we were invited to go to a mosque and sit down the back with the women with our heads covered, respectful silence, observing but not participating. In other words respecting the Muslim space and it was the same when we offered hospitality in our Christian spaces.
That is as far as I would like to go but I hope we will have some further conversation about the way in which we encourage one another to take and to claim the public space that is ours rooted in our own faith.
Chairman: A number of discussions that we have had on this platform over the years is how secularism has become a dogma whereby the whole conversation is removed from the God zone. The whole essence of the debate is whether it is women who are trying to reclaim the space of talking about God, talking about religion, talking about faith, talking about spirituality where secularism demands that we leave that at home or leave it in the closed environment of religious places rather than bring it into the public domain. And of course tonight is not the evening to discuss that but I am sure it will come up in discussions from the floor.
What I want to say on the comments that our sister made earlier in taking a stand on what we believe. That is the crux of the whole debate whether religious people or people of any faith take up a stand and are not sidelined by the secular forces that are there whether you listen to radio or read in the print media or the broadcast media. That is the sort of dialogue that is being promoted. We should not take a stand, go to work, go home and worry about our mortgages and what to do with it.
Jenan Abdulla Al Oraibi: Good evening to all of you. I am very happy to join you today in this programme and I am very happy to listen to my sisters and their interesting and valuable speeches.
Islamophobia. When we talk about Islamophobia it is not something new. It is not something that we are facing now. It is something that happened ages ago. And actually Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) was the first one who faced Islamphobia when he started to invite people to believe in Allah and when he started to separate his international message of Islam he was humiliated, he was hurt and he was broken hearted because of that.
This continued to all his family and to all the powers and until now to all Muslims. So this is something not new that we are only facing. It affects women especially because we wear the hijab which identifies us and they classify us and sometimes put us in a certain classification.
That is true but there are a lot of examples that we can learn from and we can take them as role models to stand up for what we believe and what we feel is our right.
Today I would like to talk about Lady Zeinab. It is not something easy to talk about Saida Zeinab because when I was trying to prepare for this I was unable to start because I felt I have so much that I wanted to share with you. Shall I talk about my own personal experience as a child. I come from a small village in Bahrain where we used to celebrate muharam during these two very special months and we used to act and do role plays about the orphans and Imam Hussein and how Saida Zeinab used to take care of us. And then when I grew up I used to take the role of Lady Zeinab and we used to move from village to another with this acting.
Shall I talk about her patience and her strength, her political insights, her intellectual wisdom? There is a lot to talk about. But maybe I will talk about her role in spreading the message of Islam and how she shared the responsibility for doing so.
She made history through her famous sermon in the court of Yazid when he was trying to undermine her and to underestimate her when he said we killed all the members of your family and I am sure you remember what she said. She said I saw only beauty. Everything that comes from Allah is beautiful. That was a great lesson for me that through my life I try as much as I can to really remember.
I always try to explain this to my daughters and to share the experience with them. I want them to live the experience that I had as a young girl. I want to share with them how we see Saida Zeinab as our role model and super hero.
When I was a little girl I had some kind of nightmares. I would not open my eyes. I would close my eyes and imagine that Saida Zeinab came and helped me and saved me and that is how we are attached to Saida Zeinab. When Yazid was trying to underestimate her and put her in a weak situation she stood up and she said: Do not think of those who are killed for the cause of Allah as dead. No my brothers, my family are not dead. They are alive with their Lord and receive sustenance from him.
When we talk about Saida Zeinab we only remember what happened at Kerbala. But actually she was an important figure even before that. During her father’s regime in Kufa she used to give valuable lessons to the women and valuable lectures about Islam and Quran. She was the most trust worthy reference from whom Muslim ladies took advice regarding questions about Islam, moral instructions and general ethics.
So that was her role but unfortunately we do not know much about her. What about us, what is our role. We have to share the responsibility of educating people about Saida Zeinab because what I think is happening is that we are caconing her to ourselves. We should take Saida Zeinab out of our mosques and our husseinians – Saida Zeinab is for everybody. She is not just for us.
I believe in this time there are lots of people who are going through a very difficult time, who are suffering from mental health issues, who have suicidal thoughts. If they know about the story of Saida Zeniab that will help them, that will inspire them.
The story of Saida Zeinab is a light, it is a candle and I think we should do more studies and more research and more academic reports about her because there isn’t enough material. Let us be courageous and share what we think with everybody and not worry about the judgmental opinions of others.
I remember in 2010 when the political uprising started in my country I found myself in the middle of that all of a sudden. My husband is a human rights activist and a famous blogger. I found myself in the middle of that, risking my children, my family and my career. And at that time I had to make choices and I know that these choices will affect my children, my family and my career.
I remember a lot of international channels, Al Jazeera, the BBC. They wanted to interview me. And it was very critical and dangerous to do so. I decided to speak about all those prisoners. I remember the BBC reporter asked me at that time aren’t you afraid? And I said yes I am. He asked me why are you doing this? I said I wouldn’t feel myself if I am silent. It would not be me if I am silent.
At that time I went to travel to my brother who lives in Qatar and he told me Al Jazeera wants to interview you. And I gave the interview and my mother was very very angry with me. She said I don’t think what you did was right. You have mission, your husband is in prison and you have a mission now to take care of these kids. I thought in a way my mum is right but that was not me. I would not make that choice.
Now soon millions of believers will make their way to Kerbala to relive the experience of Lady Zeinab. They will walk long distances to reach Imam Hussein’s grave. By this opportunity I would like to invite all of you to take this opportunity and to inspire your minds and hearts and souls and to read more about Saida Zeinab, to know more about her, to reconsider her as an inspiration that will help you in so many aspects in your life. Salam Aleikum.
*Latifa Abouchakra is a Palestinian refugee who came to the UK during her primary school years. She resides in London, where she has completed her BA Law at Kingston University and went on to complete her PGCE at UCL. She is now a full-time mum, a secondary Citizenship + PSHE teacher and a Trade Union Representative. She has used her platform in the Nation Education Union to stand up against racist policies in the UK; most notably within education against the hijab ban attempted via Ofsted and Prevent.
** Catherine Jones is a Roman Catholic Sister, belonging to the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary. She is from New Zealand, with a life-long involvement in Muslim-Christian relations, in Fiji, New Zealand, Algeria, Mauritania and France, as well as in London. Catherine is serving at Notre Dame de France church. Her main ministry is at Notre Dame Refugee Centre which is open to people of all faiths.
*** Jenan Abdulla Al Oraibi is a trainer, human resource specialist and social activist. She holds a BA in English Literature and MA in Human Resource Management. Her university thesis was on “Bahraini women’s expectations of education”. Jenan was responsible for recruiting, training, wages, benefits and setting programmes and policies. She believes that strategic human resource practices are the fundamental source of an organizations’ productivity.
