Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (26 page)

1. How does a saying about “paradise at the feet of the mother” fit the struggles of poor and single mothers? “Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women.”
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   When I submit my
   

   resume for jobs, grants, or creating short bios in other public roles, the twenty-plus pages is impressive to some, but if a short biographical sketch is composed I always request they include that I am the mother of five children as the most important achievement. This chapter is partially inspired by the living hell for many single female parents, or women with disabled or un-able fathers, husbands, and brothers in a Muslim com- munity that pretends such an expression is a statement of fact and therefore ignores the agony of these women, making them invisible. It is not intended to direct attention to their plight for the purpose of pity. Rather, I use the particulars of this experience as a major criterion for challenging all reformist dialogue that is held primarily by men whose “fight” for justice focuses so exclusively on the right to preserve or extend greater privilege to the ones already privileged – Muslim men. They offer little or no direct
   

   contribution to the discourse and practice of family,
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   nor to the eradication
   

   of poverty with its negative gender consequences. Neither have they partici- pated in, recognized, or allowed entry into their discourses the words and experiences of the ones who demonstrate the critical failure of elitist reform discourse in the first place – poor mothers.
   

   On the contrary, most Muslim male reformists wantonly secure their
   

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   own families according to patriarchal traditions. The number of women in the Muslim world whose lives and suffering are allowed to remain invisible discredits the aspirations articulated by such men as progressive Islam. It is disappointing to note how frequently some who are considered the most progressive are at best liberal in their gender agendas as evidenced by the embodiment of their own domestic experiences. Their failure to listen to, understand, or incorporate the self-expressions of the diversity of Muslim women renders them deaf to the intense ways these women need assistance in the name of reformed Islam and the agency they could contribute in constructing reforms beyond the double jeopardy.
   

   If the most oppressed amongst us – those with a life of suffering and despair that lies writhing under the floor of the fancy conference halls and behind the walls of elegant five-star hotel rooms inhabited by those considered champions of Islamic freedom and justice – are not equal parti- cipants in the discourse, then reform discourse remains a hypocritical fa
   ç
   ade. The inconsistencies of elites seeking to enhance their privileges, for example by taking full benefit of their wives’ care-work, in order to focus exclusively on power politics as philosophical and theological foundations for a reformed Islamic future, allow this discourse to ignore those whose lives represent the level of survival and struggle most reflective of the need for this movement.
   

   MOTHERHOOD
   

   “As a universal category equated with nature, ‘motherhood’ does not survive historical deconstruction.”
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   As I will subsequently contend, mother- hood, like family, is socially constructed. The “role” of mother has been variously conceived and variously fulfilled. “The history of motherhood also requires careful examination of the status and image of women in particular cultures. Although not all women are mothers, all mothers are women: gender arrangements play a crucial role in organizing the insti- tution of motherhood and shaping its ideologies.”
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   Many forces, including religion, influenced the conceptions of the ideal mother. “All religious systems develop norms for behavior and relationships, including family relationships, with explicit and implicit ideas and prescriptions concerning sexuality and parenthood, mothers and children.”
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   At different times and places in the history of family – particularly for wealthy elites – all that was required for one to be a “mother” was actual biological reproduction. No conception of caring for the child was
   

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   associated with it, including the first aspect of infant survival, nursing. In Islamic history, this is borne out by Qur’anic references to wet-nursing, and by the
   sirah
   literature describing the Prophet’s own wet-nurse, Halimah. No charge of un-motherliness was ever launched against Aminah, the bio- logical mother of Muhammad, because nursing one’s own infant was not part of the understanding of “motherhood.” The mother was the one who gave birth. Even in Arabia by that time, the father’s clan or tribe was responsible for the child’s upbringing. We can only speculate what other aspects of child rearing were associated with the biological mother.
   

   Today’s new technologies further complicate even the basic physiology used for conception and motherhood. Who is the mother – the donor of the egg, or the one who carries that egg to full gestation? Islamic medical experts and legal thinkers have had to react to some of the new repro- ductive technologies, even if only to declare them un-Islamic. Paramount in their consideration is determining how circumstances of birth for such off- spring potentially determine the subsequent eligibility in conjugal relations. Questions of legitimacy and inheritance must also be resolved.
   

   Such changes also emphasize the complex concerns over family and the ways people conceive of the role of the mother. “However mothers are characterized, they are always female parents – that is, they are women.” So
   

   “certain fundamental and long lived ideas about women,”
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   about the
   

   body and about sexuality, are likely to be reinscribed in our social con- structions of the role of the mother. In many cases the good woman is equated with the good mother. This moral association allows for the conception that women’s sexuality and reproductive potential are meant to serve the household or the husband. This naturally leads to particular kinds of domestic ideology.
   

   Aliah Schleifer
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   built a case around the concept of motherhood as one
   

   of sacrifice and martyrdom. The evidence for the case is very skeletal,
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   even while it mimics ideas about motherhood promoted during the Middle Ages in Christianity when “the association of motherhood with suffering and of suffering with holiness” made it “possible for women who were mothers to be eligible also for sainthood.”
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   When we extol selflessness as a particular virtue of the mother – but not as a general category of virtue for all humans – we are setting up a standard of motherhood that is exceptional to other human functions, even within the family. Inadvertently, we are requiring women to fulfill those virtues, while exempting men and children.
   

   -
   

   We have an entire array of virtues and values of “mothering” that become a special prison for women who try to emulate them; while cliches alone are
   

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   set up to facilitate or coerce those roles, no structural systems of support
   

   are provided by public
   

   policy, as befits a full citizen in relationship to
   

   human and societal well-being.
   

   The evolving structures and ideals should alert us to “the historicity of motherhood – an institution constructed over time and differently enforced and experienced in different times and places.” Indeed, “[m]otherhood never was purely
   ‘
   natural
   ’
   ; it has always been shaped by religious systems, power relationships, and material structures. Its historicity and contingency have become increasingly apparent in our times.”
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   “It is also a historical construction – embattled, vulnerable, requiring recreation in each gener- ation. To recognize its historicity is to begin to assume responsibility for the character of its reconstruction.”
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   To incorporate critically the paradig- matic implications in the life of Hajar as relived in various ways by Muslim mothers today lends much to reconstruction in Muslim Personal Law.
   

   Special care and consideration prevents this reconstruction from falling into the trap of extolling the sanctity of motherhood as “natural,” thereby ignoring the burdens of care-work for all mothers, but especially the multiple levels of work expected of single mothers. Certain Islamic sayings like “paradise lies at the feet of the mother” should not be used to shield
   

   civil society from
   

   taking
   

   a hard
   

   look at the ways
   

   women
   

   are treated
   

   in the family and the complexities of circumstances for women as mothers.
   

   “The ‘sanctity’ of motherhood . . .
   

   failed to protect those who gave birth
   

   and raised children in urban poverty or rural slavery.” Such women were assaulted by their status and still expected to be paragons of the virtues of selflessness and sacrifice useless for their and their children’s plight – survival in a contemptible margin of invisibility. In such a plight “the bankruptcy of the ideal [of motherhood] was exposed, along with its role in enforcing race and class as well as gender privilege.”
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   Unless the larger social and legal structure is set up to lend meaningful support to the particular virtues it extols in its “ideal” of family and motherhood, then it is responsible for sustaining a double bind, victimizing women who parent children alone. They must uphold the virtues of the family while competing
   

   in a public sector that disregards their familial roles because they are not the standard used to measure the predominant male participant whose essential status is determined by their exclusion from maternal care-taking.
   

   FAMILY IN ISLAM, OR GENDER RELATIONS BY ANY OTHER NAME
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   As with the construct of “mother,” the concept of “family” is a term
   

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   frequently used in various contexts with little critical reflection upon its meanings and their implications. In fact, family is so often promoted as the cornerstone of society that the constituent parts of what constitutes family
   

   are lost in the process.
   

   Many
   

   derived
   

   concepts
   

   are built
   

   upon
   

   in-
   

   adequate definitions and variously constructed notions that contribute to public acceptance and that come to eschew a set of values as “family values.” Another impetus to my research on family began with the United Nations’ declaration of 1994 as the “Year of the Family,” one year before the Women’s International Conference in Beijing. After this declaration, which promoted national discussions on “family” values, there immedi- ately followed a public campaign in the U.S.A.
   

   It is easy for international bodies like the U.N. to make such designations and expect universal consensus from international communities. My primary question, along with other women’s organizations in South and Southeast Asia, was: Who has the authority to define “family?” With these women I worried that the definition authorized would result in certain plans, whether exploitative or beneficial to all members in the real complex- ities of family circumstances and structures. How would certain limitations embedded in the underlying presumptions of family further exacerbate problems existing for so many families? From this concern over definitions and settings of basic “family” paradigms I began some deliberations over policies with regard to actual families. Although I have continually revisited ideas about Qur’anic flexibility in accommodating more than one model of family to propose intra-Islamic justifications for the social construction of more egalitarian notions, my own experiences and ideas about family were transforming continually. This chapter revisits some of the stages of that transformation. Moreover, my ideas about “family” have proven to be more significant in influencing my experiences as a Muslim woman than I had imagined at the time I began to research the topic, to say nothing of the time I surrendered to being Muslim.
   

   Although my task here has been to dismantle some of the implications of various conceptions of the term “family” starting with Hajar, a few historical examples, and developments within both early Arabian cultures and other global developments, the major goal is demonstrating how and advocating why it is necessary to reconsider family in the context of Islamic reform in modernity. In particular, the future of the harmonious continuity of Islam in the face of global realities requires Muslims to be more conscien- tious about the underlying implications of “family” in the ways we establish, protect, and promote family in Muslim societies as they bear
   

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   upon Family and Personal Status Law. Such unexamined definitions of family in legal practice allow certain kinds of abuses within the family to go unchecked.
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   These abuses are especially experienced by those members most dependent upon the family for survival, protection, support, well- being, identity, and legal status, like women, children, the elderly, and persons with handicaps or disabilities. It is my contention that the failure of civil society, including Muslim civil society, to look carefully at the under- lying notions of the term “family” while simultaneously relying upon it as a “cornerstone” of social well-being, the source of a system of “values,” and the place for the development of morality, implicates those societies in the commitment of the various crimes and abuses which occur within the family.
   

   KINSHIP AND FAMILY IN PRE-ISLAMIC AND EARLY ARABIAN MUSLIM CONTEXTS
   

   My goal in focusing attention toward the underlying implications of various forms of “family” is three-pronged: (1) to advocate for more egali- tarian notions of family in the context of Islamic societies in modernity;
   

2. to demonstrate how such notions are more commensurate with the Qur’anic social and moral ideals; and finally (3) to indicate how the willful
   

progression