Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (33 page)

A VISIT TO SOUTH AFRICA

I was initially invited to South Africa to participate in the conference “Islam and Civil Society in South Africa” organized by U.N.I.S.A., the University of South Africa in Pretoria, the location for the conference, and by the United States Institute of Peace. As one of the earlier global gatherings to address progressive Islamic discourse and the notion of civil society, the Conference at U.N.I.S.A. was significant. However, initial plans excluded any consideration of gender and Muslim civil society. It was tagged on as an afterthought. Men as males and humans are allocated space in civil society, through citizenship and civil rights. Men are also the primary discussants

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on the meanings of citizenship, civil society, and human rights.
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In many conferences since this one, a single panel is dedicated to women or gender issues. Sometimes, such panels represent mere window dressing, allowing women to be presenters whether or not they contribute significantly to the overall objectives of the conference. Although gender needs to be integrated into progressive and pluralist global discourse, often it still stands uncritic- ally marginalized. No significant attempts have been made to discover a mechanism for the integration of women’s participation and of gender to progressive Islamic discourse. When certain voices within South Africa contested this omission and expressed a need to fill the gender gap, the women’s panel was added to the program. My name was suggested.

After I accepted the invitation to participate in the conference, the Islamic Da‘wah Movement (I.D.M.) invited me to undertake a two-week lecture tour throughout South Africa and Namibia. Stops along the tour

were organized in accordance with the significance of the

da‘wah

movement in modern southern Africa.
Da‘wah
means “call to Islam.” It includes both intra-Islamic and extra-Islamic dimensions. The intra-Islamic dimension of
da‘wah
calls Muslims to renew their faith. The extra-Islamic dimension, in southern Africa, is a call to non-Muslims, especially Black Africans, to embrace Islam. A similar
da‘wah
movement in the U.S.A. between 1930 and the present successfully spread Islam and increased the number of Muslims and Muslim institutions. South Africa and the U.S.A. have comparable histories of extreme forms of racial discrimination. The religion of Islam has attracted many Black followers in part because it is

seen as

a direct response to racial discrimination. I am a product of the

Islamic
da‘wah
movement in the U.S.A. The call to Islam has influenced many African-Americans in ways integral to our empowerment, self- awareness, identity reformation, and spiritual wholeness. Islam is the fastest-growing religion in both North America and sub-Sahara Africa.

As a Black woman, my self-selection of Islam is not only reflected in my career as an academic – a professor of Islamic Studies – but also in my choice of traditional Islamic dress. Both of these were strategically significant to my contribution to the I.D.M. program. Indeed, I.D.M. had previously extended an invitation for me to come to South Africa, indicating confidence

that I was competent to serve in the tasks set before me.
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The main thrust of

those tasks was reflecting a certain image of Islam as an African-American woman who experienced Islam as a source of gender and racial integrity. Therefore race, gender, or both were often of consequence to the activities selected for my visit, including the people I would meet and the places

164 inside the gender jihad

where I would deliver public lectures. I was particularly expected to address matters of gender, which is the heart of my research and the area in which I have made my greatest personal contribution to modern Islamic discourse. I would make appearances or attend meetings among students, in women’s groups, or at Islamic educational institutions. I also was fortunate to meet with other young people from the Muslim Youth Movement (M.Y.M.) and the M.Y.M. Gender Desk, organizations set up to address certain political, socio-economic, religious, and gender dimensions of Islamic activism in South Africa.

When I landed in Johannesburg, I was told that I had been expected the previous day. Thus, with no time to rest from the journey, I attended a M.Y.M. Gender Desk workshop where I first met Shamima

Shaykh (d. 1998).
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That particular workshop was critically reflecting on

the interface between Muslim Personal Law and the New South African Constitution. I was pleasantly engaged by some very intense and bright young minds. I came away with the impression of South African Muslims as both intelligent and forward moving. I responded to their questions and comments without feeling the need to mince my words in order to placate hesitancy and tenuousness over pluralist challenges.

After the meeting, Shamima and I went to a mosque for prayer. A young woman, who had never entered a mosque before, accompanied us. Despite

the challenging posture of the young Muslims I had

just

met, other

South African Muslim factions remain quite conservative. There is a great deal of diversity of expression among South African Muslims. Three hundred years after the arrival of Islam, some had come to the edge of radical consideration and others lingered in narrow conservative con- straints of neo-traditionalism. At dinner, I met Na
‘
eem Jeenah, then editor of a radical Muslim Newspaper,
The Call
, and Shamima’s husband
.
We

discussed many issues of

Islamic thought

and

the

Islamic

movement

in the new South Africa. I realized that South Africa was an eruption of

dynamic energy focused both within

the

Muslim communities to re-

invigorate the faith, and toward the larger South African context of new pluralism and democracy under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.
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The conference was the major activity in the early part of my visit. During it, I learned a great deal about South Africa’s Islamic history and about the importance of the current time marking the successful movement to eradicate apartheid. Muslims had not only been direct and significant contributors to that movement; they were also directly affected by it in developing their articulations of the Islamic experience. I met two

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presenters in the conference considered the most progressive South African Muslim thinkers, Farid Esack and Ebrahim Moosa. During the conference banquet, I also met Rashied Omar,
imam
of the Claremont Main Road mosque.
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What interested me most about South African discourse at the time was the deliberate inclusion of gender equality as an aspect of Islamic social justice. Audiences asked about the idea of woman as
imamah
and
khatibah
on several occasions during my tour. This was the first time I had ever given this matter consideration. I admit a naive excitement about the idea although I had given little or no strategic thought to its impact or rationale. Many of my own rigid parameters were broadened with my encounter of South African Muslims in the Johannesburg–Pretoria area. At the end of the conference, I even exchanged embraces with several of these brothers.

After the excitement of the people and events in Pretoria and Johan- nesburg, I made my way to Durban. Dr. Ebrahim Dada, the director of the I.D.M., collected me at the airport. He seemed more reticent than I had remembered him from a visit to Malaysia a few years previously. As we toured the I.D.M. office, he was clear about the conservative nature of Islam and Muslims in Durban. I took this to mean that I was also expected to be more conservative in my presentations and responses. Changing Muslim minds is a formidable task. I was whisked off that night for a visit to a Muslim school for the blind in Pietermaritzburg. My hostess had two visually impaired children and the youngest one was among students who recited aloud from the Braille Qur’an. I was deeply moved by his recitation and by the struggles of this family and community in creating a space inclusive of those with physical challenges. I remember reaching over to touch his mother’s hand and to express my awe at the struggles with Islam in such various forms: children and adults, women and men, the blind and the seeing, and other handicaps and orientations – all part of the path to surrender.

After I returned to Durban, I delivered several large public lectures. These were interspersed between visits to a local university, Muslim women’s luncheons and dinners, and a visit to an assembly at a large Muslim private school. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by this grueling schedule with sometimes three events in one day, and guarded about the expectation to address such diverse audiences in a manner appro- priate to each. Sometimes I felt successful. After one lecture, a young woman came up to me with several others to offer personal greetings. I admired a ring she was wearing; she took it off and, despite my protests,

166 inside the gender jihad

insisted that I have it. I was beset by the graciousness of such people: strangers touched by the simple reminder of struggling to be Muslim and female. In time, however, I felt inadequate to the daunting tasks. On my last evening in Durban, I was in tears as Dr. Dada returned me to the hotel. Addressing the public need is no easy matter. I needed spaces for quiet reflection to balance my inner equilibrium in the face of such diverse expec- tations and so many outer duties.

The next day I was given just the inspiration I needed to get reinvigor- ated: a trip to the KwaNobuhle, a Black township in the town of Uitenhage, about thirty-five miles from the coastal city Port Elizabeth. The source of that inspiration was my first opportunity to be entirely in the company of Black South African Muslims, many of whom were members of M.Y.M. According to the South African apartheid system of racial division into four distinct racial stratifications, I would have been placed amongst the “coloreds.” Like that of most descendents of African slaves, my blood is now mixed with that of Europeans and Native Americans.Nevertheless, American

categories of

racial stratification discontinued the distinctions between

colored and Black at the end of slavery; we are all identified as Black. My historical identitygave me a great affinity with Black SouthAfricans and I sur- rendered my anxieties into their soulful embrace on this leg of the tour. I not only had a day free to wander through the township, which felt like the comfort of my childhood home in a segregated community, but also partici- pated effortlessly in their program at a small mosque with members of the KwaNobuhle community. This program included children reciting the Qur’an or reading poetry. Following the final part of that program, singing

the new South African national

anthem, “Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika,” all

members of the congregations embraced each other across age and gender lines with nurturance and affection. That was the spirit of community inclu- siveness and compassion that I enjoyed the night before I arrived in Cape Town.
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When the sun rose that Friday morning, I was refreshed by my trip in KwaNobuhle and proceeded on to Cape Town. When I arrived, I was presented with the itinerary for the next week but it did not include any information about the day’s most historically significant event. I was told I would be briefed later on one additional aspect of the itinerary. I had no knowledge about the event. Before I had arrived in Cape Town, however, flyers had already been circulated, announcing that I would deliver the pre-
khutbah
talk at the obligatory
jum‘ah
, collective prayer, at the Clare- mont Main Road mosque. I was only informed forty-five minutes before

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the actual time for prayer about my involvement in it. My excitement about this opportunity rose extremely, although I was left with little time to prepare my remarks.

When I arrived at the mosque the air was thick with excitement. People crowded around the mosque entrance. Women came down from their previously assigned section upstairs and were accommodated in a section next to the men on the main mosque level. The media were obvious by their large television cameras. I made my way through this large number of people and eventually reached the place where I would deliver the
khutbah
:
at the front of the congregation.

THE CLAREMONT MAIN ROAD MOSQUE EVENT WITH GENDER AS A CATEGORY OF DISCOURSE

This section begins with an analysis to address the event at the Claremont Main Road Mosque, in Cape Town, South Africa, August 1994. It reflects simultaneously a groundbreaking nature and a reinscription of gender asymmetry. I offer this analysis after having recounted my personal experi- ences in the previous section in order to draw attention to some of the shortcomings I observed and to utilize its benefits for the promotion of women as leaders in Islamic public ritual. As an explicit articulation for female inclusiveness, I challenge the long-standing historical precedent of male exclusivity in this role. The foundational idea promoted here is the construction of an Islamic ethical rationale for reciprocal relations between women and men in all aspects of society: familial, political, and spiritual functions, roles, and contexts. For me, this reciprocal construct is a reflection of
tawhid
(the unicity of Allah), the ultimate sacred postulate of Islam.
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What I have called the
tawhidic
paradigm constructs a metaphysical triangle embraced by a globe within which the relationships between each of three elements are equally essential: Allah, creator of all; one human being (in this case, we will say female); and another human being (in this case, we will say male). Because Allah is creator, however, and not a thing, the function of Allah in this triad is as the tension that holds the other two on a horizontal line of constant equality. Both are of equal significance and neither can be above the other because the divine function establishes their reciprocal relationship. If human beings really are horizontally equal, independent, and mutually co-dependent, each has the same potential for performing any social, religious, political, or economic task. The cultural