Quantum note
Friday, March 19, 2010
Dr Muzaffar Iqbal
No one should speak of Muslim life under Jewish rule, especially in the land that was promised to the Jews and then denied; for such speech (or writing in this case) is simply not allowed in the 'civilised' world where I happen to be living now.
The 'civilised' world is only interested in Muslim 'terrorists' whose lives can be taken out any time, for example, by a drone flying over Pakistan--a sovereign country that cannot protect its sovereignty. No one in our 'civilised' world is interested in knowing that a drone has no way of distinguishing between a little baby sleeping peacefully by her mother's side and a real terrorist sitting thousands of miles away in an office from where the drones are controlled. No, such matters require hearts that can feel pain and anguish. Pain and anguish over human suffering is not allowed across the length and breadth of this vast continent, which the writer of the Heart of Darkness could have easily used as his locale.
Thus any speech or writing about Muslim life under Jewish rule will never find its way into the 'free' media of this land; it would immediately be labelled anti-Semitic, pushed under the rug, swallowed. But, mercifully, one can still talk about Jewish life under Muslim rule, even though that opens a window onto a past that no one wants to remember. And those who should remember that time, mostly Muslims, are unable to, simply because of their long sleep of four centuries--the siesta during which the entire world around them has been transformed.
So, it is no surprise that this window onto an enchanting past is being opened by Amnon Cohen, a Jew, who spent years in deciphering documents of the Ottoman Court at Jerusalem and published several articles on the subject in various journals. It is, however, his two volume work, A World Within: Jewish Life as Reflected in Muslim Court Documents from the Sijill of Jerusalem that is our key to the window we wish to open to a bygone past in this column. Even the story of finding this sixteenth-century document is fascinating.
Cohen's research interests led him to the office of the waqf administration and the Higher Muslim Council in East Jerusalem, where he was granted access to the archives of the Ottoman times: 420 leather-bound volumes hardly touched by foreign or local scholars. These documents were kept in the court building for centuries but during the World War II they were moved to the newly established offices of the administration of the waqf on East Jerusalem's main street named after the man whom every Muslim now wants to return to rescue their brethren from their degrading situation: Salah al-Din.
The documents Cohen discovered are actually drafts of the court cases describing the daily proceedings. Each volume contains approximately 450 pages. Each page includes several cases. These daily proceedings of a Muslim court at Jerusalem during the Ottoman times contain a variety of cases, but an interesting part of this archive is those cases which involve Jewish litigants. These are part of the daily court records, without any distinguishing mark. That is, they were treated as normal court cases even though they pertained to a religious minority living under Islamic laws.
These documents provide a wealth of information about the daily life of Jews of Jerusalem. They slaughtered their own meat, followed their own religious laws in all matters. As money changers, they were the fiscal pillars of the local economy, and they lived under complete freedom. There was a very active guild system encompassing butchers, money changers, millers, grain merchants, jewellers, and other trades.
Cohen provides some insights into the Jewish life. Noteworthy among these are the reasons due to which the Jews went to the Shariah court, rather than their own courts, as these court cases do not only involve conflicts between Jews and Muslims or Jews and Christians; they are also replete with cases involving Jews only. So, why would Jews go to a Shariah court?
"They turned to the Shairah authorities," Cohen concludes, "to seek redress with respect to internal differences, and even in matters within their immediate family (intimate relations between husband and wife, nafaqa maintenance payments to divorcees, support of infants, etc.). Other matters of purely religious nature were also introduced into the Muslim court; Jewish prayer shawls and phylacteries, Jewish traditional and communal institutions, Jewish holidays and even Jewish dreams…"
Some examples would suffice: Volume 58, for the Gregorian year 1578-1579, contains a document (no. 122c), dated 7 Rabi al-Awwal, 986, which states: "The Jew Yaqub b. Yusif declared in the court that from now on he would not contradict his father and will involve himself deeply in the study of reading and writing. The father undertook to marry him to a Jewish woman from Safed since he formally declared himself unattached to a certain other Jewish woman."
On the 17th of Shawwal, 986, the same Yaqub b. Yusif was again in the court. On that day he declared in the court that he was divorcing his wife Sara bint Ibrahim from Safed, who was identified by two Jewish witnesses. Both parties, i.e. Yaqub and his father on the one hand, and Sara and her mother on the other hand, absolved one another from any obligation or debt whatsoever.
Less than a month later, the same Yaqub b. Yusif appeared in the court on 9 Dhu'l-Qa`da, "alleging that another Jew, Shmuil b. Khalifa, had promised him his minor daughter, Mazaltuf, in marriage for 25 gold coins as bride-money. Shmuil denied it and referred the court to an earlier deposition by the same plaintiff in which Yaqub specifically referred to his daughter as totally unrelated to him."
Fascinating accounts. Another time, another era. Yet, so much to learn from. Only if Muslims would wake up and start learning from their own history.
The writer is a freelance columnist.
Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com
Showing posts with label Muslim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslim. Show all posts
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, October 15, 2009
What Do Muslim Women Want?
Monday, June 1,2009 03:29
by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed
In sharp contrast to the popular image of silent submissiveness, Gallup findings on women in countries that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations hardly show that they have been conditioned to accept second-class status. Majorities of women in virtually every country we surveyed say that women deserve the same legal rights as men, to vote without influence from family members, to work at any job they are qualified for, and even to serve in the highest levels of government. In Saudi Arabia, for example, where as of this writing, women were not allowed to vote or drive, majorities of women say that women should be able to drive a car by themselves (61%), vote without influence (69%), and work at any job for which they are qualified (76%). Egyptian women, who have faced far fewer restrictions than their Saudi counterparts, speak even more strongly in favor of women"s rights, with 88% of Egyptian women saying that they should be allowed to work at any job for which they are qualified. In Egypt, as in other parts of the Muslim world, this attitude is not just a theory, as a full third of professional and technical workers in Egypt are women, on par with Turkey and South Korea.
If you want to put faces to these data, observe women such as Souad Saleh, an assertive and outspoken woman whose area of expertise is fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence. Saleh is an Islamic jurist and professor at al-Azhar University, the most prominent institution of Islamic scholarship and authority in Sunni Islam. She was the first woman dean of faculty at the institution and is a prolific writer on issues ranging from family law to women"s rights, authoring more than seven volumes on Islam and at least four in-depth research works. A regular on pan-Arab television and one of the most outspoken preachers on Islam, her message is clear: "Islam is simple and holds women in high esteem."
Celebrity preachers aren"t the only ones who defy conventional wisdom. There are also women like Salwa Riffat, an Egyptian woman now in her late 50s who earned her bachelor"s degree in aeronautical engineering from Cairo University and went on to earn her Ph.D. in civil engineering. At the same time, she managed to successfully balance raising a family and fulfilling the demands of her career. She is now a professor of engineering, teaching men and women alike. "Women of my generation were at the forefront of a new era in Egypt," she says, referring to the wave of women attending college that gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s. "Now, it"s hardly something worth noting that in Egypt, universities are filled with women, in some cases more than men, and they are excelling." The valedictorians of Cairo"s elite medical school are famously known to almost always be female.
These cases are hardly unique. Nationally representative self reported data show percentages of women in Iran (52%), Egypt (34%), Saudi Arabia (32%), and Lebanon (37%) with postsecondary educations. In the United Arab Emirates and Iran, women make up the majority of university students. However, in Muslim countries -as well as in non-Muslim countries -Gallup finds a wide range of female education with percentages of women pursuing postsecondary educations dipping as low as 8% and 13% in Morocco and Pakistan, respectively, which is comparable with 4% in Brazil, or 11% in the Czech Republic.
Based on the largest and most in-depth study of its kind, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think presents the remarkable findings of the Gallup Poll of the Muslim World, the first ever data-based analysis of the points of view of more than 90% of the global Muslim community, spanning more than 35 nations.
John L. Esposito is an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown University. Dalia Mogahed is executive director of the Center for Muslim Studies at Gallup. They co-wrote "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think."
by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed
In sharp contrast to the popular image of silent submissiveness, Gallup findings on women in countries that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations hardly show that they have been conditioned to accept second-class status. Majorities of women in virtually every country we surveyed say that women deserve the same legal rights as men, to vote without influence from family members, to work at any job they are qualified for, and even to serve in the highest levels of government. In Saudi Arabia, for example, where as of this writing, women were not allowed to vote or drive, majorities of women say that women should be able to drive a car by themselves (61%), vote without influence (69%), and work at any job for which they are qualified (76%). Egyptian women, who have faced far fewer restrictions than their Saudi counterparts, speak even more strongly in favor of women"s rights, with 88% of Egyptian women saying that they should be allowed to work at any job for which they are qualified. In Egypt, as in other parts of the Muslim world, this attitude is not just a theory, as a full third of professional and technical workers in Egypt are women, on par with Turkey and South Korea.
If you want to put faces to these data, observe women such as Souad Saleh, an assertive and outspoken woman whose area of expertise is fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence. Saleh is an Islamic jurist and professor at al-Azhar University, the most prominent institution of Islamic scholarship and authority in Sunni Islam. She was the first woman dean of faculty at the institution and is a prolific writer on issues ranging from family law to women"s rights, authoring more than seven volumes on Islam and at least four in-depth research works. A regular on pan-Arab television and one of the most outspoken preachers on Islam, her message is clear: "Islam is simple and holds women in high esteem."
Celebrity preachers aren"t the only ones who defy conventional wisdom. There are also women like Salwa Riffat, an Egyptian woman now in her late 50s who earned her bachelor"s degree in aeronautical engineering from Cairo University and went on to earn her Ph.D. in civil engineering. At the same time, she managed to successfully balance raising a family and fulfilling the demands of her career. She is now a professor of engineering, teaching men and women alike. "Women of my generation were at the forefront of a new era in Egypt," she says, referring to the wave of women attending college that gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s. "Now, it"s hardly something worth noting that in Egypt, universities are filled with women, in some cases more than men, and they are excelling." The valedictorians of Cairo"s elite medical school are famously known to almost always be female.
These cases are hardly unique. Nationally representative self reported data show percentages of women in Iran (52%), Egypt (34%), Saudi Arabia (32%), and Lebanon (37%) with postsecondary educations. In the United Arab Emirates and Iran, women make up the majority of university students. However, in Muslim countries -as well as in non-Muslim countries -Gallup finds a wide range of female education with percentages of women pursuing postsecondary educations dipping as low as 8% and 13% in Morocco and Pakistan, respectively, which is comparable with 4% in Brazil, or 11% in the Czech Republic.
Based on the largest and most in-depth study of its kind, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think presents the remarkable findings of the Gallup Poll of the Muslim World, the first ever data-based analysis of the points of view of more than 90% of the global Muslim community, spanning more than 35 nations.
John L. Esposito is an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown University. Dalia Mogahed is executive director of the Center for Muslim Studies at Gallup. They co-wrote "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think."
A veiled attack on freedom in France’s niqab debate
Trying to support Sarkozy’s decision by arguing that niqab is not a religious obligation is absurd, and beside the point. Women in France being allowed to wear niqab if they choose to has very little to do with France’s respect of Islamic law. It has much more to do with the French government’s respect of minority rights, and of the basic human rights of the few Muslim women choosing to wear niqab in the country.
Wednesday, July 8,2009 02:01
by Ibrahim El Houdaiby
French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s comments on the burka or niqab (face cover) have stirred a huge debate in France and in the Muslim world. Sarkozy argued while addressing the French Parliament that niqab is a “sign of [women] debasement” that should be outlawed in France. A parliament commission is reviewing the issue to make recommendations.
Trying to support Sarkozy’s decision by arguing that niqab is not a religious obligation is absurd, and beside the point
I do agree that niqab would be a sign of debasement if women were forced to wear it. Taliban’s government forced Afghani women to wear it, and the Saudi regime forces still beats men whose wives walk around the streets of Riyadh without a face veil. Both regimes have been constantly criticized by Muslims and Westerners alike for their human rights abuses and discriminatory positions. But these positions are not any better than that adopted by the French president, forcing women not to wear niqab. Both positions reflect a belief that the individual woman in unqualified and incapable of making decisions for herself.
Trying to support Sarkozy’s decision by arguing that niqab is not a religious obligation is absurd, and beside the point. Women in France being allowed to wear niqab if they choose to has very little to do with France’s respect of Islamic law. It has much more to do with the French government’s respect of minority rights, and of the basic human rights of the few Muslim women choosing to wear niqab in the country.
I do have respect for women’s individual choices, and I do believe that no law should define what they should or should not wear
Ironically, this argument comes from the very same people who have for long criticized Muslim scholars for “hijacking” religious text and dictating what interpretation are to be viewed as authentic. Their argument has always been that there are no priests in Islam, and that the holy text is open for interpretation. This rationale is being completely reversed now. My good friend Mona Eltahawy puts herself in that exact position by arguing in her New York Times piece that niqab has “nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.”
I am not a supporter of niqab, and I like the vast majority of Muslim scholars I do not view it as a religious obligation. But the fact is that there is a large school of Muslim scholars who believe that it is a religious obligation, and their views should be respected as long as they do not violate the individual woman’s freedom of choice. I do have respect for women’s individual choices, and I do believe that no law should define what they should or should not wear.
I wrote an OpEd some two years ago supporting Eltahawy when the Muslim Brotherhood’s Chief Akef called her naked for meeting him without hijab (headscarf). In that article I made it clear that I “support Akef’s stance on wearing the hijab, and like him view it as a religious obligation,” but not wearing it “makes a woman unveiled, not naked.” I asserted that while hijab in an obligation, I believe “it is an individual woman’s choice to uphold it — a choice that the state should not interfere in.”
In fact, the ban on niqab reflects a trend that has been growing in France over the past decades; political diversity with cultural intolerance
I adopt the same position vis-à-vis niqab. I do not believe it is a religious obligation, and I believe it detaches women who decide to wear it from the society; more specifically from men in the society. But no law should criminalize or restrict an individual’s decision to decrease her social integration, and niqab is not the only manifestation of detachment and should not be singled out and banned. People should be encouraged to engage in their societies through illustrating tolerance, appreciation of diversity and respect for individuals’ choices, not through fascistic measures that dictate what a woman should wear.
In fact, the ban on niqab reflects a trend that has been growing in France over the past decades; political diversity with cultural intolerance. The French government is adopting a version of secularism that is not separating state and religion, but is using the state to dictate specific religious, cultural and social values. Those who accept these values are integrated into the system, while those who rejected it are banned, and marginalized.
I am afraid the notion of liberalism is being twisted to undermine women rights. In fact I would quote President Obama from his speech in Cairo last month saying: “It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.”
* Written for AL ARABIYA. Ibrahim El Houdaiby is a freelance columnist and researcher. A graduate of the American University in Cairo, he holds a B.A. in political science and is working towards a M.A. in Islamic Studies at the High Institute of Islamic Studies.
Wednesday, July 8,2009 02:01
by Ibrahim El Houdaiby
French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s comments on the burka or niqab (face cover) have stirred a huge debate in France and in the Muslim world. Sarkozy argued while addressing the French Parliament that niqab is a “sign of [women] debasement” that should be outlawed in France. A parliament commission is reviewing the issue to make recommendations.
Trying to support Sarkozy’s decision by arguing that niqab is not a religious obligation is absurd, and beside the point
I do agree that niqab would be a sign of debasement if women were forced to wear it. Taliban’s government forced Afghani women to wear it, and the Saudi regime forces still beats men whose wives walk around the streets of Riyadh without a face veil. Both regimes have been constantly criticized by Muslims and Westerners alike for their human rights abuses and discriminatory positions. But these positions are not any better than that adopted by the French president, forcing women not to wear niqab. Both positions reflect a belief that the individual woman in unqualified and incapable of making decisions for herself.
Trying to support Sarkozy’s decision by arguing that niqab is not a religious obligation is absurd, and beside the point. Women in France being allowed to wear niqab if they choose to has very little to do with France’s respect of Islamic law. It has much more to do with the French government’s respect of minority rights, and of the basic human rights of the few Muslim women choosing to wear niqab in the country.
I do have respect for women’s individual choices, and I do believe that no law should define what they should or should not wear
Ironically, this argument comes from the very same people who have for long criticized Muslim scholars for “hijacking” religious text and dictating what interpretation are to be viewed as authentic. Their argument has always been that there are no priests in Islam, and that the holy text is open for interpretation. This rationale is being completely reversed now. My good friend Mona Eltahawy puts herself in that exact position by arguing in her New York Times piece that niqab has “nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.”
I am not a supporter of niqab, and I like the vast majority of Muslim scholars I do not view it as a religious obligation. But the fact is that there is a large school of Muslim scholars who believe that it is a religious obligation, and their views should be respected as long as they do not violate the individual woman’s freedom of choice. I do have respect for women’s individual choices, and I do believe that no law should define what they should or should not wear.
I wrote an OpEd some two years ago supporting Eltahawy when the Muslim Brotherhood’s Chief Akef called her naked for meeting him without hijab (headscarf). In that article I made it clear that I “support Akef’s stance on wearing the hijab, and like him view it as a religious obligation,” but not wearing it “makes a woman unveiled, not naked.” I asserted that while hijab in an obligation, I believe “it is an individual woman’s choice to uphold it — a choice that the state should not interfere in.”
In fact, the ban on niqab reflects a trend that has been growing in France over the past decades; political diversity with cultural intolerance
I adopt the same position vis-à-vis niqab. I do not believe it is a religious obligation, and I believe it detaches women who decide to wear it from the society; more specifically from men in the society. But no law should criminalize or restrict an individual’s decision to decrease her social integration, and niqab is not the only manifestation of detachment and should not be singled out and banned. People should be encouraged to engage in their societies through illustrating tolerance, appreciation of diversity and respect for individuals’ choices, not through fascistic measures that dictate what a woman should wear.
In fact, the ban on niqab reflects a trend that has been growing in France over the past decades; political diversity with cultural intolerance. The French government is adopting a version of secularism that is not separating state and religion, but is using the state to dictate specific religious, cultural and social values. Those who accept these values are integrated into the system, while those who rejected it are banned, and marginalized.
I am afraid the notion of liberalism is being twisted to undermine women rights. In fact I would quote President Obama from his speech in Cairo last month saying: “It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.”
* Written for AL ARABIYA. Ibrahim El Houdaiby is a freelance columnist and researcher. A graduate of the American University in Cairo, he holds a B.A. in political science and is working towards a M.A. in Islamic Studies at the High Institute of Islamic Studies.
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