On Monday, November 3, 2014, Samaa Elibyari, member of CCMW’s Montreal chapter spoke at an event titled “Women of faith, meeting challenges – seizing opportunities”. Read her wonderful speech here.
Author: Samaa Elibyari
I want to thank the organizers of this event for their invitation. I am filling in for Mrs Shaheen Ashraf, board member of Canadian Council of Muslim Women since she is out of town.
Allow me to start by sharing with you this press release concerning the tragic events that took place last month.
October 23, 2014 All members of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) join with our fellow Canadians in conveying our condolences to the families of Corporal Nathan Cirillo who was killed while standing guard at the Ottawa National War Memorial, and of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent who was murdered in Quebec on October 20, 2014. Words are inadequate in expressing our horror and our sorrow.
It is a profoundly sad day for Canadians because what has happened today is out of character of our nation.
Although it is not yet confirmed, from the media reports, as to the motivation of Michael Zehaf Bibeau, it is reported that he was a Muslim. If he or Martin Couture-Rouleau killed in the name of Islam, we are extremely saddened that they so misconstrued the teachings of their faith, and acted so violently and murderously.
We hope our voices will be heard when we speak out loudly and clearly that the actions of those who commit murder and chaos do not reflect our understanding of Islam.
Signed Alia Hogben, Executive Director
It is no secret that after these terrorist attacks, Prime Minister Couillard called on leaders of the Muslim Community for help. While our community is pleased by Mr. Couillard’s initiative, the consensus is that we have to face the current situation as a society. More precisely, we advocate more mental health services.
In one of the meetings with a Muslim panel, it was suggested that Health Minister Mr. Barrette be also implicated as well as social services if we want to avoid similar tragedies.
I would also humbly but strongly recommend that Mr. Harper not get further embroiled in the conflict with the so-called Islamic State in Iraq. Mr. Jean Chrétien has very well detailed what role Canada can play. Getting into the details isn’t the subject to our panel tonight.
What is relevant to our topic however is the recommendation of Mr. Drouin, mayor of Hérouxville on how to eradicate terrorism. His solution is simply to ‘shut down all the mosques’ presumably to discourage conversion to Islam. I don’t want to disappoint Mr. Drouin but no one needs a mosque or even an Imam to convert. If one wants to declare becoming a Muslim, he or she has to pronounce the Shahada which is a phrase stating that ‘there is only one God and that Mohamed Peace be upon him is his messenger’ in front of two reliable witnesses. No more no less.
It is reported that some of those wannabe jihadists choose to convert on YouTube. I am not in a position to issue a fatwa ‘edict’ to proclaim whether this is acceptable or not. However, the role of the witnesses is to make the event known in the Muslim community and certainly the jihadist groups are very well attuned to YouTube and other forums of social media.
A social worker related that a youth living in Montreal was rejecting his family values. He wrote a rebellious message stating his intention to become a Muslim. His mother was startled to find that within 24 hours, her son was flooded with supportive and welcoming emails.
So closing the mosques will make no difference to the security situation but it sends the message to the lay person that Muslims gather in places that breed terrorism. For the record, in Lac St-Jean de Richelieu as well as in Vancouver Imams had alerted the police to the danger.
Let us bear in mind that mosques aren’t clubs, they are open to whoever walks in, no one checks your identity card at the door or asks you about your religious affiliation. As long as you take off your shoes at the entrance and be modestly dressed you’re in and I might add warmly welcomed. No questions asked.
Since the mosques aren’t going to be closed tomorrow, you may say what is the worry? This suspicion and fear of our community has very real implications because it directly affects our employment opportunities hence integration.
In the report that was submitted by CCMW to the Bouchard-Taylor commission, we showed using figures from Statistics Canada that Muslim women ranked second as far as education levels but were at the bottom of the list for employment opportunities. This trend has been consistently maintained even before 2001 and has by all account increased since then. In Québec, for more than two decades, among the North African Muslims, now the predominant group in Québec, the unemployment rate hovers around 30% compared to 7 to 12% for others. And we are talking about equal qualifications.
It is not usual to find job seekers changing their Muslim name to avoid being automatically eliminated. Last week, a father was confiding to me ‘ I don’t know if I did the right thing by naming my son Mohamed-Ali’. I remained silent. ‘The second I named Hussein, it’s not so bad with this one. Isn’t it? He continued.’ Judging that it wasn’t the time to be honest, I replied trying to be convincing ‘Oh, no you did very well, we should be proud of our heritage’. I agree he replied, I just don’t want my son to be hindered by his name, stopped at airports, you know ..’ Of course I know. I know that it is going to be equally hard for Fatma and Zeinab.
Our community also expects the tragic events of last month to have long lasting effects as Mr. Harper is rushing to introduce new surveillance laws and granting more powers to CSIS (The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada’s primary national intelligence service).
Our resources are limited and we find ourselves constantly fending off attacks on our community, leaving us little time and energy to concentrate on core issues. The silver lining is that situation has mobilized more women who otherwise would have been content to go on with their lives, to become more involved in public affairs.
At a recent meeting someone remarked that to be a Muslim is a rich heritage. Everyone will go to the notary to remind you of it, whether you want this heritage or not.
There is a saying ‘Hadith’ of our prophet Mohamed peace be upon him that Islam is built on five pillars, the declaration of Faith, Prayers, Fasting Ramadan, giving a prescribed amount of your wealth to charity know as Zakat and performing a pilgrimage to Mekka, if affordable physically and materially.
Nowadays in the Western societies, we can clearly identify what I view as the five pillars of Islamophobia; hijab, jihad, halal, sharia and inequality of women to men. Because of time limitations I will only mention one anecdote about the hijab.
On Friday October 31 2014, The Montreal Gazette published under the title ‘Métro user was strangled by scarf: coroner’s report’. Following the strangulation death of a 47 year old woman whose scarf got snagged in the teeth of one of the moving steps at the Fabre station in January, coroner Paul G. Dionne wrote in his report that ‘ Naima Rharouity died as a result of asphyxiation by strangulation’ .
Some news reports on the day of the fatal accident claimed that Naima was wearing a hijab, suggesting that the religious headgear might have been partly to blame for her death- a claim that was being made during the divisive debate over the proposed Charter of Quebec values.
In his two page report, Mr. Dionne does not use the word hijab observing instead that Naima was wearing a ‘hoodie (Capuchon in French), a long coat, a long scarf and a white bag in her left hand’. Naima’s scarf, coat and hair got caught in the escalator.
Even without the coroner’s report, we know that the hijab cannot cause strangulation since it is wrapped around the chin not the neck. However every possible negative aspect of wearing the hijab, real or imaginary is exploited to the max.
In a meeting attended by several Muslim women and staff at the CBC we were asked the question ‘ What do you want to see in the media about Muslims and Islam?’ My answer ‘ I don’t want to see anything’ This was a few years ago, it is still valid today.
Some might point out that the series ‘Little Mosque in the Prairie’ was popular, still it doesn’t balance the bombardment of negative stereo types, news, comments, so-called documentaries, talk shows, especially in French
The source of this negativism towards our community and specially women who are identifiably Muslim by their attire or their name or both could be ignorance, antipathy or opportunism since, let us be frank about it, it pays to be anti-Muslim. It’s even better if you can also pass for knowing how Muslims think, no matter how shallow this knowledge is or how much of it is rational or factual.
As an example, in the book ‘The trouble with Islam’ that propelled her to fame and earned her the reputation of a progressive thinker, author Irshad Manji explains that Muslims aren’t encouraged by their religious teachings to be critical. According to Ms Manji we are only good at memorizing and doing what we are told. As proof she notes that the first phrase of our holy book the Qur’an, as revealed to our prophet was Iqra’a, which she translate as recite. Apart from ignoring the many schools of thought through the ages, the diversity of respected opinions, the encouragement to reflect on the tenants of Islam and to act according to our conscious, Ms Manji chooses the verb ‘to recite’ as the meaning of Iqra’a. In fact, Iqra’a means also to learn and to get informed. Up till this day, in North Africa, one would hear the phrase ‘ I read at such university’ implying I study at such university. Similar distortions are unfortunately wide spread
The Qur’an being the primary source of guidance in Islam, one can appreciate the importance of getting the message right if we want to abide by its injunctions. Contrary to popular belief this is a dynamic situation since our society today is not the same society of more than 14 centuries ago.
So how do we adjust to our times and circumstances? Who reads the Qur’an and who explains it, what is known as interpreting the text. And how this teacher or this facilitator projects his own values and the values of his/her society on his/her readings, even with the best intentions?
Although there is agreement on the fundamentals one area of our faith that requires examination is the status of women. In her foreword to the study commissioned by CCMW, Asma Barlas writes ‘that there is a tendency to ascribe abuse of women to Islam’s own scripture. And since for Muslims, the Qur’an is God’s word, the pervasive view is that God gives men the licence to control or ill-treat women’.
Studies undertaken by Muslim female scholars show that one can interpret the Qur’an as rejecting women’s abuse. Which raises the question ‘why many Muslims cling so compulsively to patriarchal interpretations’.
Asma Barlas, author of ‘Believing women in Islam’ explains:‘ the most obvious answer it that, since Muslims live in patriarchies in which male authority is taken for granted, they do not question their own approach to the Qur’an’.
She continues to state: ‘The most theologically problematic assumption some Muslims make is that God is a male since the Qur’an refers to Allah (God) as He/Him. However, these gendered references are simply a function of the Arabic language as is obvious from the Qur’an categorical assertion that God is uncreated, hence incomparable. To this end, it even forbids using metaphors that convey similarity for God.
Of course, if God is not a male and is, in fact, beyond sex/gender, one might ask why God would favour men and discriminate against women’.
My mother tongue is Arabic and I was raised in a family with a long tradition of Muslim scholarship. It was in Montreal that I heard for the first time a feminist telling me ‘Your God is a male’. I attribute that to the literal translation of the Arabic text which is the original language of the Qur’an and to the low level of education in general in many Muslim countries, especially religious education.
In the Qur’an there is absolutely no derogatory claims about women and it clearly stated that Allah created human beings from a single self (nafs), an account that does not establish a hierarchy between men and women, confirms Asma Barlas.
This kind of research is important because it encourages Muslim women to study the tenants of their faith which is an obligation upon all Muslims, men and women.
Finding out how Islam views women, what is their status, their rights etc.. is also particularly important for Muslims living in the West since there is so much misconceptions about these issues. For example, the Qur’an says nothing about such practices that are associated with Islam such as stoning to death (or beheading as they do in Saudi Arabia) for adultery or female genital mutilation.
Genital mutilation is an ancient practice dating back more than 5 thousand years, in African countries bordering the Nile river. Such a practice is documented to have taken place in the times of the Pharoas. If today we know that it is wide spread in Somalia, it is because of Somalia’s geographic location and traditions not Islam. We find the same practice in Ethiopia which is a neighbouring predominantly Christian country.
Among the research done with African woman concerning Female Genital Mutilation, I quote from the book Violence against Muslim Women, published by CCMW;
‘There was also a widespread perception that Western feminists and human rights organizations had fixated on FGM, often with the consequence of leaving, in the respondent’s view, more serious concerns related to the very survival of African women and children in the background, as expressed by this quote: ‘.. Western women need to put themselves in the others’ shoes ..
Did you ever speak to us? Did you ask us? Did you assume?’
Among the pressing issues for African women were lack of drinkable water, lack of access to education, their desire to participate in their countries’ political process, infant and child mortality and lastly famine’.
Even if the Canadian Council of Muslim women receive grants to carry out studies that hopefully will debunk some hurtful myths towards Muslim women, the biggest challenge is how to disseminate the knowledge in an effective way.
It is not easy to eradicate deeply rooted believes, especially if they are taken as divine relegations. Moreover our community isn’t monolithic, we are a microcosm of the entire Islamic world, with all its diversity in thought, ethnicity, educational level, material wealth, political orientations, identity affiliation etc..
It will take means far beyond those of a single organization to produce noticeable change but the first and most critical step of initiating the thoughts is under way.
Encouragingly, the winds of change are blowing in some parts of the Muslim world. In the Arab Midlle East and the Gulf countries, Turkish soap operas are presently extremely popular. If the series ‘The harem of the Sultan’, the Sultan being Suleiman the magnificent, is pure entertainment, other series have a profound social reaching.
One series addressed the issue of the marriage of a young woman to an older man.
Another one was about the union of a Turkish man and a Greek woman. This provoked so much resentment in Athens that Greek men protested in front of the TV station demanding the removal of ‘this garbage’.
One political analyst called such TV programs the ‘soft political power of Turkey’.
The actors are intellectually interesting and physically stunning: the women are exceptionally beautiful, graceful, intelligent, educated, ambitious. The men are beyond handsome, they are also brave, tender, loyal. Romance gets more than its rightful place in marriage and love overcomes obstacles of social status and political enmity.
These series have become so popular that household activities are organized around them. So much so that in the United Emirates a couple went to seek marital counselling. The wife deemed not to be disturbed during her favorite soap opera program, as her right. The husband disagreed. They both went to an Imam for his advice. The wise man said to the husband ‘ It’s your fault, who brought the TV in the house?’.
Thank you
