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Many Muslim young women living in the modern world are lost when it
comes to the marriage versus career question. They wander along with
no real guidance, following in the footsteps of their non-Muslim
counterparts and falling face-first into the same disastrous outcomes.
Note that this essay is not meant to demonize women who do have
halal careers. My own mother was a practicing physician for many
years and I myself graduated from Harvard University and planned to
enter the workforce and “change the world” in those naive college
days. I am not blaming my working sisters (some of whom really have
no choice due to their financial situation), but I do blame an
overarching system that puts women in these difficult positions of
defining their self worth according to their careers or lack thereof.
It is feminism that has told us that women need to “be more,” that
women need to “fulfill their potential,” implying that women somehow
gain something by spending their precious hours, days, weeks, years
pursuing money and titles and leadership rather than spending them
on a husband and children. In actuality, women gain very little and
lose much. It is the entire modernist system that has created this
situation and this mindset. We are victims of it, but it is up to us to call
it out for what it is and to not perpetuate it to future generations.
Billoo finds this extremely hypocritical. Frankly, I agree with her, but
not for the same reason.
But Billoo and others suffering from the feminist mindset think that it
is men’s fault for not wanting to marry a dedicated, overworked career
woman. But why? Why can’t men prioritize what they want from a
wife? Why is it surprising that the majority of men don’t want to share
their wives with a demanding career? Why is it surprising that the
majority of Muslim men want wives who will prioritize Islamic gender
roles like motherhood?
This is what feminism values, but it is not what Islam values. In fact,
the opposite.
Is this the sad future anyone wants for his or her daughter?
It is outrageous that one of the things that brings the most happiness
and fulfillment to women in this life — namely, having children,
nourishing them, loving them — is depicted as secondary at best.
Women are told they are better off sacrificing their most fertile years
of their youth pursuing anything other than being a wife and mother.
This is disastrous and now Muslim figures are complicit in pushing this
toxic message.
“The path that Allah chose for me requires that I work long
hours, putting my life and body on the line, to protect my
community.”
In Islam, men are in fact charged with both of these exact tasks:
working to provide and protect. It is to men, not women, that the
difficult task falls of putting their lives and their bodies on the line in
the protection of their families, their communities, and the larger
Ummah of Muslims. Women certainly should protect their children and
family in dire situations and emergencies, but this is not the role in
which Allah has placed Muslim women at large, in general. It IS the
role in which Allah has placed Muslim men.
There are masculine virtues and feminine virtues (as well as masculine
weaknesses and feminine weaknesses). Thanks to feminism, however,
there is a strong, concerted effort to androgenize all attributes and
qualities, and to deny the existence of uniquely masculine or feminine
traits. We increasingly witness the erosion of gender, the war waged
on masculinity (which is equated with toxicity) and on femininity
(which is equated with weakness).
The Islamic system is in stark contrast to all this. Islam has a strong
and healthy conception of gender differences and gender roles. Islam
greatly values marriage and family, and outlines defined roles of the
wife and of the husband therein. Each person has certain rights and
responsibilities; these differ based on gender. The husband is the
leader of the family, stewarding his wife and children in the best way
toward piety, high morals and deen (he is responsible before Allah for
this, which is a fearsome task).
The wife is his helpmate and devoted partner, respecting his authority
and cooperating with him in their joint mission to raise a righteous
Muslim family. The husband is a leader–but with that role comes heavy
responsibilities: he must protect, fully provide for, religiously educate,
attend to the needs of his wife and children without abusing them or
neglecting them in any way. These are the responsibilities of a Muslim
husband and the rights of the Muslim wife. The responsibilities of a
Muslim wife–which are the rights of the husband–are being a
cooperative mate who strives to please her husband and obey him and
to protect his home, his children, and herself in his absence. This is an
efficient and effective division of labor, in which each gender plays a
specific set of roles that capitalize on that gender’s innate strengths.
The wisdom of the Islamic, Divinely-ordained system is clearly superior
to the dysfunctional mess feminism has to offer, if only we reflect.
Billoo continues:
“I didn’t say this to the man at the restaurant, but I will say it
here in hopes that others who are raising their daughters to be
activists and leaders will read it. That’s not enough. You need
to also raise your sons to amplify, celebrate, uplift, and support
the women who are on the frontlines. We can’t do this work
without our communities and families.”
What?
Please don’t bring the Sahabiyyat into this mess. Which Muslim man in
the time of the Prophet, salla Allahu `alayhi wa sallam, married a
woman who worked long hours, marched in the streets, and overall did
not conform to Islamic gender roles in a marriage?
For a person to imply that the mothers of the believers and the female
companions of the Prophet, salla Allahu `alayhi wa sallam, were
“activists and leaders,” in the sense that Billoo refers to, is dishonest.
It’s simply a projection of the values of our current time onto them,
superimposing the modernist secular feminist ideals so popular today
(like “women’s liberation,” “female empowerment,” being a “social
justice activist,” etc.) onto the time of the Messenger and His blessed
generation. To back-project such things into our Islamic history is
irresponsible and misleading.
Were the mothers of the believers, may Allah be pleased with them all,
leaving their homes and their families to travel and speak to crowds of
men and women mixed together, while dressed as we are today? Did
they travel without their mahram to do such things? Were they on any
front line of any battle, in particular after the command of hijab was
revealed?
Yes, Aisha was a wealth of knowledge and she transmitted about one
third of recorded ahadith, but she transmitted knowledge while being
fully concealed behind a barrier to preserve her modesty.
So, why is marrying female leaders “part of our faith practice” as Billoo
and others assert?
In the End…
In the modern Western secular-feminist paradigm, all the above will
elicit gasps of horror. Muslim feminists and social justice activists insist
that men and women are the same and equal in every way and there
are no roles for either gender, and come to think of it, gender itself is
a made-up concoction of the patriarchy, nothing more than a delusion!
Certainly, within feminism, marriage and family are seen as irrelevant
at best, and as oppressive and tantamount to rape at worst. Being a
wife and running a household is derisively called “domestic drudgery.”
Motherhood is looked at with disdain or pity, nowhere near as
important as “real work” that comes with a paycheck every two weeks.
What is alarming is how Muslim activist figures like Billoo and others
push these feminist values as if they were Islamic, when in reality,
they are anything but.