Over this winter break I had a chance to engage in a number of good dialogs with my wife and friends about what’s going on right now with Muslims, American Muslims in particular (though, as it was recently pointed out, some of this is equally pertinent to Muslims living in Europe). From those talks sprang a reference to the article in which Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, from the Nawawi Foundation, was interviewed regarding Muslims, tradition, and dress. I read over the article again and thought I’d just point out a few brief points, as I felt they were relevant to the last post.
To be specific, Dr. Abd-Allah’s article highlights the dichotomy that exists between Muslims of so-called “Tradition” and its ever-increasing counterproductive results. Dr. Abd-Allah highlights a key issue facing Muslims, namely that of the burden that Muslim women are currently carrying: Identity. Abd-Allah points out this burden is “way too heavy”, and that it in effect reverses the very objective (Maqāsid al-Shari’ah/مقاسد الشريعة) that the Divine Law is trying to aim us towards:
When a Muslim woman in a scarf is coming out into public and she is totally exposed, the man is now in hijāb. He is in hijāb. She’s not in hijāb. She’s wearing a scarf yes, but if we know what hijāb really is, the man is in hijāb because he’s hidden. You can’t see him, you don’t know if he’s a Muslim or Hindu, you don’t know if he’s an Arab Muslim, an Arab Jew, an Arab Christian or just white. The man is in hijāb. That is what hijāb means – he is hidden from the public eye. She is not. She is the one who is absolutely out there, everybody knows it, so that’s hard for her to bear. Continue reading “Getting Serious About Our Islam – More Thoughts on Tradition”