Spare Me the Sermon On Muslim Women

Last updated Thursday, October 9, 2008 9:14 PM CDT in Religion

By Mohja Kahf
SPECIAL TO THE MORNING NEWS

I embraced that principle, and my collection grew: The blue-and-yellow daisy print is good with jeans, the purple voile for a night on the town, the gray houndstooth solidly professional.

As beautiful as veils are, they are not the best part of being a Muslim woman -- and many Muslim women in Islamic countries don't veil. The central blessing of Islam to women is that it affirms their spiritual equality with men, a principle stated over and over in the Quran, on a plane believers hold to be untouched by the social or legalistic "women in Islam" concerns raised by other parts of the Scripture. Wherever in the world they live, this is how most believing Muslim women experience God: as the Friend who is beyond gender, not as the Father, not as the Son, not inhabiting a male form, or any form.

Reasons for being a joyful Muslim woman go beyond the spiritual. Marriage is a contract in Islam, not a sacrament. The prenup is not some new invention; it's the standard Muslim format. I can put whatever I want in it, but Muslims never get credit for that. Or for having mahr, the bridegift that goes from the man to the woman -- not to her family, but to her. A mahr has to have significant value-a year's salary, say. Hey, I got mine -- cash -- and I was married in Saudi Arabia, a country whose laws come from the strictest end of the Muslim spectrum.

I had to sign my name indicating consent, or the marriage would not have been valid. Yes, of course, I chose whom to marry. Every Muslim girl in the conservative circle of my youth chose her husband. We just did it our way, a conservative Muslim way, without this nonsensical Western custom of teenage dating. My friends Salma and Magda chose at 16 and 17: Salma to marry boy-next-door Muhammad, and Magda to marry a doctor 10 years her senior who came courting from far away. Both sisters have educations and careers, and both are still vibrantly married, their kids now in college.

I held out until I was 18, making my parents beat back suitors until I was ready. And here I am, still married to the guy I finally let in the door, 22 years (some of them not even dysfunctional) later. Another childhood friend, Zeynab, chose four times and is looking for Mr. Fifth. Her serial monogamy is not something she picked up from reading Cosmo or from the "liberating" influence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It's what a lot of women in early Muslim history did, and many Muslim women still exercise that option.

Would you guess that we've been freer to divorce and remarry than Christian and Jewish women have been for most of history? When Christian authorities were against divorce and remarriage, this was seen as another Islamic abomination. Now that divorce and remarriage are popular in the West, Muslims don't get credit for having had that flexibility all along. We just can't win with the Muslim-haters.

Here's another one: Medieval Christianity excoriated Islam for being orgiastic, which seems to mean that Muslims didn't lay a guilt trip on hot sex (at least within licit relationships). Now that hot sex is all the rage in the post-sexual revolution West, you'd think Muslims would get some credit for the pro-sex attitude of Islam -- but no. The older stereotype has been turned on its head, and in the new one, we're the prudes.

Of course, I'm still putting in my time criticizing Muslim misogyny (which at times is almost as bad as American misogyny), so I am quite aware of the abuses that go on-but may I have one moment to celebrate some of the good stuff? The Quran doesn't blame Eve. Literacy for women is encouraged by the Prophet Muhammad. Rapists are punishable by death in Islamic law (yes, an atavistic part of me applauds that death penalty), which they are not in any Western legal code. Birth control allowed in Islamic law? Check. Abortion? Again, allowances exist -- even Muslims seem not to remember that.

It's easy to forget that Muslims are not inherently more sexist than folks in other religions. Muslim societies may lag behind on some issues that women in economically advanced, non-Muslim societies have resolved after much effort, but on other issues, Muslim women's options run about the same as those of women all over the world. And in some areas of life, Muslim women are better equipped by their faith tradition for autonomy and dignity.

There are "givens" that I take for granted as a Muslim woman. It took European and American women centuries to catch up to Islamic law on a woman's equal right to own property. And it's not an abstraction; it's a right Muslim women have practiced, even in Saudi Arabia, where women own businesses and endow trusts.

Khadija was the boss of her husband, our beloved Prophet Muhammad, hiring him during her fourth widowhood; she then proposed marriage to him. Fatima is the revered mother of Shiite Islam, our lady of compassion. Her daughter Zainab is the Muslim Antigone, shaking her fist at the corrupt caliph who killed her brother. Saints, queens, poets, and scholars adorn the history of Muslim womanhood.

More recently, Muslim women have been heads of state five times in Muslim -- majority countries, elected democratically by popular vote (in Bangladesh twice, and in Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan). And I'm not saying that a woman president is necessarily a women's president, but how many times has a woman been president of the United States?

All that gorgeous history pales when I open my closet for the evening's pick: pink-and-beige plaid, creamy fringed wool or ice-blue organza? God, why would anyone assume I'd want to give up such beauty? I love being a Muslim woman. And I'm always looking for my next great polka-dot scarf.

Mohja Kahf is the author of the novel, "The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf," and an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas. This piece ran in The Washington Post on Sunday.

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