Dr. Celene Ibrahim: Female Archetypes in the Qur'an

bismillah r-rahman r-rahim may peace and blessings be upon our prophet and his family so I'm your host for this afternoon Sima Jahan and I managed a tunas community engagement program usually through this community engagement program we go out to the broader audiences in across the country and with our scholars giving talk and talks on different topics teaching classes to kind of create literacy about the mission and vision of Zaytuna College and here we are today on the campus first time because we have a scholar who is coming from somewhere else to Zaytuna College mashallah so I really thank your presence here I thank my colleagues staff faculty dr. crazy for always guiding and helping in every possible manner so I would also like to give you outline of today's program so after me dr. jawad Qureshi will introduce our guest for this for today and after that dr. Saleem will give her presentation and lastly the audience's can ask the questions and the preference will be given to say Tina students I hope you all will comply with that and that's all and let's start the journey thank you it's not Michael it's not Michael there we go okay not the mic was off aha it's a pleasure to have dr. Shalini and brahim visiting us here as a tuna hamdullah she spent the early part of her day with our students and they were all seemed really excited about having her here so we're really pleased to have her here she comes to us from she's teaching currently at the Groton school in Boston she and in Massachusetts she'd finished her PhD at Brandeis University her talk today is it comes from what's her forthcoming book women figures in the Quran which is tentatively titled woman figures in the Quran Oxford University Press having a lot you know Quranic Studies is in a very burgeoning phase right now much of what dominated the way in which the Quran was studied in the West has you know people have moved on from that questions of all as one does we actually date the history the Quran can we date it to the seventh century can we dated there was a school of thinking that kind of held everybody's minds from thinking originally about the Quran and actually saying they're more concerned with a question of the one we can date the Quran to what the actual what the Quran actually says so you would find people that would say for example the Quran comes not from the time of the prophets of Allah why they would send them but it comes from a few centuries later it's a product of these inter Arab debates between Christians and Jews third century of the Hydra second century the Hydra and then there's a you know recently they found these manuscripts of the Quran in Bergen Birmingham University in other places and they carbon-dated them and they carbon dated them to within seventy years of the life of our prophets of the lives of them and that kind of ends the discussion for a lot of people but some people said you know what there's a range on that right it can be 20 years before the Prophet and then 20 years after so now they're trying to say the problems before the Prophet so you can't win you know so I'm loved but what happened is that people have turned the conversation they've gotten past this problem of the history of the Quran to look at what the Quran actually says and this is a very good Vista for us it's a new horizon it's really beneficial for us because now we can actually start to ask ourselves well instead of reading the Quran to try and find out what its date is what is actually being told to us who are the people that are speaking what are the what are the voices that are here what is that off of the Quran God trying to convey and what we have with dr. Salinas talk and her book which I'm really excited in looking forward to is a focus on the Quranic figures not taking one individual this is the story of Mary and there's books that have been written about Madea my day Saddam the Quran not taking ASEA as another figure of the Quran a female figure of the Quran or taking hawa as one another figure of the Quran but looking at the entirety the ones that are named the ones that are not named the ones that are implicitly stated there and what their voices what the this broader picture so I am personally very excited to hear dr. Celine's contribution to Quranic studies and what will tell us about the Book of Allah and ways in which we can you know bring that into our own lives and our own readings of the Quran and I hope you hope you guys will be hope you'll enjoy it as well so what that amedeo welcome dr. Saleem [Applause] bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim hamdulillahi rabbil alameen I'm so pleased to be here and to be witnessing this moment in de tunas development it feels to me like the flower that is just beginning to see colors and and and opening and I ask Allah subhana Allah to continue to place barakah in this institution and to shower all the people who come to it and through it with the mercy of Avalon wada and with all the the blessings that of in them and may we all of those who who visit here be enriched by the presence and a return in return again frequently so I'm pleased to be returning to tis a tuna and to find it in a great state of ax men and to be enriched by all of your presence here tonight I ask peace and blessings upon the beloved prophet sallallaahu and he was send them and I ask that our hearts be present here together and that there be benefit in our gathering and that we benefit from from what we learn I want to say a special thanks to sister Seema who put so much energy and effort into this I have to tell you she is the most well organized host I have met in in all of my time traveling to different organizations so I asked that a lot continues to open up the doors for sister Seema and for all the programs here at Zaytuna my lord indeed I am for whatever good you would send down upon me in need I start out with this dot here because this is the place that in many ways my project of trying to understand the women figures in the Quran began and it began with that sense of trying to locate myself as a Muslim woman in the unfolding of Islamic secret history and I would coming to SM as a convert Muslim in my early 20s I was familiar with some of the figures and some of the characters from having had biblical studies in the past but this the Quran was the first time I felt an immediate kind of access in a way to these figures and to their emotional states for instance so the reading the the the Quran after having become familiar with these with certain figures from a biblical background I could hear for the first time the speech of women figures for instance I could understand the relationship between allah subhanaw taala working in the world to achieve certain aims and how the stories were playing out so the way in which the Quran was telling the stories not just from a narrative place but interjecting the speech of Allah into into these stories just brought them alive in a whole new way and as a new Muslim coming to Islam I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what my role as a woman in the world was and so one of my first places to turn to the Quran was two rules about women and understanding the the dimensions of being a woman but gradually I found that it was actually in the stories that could illuminate that that in a reality the the metaphysical reality that relationship with allah subhana wa ta'ala that i couldn't quite get as strongly from from the fit discourses so this is one of the reasons why i turn to to the women figures and i found some surprising things and some of the those things i want to share with you today and maybe you've already discovered some of these things for for yourself but for me the process of coming to the Quran with this question about how to be a woman in the world in relationship with Allah subhana wa ta'ala in relationship to the other people in my life this was really the impetus of the project so one of the things that I found was that oftentimes when male figures are distressed in the ground it's actually women who come to their rescue and so not only does this particular dua here represent sort of my state for being in a state of research of that feeling of being impoverished and turning to the book of allah subhana wa ta'ala for for that sustenance for that good but those of you who are thinking about sort of discuss us can you think of the verse that immediately follows this verse this is one of the one of several places in the Koran where a male figure is in distress and where a female figure comes and the series of events unfolds such that the male figure is then put in a better state in station than when he was first when when he was than where he was at first and so of course this is one of the women in Midian who and we don't know allah subhana wa ta'ala does not say he just says that there was two sisters and we don't know which one came walking to moosa we later don't know which one encouraged her father to hire moosa we don't know which one of it which one of them actually married moosa but here we see this male figure in distress in the middle of a desert comes upon a watering hole praise to God for for refuge for you know any any source of refuge and unless Allah what Allah sends a woman we see this as well in other instances in the Quran and these little pieces to me help tell a different story about the role of women both for us as Muslims but then as a way to speak back to a culture that often sees women in Islam as oppressed or burdened in a unique way and so in fact in the Quran we don't really see stories so much of men saving women who are in distress which is kind of the Disney trope right we actually see the reverse we see women coming to the aid of men and Musa thanks to them is actually one of the most needy men in in the Quran and we'll see this as the presentation unfolds so I want to say a few words since this is an academic institution and since it is in many ways itself a bridge between the liberal arts and classical Islamic learning I'd like to say a few things about how I personally coming out of a historically Jewish University doing an area Studies department situated my own studies on the Quran and I say this to all of you because many of you who are in the process of your studies might be thinking about how to bridge these two words worlds of secular academia and in traditional Islamic studies I'll give you a few highlights of the research and then I'll talk about some of my burning questions which I already gave you a little bit of a hint about and finally we'll turn to a little bit of a quiz for you all and that's the the part in which I often take the most delight in because having spent time with the Quran looking very specifically at a narrow topic and the minutiae of that topic I always love to turn that out and to challenge people to continue to dig in in the Quran and to continue to look at those subtleties and that minutia so we'll have a little game that will play at the end here so coming out of an area Studies department in an Academy that that largely has a secular focus theology is oftentimes circumspect and in that world where the possibilities for Quranic studies are as you so rightfully alluded to often constrain to discussing historical facts about the Quran I knew I wanted to do something different with my project and I knew I wanted to infuse in it a spirituality so my studies were for me not just a profession as I'm sure for many of you this is a life path this is a way to draw closer to a loss upon what the other end so I needed to figure out a way to do a type of research that would let me do the spiritual work of of seeking him alongside of this professional foundation and so what I decided to do for my particular project is to put aside questions of the authorship of the Quran so for me they're already settled for people who come to the Quran as secular readers those questions are already settled so in my research I would say just simply the Quran says and that was a way to avoid condemning into questions about the authorship of the Quran so if you're thinking about how to write about the Quran for a secular audience this is a good way to do it because we have a copies we have a and for the most part the fact that there is a solid Quran that developed very early in Islamic history is not a point that even scholars who come from a more critical skeptical point of view would dispute and in terms of my own research as I was researching the Quran I'm experiencing it as that interaction with divine speech but then I'm translating that into a way in which a secular reader could also approach and what that means is that my work is often situated in the literary approach to the Quran so there's some danger for a Muslim mind perhaps in slipping into a literary perspective because for us the characters in the Quran are not just characters they they represent a deeper reality but this type of translation is I think what we need to do in order to bring Islamic learning Islamic perspectives in Islamic world view to a wider audience so I never really saw it as a compromise in the work I saw it as a way of translating what the Quran has to say to to a an audience that might never have experienced it before so of course in a secular Academy you're also dealing with a lot of implicit biases against Muslims and in particular in the realm of women's studies I was constantly navigating this line between being inspired by some ideas that come out of the women's movement come out of a sense of developing women's agency and voices and telling women's history and women's perspectives and I think many of this this impetus has actually benefited in terms of scholarship on the Koran there's many more women's voices who we we now can tap into whereas the history of at least written scholarship on the Koran before the present moment before maybe the 1950s was largely completely male-dominated and so if you I mean I challenge you to think about a work of exegesis before the modern period that was composed by a woman and this is not to minimize the role of our women scholars in transmitting the tradition and preserving knowledge in teaching but it is to say that there has been historically this dearth of knowledge around woman's written perspectives on the Koran and so on the one hand I'm trying in a way to say what can I say about the Quran that has not been said before which in some ways could could potentially lead one to a position of real like arrogance or it seems like a dangerous place to start out but I think in terms of a word of maybe it advice and mentorship to those of you in the room is that allah subhana wa ta'ala gives each of us unique curiosities and opens in each of us different doors of of knowledge and having access to to the quran with you know through the medium of our own burning questions as I'll talk about a little bit later I think it can I think each of us can really bring a unique perspective something about the Koran that has not been said exactly in the same way or an insight and over the course of this project in my salat I would regularly pray you know Allah give me like just tiny tiny kernels of knowledge help me see things in the Quran and I don't know if other people have seen some of these things before but anytime I would discover something that I had not read in another book before it would feel like a little duel a gem like a kind of a confirmation of the struggle to to be in this this field and so that said I encourage each of you to approach the Quran seeking that sense of what can i what can I discover in here and seeking that relationship with allah subhana wa ta'ala through studying the quran and finally it's just a methodological challenge that i came across and that's where does the how do you divide between what the quran the words of the actual quran and then this body of dustier and how much if i'm if i'm focusing a project on the women figures how deep into tafseer do i need to get if i get too much too deep into test ears i might get lost in the details of what allah subhanho wa taala is saying in the quran itself and so for me the way I approached this project was to limit it as much as possible just to what was in the the Quran itself and then where I needed to read a slightly farther into the tafseer but in my work I don't discuss tough co2 per se I just use it as a mechanism for xsplit explicating the Quran and so a lot of works on the Quran looked at FC R and there actually may be more works studying tough seer than they are work studying the Quran and so I wanted to in my own work try to to put a las formas allah's actual the minutiae of allah SWA know allah's words first and foremost to dig into those words before turning to the the words of our scholars may may god be pleased with them so what I ended up doing was to look at the metaphysical concept of what womanhood was and so womanhood is almost always in the Quran juxtaposition against against maleness in this concept of as wedge and this this concept is core I think because it links us as human beings to all of the rest of of created things and it it shows us that although we are that the hyewon not a-- the the rational beings in so many ways we share this this property of being as wedge with other created species and in this I think is an important insight in that most of the differences that you find between women and men in fit relate to this concept of as wedge and very specifically in the biological domain so that you find most of the fit concepts rely relate back in some way to birth suckling the the family structures which is all tied to this concept the biological concept of the way our species and many other species procreate so I I do a bit in the book on thinking about this concept of as wedge and the many ways that it manifests in in the Quran and then we move from the metaphysical into the embodied female and here we deal with concepts of of sexuality one most the vast majority of Quranic stories narratives I mean by stories involve sexuality in some way and so this is a very prominent aspect of being a woman and when I mean when I say sexuality I mean the whole realm I don't just mean in contemporary terms sort of a preference for a particular type of person I mean everything that goes under the rubric of of the experience of pregnancy the experience of birth the intimacy with a spouse before that but we also find that in the in the Quran interestingly very few descriptions of woman's physical features are mentioned and even very few physical body parts of women are mentioned so we have like the shins or the ankle of the queen of sheba we have the rope around her neck of above the hubs wife we have the women who are cutting their hands we have the the eyes of the the beings in paradise but other than that you don't the Quran does not focus on the external features we also have the mention of KO ab which could be a reference to you know a state of a prepubescent female or a approaching fema was approaching puberty but in any case there is not a focus in the quran on women's external forms and this is this is quite striking and there's a lot of focus on the other hand on women's internal states and so we see a less one without describing in very vivid terms the heart of the mother of Musa the the fluid and then the pulp of the mother of Musa we we see the the descriptions of of maryam in the moment when she's giving birth and her her words you know i wish that i had died and become a forgotten thing before this and so we see these moments by the way maryam is literally bringing she's literally bearing the burden of Kalamata law into the world so she's in in that way her and agony in that moment of of birth pangs and that delivery is I think in many ways akin to the agony that prophetic figures feel when they're trying to deliver this world word into the world and and facing all of the backlash so Miriam - as we know when she delivered Ella's word into the world she also faced the backlash but interestingly here on Miriam this is one feature of in terms of female embodiment I'll get down here - female speech and and God speech to women Miriam in that moment when she's sort of pressed to come out before the crowd and they're taunting her sister of Haroon you're not like your parents are not a problem your mother is not a prostitute etc etc she's actually sworn to an oath of silence in that moment and in many ways it resembles structurally thematically the oath that that Zachary are the be not not the oath but the mandatory silence that allah subhanho wa taala imposed on Zakaria when he alayhi assalam gets the the word of his wife conceiving a child but Miriam in this moment we're prophetic figures she's delivered the word the Kelly met Salah into the world and then it's the Kelly Mottola it's ISA la semaine if no Miriam that speaks and so there's a really deep I think metaphysical reality that Allah Sobhan WA Ta'ala is showing in that moment and for me that answered a lot of the questions around why are male figures mentioned as prophets and what are women figures doing in terms of advancing the the revelation into the world and so for me it's not that we should tell Islamic history based on a lineage of male prophets alone but we can't ignore the role of women in also bringing this this word to life in in very specific ways so that's a female you know on female embodiment and by the way pregnancy and birthing are as you would probably estimate very accentuated tropes in in the Quran and I don't just take that to mean that women's role is literally only in producing children but that the metaphorical them and the metaphysical idea of carrying something and then giving it life in the world I think can tell us a lot of what what is the unique capacities that Allah subhana Allah has given to women specifically on female kinship roles I looked at mothers sisters daughters I looked at mother-daughter relationships father-daughter relationships sibling relationships and tried to map out the the different patterns that we find in the Quran so for instance we don't find a corrupt mother interacting with her children in any of the Quranic stories on the other hand we see Ibrahim alayhi Salam Father you know telling him I will stone you I mean what is the it's probably the worst thing that a parent could say to a child but we don't see any mother figure now we see why figures who we know also have children but we don't see in rods lute or in in rotten or the the wife of no the wife of noah or the wife of a lot we don't see them at all interacting with their children in fact it's only their husbands who ever interact with their children and in this section it led me to do think about the discourse that I often hear in Muslim communities that women have the nurturing roles and actually part of what I looked at in reading the Quran was that allah subhanho wa taala has a lot of father-son father/daughter interactions as well and so if we think of nurturing merely as a biological function we say that that okay women might do a bit more of that because they're carrying the burden they're suckling potentially the baby although that's not even a requirement for that specific woman who birthed the child to then also suckle but if we look at the nurturing role we actually see that that men and women are doing this both doing this nurturing role because nurturing and in my mind is connected to that Tata BIA is connected to that that child parents relationship of guidance and dialogue and again that's not to minimize the role that women play in raising children but that's to say that in terms of quranic stories we do not find an emphasis on mothers as the nurturers in terms of female speech we find 34 ayah that are specifically women speaking in some of those ayah women are speaking together with a male figure so adam alayhi salam never speaks in the quran except with his wife and when allah speaks oftentimes it's to the pair now there's a notable instance where allah subhana wa ta'ala gives words to to adam alayhis-salam and that's one of the first stories of course in a baqara that we encounter and interestingly this this giving of words Adam receives the words but then the pair say it in unison together that formula of Toba the pair say it in unison together which has always led me to wonder what is this relationship between the the transmission so in my mind we don't see we don't see a verse in the Quran that says Adam then taught how the words we just find right away that unless one modality gives Adam the words and then the pair say the words in in unison together and it brings to my mind the the idea that and this is going to be controversial I warn you but that sometimes guidance to male figures is much more direct and the guidance to female figures is sometimes much more intuitive so for instance when the heart of Musa the heart of Omo Musa the mother of Musa receives revelation when God inspires her heart God just directly inspires her heart the Quran doesn't say and then we said to the mother of Musa nurse him it says you know Allah knoweth Allah says we you know revealed on to the heart of the mother of Musa and so I think there's a deep even though we see women speaking we see in the Queen of Sheba who has quantitive ly some of the most she's the most loquacious figure in the Quran alongside in brought disease missive and followed by Marian alaysalam even though we see that that women do speak and women speak really frequently to God but in terms of God's speech to women it's much less frequent in the Quran but we don't necessarily have to read that as saying O God speaks less frequently to women's hearts or something like this we could say there's a there is a qualitative perhaps difference in the way that allah spawn wada interacts with these prophetic figures that are receiving speech and the way in which the pious women receive this this revelation and finally a women in sacred history I I would challenge you to kind of list in your mind all of the women figures that you can think of in the Koran and I wonder if we were in a workshop we might actually do this but I wonder if as you were working on your list if what would come to mind would be the parents of Solomon alehissalaam would would the parents of of Joseph of Yusuf alayhi Salaam come to mind would the health of Saleh alaysalam come to mind you know what the ahead of Musa the family of Musa comes to mind but yet we see and what is Musa al-salaam doing when he encounters the voice of Allah in Revelation he's going to search out something for his family so we find when we look closer that women are there they're always around these prophetic figures so we look at we look at Musa ISA ISA and all of them all of the major profit figures in the Quran in most of the Minor not all of them the the men talked about minor of being the Nabi versus the Russell all of the Russell have women figures and some of them multiple women figures and most of the nibby also have families mentioned or specific women figures mentioned so we find that women are there even if they're not always the focus of our narratives in terms of the way we as Muslims relate our stories so I've part of the reason that I came to Islam was because of traditions like this one that I saw this deep respect for women in the life of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa Selim and then continuing on into major figures in our tradition and at the same time I found that if I would sit in helices and if I would hear hot buzz I wouldn't necessarily hear as much the stories of women like I would actually have to go out searching for those they wouldn't just kind of come to me and so then I started asking is as a kind of a fairly new Muslim these these questions that for me became really important and so when I would hear the genealogies of the the male prophets I would always wonder where where are the females in this story and again this question about what is the how can a woman achieve proximity to allah subhanaw taala i've often heard in a studies in the room will will will confirm this that the prophets have the highest station and I wonder if that's is that a a Quranic principle is that a principle that that's drawn from from the hadith because I think if we say that prophets have the highest station we're sort of overlooking the fact that you have figures like Maryam like other figures in our tradition who are doing really amazing important critical things to advance the the unfolding of history and so I think there's a way and you know I am this is a point in which I would invite a lot of dialogue from from those of you in the room who have a stake in this issue as well about if we give that message over and over and over what does that do to the women in our community who are trying to find role models and trying to find exemplars and is there a better way to talk about the the figures without necessarily always just focusing on the prophetic figures who happen to be at least in the ones named in the Quran all men and I speak this as a as a point of how do we reach the hearts of young women who are trying to locate themselves visa vie allah subhanaw taala and visa vie the the the possibility of accessing knowledge and and an understanding revelation so one question burning question that i had for a very long time is why is maryam alaysalam only mentioned the only woman mentioned by a personal name and does that mean that allah subhana wa ta'ala is on personal terms with you know Halil allah rahim and on personal terms speaking with moosa is 11 what does that say about about the the ability again of women to be in this intimate type of relationship with allah spinel data and then again the questions that i started to raise in the beginning about women's biological functions and easie what is a woman her major worth and kind of how many children she can put in the world and and where does this idea come from in in our social milieu as as muslims and if if we look at the quran how much is this the biological roles of women stressed in terms of the the spiritual development of women and then finally the question that i brought to you before about that nurture the nurturing nature and can we say that women have a very specific nature and men have a very specific nature and is that concept is that something we've brought to the quran culturally or is that something that we can derive from the actual ayat of the crime so those are my burning questions now i have a few questions for you all so who is the first person or the first individual woman mentioned in the order attenzione so the order of the revelatory order of the Koran who is the first individual woman figure mentioned take a guess so in my understanding and again I'm consulting books here on the revelatory order of the Koran which which are not perfect they're the work of our scholars trying to piece together the the revelatory order but it looks like it's actually the wife of Abu Lahab I mean isn't it the the Quran is this book of guidance but it's also the book of of warning right and so the first Muslim are the first figure definitely not Muslim the first figure that that comes in terms of representing women is this the wife of Abu Lahab and then we it improves from there although so we have the wife of Abu Lahab and then how many other Quranic figures are explicitly damned who are women yes yes the wife of looat and the wife of Noor interestingly the the verse in surah tehreem at the end of surah tehreem that says it was said unto them Makela you know it was said enter the fire that doesn't come and we sort of the team is nearly at the end of the ten zhilie order right so unless upon with Allah's wisdom he's told us at the beginning and at the end kind of the first warning and the last warning do not be like these figures the first figure has a husband who's also a damned and you know she's facilitating his damnation in the fire and then the last two women are examples of women who have prophetic husbands and who still don't heed the warning now so who is the first individual woman mentioned in the masaf yeah there would it would be the the zauj of adam alayhi salam and we find that she's the first woman sacred history and when I say secret history I mean the the kind of unraveling of the way that in which the Koran tells the genealogy of Prophet prophetic families so she's the first individual mentioned and she's the first in in the mas laughs as well we also find that she is of course never mentioned by a personal name and so in my research in an effort to kind of confine myself to what the Quran says I always say that the spouse of Adam she's never called him brought we never see him brought Adam have you ever heard that phrase before imrat Adam it's it's just not in the Quran so there's a very interesting dynamic when allah subhanaw taala uses as wedge to refer to a wife spouse figure we we see that as wedge is is is is used for figures that have a let me say we see as wedge is wedge and ABI for instance and it's it's used in that context where there's a parody between the spouses and so in the even the use of as wedge we can infer that there there's out there literally in a dictionary definition one out like one of a pair and so we find that in brought is often used when there's a difference in spiritual state or station between the two parties but then we have and it could be it could go either way in terms of the woman having a higher state and then the male figure or the other way but we find that though that that words out it has a very particular meaning in the crime so how many temptress figures are there so if we look at like world literature women are always cast as the temptress figure right so we have one chronic temptress figure and of course she is she is flawed in her relationship to Yusef of course she's in this compromised sexual puts him in this compromised sexual situation where he says I the love god forbid and he seeks refuge in Allah subhana Allah and in the Quran we find a remarkable balance we find that we have this female figure who is this temptress but then we also find we find a figure a female figure who is in her private chambers and a male figure comes and she says I seek refuge from from the compassionate if you are among the the pious right so we see maryam says the exact same thing that yusuf says to the wife of the the egyptian viceroy so we see that even in terms of respondent let's say call it responding to a potential threat of a compromised sexual situation we see that men and women in the quran respond very similarly the way for the egyptian viceroy and the vizier we also see in her a figure who eventually repents right in the cinah in it I wouldn't call it repentance so let's call it apologizes or maybe not even apologizes admit she's wrong so we see this movement her heart begins to move she admits the truth that granted she's kind of under pressure to do so it's not of her own free volition but in this woman figure we see a person in process and I oftentimes think that it's sometimes easier as ordinary Muslims to relate to a person in process that has a bunch of flaws than it is to relate to a figure who is raised in a temple by prophets and who is chosen by God to fulfill this marvelous function and so even when we have a temptress to figure the way that she's presented there is she begins to redeem herself we never we never hear her say I'm sorry Yusuf I use if I messed up we never hear her say yeah Rob forgive me for my sins we never hear that but at least we hear the very beginning of her process of of turning by the way I think so the words of life I never it comes in the Quran but if you look it up by its root and in Arabic dictionary you find all kinds of wonderful meanings that actually tie quite well to her role in the story okay so who is the only major woman figure in the Quran who has no kinship relations we have lots of mother figures we have daughter figures sister figures who is the only figure who doesn't have any kinship relations mentioned yeah exactly and so when I looked at bill peace and who's also obviously not called Bill case in the Quran but is just referred to as the queen of sheba I noticed that before the story of bill peace you have this story of the little ants right and when you read the story of the ants at least I read it this way I wondered what does this have in any way to do with the story that follows and as is true with many of the stories in the Quran you have to look very very closely and you have to actually think quite deeply to begin to discern some of the connections so what do we know about ant colonies in relationship to the sexual is called sexual identity of the the leader of the ant colony exactly so you actually have a queen ant and what else do we know about ants that they're incredibly territorial that they have these works and so in this story where you see the queen ant the forces of Solomon are are lined up he's ready to go to battle by the way that the word he was owned that word means to marshal in ranks and it also means to inspire and so when the ant figure you know it says to her colony or the you know I think it would be a her the the Quran just says the ant but we'll call it a her aunt when when perhaps this queen ant figure gives the order for her colony to take refuge Solomon hears her words and is inspired right and so that same word he his forces were all marshaled but then he hears the word of the ant and then he gets him he prays Rob you know my Lord inspire me to give thanks so he asks for sugar and in that moment you see a queen figure teaching Solomon kind of a lesson a reminder giving him a reminder and then in the story that follows you see Solomon giving a queen figure a reminder you know in a way that's one way you can describe this story and so even in this little story you see a type of balancing of gender norms and also you see that the story of this conquest of Solomon marching his troops out the very fact that he's inspired to pray for what what does he pray for inspire me to you know to give thanks to pray for my parents you know and and on and on and on this aunt figure reminds him of his mother and father figure of all things and it puts the story into this the spiritual it takes it off the battlefield and puts it in immediately into the field of morality and ethics and that's the the same transition that the Queen later makes when she recognizes she was oriented towards her physical throne but then she becomes by the end oriented to to the throne of allah subhanho wa taala and so she says you know Robbie Anissa Lemp dune FC and I submit you know with Solomon to the Lord of the Worlds who else says my lord surely I have wronged myself Yunus says Musa says it so in using this very phrase she's using a formula that prophetic figures used throughout the Quran - to do the Toba and no one taught her this phrase right she just it's from her inner being that she knows to say it needs a limb to Neph see so here for instance by the way in the very sort of enamel is what 27 in the order it's in the next order that Musa alayhi Salam says in me Salam do not see so taking this back to kind of the study of the Quran one of the challenges that and the opportunities I think that we have is how to do academic secular studies of the Quran in the way that I described in the beginning while also trying to impart these deep lessons and it happens that literary studies is a great mechanism for doing that because you can you know discuss the inner evolution of a character for instance in in a literary framework but that literary framework also opens up the doors for us as Muslims to talk about the spiritual development and if you're writing for an explicitly Muslim audience you could write in explicit terms about what the implications of this story have for us today so for me one of the lessons that that I take very strongly out of the the story of of the queen of sheba is to remember always if I'm oriented towards physical things and material realities and power and control and all these things that I'm not really focusing on maybe what what is the bigger priority of life so literary studies of the crime left let's do that kind of kind of the Tobia approach to what the quranic stories are telling us how am i doing on time okay one of the remarkable features of the quran is that we do as i mentioned in the beginning get to access the words of the female figures in their own words and I won't delve into this too much but I did want to just point out that the very last words zoom in here a little bit the very last words this is not the the Arabic is different than the English here the very last words that that the that a female figure speaks in the Quran so the very last ayah that contains like call it she said is the wife of Pharaoh and she asked for a house near God in the garden and deliverance from Pharaoh and his deeds and deliverance from the wrongdoing people so she's the very first woman early last woman with a line of speech in the Quran and what is she asking for she's asking for nearness to Allah the second the the Mesquite the the house she's asking for you know Sakina perhaps the the peace that comes with having a residence next to Allah and then she's asking for an improvement in her like domestic an escape from her domestic situation and not just her domestic situation but all of the people who are around her who are enabling that that poor domestic situation to happen so the very last ayah of speech that Allah sapone without that gives us in the Quran is addressing one of the issues that plagues humankind generally and and plagues our Ummah specifically and and that's that this this issue of the house not being a place of Sakina the very first verse that that a female speaks in the Quran is actually the the zone of Adam and she's doing this this how this you note Alba the sense of Taba and in I don't want to be polemical but I do want to make this point so in the way that the Quran presents the story we see that is a very shared culpability which is different from how the story had been presented before the time of the Quran and in the fact that it's a shared culpability the very first verses of female speech in the most half are also in a way refuting this idea that women are somehow the source of evil in the world okay so you have you know allah subhanho wa taala starts off with a woman you know showing this act of talbot with her husband simultaneously in unison saying this now before Mila and you know in my mind that serves us to undermine the the myth that women are uniquely impure have a unique capacity to error are dangerous to be around because they lead you to error etc so on both ends of the most half and kind of in all of these places in between Las Palmas Allah is turning over previous conceptions of women and is instructing the oume for how to have more of a correct view of the capacity for a woman to have spiritual realization I also wanted to highlighted sorry I didn't put in English translation but this is this is the verse where the wife of Imran who by the way we never see him wrong we just see his wife so we just see the wife of Imran so this is one of the unique instances where we just see it the female figure and know the husband is kind of implicitly mentioned but it's just somewhere in the background but we see the wife of Imran asking and devoting her child to to the service of the temp and this is one of many verses where women are actively seeking that proximity to allah subhanaw taala and and are doing pious deeds of a drawing nearer to allah subhanaw taala now I promised you we'd get back to this so just kind of count in your mind how many women figures are there surrounding Moosa and this is why I said at the beginning of all of the figures in the Quran he is kind of the most needy of support from women okay so let's just work backwards I talked in the beginning about the sister of the two sisters in Midian right his eventual wife who gets him a job you know marries him kind of lands him in a good family situation by the way she's we have in zulu a high as I mentioned this figure of a temptress who puts a man in a compromised situation and and is is is going about the whole relations thing in a very bad way but here you have an example of a woman figure who recognizes the characteristics of Musa as being kawaii as being Ameen and encourages her father to hire him so women looking for a spouse find find a good business partner for your father I'm just joking I'm just joking but this is one of the things that I tell two young women who asked me about this whole process of finding a spouse is that allah subhanho wa taala gives us in the quran a story of a woman who kind of sets things in motion and then you know her father makes this arrangement that that Musa works and marries marries one of the sisters okay so we have we're counting so we have two there moussah has a foster mom right who gets him not killed okay so these the first two women save him from wandering in a desert here's a woman who gets him not killed we're up to three ooh I think I missed a slide here today mm-hmm okay I think I forgot to just connect it so anyway we have then his sister figure who saves him from being like kind of like lost forever in the palace of Pharaoh okay we're up to four then we have the Isle of Pharaoh who pull him from the river and aha usually means like family unit so we can assume that there's some women doing that too okay we're up to five and then okay so they save him from drowning in a river and then we have six who's his mother figure who saves him from being killed by the forces of Pharaoh so he is six different women figures who are all at various junctures in his life saving him and I had never before I kind of reconstructed the story that way for myself I had never kind of seen the role of all of these women and I had only seen I had only seen it in terms of allah subhana wa ta'ala narrates you know a big sort of focused on the life of moosa why you know where's the woman's where the women in all of that and then I realized that oh wait the women are at every single juncture of of that particular story finally let's look at this idea of matriarchs which is quite phenomenal in the quran actually so we're oftentimes taught thinking about the the genealogy in terms of ibrahim and yaqoob and our sorry ibrahim and it's half Finnish mile and Yaqoob and and focusing the male Lazcano Salah have a shower a peace and blessings upon them and their families and at the same time we also have God choosing in this particular verse you see the house of Abraham so I'll like and the flam the house of Abraham and so why say it's not just Abraham Ibrahim right a taste of them it's the house so that concept of chosen Asst the house and we see as well the wife of Ibrahim Sarah you know who's not mentioned in the Quran is Sarah but Sarah but is known to us as Sarah we see her addressed directly by Allah saponin with Allah as a head of bait okay who else do we see is a debate right the the the as virginity sallallahu aleyhi we sellem and think about our prayers asking peace and blessings upon you know ibrahim and the family of Ibrahim and and Muhammad and citing a Muhammad so even in the even in the Quran in terms of calling Sarah and the a love of the house we see that there's a parallel that the Quran says between calling the the family of the Prophet is awesome and you also see the house of Imran now remember what I said in bronze no we're really in the picture who is the house of Imran that's represented in the Quran let's zoom in here so these names are taken from from deaf theatre works but that the house of Imran it's a matriarchal lineage and who in the Quran do we see both getting birth and then birthing we see Maryam alayhi Salam so I often thought about the fact that we see patriarchs right but the Quran actually also gives us grandmother figures okay in in the the mother of Maryam we have a grandmother figure so we have we have Jesus's grandmother in the Koran okay I mean that's that's pretty special and then also Sara oftentimes we just think of her as the wife of Abraham and Ibrahim alayhi Salaam and then the the mother of is Maya and and it's hot but she's also the grandmother of Yaakov right and then what else she's a great grandmother figure we have a great grandmother figure in the Quran right and she's explicitly I don't have the verse in front of me but she's explicitly given news of this of it's not his talk yes how ok specifically given news of this hark and after his half be a cool bright so she's even look the crime is not just giving her news of a one one you know miraculous birth but then she's getting this news that she's also going to be a grandmother by the way so that's just at this so that what I drew from this is that matriarch there there's a matriarchy in the Quran as well and that I wasn't ever taught that but that it when I went to the Quran looking for it that it did emerge okay so now I I've shared a lot and now I want to play a little bit of a game for you some of these questions if you have a notepad that's fine you can write them down if you're just doing it in your head that's great so the the challenge of this game is some of these questions are very hard and some of them are easy and my in my experience a lot of times we as Muslims read the the Quran just kind of lynyrd linearly and there's immense benefit obviously and not going Jose by Jose by Jose but part of the delight for me personally is kind of looking at all of these different sections of the Quran and seeing how they relate to one another in very subtle ways and so this game is kind of how geared to helping us do that so now if you think of the figures if they come to you really quickly I challenge you also to kind of try to do the the verse ID and then to try to review that verse in your mind as well as a kind of reviewing don't worry I'm not collecting your papers nobody's going to fail I I work in a high school and when I give an assignment to ask them to think about something they literally without fail ask me how long do you want us to think about this I'd have to say like think about it for 20 minutes so which which female figures interact with angels which women are explicitly damned we talked a little bit about this one and which women says bismillah in the name of God the compassionate the merciful ar-rahman ar-rahim by the way some scholars say that this is like the the missing bismillah that's not on a sort of the Toba but even the fact that here you have a woman she's not she's not even Muslim in the sense that her heart has not yet gone through that process of submission but what she receives this noble letter she recognizes it she reads it out loud so the speech she's literally saying bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim in the Quran the only Quranic figure to do that which is which is a an interesting aspect of her figure and then she recognizes what does she say it's a noble letter khadeem isn't is it cream am I remembering that right so here it shows that she intuitively has knowledge that this letter is a noble letter so I gave away that one obviously we talked about figures being damned so there's plenty of Quranic figures that interact with angels right lot lots of them and so did you get shout out your your answer yeah yeah of course and good good yeah yeah yeah Miriam and sada any Sam so which woman explicitly received direct revelation from God mmm Musa may God be pleased with her which three women get pregnant in unusual circumstances Maryam and then and sada and then the Umbra Zachariah right second yeah may God be pleased with them all okay so this one's a very easy one and I wanted to give people encouragement if they were not as learned as you all are mashallah there's by the way there's one that gets a little bit harder after this so brace yourselves okay so which team female figures get married in the course of Quranic stories we talked about the wife of of Musa who else we just have it in one eye one passing ayah it's in sort of tab yes interestingly to that verse is the direct middle verse of surah ahzab and in surah taha essa Assad and sort al Imran in my my work I outlined a lot of structural parallels between those two and in surah surah ahzab that particular verse is the 37th first the 37th ayah and in that verse you see a woman figure coming under the care of a prophetic figure she marries as in a bin josh may God be pleased with her marries the prophet sallallaahu alayhi assalam in surat al-imran in the 37th verse is when Maryam goes under the care of Zechariah so you have another instance where a woman figure is going under the care and this is just one example of the parallels between the two there there are many and by the way there in the tens early order like in the revelatory order they are actually this order are actually close together so that the correspondences were probably not lost on on the the most the early Muslim community okay so which sisters does the Quran mention so obviously the sisters in Midian and the sister of Musa by the way those are both like supportive sisters right how many corrupt sister figures do we have in the Quran none right there are no corrupt sisters in the front some of you are like that it's not true to my experience but how many corrupt brother figures do we have Youssef has a whole bunch right and in and we also see that for instance there's no corrupt girl figures even though we have girl figures in the Quran but there is a corrupt boy figure right else headers is sent to to support pant the the parents of this corrupt boy figure by by taking care of that situation okay so all right how many women are described as harsh or otherwise incompetent mothers so we do have the fasts in a way the wife of the Vizier is a foster mother of Yusuf right so we do have she's not a very good foster mother figure at all but other than that we don't see as I mentioned at the outset any women who are explicitly in the course of a Quranic narrative being harsh against their okay yeah being harsh against their the the children in their care okay so again no jealous or vengeful sister figures all right to mother daughter pairs yeah most Musa and the mother of Musa and end massage sister and then the I'm blanking here oh of course of course of course of course Miriam in her and her mother Elias and I'm so which two fathers mention their daughters there's one really obvious one in one subtle one I'm gonna let you think about that for a second so we have this the relationship that we talked about with the father of the sisters in median right and then we also have lute who who mentions his daughter figures now what other daughter figures are mentioned in relationship to a father figure in one verse in surah ahzab allah SWA know allah says to the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa seldom you know tell and then goes on for a list of women the women figures of your family and includes magnetic yeah okay so which woman gets fooled and realizes her mistake the queen of sheba alright this one's a hard when I told you I would get some hard ones on here so what are some aristocratic female figures that are alluded to or mentioned so zeyneb been Josh may God be pleased with her Leela Hana is a came from the Croatia aristocracy who else the queen of sheba obviously who else yeah good the wife of pharaoh who else was sarah was in it could be it could be in there's narrations that that locate her in in a lineage not so much in the course of the stories that we see in the quran but maybe in her background hmm exactly exactly and i i just point this out to say that there are a lot of women figures in the quran who hold these stations of kind of political power and authority in terms of their their polity but then allah when allah tala balances that out with figures like Hodja right who comes in terms of where she is in Ibrahim at least men say neighboring household comes in as not not an aristocratic figure although we have narrations that she does indeed come from from from a noble lineage alright so which female figures physically hurt themselves yes yeah so we have said this which woman is birth and gives birth it's Miriam nice and them so a girl figure that's clever under pressure yeah I I really like teaching that story to young women and makes it if you're involved in teaching like a Sunday school or something that story makes it connects with kids hearts really well how many women speak this is a hard when I told you they've got hard how many women speak prayers to God so in my in my list I came up with four so we talked about how as Oh Joe Adam we talked about the Queen of Sheba right says Robbie knees and them tune FC we saw the ayats of ASEA right asking for the Sakina the the place of refuge and safety and then the wife of Imran who prays for the woman in prays for the child in her belly to be dedicated to the Lord now this one stumps people quite frequently and we didn't talk about it at all today so we know sort of Mariam that's an obvious answer to the last question the 19th question what other two women have a sort of named in their honor good good image Adeline and Donna so I'm nothing like you you all passed with flying colors mashallah Zaytuna is doing a wonderful job you've passed me like women in the crying course with flying colors and I just in terms of wrapping up and turning this back over to my wonderful hosts I want to say that for for me the the process of of approaching the the Quran in this way with what I what I want to call like a burning question is something that I want to pass on and encourage people to do oftentimes I find people lamenting that they don't have a teacher and they need a teacher and it's so hard to find like a teacher and a la semana Madonna has given us many wonderful people as teachers but Allah SWA Masada has also given us the speech his speech directly so that's a pretty good teacher if you need one so you know maybe if you have a practice of simply like reading ayah for ayah that's wonderful keep doing that but for me one thing that's been really powerful my own spiritual development has been coming to the Quran with those existential questions and so I encourage you to dig down deep and figure out what are your deep existential questions and then take get to the Quran and then see how allah subhanho wa taala and she Allah speaks to your heart through these deep questions so dis economic siren for for listening so intently and I I want to thank again my gracious host and also just say if there's anything that I said that was inaccurate may Allah want Allah for forgive me and may he continue to increase all of us in in in well Darwin and earlier here up that I mean was so that was sad I'm a little Zuleta he said about him sent them I mean thank you so much for this illuminating speech it was deep we all learned so much tonight and now it's up to the audience's of you have Mike on your right and on my right and please come and ask the questions and Zaytuna students will get the preference thank you [Music] bismillah anyone has a question please go ahead and step forward and use the mic on your front left it's already coming man this might be kind of a silly question but if my name is the only one mentioned by name in the Quran how do we know the names of all these other figures that's a nice little question at all so sometimes tough theater will contain names of specific figures but oftentimes for instance the mother of Musa if you go searching for the name of the mother of Musa in the granule end up with a list of about 20 options and so on though on the one hand if Allah subhana WA Ta'ala didn't tell us the name directly it's probably not of great importance to our spirit I'm going to sit over here so I can see you a little bit better so it's on the other hand it's there is a kind of intimacy in knowing someone's name and and so some of these names are drawn from some of these names are drawn from Hebrew traditions for instance others are part of oral history that then come into testier but in terms of figuring out what was the actual name a lot of times we don't have very good sources to to rely on sound like thank you so much for this this is a muscle that great it's really kind of wedding the appetite to see your book what it actually comes out that's although I think there's gonna be a lot to read there I guess my question is more methodological in terms of how you went about studying the Quran to look for this can you give us a sense of what your process was what methods you used to employ that did you just open page one start going through or you know or could you speak a little bit about your process in your research there Thanks thank you I I approached it differently in that I from the very beginning said basically all of this is like between you and me kind of thing like this is this is my own German spirit journey and so the instead of turning right away to the tafseer I actually just did sort of a line by line starting with the Fatiha and trying to go through like this identifying all of these in flagging these verses that later on then I wanted to dig into deeper and in that way it was kind of a direct process of discovery for me and I knew that if I turned right away to the tafseer I'd get muddled kind of in all of these details of and where's the story taking place and when is the story taking place and you know what color was the camel or you know this kind of detail that you sometimes get with deaf theatre works and so that to me anytime I was kind of wandering too far perhaps into these these kind of minutiae I was always trying to take it back to it to the Quran itself and I joke that the the dictionaries kind of were my best friends for five years and you know me and and Edward William Lane had a like weekend appointment every every weekend to get the this is the the author of the the one of the modern dictionaries that I find one of the most easy to use so in terms of from a research perspective I did the what was easy for me and then dug deeper as the questions came up because I knew if I was digging deep to begin with I might get lost in kind of what was my question what is my purpose and so to me it was always also I would you know write and then fry it and then write and then pray and then write and then pray and oftentimes in the prayer I mean if doctor other things come to your mind in the prayer but oftentimes in the prayer these little kernels of insight would would then come so I felt like it was very much this this process and I would ask a lot like to support the research at every single state and for you know for all of you who are in that process of doing research that's I think one of the beauties of being Muslim doing research in Islamic studies that you can rely inshaallah and Mela correct all the mistakes that I probably have in the book but but you can use the research too as a spiritual quest Somaly comes second laughter that was really enlightening did you at all consider the minority perspective like I believe alcorta be that women were prophets is one question and a second is you didn't mention Hodja which to my memory she's not actually mentioned in the Quran swear in the hadith and yet she's play such a pivotal role in our cyanogen I mean yes so again on that question of women being prophets or not I went with what was explicitly so I just looked at where in the Quran who does the Quran explicitly described as the Rasul and Nabi and this is the way I avoided kind of going off in a lot of different directions is by just simply saying from what I can answer based on just the Quran alone and and a lot of places in my footnotes I say you know based on the Quran alone but I'm not and I also say I'm not advocating a reading for the the Quran alone but my particular contribution is this and in terms of just advice to younger scholars in the room oftentimes you have to do that in your research because your research will take you in a lot of different directions and then you have to constantly say my contribution is this you know and someone else can maybe do this or I'll get to this in the next project but that sense of narrowing and so also I don't have much information on on Hajj of may may God be pleased with already Lahaina for that very point that aside from the mention of the rituals of Safa and Marwah and aside from the mention of Ibrahim settling his progeny in a in a sacred Valley there there is not a a robust Quranic story that deals explicitly with her struggle we get that from other sources thank you so much first again I noticed that a lot of the pranic prototypes for males that were discussed in a positive light were mostly relating to prophets who all had somewhat of a similar role they all had a message to bring in so for men to follow it's a little bit more straightforward whereas as we've gone through all the women prototypes seem to have radically different roles those presented in a positive light so I was wondering if you and your research have found one archetype or prototype to be more of a universal role model than any other for women specifically yeah I really I found that in terms of the way allah subhanaw taala described the women that there was not any qualitative difference between the characteristics and the qualities that Alana Dallas ascribed to women figures as there were two two male figures other than the B and those those exactly like 'no B in Russell but in terms of the qualities there wasn't qualities that were like specifically feminine qualities and qualities that were specifically masculine qualities really I didn't find a kind of clear division like that I also didn't find necessarily the same qualities always coming up for women either it was just this which which might be akin to how we see the world in terms of the the personality traits that that we inhabit it's I don't I don't necessarily think that personality traits are gendered in in that specific way people disagree with it with me on that but unless upon what other you know teaches a smell of al-husna and then so though some of those are the motes a Chevy hat and to my mind and in my reading men and women exhibit these qualities and so I didn't find an archetypal pious woman figure and you see figures all along the spectrum of piety as well so we do see corrupt women we see women in process so we see zuleyka who started the process of doing toe above it didn't really complete it in terms of what's presented in the Quran and then we have the queen of sheba who does the whole process of tawba and then we have figures who are exemplary for the Muslim community who that the wives of the Prophet sallallaahu they send them two of them are obviously in sort of the tehreem chided by allah subhanaw taala so we see pious women making mistakes we see like an M pious woman making big mistakes and almost doing tawba and then we see also really pious woman making a tiny mistake and then being told to do tawba so there's this really beautiful balance and I kept finding if there's one thing that I kept finding I kept finding balance I found balance between pious and impious and old and young and male and female and everywhere there was this this really pronounced balance would that be all the questions there's another question coming from the back it's not like um um thank you as all for your talk I was wondering if you could give like a few comments on motherhood and if you had any kind of like recommendations of reading or specific examples to look at about sort of the qualities to bring to motherhood or wifehood that are in the Quran that's wonderful so did you ask about wife wife hood as well at the end or just movement okay yeah almost every single story that involves either a mother or a wife I think has some things and multiple things right to teach us about how to be women or spouses how to engage and so there there wasn't a kind of one lesson that kept coming up there was like each set of stories had its own sort of lessons to in part and I think in that way there's a lot of instruction in there and we get different things from different stories in terms of the application but the reoccurring message which is not just about mother figures or wife figures is is always going back to that you know surrender to a less one or the other do the do tell do you know these these very basic messages that don't necessarily relate to motherhood specifically or being a wife specifically and this is another sort of remarkable aspect of the Quran that I found was that if you had a set of characteristics so it sort of to her name for instance Allah subhana WA Ta'ala tells the two wives who have given the prophets amount of a headache with their chatter have repent otherwise they will be replaced and then there's a long list of qualities that the that they could be replaced by when and in that same list that list is a almost an exact parallel of in in surah ahzab you have a list the believing women and the believing the believing men and the believing women and and so forth and so there are a lot of parallels between that list which you can infer that when allah subhanaw taala is describing this hypothetical wife for the the prophet muhammad salallahu alaihe send them it's actually the characteristics that in another place alaska la jolla describes as both men and women possessing and even virtues like chastity for instance which culturally speaking in muslim communities kind of the burden falls on women if you look at the quran it's it's not duress like in a very specific way to two women except for one small tiny detail that i found so interesting women and men alike are told to guard the like protect like types of food right so women and men are told to do this women alone are taught to like fortify and so women actually do take an extra step but interestingly it's literally the word the same word that that is like a fortress coming from the same route and so women are told to fortify and for me that's the sense of like protection from like literally if you think of a fortress its protection from like invading forces enemy forces or something and so there is unless one without it does give this slight instruction to two women to fortify and in which i found notable Hanako and Disick allahu khairan so it seems like to me there's still a greater emphasis on women in relation to men in the Islamic tradition like especially with the four greatest women many male Islam is the mother of E Saturdays to them and Khadijah Adeline is the wife of the prophesy said I'm thought the mother of the law and as the daughter of the Prophet says in them and then even hacia she's the wife of Pharaoh so my question is kind of how do you see women especially these great women separate from their relationship to men yeah yeah that's a great question there's actually not a lot of single women in the Quran right you I mean you have bill please you have you have the queen of sheba but in general even with male figures you find the the same thing that there's not a lot of single male figures that most of I mean Youssef stands out as one example of a prophet who you don't see at any point in a relationship with a specific woman figure I mean and I mean in a marital relationship with a specific woman figure and even a character a figure personality like look man for instance a male figure mentioned who's not a prophet but who is wise is mentioned with his son so if he has a son he's gonna have a wife right at some point so I the same is true that I'm one of the things that was very pronounced for me is this emphasis all throughout on family relations and even in such subtle ways so you get we have the instruction right to testify against justice whether it be a rich person or a poor person or or if it be one of your relatives or if it be against yourself etc you even have in the story of zuleyka who is it that testifies and says you know gives the advice we'll just look at the shirt look at the physical evidence it's it's what a witness from her fam and so to me these subtlety is about Fant just family dynamics in general per me quranic stories with with the exception of of the story of bill case for instance that's the only one that does not in some way in terms of the women figures revolve around some sort of family dilemma family situation and if we think about our lives we all have families we couldn't get here without a family so i think that's this is just kind of a mirroring of the the the way that al Espinoza has designed the world what was the second part of your question yeah yeah I think in Quranic stories you see women with agency so it's a big word and feminist thought and you see it in in the Koran so for instance you see a woman who chooses to be Muslim you know at great peril even when that's against the wishes of her husband you see the inverse you see women who are not Muslim even when they're getting advice from their husbands to be Muslim so if for instance even in a mimosa may God be pleased with her and where's Abu Musa and all of this you don't see abu musa right so you see a woman here making a life-or-death decision she there's nowhere it's not like she received the revelation to her heart and then she said yeah abu musa what do you think so i'm not saying that we shouldn't consult our partners or anything like that's not what i'm saying but I'm just saying that you see women taking major decisions for good and for bad on their own so that's one one way in which you see this kind of agency I mean also in the marriage proposal or not the the the marriage proposal the pre marriage proposal you see a strong emphasis on a woman seeing particular qualities in a man that she thinks will be good for her father's business okay so that's this inner discernment so there's there's all these instances I don't know if you looked at all at the creation story with the wording of the creation of how is it from Adam or is it from Nelson why duh yeah it becomes a really big thing and then of course the hadith which I don't know if you look at that yes so I actually this point has been covered so well in in contemporary literature about sorry I talked a lot about the Neffs in Maya in the in terms of the metaphysical reality of as wedge and what that what that entails about that in relationships between embodied men and women and for me there's there's quite good scholarship are already out there on this particular point but I think for me it was just discovering more of that emphasis on as wedge as as partners and and a pair and you know we talk about parody that and he just kept coming out over and over again Asano Rinko what I would like to ask and I'm kind of touching on the same thing this sister talked about what does woman in the Quran really really means what does it mean to society to to humanity because the quran says allah created male and female from the same Neffs Waheeda and another thing that i like for you to comment on is that the idea of woman can be symbolic of society and a corrupt woman is a corrupt society and so basically we know that the Quran is is guidance for humanity for the human being for the human family so could you please give me a perspective of in general what does woman mean in the Quran I think we make a little bit of a mistake when we focus to categorically on like woman and man because that's just one of the many kind of differentiated human relationships that Alaskan although that is speaking about in the Quran and so well I mean I'm focusing on it and at the same time I'm saying that there's so many similarities in the treatment that it's almost as if I think we as societies sometimes and and Muslim communities specifically sometimes I think over accentuate differences when and then we we under accentuate the similarities and I think that comes out in in somewhat detrimental ways sometimes so setting up double standards that really should just be a single standard or assuming that girl children do not have the same capabilities for instance to acquire enemas boys do or like all kinds of these ideas that that I've personally seen in my time and so I would say the the aspects of of womanhood that are unique really Center on this creative capacity and this sustaining capacity to that have to do with not not just bringing about life in a literal sense but about sustaining like a creative force in the world and that's I mean that to me it's I'm trying to put words to to something that I don't have words for yet but it's that sense that if if prophetic figures for instance are are doing the work of transmitting though the word of Allah subhana WA Ta'ala I see a lot of the women's women figures like women in general IDI doing like this like carrying the the the burdens of like life itself you know I and I and I don't know how to how to say it in like concrete terms but but it is that yeah tied to the to the Rama tied to the Ryan tied to the womb tied to that generative force and so that's where I see it's subtle right like the the the mercy of a lost one with Allah like how do we describe the mercy of Allah we can only describe its effects you do you know what I'm trying to say here I'm struggling for the words but I think if I asked you about the mercy of Allah you might say oh yeah this instance in my life where this happened or this happened or this happened but what what is that thing called mercy weed how do you tap into that and is something about the the the s the essence of like o of womanhood it's almost unspeakable in a way and that's that I think why sometimes the societies we have trouble valuing that because it is so subtle and it can be so powerful but it can also be so very easily overlooked shut out cut off squashed and so that's I think what I'm trying to do in this process is on unlike some kind of very deep level like bring out try to find words or like what what is this thing that women are doing that is so hard to put words to if you all have ideas I'll credit you in footnotes so a comb second off hair and thank you for your speech and presentation so Michele obviously you've done a lot of research within the Quran about women and their role in Islam and society and things like that and I was just wondering if you've looked into the Bible or other traditions and seen the role of women there or how women are presented or approached in other traditions to see if they compare and things like that for a good part of the time Jack O'Lantern for the question for a lot of the time that I was writing this work I was teaching in a rabbinical school which provided this wonderful opportunity to be in dialogue with other serious students of knowledge and given that our stories are many of them shared that to me was was a really rich time and there I decided very on in this work that I wasn't going to touch a comparative focus at all and that decision was not because there wasn't a lot to say but again one of those questions of I'm gonna leave that to either another book or another person entirely I've personally found so much enrichment sitting with rabbis or rabbis and training and looking at text and it's sometimes it's only in reading Hebrew Scriptures that I see more subtle points in the Quran I'll give you an example so when the aisle of Pharaoh pulls Musa out of the river in Hebrew Scriptures it's explicitly said it's the daughter of Pharaoh and I found it really interesting because the Quran goes right away from Musa being pulled out of the river right away to Ostia saying can we keep him can we keep him essentially and I never I in my mind I always thought Oh Hebrew Scriptures say it was the daughter who kind of like rescued him the Quran says it was the wife of Pharaoh who rescued him here's a difference and then when I went back and did that deeper textual work I said oh wait the Isle is pulling him out which might be though it might be though like maybe the wife of Pharaoh was present there maybe the daughter of Pharaoh was present there but when I when I saw that I saw that okay these these stories at first I thought they were making disparate truth claims and then I saw that that you know in experiment in digging a little deeper then I saw that maybe these stories are are more complimentary than I at first saw and and there's there's other examples of that too but I would encourage all of you if you know serious students of Hebrew Bible to have them as the the you have you heard of the concept of have rota it's like that concept of having a study partner who you you know really dig deep with and sometimes you argue with and sometimes you're like in it in this reciprocal relationship of studying together and that's a meal from from these work years at working at the rabbinical school the value of that type of long-term study partner with whom you challenge each other to grow it was so valuable so I encourage you all to find those types of relationships with other Muslims but also people who are learning in their other faith traditions as well because oftentimes in teaching you also things in a new way so when you work together its leads it opens the hearts I think in a beautiful way so I can suck a little air free lecture so my question is how can women in today's time take inspiration from women figures in the quran specifically Mariama is set up specifically money at man you Sam I think that in different phases of life there's different figures that one my gravitate towards to kind of whatever and not just stages of life meaning you know and kind of life markers but also stages of spiritual development might be different figures and so if I'm having a moment where I'm particularly feeling you know maybe I'm alone and I'm feeling this like a tremendous connection with allah subhanaw taala that's you know this is like a moment where I can connect to the figure of Maryam uh nice and then but then if I'm having a moment where I'm having to say something really unpopular you to to a group of people or something Maryam is also that figure who had to do something very difficult socially as well you know Maryam is also the the figure who allah subhanaw taala gave her a burden that seemed too big in her mind for her to carry and then she had to figure out a way to do that so I mean just taking the figure of Maryam there's all different points in her own life in her own spiritual development different struggles that she faced and even that sense of yellow of why am I facing this right now this is too great for me how do I even find a way through this particular challenge then you can look at a medium and the as someone who faced tremendous challenges but also received an immense status in immense rewards because of that by the way Miriam twice's mentioned is the in the Koran is chosen right she's chosen among all the women's of the world but the quran emphasizes the chosen miss twice and for me one of the ways that I explained I told this to the woman this morning one of the ways that I explained for myself why there's only one woman mentioned by her personal name by Allah Subhan Allah Allah in the Quran is that maryam is also chosen in that respect - and so that to me was a part of her uniqueness that that ls1 what other emphasizes thank you and just to mention we'll take one more question and then it's time to close so this is a question not necessarily related to the content of your talk but you talked about your experience as a comfort and your experience with the Quran and so I was wondering I imagine that you know being a student of some acknowledged as a convert you would face an enormous amount of pushback and you know whether in Islamic circles or otherwise and I was wondering how if you wouldn't mind sharing and I understand this is very personal but how you maybe like took ownership of your role both in you know in in your doctoral studies and otherwise and then if you have any advice to feel our efforts in academia whether those are you know students of Islamic Sciences or otherwise that's that's a beautiful question oftentimes the last question if they say this doesn't relate to what you've said it all it's usually about the Haddad but fortunately I knew you weren't going to ask me about that there's there's two things that I think a lesson on Dada has taught me about this you know in reference to your question one is that to stay as humble as possible and to stay as strong as possible both at the same time and that's the the the sense of developing a conviction that I do have something to say that my voice is important that I can contribute to this discussion that even somewhat of a determination that I'm not going to be shut out and I'm not going to be kind of dismissed but then at the same time like balancing that type of determination is that sense of yeah a lie I'm a baby and Islamic learning I am you know I don't know if I'm right or wrong I'm just kind of hypothesizing and you know insha'Allah correct me if I'm right or wrong and that that type of the balance between having the like the and I and maybe it's something about the vulnerability as well that if I trust that Allah subhana WA Ta'ala is going to support whatever if I set out with a right intention then insha'Allah Allah will support it and that to me I always go back to that anytime I'm doubting or or just trying to figure out what my role is and I say over and over again in my mind like viola if you put me in this situation you've obviously you're going to give me the the tools to figure it out and that's always been the the driving force of the scholarship to like you have to if you're doing a scholarship you have to have some type of confidence that you're going to install I'll have something to say that will be a value to someone insha'Allah and I never have very high expectations but that to me that prayer of like yalla made me beneficial to people and for me that path has been like somewhat through scholarship and Chawla so maybe that's a good place to end to pray that y'all love me we you know forgive us for anything that we said that is wrong and you know put our feet firmly on the path of knowledge and a faith in Him and forgive us for all of the bad qualities and replace those with good qualities Yama we are we know your are the all forgiving and that you love to forgive y'all Allah forgive us and have mercy and compassion on us and upon all of those in our life who are suffering and upon all of the umayyah Allah raise all the people who are suffering out of their suffering and lead us out of our ignorances and our bad qualities and put in our heart the the love of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and of all of all of his companions his family and all the righteous people in the in Allah Yama Yama and I mean Europe bless the people of Zaytuna and make this a place of deep Islamic learning and SOPA I mean I mean i doing in a Hyundai [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Zaytuna College

Views: 381,885

Rating: 4.540463 out of 5

Keywords: Islam, muslim, Quran, education, liberal arts, Zaytuna College, Berkeley, Zaytuna in your community, ZIYC, 2019, celene ibrahim, female, archetypes, feminism, women

Id: 8FD-7GTUslE

Length: 118min 19sec (7099 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 09 2019