Muslim Feminist Accidentally Discredits Islam (feat. Rationality Rules)

Amani El Catawba is a Muslim American activist and the founder of Muslim girl calm she's pretty influential within her sphere I tend not to agree with a lot of what she says but I will outright say that I do agree with her that most Muslims are not terrorists and that Muslims are just people who should be judged on an individual basis like everyone else that said I caught a video of her on the YouTube channel astronauts wanted arguing that Islam is compatible with gender equality and she ultimately does herself a major disservice fair warning this is not a commentary on feminism this is a video made in response to claims about Islam let's get into it on a scale of one to ten how ignorant is the title of this episode that can you be a Muslim feminist is it just really obvious I want to say that it's a ton except for the fact that so many people are unaware of how feminist Islam really is you just said the Islam is really feminist which to me I was like wait what yeah what because everything that I hear about Islam is that it's quite oppressive it has much less to deal with the geography and more so to do with the principles of the religion itself and what's interesting and what not many people know is that Islam literally founded the principles of gender equality that we call feminism today this claim is so far off in so many ways that one doesn't even have to argue about Islamic doctrine to be able to discredit it I'll get to the doctrine of Islam soon enough but first let's discuss some basic history women in ancient Egypt at least two or three thousand years before Islam were able to have jobs be financially independent represent themselves in court marry and divorce as they please and travel alone freely there were even several female rulers in ancient Egypt across multiple dynasties even if it was established that Islamic societies in seventh century Arabia upheld rights for women they still wouldn't be the first in the Middle East to do so plus in order for Islam to provide the foundation of gender equality that we in secular countries uphold today it needed to at least be a powerful influence for the establishment of women's rights around the world but it wasn't women's suffrage for instance began to be established across the world with the women's rights movement in the night and twentieth centuries which was based primarily on secular ideas not Islamic ones and it really was revolutionary for its time period when it was revealed in society and it was because it was an equalizer between the genders and it really just elevated women in a way that they weren't elevated in the pre Islamic society of the Middle East before again even if we're generous and grant for the sake of argument that Islam was the first influence in Arabia to champion some women's rights and allow them to vote to be financially independent and to divorce their husbands her claim can be disputed if there really was a revolution toward affording women these rights it was incredibly localized like I said a moment ago it didn't become the foundation of gender equality that we uphold today let's say this revolution did happen and every single Islamic Society began upholding the rights previously mentioned along with that revolution would definitely come practices based on other teachings in the Quran and hadith teachings like women's inheritance should be half that of a man's a woman's testimony in court is worth half as much as a man's men can have up to four wives but women can only have one husband men can take female slaves and captives as sex slaves a woman is less intelligent than a man and a woman can't leave the house without her husband's permission with every edict supposedly given in favor of gender equality Islam gives another which firmly cements the oppression of women into Islamic practice even if Islamic societies got a head start in their progress toward gender equality they reached their peak and halted at a place of still rampant sexism because of Islamic doctrine just looking at the world stage today it's obvious that those societies have not progressed to the same extent as societies without Islam when it comes to gender equality now I'm not saying that the birth of Islam actually spurred any kind of revolution for women's rights I'm just demonstrating that one can make well-supported arguments against all these claims with just a basic understanding of history you don't have to have an incredibly deep knowledge of Islamic theology in order to realize that these claims are nonsense one thing that's really cool that not many people know is that Muslim women actually have a marital right to be sexually satisfied by their partner yes yeah exactly yeah so that's like really cool because number one is finding out and orgasm exactly yeah that's the thing it's like so so first of all it's um acknowledges that sex can be hide for pleasure and so just for reproductive purposes and then on top of that that Muslim women are entitled to be just as pleased by their partner as men are in some interpretations yeah but also when a husband calls his wife to bed and she refuses and as a result the husband spends the night in anger then angels curse the wife all night til dawn I'm sure it's really great as a woman to be sexually satisfied every time you're commanded to have sex regardless of whether or not you want to the explicit rule that men have authority over their wives just makes this whole equal rights thing so much easier for men what's cool about it is that you know that's even a reason a really significant reason to be able to file for divorce so yeah if you're not hitting those oath well if she's not satisfied a woman can ask her husband for a divorce see the way it works in Islam is that a man divorces a wife while a woman gets divorced by her husband a woman can only ask her husband to divorce her if the husband refuses she has to take the matter to court and let the Court decide meanwhile as mentioned earlier a woman's testimony in court is worth half as much as a man's so oh and does a woman still have that right if she's been subject to female genital mutilation like many women in the Muslim world have that's undeniably an Islamic issue so what's the deal here so you say that women can divorce her husband if they're not being satisfied but I heard that in Sharia law a woman can't divorce her husband oh man Sharia law okay you know I think I'm gonna make a call here hey Steve yeah I'm working on a response video right now and there's about to be some claims about Sharia law that need to be debunked would you mind helping me out here all right yeah awesome I figure you are way too British to actually sing now so all right cool thanks see I figure since this video probably won't be able to be monetized I should at least collab with Steve to get some of the subscriber I mean bring in his wonderful prospect on a complex issue yeah so here's rationality rules to take a look at this videos claims about Sharia law hello Drew's crew if you've never heard of me then it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance and if you have then well hi so Sharia law yeah the chances of this video being monetized is indeed low and unfortunately I'm about to make even more so and Sharia law is not supposed to be oppressive towards women minorities nothing okay so there are two claims here the first being that Muslim women can divorce their husbands and the second being that Sharia law is not supposed to oppress minorities now as far as I'm concerned Druze already dealt with the former assure a Muslim wife can indeed divorce her husband but Aman's will often prohibit her unless she has her husband's consent or proof of legitimate grounds which depending on the legal school can include infidelity physical and / or emotional abuse financial straits or sexual disfunction but on the other hand if a husband wants to divorce one of his wives he can do so without a cause and at any time other than when she's menstruating how's that for equality and as for the assertion that Sharia law is not supposed to oppress minorities you've got to be kidding me the Quran and the hadith are absolutely saturated with edicts explicitly oppressing minorities and that's why countries practicing Sharia law do exactly that his pew's world map representing Muslim population and his HDR's map of gender inequality now that's quite an overlap isn't it and he's the ALJ's world map of sexual inequality again telling isn't it and here's a world map of blasphemy laws that is countries that punish minorities for saying anything against the state disk whoa a lot of times we see government's basically like hijack Sharia law and implement these really oppressive policies on their own people using it and then we also see in the West kind of like politicizing that term in order to assert the type of agenda like in the middle you store on like another group of people okay I see what's going on here Imani is committing a no true Scotsman fallacy the reason she can say that Sharia law enhances women and protects minorities is because she's disregarding all of her interpretations for her own interpretations I might add that have more scriptural justification we see this type of apologetics in every religion and this is no different it's similar to how some Christians will accept evolution but say the Christians that don't accept it aren't real Christians but then again this isn't a perfect comparison because while most Christians accept evolution most Muslims do not consider women equal to men oh and as for the accusation that the West is politicizing that term in order to assert that Amazon Dalek in the Middle East or on look another group of people we need only look at the aforementioned world maps to show that this isn't the case the East is at large oppressive and that's a statement of fact not opinion a lot of times we see modern-day applications of Islam being totally torn away from the actual like principles that our founding the religion the policies are not supposed to be stoning game people actually the Prophet Muhammad himself had a really long record of being very protective of minorities that are ostracized by their societies and again this is the no true Scotsman the fact of the matter is that the Quran and the hadith contained countless violent edicts against minorities and many oppressive acts from Muhammad and that's why the vast majority of Muslims don't share Armani's views anyhow with that I bid you farewell and send you back to jury thank you for your time thanks for coming on Steve to anyone who hasn't yet seen it I also made an appearance on rationality rules in a video upload you concurrent with this one so make sure and check that out after this okay back to the video a hand Islam is being hijacked both by non-muslims and Muslims to assert like certain political agendas okay ones that can be oppressive towards women and one thing that is a personal pet peeve of mine is the fact that a lot of the Fed was which are the interpretations of Islamic law are issued by male sheiks right so of for today a shake is a religious leader and usually a male religious leader and when that happens of course these fellows are going to be issued confined within this very patriarchal mindset oh this is her explanation for why Islam is so patriarchal and oppressive the women she's made it very clear that she thinks Islamic practice today is tainted that it isn't being done correctly so this whole thing boils down to her claiming that what is essentially mainstream Islam is based on sexist misinterpretations of the original doctrine the point that her interpretation is so far in the minority doesn't help her case that Islam in its true form promotes gender equality if a teaching intends to promote equality but the vast majority of people who encounter it understand it to promote inequality the teaching for the most part promotes inequality now when the author of that lesson is known to be fallible we can most reasonably say that the teaching was poorly worded and the intent of the author was not reflected well but when the author is supposedly omniscient it's a different story more on that in a minute for us like I'm Muslim girl for example we are really encouraging of that type of autonomy with the way that you practice religion with the way they interpret it and one thing that's really unique to Islam is the fact that we don't have like a middleman between you and God because we believe that like even in moms and sheiks that's not their purpose we believe that everyone has like a direct connection with God in their religion and as such it's totally alright yeah to be it looks like read something and be like okay well this is on how I believe this is going to be implemented within my life instead of relying on the same old people from for decades telling us like how to be able to practice it in case you're wondering no this minimal religious hierarchy isn't unique to Islam those in the Baptist Church I grew up and used to make this point all the time in an effort to validate the denomination a lot of Protestants actually think this way also her point about Islam being open to personal interpretation undermines her entire point once again she said earlier that true original Islamic principles promote equality she also said that those who don't promote equality in their practice aren't holding to the original principles that they've got the wrong idea about Islam further she said a lot of misinterpretation is due to male leaders patriarchy bias these earlier claims do not fit with the one she just made if Islamic practice is open for personal interpretation why are all those male shakes wrong but she's right how are others mistaken about their interpretations and she's not how in a system meant to be interpreted subjectively can one claim to know its objective truth she builds up her points about the true interpretation of Islam in order to discredit though she disagrees with but as soon as she attempts to justify her deviation from the norm she uses a line of reasoning that her detractors could just as easily use as well so much effort put forward only to refute herself she inadvertently brings up an interesting idea though do you think that perhaps the meaning of the Quran and hadith are always interpreted subjectively like literally all other literature in existence what if all interpretation is subject to bias if you're a male Muslim leader it's patriarchal and if you're a Muslim feminist it's toward elevating women well this is the nature of literary interpretation this is the way it is with all text written by mankind any government or institution that is acting out against minorities or against women in the name of Islam would you say that they're not Muslim I wouldn't say that they're not Muslim that's not I'm not God to be with like yes you know I feel like anyone that identifies as Muslim can say that they're Muslim but I would say that they're very adjacent some of some principles I think that she misspoke here when she said adjacent I think she meant that they're behaving contrary to Muslim principles so that's what I'm responding to here once again she references true Muslim principles the issue is whether she attests to a true interpretation of Islam or defends subjective interpretation she just digs a deeper hole for herself if there is a true interpretation of the Quran but people disagree about what that is it didn't communicate its points clearly enough to be properly understood all literature has that problem you might say yes that's because it's impossible for a fallible author to overcome that completely but an all-knowing all-powerful author could so the author of the Quran and originator of Islam either couldn't or didn't want to they're either flawed or purposely misleading people on the flipside if Islam is meant to be understood and applied subjectively it has no one true meaning it can't be shown to contain objective truth if that's the case its truth is no greater than that of any other religions so why defend it why practice it I believe it at all thanks for watching I've been drew of genetically modified skeptic remember to check out my collab with rationality rules link in the description and the comments praise be an Adam my top patron and personal Lord and Savior for making this video possible go ahead and subscribe check out my patreon follow me on Twitter and Facebook @ GM skeptic and until next time stay skeptical you

Channel: Genetically Modified Skeptic

Views: 511,830

Rating: 4.8561716 out of 5

Keywords: atheism, atheist, agnostic, skeptic, skepticism, genetically modified skeptic, astronauts wanted, amani al-katahtbeh, amani, al-katahtbeh, feminism, gender equality, islam, quran, hadith, muslim, muslim feminist, women's rights in islam, women in islam, women in the quran, mohammed, is islam a religion of peace, islam debunked, islam debate, rationality rules, is islam true, merciful servant, miracles in the quran, gm skeptic, gmskeptic

Id: AY7wOpn7FP4

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 23 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Excavateandfill]

Muslim or equality. Pick one. You cant have both