Women In Islam: Through Western Eyes - Lisa Killinger

inshallah we'll have a lecture today about women in Islam and it's continued from last night I believe dr. Lisa killing juror will be giving the lecture she is an American Muslim who embraced Islam as an Iowa State University student in 1979 she obtained her Doctor of Chiropractic degree in 1983 and practice in California where she was where she also worked as a teaching assistant for world religions classes at the University of California her popular lectures on women in Islam and Islam and universal peace were often attended by over 500 students Ms Killinger is currently a guest lecturer on Islamic topics in Davenport Iowa where she works as a chiropractor researcher and author she is mashallah also the mother of four children please help me in welcoming her bismillah her father you if I just talk like this will you hear it I'll stay close to the microphone then I really I'm small so I tend to disappear when I get behind here but I'll try to behave and stay stay where I'm told most of the time when somebody American like me comes up in front of a group who have been Muslim their whole lives they ask how did you get here how did you embrace Islam and I actually as the sister mentioned was here a student at Iowa State University and I was eating in a special cafeteria that was for people with special diets I happen to be vegetarian which meant I was already a black sheep if you can imagine in the 1970s in the Midwest the pork Belt being a vegetarian so I was eating in this special cafeteria and some people there asked me you know what are you in for as if it were a jail sentence and I told them that I was there because I didn't eat meat and I asked them what they were in for and they said they didn't need pork so I was intrigued as to why and I asked you know why and they told me they were Muslim so I was curious and this led to a bunch of discussions about politics religion and everything else you're not supposed to discuss over dinner but one day they asked me what I believed in what my faith was and I told them that I believed in one God certainly and I respected the prophets and I knew that the prophets all brought important messages and it seemed to me that the message was all the same but I didn't think that it was right to pray to any of these prophets so I had been I was actually a Sunday school teacher at the church across the street here on this campus in a Pisgah peléan church and I was struggling with the fact that they were praying to really essentially Jesus and I had a hard time with it so it wasn't making sense to me and so eventually I asked them I when I told them what my beliefs were they told me ah she's Muslim and I was so shocked I was horrified actually I'd never really heard the word and I didn't know anything about the faith of Islam and I got very suspicious and skeptical and asked them what is this you know Islam and then I remembered wait a minute maybe we studied this in social studies class in high school and all I could remember was it in the East there was some foreign-looking people they wore saris and Dodi's and that they worshipped cows so I asked them do you worship cows and they of course laughed thank heavens they weren't too offended but this is the ignorance of being raised in the Midwest we so often don't learn anything about Islam and if we do it's a paragraph in the social studies texts often forgotten by the age of ripe old age of 19 where I was when I embraced Islam so they told me about a little bit about Islam I read some books and now in retrospect I think alhamdulillah that I learned about Islam through the books and I didn't learn about it from really Muslims per se because I might have been extremely disappointed in the behavior of some Muslims in fact those Muslims that taught me about Islam I embraced Islam the first day of Ramadan 1979 and we fasted and prayed and they taught me as best they could remember how to pray etc etc and then after Ramadan ended they weren't praying anymore and I said doesn't it say that you're supposed to pray five times a day and well yeah so obviously the people that brought me to Islam weren't perfect as far as their practice of the Deen but this is just maybe an example to let you know that you don't have to be a perfect Muslim to spread this Deen to others in to bring people into Islam Allah chooses whom He wills and I feel honored to be here today the circle has completed that I'm back here on the campus where I embraced Islam at that time I drove a motorcycle to Iowa State which I think people found intriguing because when I wore hijab and wore the motorcycle helmet and took the helmet off I was still wearing hijab and people found it quite unusual but there's not too many Muslim women on motorcycles at the Iowa State campus I think to this day then I became a chiropractor in 83 married then later after years of being Muslim and went got an opportunity to go to the foothills of the Himalayas and do some chiropractic practice in an area where no they hadn't the women there hadn't even seen a health professional of any sort during their life so it was a big honor for me again to get to provide health care they are near the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan and Pakistan I got to go to London for a time be introduced to the cat named cat use of Islam or cat Stevens's people of my generation referred to him as and I was very moved that another person was on the same kind of spiritual path from being a tree-hugging hippy like myself into Islam in the late 70s then I went to California and taught is as the sister mentioned and who stodgy who knows what that means here in the audience I think some of you who are Pakistani know um I had a great world religions teacher who was Pakistani half Pakistani and half Irish and he called them self-hosted ji and he was my teacher as well and allowed me to help new students learn about Islam and now I'm home again so the circle is is complete people ask and my mother certainly asked when I embraced Islam why would you want to be Muslim the women are so oppressed has anyone else ever heard this the women are so oppressed how could you be a part of this faith where the women are so I hear this over and over and over for the past 22 years and then I say maybe these are the types of women who would want to be Muslim a modest woman or an educated woman a professional or business woman or an outspoken woman anyone who believes in a fair and loving and just God would be a good candidate to be a Muslim woman and then I've always then people are very skeptical and wonder how could this be because these aren't the things that come to mind when you think of women in Islam but then you who have an opportunity to interact with non-muslims you can say but consider the time 1,400 in some what year are we in fourteen seventy eighty something kyndra this many years ago think of the time female children were buried alive do we have any examples of this in our society today not in America but in the world today yes in China women are killing female children children because they're only allowed to have one child and so they kill the female so that they can end up having a son who will hold the name this is amazing to me that we haven't learned in this fourteen fifteen hundred years that this is wrong women were traded just like horses or packages of dates and women were married off as part of business deals this was the time and this was the state of the world even after the other two great religions had come brought the book brought a messenger and guided many people towards a belief in one God still women were in a situation where they were bartered for and traded this is unconscionable so Islam came with a different message and a new message in an important one that was going to be just and fair towards women women couldn't inherit land or property as you well know in pre-islamic Arabia and women had no say in society relative to voting lawmaking etc men ruled women followed then the other point I have to say if you have any chance to interact and educate non-muslims you have to make this point upfront and and the brother from then the person who spoke last night and and he became the enemy of everyone now he he was trying to make a point and I think it got a little bit out of hand he was very passionate about what he had experienced in his life and we're very passionate about our Deen so some friction occurred but what you have to understand is to any one who observes the Muslim world we are a world with a lot of cultural clutter a lot of cultural baggage and I'm fortunate to have embraced Islam and have none of the cultural things come with me that I can just read the Deen and practice the Deen as it was taught and as it was revealed and I don't have to bring in all of the culture that comes along with being raised Pakistani or being raised Arab or being raised Sudan er being raised from any of the countries so I bring a non culture to this wherever culture overrules Islam and wherever people forget that Islam should be first we get into trouble societally and historically we get into trouble many people many women in afghanistan have suffered because the rule in afghanistan was women can't be educated they need to stay home they cannot go get an education it's haram for them but that was as we all know not part of Islam but their culture was overriding Islam and we get into trouble cultures where women are married off and arranged marriages occur this is this gets us into trouble because it makes the rest of the world feel this is part of Islam even though it might be part of maybe the Pakistani in the indo-pakistani subcontinent where Hindu tradition was that marriages were arranged and the women didn't have a say in it this isn't part of Islam it's part of the culture so I upfront and educating anyone about women in Islam say that you have to separate out the cultures and I can't answer to any of those the actions of some Muslims are not according to the faith but what I can do is I can tell you what the faith says and then we can make a judgement from there so we have to separate those two issues certainly men in Islam don't have the right to objectify women and women are all considered sisters and auntie's in and treat it as such in a very venerable position and of course if you tell anyone that paradise lies beneath the foot of the mother between beneath the feet of the mother in Islam they'll say oh this is a this gives them a different picture of Islam use the hadith and use the Quran in educating others about Islam people feel that the God of Islam this Allah when you use the word Allah it has been given such a negative stereotype in our society through the media that all they hear is Allah Akbar as people go to kill someone that word Allah to everyone in this country means a harsh God a frightening God a revengeful God and what we have to let people know is know Allah simply is the word in Arabic it's not different than God the God that sent Abraham the God that sent Moses sent Jesus and sent Muhammad peace be upon them all in Islam we believe in a loving God who would never deny the rights of half of the society the women so Islam gave women the rights to vote over 1,400 fifty years ago the right to vote does anyone know in this audience when we got the right to vote in this country this advanced very free country when did women start voting here anybody know maybe you know early 1900s in my mother's my mother's lifetime can you believe that this advanced society that we say is the freedom of the world lies you know we're like the the belt of freedom is is you know held by America no women couldn't even vote until my grandmother was a voting age also inheritance in in this country women could not inherit property in the southeastern United States places like Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi until my generation in the 1950s and 60s these laws were finally finally being rewritten and I know that you who weren't raised here don't have an appreciation for just how bad the status of women was in this country even up till today you all have such a wonderful thing that you're raised Muslim or that you're either you carry Islam you have rights that women in this country never dreamed of until perhaps this generation and you've had them for fourteen hundred and some years it's amazing to me so when you educate others about Islam they're very surprised oh maybe this isn't the male chauvinist pig religion that I thought it was the right to divorce in societies where there is no safety valve for women in divorce things go terribly wrong and there are two religions to this day even in this country where divorce is not allowed not considered a right of women and women are subjected to beatings their whole entire life and there is no way out for them because divorce is haram for them Allah wouldn't wouldn't put this on women a faith or a human being that wrote something incorrect put this on women the right to verse control this is it talking about the topic of birth control is not in any of the other faiths really very much Islam has in-group pages and pages and pages of hadith about the right to birth control what's appropriate was Haram wa taala but ultimately it's in the hands of the woman to decide the spacing out of her children for her Health's sake and her well-being sake this is very very proactive in advanced thinking this is this is the type of thing that Allah would give to the world not the things that came from the other book religions and marriage to whomever you choose is the right of Muslim women and it's something that we do have to educate non-muslims about because they completely have this one guessed wrong they think that women are married off they don't have a choice so we have to give them some historical examples in educating others about Islam we really it's it's kind of flawed to use the Quran only because other people don't believe in the Quran as their holy book so they don't think it's the Word of God so when you say the Quran says this the Quran says this it doesn't mean a lot to them but you can use some examples in history to let them know that the faith the enactment of the faith puts women in a good situation the right to education you can let them know that in Islam education is not only the right for all women and all human beings but is the responsibility in our faith for all women for example a very well quoted hadith is the first school of a child is the arms of the mother think of how profound this concept is that if child will be mostly reared in the arms of their mother and if that mother is uneducated that child has so little chance to be educated so if the mother is educated that child is put in an edit advantage so the Prophet sallallahu alayhe wassallam encouraged all women to learn and to seek knowledge from cradle to grave it wasn't men seek knowledge it was all human beings seek knowledge from cradle to grave this is so important this is so important and then the point that I like to make is that the first revealed word of the Holy Quran is Agri it groves Mirabeau colada hala read in the name of God you know created you and is so bountiful the verse goes on and it wasn't men Achra it wasn't children it was all human kind a craw read educate yourself learn recite do those things because we've been given a mind and this is a great blessing that sets us apart from the animal world that we have the right the ability to reason the ability to think the ability to learn the ability to then recite it grow and then the example historically that I love to use is Aslam iya does anyone know us Lamia the story of us Lamia a first female physician in Islam during the time of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam there were many battles as you as you well know the there was a lot of aggression under against the new Muslims and during that time as Lamia a young woman had learned much about caring for sick and injured people from her father he had no sons there was no one else to pass this knowledge on to he passed it on to his daughter and trained him trained her on everything he knew about caring for the sick about providing medical care and physician services so she went to the Holy Prophet and said is this okay for me to do I'm a woman and is it okay for me to be providing this care and using what I know to help the sick and the injured on the battlefield and he said of course of course how many women do you know back home that say no I don't want to I'm a doctor but I'm not going to provide care because it's Haram I can't I can't interact with man it's Haram Islamia at the time of the Prophet was given the right from his own mouth to provide personal care to the injured in the battlefield Islam doesn't separate us out Islam encourages us to get educated and learn and then do what we can do to help society through that education and to become a doctor is a wonderful thing and I encourage all of you young women think about what you can do that might be giving a positive impact on society and certainly to be a doctor is not the only thing to just excel at whatever you're passionate about and love to do but Aslam Aslam iya was a hero of mine and then because she didn't want the art of health care to die with her she got a bunch of women together and I'm trying to think of the name the Asiata she trained a group of women and they were called the Asiata and they all provided health care in the battlefield and the Prophet gave them permission to peace be upon him and won one of the us the Asiata asks the Prophet there's a man who's very very injured and I need to provide health care in his home because he can't get up is it okay for me to go there by myself and provide this care she spent three weeks visiting this man in his home providing health care and ultimately his injuries were too bad and he died but people had started the whisper and talked and said what happened to this man well he's been home and what happened to this woman when she's been visiting him and the murmurs went out and she went to the Prophet and said it was this okay that I did this and he said of course it is you were providing the care that you knew how to give so this was the right thing to do and this is the example of women in Islamic history not an example where you take your knowledge and you lock it away and you don't help society with it slaw was a religion of rational thought and encouraged women to be outspoken and to be leaders in their field one common grounds that all of the three world religions share is modesty and we were just talking about this earlier today this scarf business is this something that Islam brought to the world how many of you have are raised in an area where there's Greek Orthodox women any of you in the Middle East Palestinian or other places where there are Greek Orthodox women there are women wearing hijab Christian women wearing hijab very traditional Jewish women also wear hijab and also women who follow the deen to the letter wear hijab as well in Islam Islam did not corner the market on scarves this was something that was all three of the major book religions encouraged women to cover your hair it's in the Bible the hair is the woman's glory cover it in a modest way it's in the Bible it's in the Torah it's in all of the faiths it's not Islam oppressing women it's God giving this as a woman's right to be modest so we're not separate or different because of this we're following the Word of God that has been consistent throughout time modest dress and behaviors not only for men but for women and we have to let people know who asked about this that yes modest dresses for men too they need to cover themselves loosely not wear short shorts and not you know go around half-naked but it is a personal choice issue in a way that there is no compulsion of one person forcing another to do this this is something you have to decide to do in your own hearts there is no compulsion in religion but we know that that the Quran has guided us to be modest but we have to answer to Allah ultimately so this is for women to decide and I think that it's societally maybe by a bad move for societies to try to force this on some women because I know in some countries where it has been forced by men with whips and you know punishing women if their hair comes out of their scarf that some of these women turn away from Islam and say this isn't what a loving and fair God would have us do in the society maybe they weren't raised with hijab and don't know the value and when it's forced like that when we go against Islam's basic concept of there's no compulsion in religion you can't compel somebody to do a practice then I think we struggle as an Ummah but it's good to educate women on what the benefits are I was an ER I was Muslim in the early days in California in Santa Cruz California where it is the feminist capital of the world and the gay and lesbian capital of the world it is it's an amazing cross-section of society in California many many feminists would come to me and say but this dress is very oppressive this scarf is very oppressive and I would use the argument that maybe does oppression equal modesty so therefore then does freedom equal in modesty and they said yes yes you should have the right if you don't feel like wearing a shirt to not wear one or not cover your hair hair or whatever that freedom to them equals immodesty and I asked what that freedom buys them in this society and my guess is that it buys them very little in this society where women are used to sell products thank you sell products in this society where women are put all over the television and used to sell alcohol to sell cigarettes to sell everything in the society I think that the status of women is lowered because of this freedom that we've been given here we can use the example of Khadija may Allah be pleased with her a businesswoman independently wealthy 15 years older than prophet muhammad peace be upon him and she asked him to marry her when people find out about this as an early Muslim leader they're so shocked how could this be how scandalous it was only in my generation in this country that women started asking men to marry them so Muslim women used to speak out and we haven't been good in recent history doing this we should take the example of early Muslim women leaders the wives of the Prophet excuse me would often correct the men when they would misquote the Prophet or they would give an inaccurate account of a hadith they would say no this is incorrect and when people wanted to know they would turn to whom to the wives of the Prophet and ask what is right and they would tell them because they were extremely knowledgeable and had that life experience to share so in the name of that the women would speak out other prohibitions that you can that you can tell non-muslims about alcohol it's not forbidden to take away fun in our society one of the reasons alcohol is forbidden is because in this country maybe 75 to 90 percent of abuse domestic violence cases are related to alcohol men are drunk and they hit this is not fair just to women drugs were forbidden for the same reason gambling similarly who Gamble's in this society mostly the rich know mostly the poor the poor who need the money in their home but they're hoping for a quick fix to get rich quick and they go in they gamble away their welfare checks and the women and the children then suffer so Islam forbids those things that would be damaging to the social fabric of the family restrictions for polygamy I I'm always asked about polygamy and surely you've had to to ask about you've been asked about it isn't your religion the one that allows polygamy oh and they're mean about it they don't ask nicely there get they get mean and they're expecting you're going to get very defensive about this and what I say is I would much rather have a religion where as a first wife I would have to be asked for permission for my husband to take a second wife and without that permission it's not going to happen and that it's only under very restricted circumstances and the rules about them are so strict that most men would choose not choose this because to treat two women exactly equally and justly is so difficult that most men choose don't to do this but in this society where polygamy is not allowed what happens or does that mean men stay faithful their whole marriage about 50% of marriages end in divorce due to infidelity primarily on the male's part so this rules of polygamy actually are a safety net in society a safety net against what is Haram and what would be humiliating to a woman I can't think of anything more humiliating than being a loyal wife whose husband had a mistress or and you discovered at 10 15 20 years later but this society doesn't allow for any extenuating circumstances and we end up in Haram divorce again in family planning which we spoke of so some take-home messages on this topic are that we as women must educate ourselves and must practice communicating with non-muslims about women's issues in Islam if we don't practice and we don't just bring and invite women to talk about women's issues we will be very stumbling and very stuttering and we will never be able to eloquently discuss what it is that we love about this faith and what it is we're proud about this faith Islam has given us so much so much that American women crave that's why Islam is the fastest growing religion in this country and who's embracing Islam women at least twenty times the number of American women are embracing Islam compared to men because Islam is the is the religion of rights for women and the men actually in some situations are at a disadvantage whatever income they have it goes to you as a wife whatever income the wife brings into the house it goes to her my husband said how is that fair he's an American Muslim how is that fair it's Allah's word it's not mine so we practiced that we must educate others and this is a good opportunity since 9/11 we've had many opportunities to build interfaith dialogue and this is a very hot topic and actually I had a newspaper article go out full-page newspaper about women in Islam in the in the Davenport newspapers when did it come out the day the weekend before 9/11 it had my picture had my name had where I worked it had my email addresses my children everything about me including my address and my workplace I was horrified I was very frightened and my children were worried but alhamdulillah I've got nothing but letters of this is a good thing we need to have this dialogue how timely is this article they thought I did it because of 9/11 I'd wrote it two years ago and it just happened to get published that weekend hamdullah hamdulillah we have many opportunities for interfaith dialogue and then this final point is that we should follow the Sunnah and do what the prophet muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam said is a charity - smile - smile to your sisters fellow sisters sisters I don't tell you to go out and smile enticingly to men I say smile to other women and let them know I am proud and happy to be Muslim there's nothing that's a worse advertisement for Islam than a woman covered in a scarf and looking all sullen about it looking all downtrodden it's not a good advertisement for some smile I did it I did some research I'll go through it very quickly because my time is almost up but I did some research I'm presenting it for the first time in this conference I surveyed three groups 14 Christian leaders 18 members of the American Public Health Association public health providers who are in the faith caucus who dedicate their life to faith and healing issues and 21 participate participants in a class on Islam in Davenport Iowa trying to get a sample from all over the place and I asked them two questions one which has nothing to do with women Islam do you associate Islam with terrorism more or less since 9/11 I was curious and then the second one was a free association have you ever seen the inkblot tests where they show of an ink blot and they ask what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you see this picture and you write down whatever comes I asked them to do that I said what comes to your mind when you see a woman in hijab what are the first two words that pop into your mind the Christian clergy group said to the first question do you associate Islam and terrorism more or less only one said less five times that many said more they said they associate Islam and terrorism more since 9/11 and seven said the same they thought it would be more politically correct to say that the media hadn't influenced them at all that's alright that's alright I suspect I suspected that they had some negative thoughts before and they still have some negative thoughts about Islam and terrorism but the words that they came up with this enlightened group of Christian leaders surprised me when they see a woman in a scarf and oh my gosh I think I spelled oppression wrong that's really bad is that wrong is it OPP of typo oppression was the word that they came up three or four people had that as their first response repression Muslim dangerous extremist fundamentalist hidden suppressed faithful thank heavens there was one good word strange low self esteem small value value hidden forbidden these were the words that the Christian leaders came up with when they see a woman in hijab the next group again less people is very few people associated Islam and terrorism less than five said more and ten said about the same and the words they came up with were when they see a woman in hijab Muslim faith Arab Middle Eastern foreign then it gets ugly subservient different conservative depressed sad but they had some other things like order ceremony Islamic friend refugee and then my favorite of all must be nice you had to like that response that they saw a woman in hijab and they thought this must be a nice person then the Presbyterians you have to love the Presbyterians they gave a ten week series in Islam ten week class in Islam and they did a better job than truly I've ever seen any Muslims educate people about about Islam it was a wonderful job the words of course more people associated Islam with terrorism than not in the words they came up with Middle Eastern conservative pre-modern devout abused oppressed uneducated poor foreign sheltered suppressed docile things like mysterious an older woman who couldn't see very well felt this looked like I had a white hijab that day felt it looked like a marriage gown so she said marriage that's what it reminded her of other-worldly which is one of my favorite otherworldly that's what we look like to some people not free different kind shy unapproachable and then the hippie in the audience wrote cooler than I thought all right so I bring this forward to you this is a tiny piece of research but it's done with three different groups and it's to say that our bottom line is that most say that they feel the same about Islam's connection with terrorism but at least three times as many and these surveyed groups felt that they associated Islam more with terrorism and although our leaders in this country have tried have said some things at least lip service to the concept of these aren't this isn't Islam this is just some people who have done bad things on 9/11 but the media has been filled with things that talk about Islam the racial profiling and ethnic profiling of people being searched at the airport because their name is Mohammed this has been too much a completely unacceptable level of ethnic and racial profiling has gone on and we as a Muslim people have work to do you and me and everyone else who happens to live in this country need to write letters to become active and become vocal and our leaders in the Muslim organizations need to say this is not Islam and this is not acceptable if you are not going to call this a terrorist country because more terrorism occurs in elementary schools in this country than in any other country in the world how many of your countries would a person be able to walk into an elementary school with a gun and kill classrooms of innocent children it doesn't happen except for here and if our concept as a government is that wherever there's terrorism we much we must carpet bomb countries that hold terrorists in their mist what about here what about here this country is as guilty as any we need to as a country speak out and say if we're going to follow that line of reasoning that terrorism must be rooted out start here and mostly with non-muslims in this country who commit acts of terrorism start here so I'm getting off my political soapbox I had to added in because it was part of the research about her job most of what immediately pops into people's minds when they see you or they see you walking with your hijab is very negative not negative in that they perceive you as mostly dangerous but negative in that they see that you're oppressed and forced and subservient because you choose this dress so we as a Muslim people have to do the educating the non-muslims are not going to educate people about Islam we have the responsibility as a people to educate others that this dress is not to us subservience this dress is not to us oppression this is our choice this is our right to be judged by our intellect our character and our contribution to society the things that people should be judged for not how nice our hair looks on that given day not how skinny we look or how shapely we look but how we contribute to society how educated we become and what leaders we become and how or how much we participate in a positive way and contribute and also to I say again smile because what we're going to be asked when people see us as Muslim women they noticed that you're different so they're going to be asking themselves a question they're going to be asking see if they think if you think that this would be what people would think of when they saw you now there's someone who enjoys their faith they look like they love being Muslim is that what pops into their head if it doesn't we haven't done enough educating and we haven't done enough smiling and we hadn't haven't been engaged enough and contributing enough in society it's our job not anyone else's it's our job to show this Deen as a positive thing in this society something that we enjoy and love to embrace would they add when they look at you and say now there's a woman who is empowered through her faith to make a difference is that what they're seeing when they see you walking in hijab if it isn't then we have work to do you women we have work to do and you men educating ourselves about Islam is not not just the woman's importance it's not just the responsibility of women because you are going to be fathers of daughters you are going to be leaders and you are going to be in a position where you can make a difference and you can bring issues of women's rights to the table and you can too and have them discussed and I know that back home there are many countries where women's issues are not being discussed ignorance is being allowed and the whole societies in the state of Julia because women have not spoken out and men have certainly not spoken out on our behalf it is men's and women's responsibility to see that this half of the society over here gains all of the rights that Islam gave them 1400 and some years ago because that's what balances a society and makes a society positive it puts a society in a balance that then can show to the excuse me to the world that Islam is a religion with a fair and loving and just God we must show that love of Islam through our to our fellow human beings through our attitudes and through our actions and it all starts here with the individual power of each individual each one of you has the ability to change the course of the history of your country and if your country happens to be this one to change so many people's attitude about Islam just through your interaction with them and somebody last night said but just one person how can they make a difference have you ever seen a drop of water fall onto a pond off of a leaf maybe there's a leaf in a tree and it drips water one single drip have you ever seen the ripples come out from that and get larger and larger and larger and spread out through the whole body of water this is the impact that each individual Muslim can have in this society and we must have it if we keep our mouths closed nobody's going to speak up for us that's all I had thank you very much you

Channel: Islam On Demand

Views: 156,048

Rating: 4.8450756 out of 5

Keywords: muslim, muslim women, muslim women oppressed, oppressed, muslims, are muslim women oppressed, muslim women are not oppressed, muslim women oppressed?, how are muslim women treated, women's rights, oppressed muslim women, muslim women oppression, women oppressed, muslim women stereotypes, religion, muslim men beat women, women in muslim countries, rights of muslim women to divorce, women rights, rights of women, islamic women lectures, women conditions

Id: NaBTD27frFk

Length: 39min 52sec (2392 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 27 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/Ali_Is_The_GOAT]

Disclaimer: Non Muslim

Why is there an " F " beside your name LIGHTNING-San. ?

[u/UntitledTales]

Very interesting Jak

[u/skirlaug]

!!!

She is a leader at my local mosque! (And a friend.) So cool to see her here.