(1) INTRODUCTION:

• Dear sisters and distinguished guests, in the 1870's, French administrators trying to strengthen France's colonial rule over parts of the Muslim world recommended that French men marry Arab women. A supporter of this policy stated, "It is through women that we can get hold of the soul of a people".

 

• The colonialists realised that within Muslim societies, women are the centre of the family, the backbone of communities, and the nurturers of children. If you capture their hearts and their minds, you capture the spirit of present and future Muslim generations, creating advocates for your beliefs, and supporters of your rule. Western rulers therefore sought to get hold of the soul of the Muslim woman by shaping her tastes according to their values; convincing her to view her Islamic history through their eyes; and moulding her hopes and aspirations through their dreams.

 

• And over successive generations, it is the media that functioned as one of their greatest tools in achieving this aim. For it served as a mirror to that soul; not by providing a true reflection of the Muslim woman's status in her Deen - for if it had, it would have shown her as embracing a system which exemplified protection of her dignity and wellbeing, one that elevated her status within societies, and pioneered the political, economic, educational and legal rights she enjoyed, centuries ahead of Western civilizations today.

 

• No! The secular media concealed this truthful reflection of the position of women in the Shariah. Instead, it constructed a distorted ugly image of her identity as a Muslim woman and her mistreatment under Islam, based upon lies and myths - that she was imprisoned, enslaved, consigned to second-class status, and the subject of violence. The words ‘victim' and ‘veiled' became synonymous; and the covered Muslim woman came to represent to many the visible symbol of Islam's oppression of women.

 

• This false image led to many Muslim women becoming ashamed of their Islamic culture, despising their Islamic history, and fearing the return of Islamic rule, while also being enticed by the secular, liberal lifestyle, culture and system, viewing it as the path to dignified lives. It also intensified the suspicion and hatred amongst non-Muslim communities towards Islam. All this aided secular governments, in the East and West to pursue their agenda of weakening the attachment of Muslims to their Islamic beliefs and to remove Islam from public life by manufacturing consent amongst their public for hijab and niqab bans and other oppressive policies against Muslims, as well as to invade Muslim lands for political interests - all in the name of saving Muslim women from their so-called ‘oppressive' Islamic culture.

 

• Gema Martin Munoz, Professor of Sociology of the Arab and Islamic World at Autonoma University of Madrid wrote in an article entitled, ‘Islam's women under Western eyes', "The media not only constitutes almost the sole source of information for the images and attitudes that they create. They also perpetuate historically inherited stereotypes and cultural imaginaries that form part of the national collective memory bank."

 

• Dear sisters, these inherited stereotypes and false cultural imaginaries of Muslim women and their status in Islam cannot go unchallenged. Such lies should not be the dominant voice in the media discourses on women and Shariah. They must be dismantled and discarded. To do this requires for us to first recognise the main sources from which the media fiction regarding the Shariah's subjugation of women arise.

 

(2) BREAKING THE ORIENTALIST MYTHS REGARDING WOMEN UNDER THE UTHMANI KHILAFAH:

• One of these main sources is the age-old Western orientalist myths regarding the treatment of women under the Uthmani Khilafah "Caliphate" state.

 

• For centuries, the writings and paintings of Western orientalists, historians, and politicians portrayed the position of women under the rule of the Uthmani Khilafah "Caliphate" as one of servitude, imprisonment, and enslavement to men. Sensationalist, fictitious books such as "1001 Arabian Nights" - as well as the works of European travellers and artists presented Ottoman society as a lustful place, where women were helpless chattels of their husbands, captives in their homes, and treated as mere objects to provide pleasure for men. Nowhere symbolised this more for the Western mind than the ‘Harem' that became the most fertile space of orientalist imagination. Scenes depicting it as a place of sexual indulgence, with women imprisoned and paraded for male gratification were played out on the pages of books and the canvases of paintings- all of which was attributed to the Shariah and Islamic rule.

 

• For centuries, these European descriptions of the ‘Exotic East', shaped Western attitudes towards the status of women under the Shariah laws. They were repeated endlessly and perpetuated on the cinema and TV screens of the 20^th and 21^st century, becoming part of popular culture and ingrained into the psyché of many in the West as well as many Muslims.

 

• It is these depictions that came to define many of the modern-day media accusations against specific Islamic social laws. The niqab for example, that has been described by the media as a garment of imprisonment and seclusion, that makes the woman voiceless and invisible - is viewed as almost an extension of the walls of that jail-like harem as pictured by orientalists, as is gender segregation that has been labelled as ‘gender apartheid' and as another means of secluding women from society.

 

• However, in truth, these orientalist depictions of the Uthmani Khilafah "Caliphate" were mere figments of European imagination. They were in the main, works of Western male writers and artists who were never allowed to have close interaction with Ottoman women, nor enter the harem due to the strict segregation of the genders that was implemented under the State. It was therefore virtually impossible for male foreigners to give a first-hand account of women's lives in an Ottoman harem or household.

 

• However, the writings of female European travellers who were able to have closer contact with Ottoman women and enter their harems to witness directly their lives, paint a very different picture to the descriptions of these male orientalists. They rejected the idea that women under the Uthmani Khilafah "Caliphate" were imprisoned, enslaved, and degraded human beings; rather they witnessed the converse. M. De M. D'Ohsson, an Armenian woman who worked for many years in the Swedish Embassy in Turkey during the 18^th century stated regarding the Uthmani Khilafah "Caliphate", "Anyone who behaves badly towards a woman, regardless of his position or religion, cannot escape punishment, because religion generally commands women to be respected. For this reason both the police and judges deal very severely with anyone who ill-treats women."

 

• These female European writers also refuted the claim the harems were places where women were imprisoned, describing them instead as simply the living quarters of women within a household, and detailing how women were free to leave them for leisure activities or to seek redress of violations to their rights through the courts. They also disputed accusations of harems being places of sexual depravity where women were displayed for male pleasure, describing instead the piety and high regard for purity in the interaction between men and women in the Muslim Ottoman household. They told of how men strictly adhered to rules relating to the female-only environment of the harem to the extent that the husband of a Muslim woman, even if he was the Khalifah would not think of entering into the harem of his own home if he saw women's slippers at the harem door, which indicated that there were female guests visiting.

 

• An examination of the judicial records of the Uthmani Khilafah "Caliphate", also paint a very different picture of the lives of women under its Islamic laws than that depicted by the fantasies of Western orientalists. In the 1970's, an American history professor, R. C. Jennings conducted extensive research on more than 10,000 Ottoman court records from the 17^th century. They reveal that women used the courts regularly to defend their personal and property rights, that they were protected from violence and forced marriages, were financially maintained by their husbands and families, could initiate divorce, and had their dowry and inheritance rights protected. In addition, they had the same economic rights as men and were able to manage their wealth and economic affairs independently of male relatives. This included the right to buy and sell property, run a business, form contracts, invest their wealth, and hold managerial positions in businesses run by others.

 

• Despite all this sisters, the century-old lies of the oppression of women under the Shariah laws of the Uthmani Khilafah "Caliphate" continue to form the basis upon which numerous journalists and media formulate their arguments regarding Islam's mistreatment of women. They are also replicated in modern-day dramas, films, historical documentaries and writings - even in Turkey where a number of recent shows regarding various sultans have gained great popularity and have been exported across the Muslim world, even though their scripts are cut and paste of the myths of Western orientalists and colonialists.

 

• These historical portrayals of Muslim women's subjugation by Islam are also echoed in another modern-day phenomenon - the birth of a genre of memoirs written by Muslim and ex-Muslim women accounting their personal stories of escaping oppression for which they blamed Islam. The narratives of historical works of fiction have therefore today been etched into the storylines of what are being marketed as works of fact! These books and films have exploded in popularity over the last 2 decades, flooding bookshops and selling in their millions in the Muslim and non-Muslim world. Whether it's Ayan Hirsi's, ‘The Caged Virgin', or the ‘Princess' trilogy about the subjugated life of a Saudi Princess, or the book ‘Sold' that tells the story of 2 girls forced into marriage in Yemen, or even the biography of Malala Yousafzai - it's the same message that is amplified again, and again, and again - that Muslim women need saving from Islam. And it's the secular media that is providing the megaphone. Indeed, such media have created celebrities of this genre of authors, providing them extensive airtime and huge press space to peddle their stories and publicise their books, giving them a free reign to present their individual personal experiences resulting from non-Islamic customs as the general norm of women's lives under the Shariah, and that vast numbers of Muslim women resent their Islamic culture. And all this has been re-enforced by the relentless sensationalist media coverage of forced marriages, honour killings, and other oppressive non-Islamic practices in Muslim communities which have been linked to the Shariah; or stories of women's subjugation under non-Islamic regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan which are falsely paraded as templates of Islamic governance - re-iterating the dominant narrative that the Shariah oppresses women.

 

• The truth therefore appears to have been branded as irrelevant in all this.

 

• Sisters, this new age literature and media productions based upon gender orientalism and historical fabrications and fantasies do not belong in the bookstores or TV screens of our lands. They belong in the dustbin of history!

 

(3) DISMANTLING SECULAR ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE ISLAMIC SOCIAL LAWS:

• Dear sisters, the other main source from which the media fiction regarding the Shariah's subjugation of women arises is their whole approach by which Islamic social laws are examined and judged. Individual Islamic rulings are cherry picked, their context ignored, and then their meanings misinterpreted using a host of wild assumptions to come to the conclusion that the Shariah oppresses women; while conveniently overlooking the high status and unrivalled rights Islam affords women, as well as the positive impact that Islam's social laws have when implemented as a whole upon women, children, family life, and society.

 

So for example, the media says that Islamic inheritance laws are discriminatory against women because the sister receives half the share of her brother - while ignoring the fact that in Islam the man is obliged to provide for his wife and children, as well as his sisters and extended family if required while the woman is not expected to spend a penny of her wealth on others, even if she is rich - yet Islam still grants her a share of the inheritance! Subhanallah! Or they say that polygamy is unjust to women, even though a man is obliged to take financial and physical care of each of his wives equally, and to treat them with kindness and love. However, there is no condemnation that adultery has become the norm within liberal states, where it is perfectly legal for a man to have relations with countless women while taking no responsibility for them or the children they father.

 

 

• Or some journalists say that the differences in certain rights and roles of men and women in Islam - for example in testimony, marital duties, or the woman not being permitted to be a ruler - implies that Islam views women as being inferior to men in worth or intellect, while ignoring the fact that Allah (swt) said,

((وَٱللَّهُ جَعَلَ لَكُم مِّنۡ أَنفُسِكُمۡ أَزۡوَٲجً۬ا))

"And Allah has made for you mates of your own nature..." [An-Nahl: 72]

And that the Prophet (saw) said, «إِنَّمَا النِّسَاءُ شَقَائِقُ الرِّجَالِ»"Assuredly, women are the twin halves of men." They disregard the fact that numerous women transmitted hadiths from the Prophet (saw) which form part of the Sunnah - one of the four main sources of extracting Islamic rulings. Historically under Islamic rule, women played an essential role in the development, transmission and preservation of Islamic sciences, fiqh and hadith, contributing to the richness of Islamic culture and scholarship; that there were thousands of female scholars under the Khilafah "Caliphate" some of whom were teachers of eminent male scholars such as Imam Malik, Imam Shafi'i, and Ibn Taymiyyah, and that they lectured in the prestigious colleges and mosques of their time - such as Umm Darda in the 7^th century AD who taught hadith at the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the capital of the Khilafah "Caliphate" at the time, one of her students being the Khalifah of the state, or Aishah bint Abd-al-Hadi who in the 9^th century was appointed to the post of principal teacher of Sahih al-Bukhari in the Grand Mosque of Banu Umayyah - so after all of this, how do they dare to claim that the Shariah views the worth and intellect of the woman to be deficient to the man?

 

 

• And finally, the media claims that the Shariah orders women to cover up, and enforces gender segregation, and other social laws that limit the relationship between men and women because it views women as evil, sexual temptresses that are a cause of fitnah for men and need to be secluded from society; while they blindly ignore the fact that within capitalist liberal states, the beauty, entertainment, and pornography industries have marketed the idea of the woman as a sexual temptress, exploiting her feminine charms, and presenting her as a seductress for the sake of profit.

 

• Islam in contrast, describes the woman as ‘muhsana' - a fortress against Shaytan, who is able to keep her husband upright in his behavior and completes half his Deen. Additionally, under Islamic rule, countless eminent male scholars held their female teachers in high regard, praising them for their piety, virtuous conduct, and integrity. This is because, unlike Western Christian societies historically, Islam rejects the view that women are ‘sexual temptresses' or ‘instruments of the devil' causing men to go astray. No! Rather the Qur'an states,

((وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنَـٰتُ بَعۡضُهُمۡ أَوۡلِيَآءُ بَعۡضٍ۬‌ۚ يَأۡمُرُونَ بِٱلۡمَعۡرُوفِ وَيَنۡهَوۡنَ عَنِ ٱلۡمُنكَرِ))

"And the believers, men and women, are guardians one of another; they enjoin the right and forbid the wrong" [TMQ At-Taubah: 71], thereby holding men and women equally responsible for protecting society from corruption. And as for the accusation that these social laws encourage the seclusion of women, then how do they explain the fact that women had an active role in the politics, economics, education and general life of the society under the rule of the Prophet (saw) while also abiding resolutely to their Islamic dress and other Shariah rulings?

• Indeed, what such media seems determined to ignore is that unlike the irrational liberal ideology, Islam recognizes that men and women have the potential of provoking the sexual desire in each other. Therefore it sets down strict laws and limits, to direct the fulfillment of the sexual instinct to marriage alone and hence to that which benefits rather than harms society. So the Islamic social laws, rather than secluding women, or hindering the interaction of men and women, facilitates it by ensuring healthy cooperation between the genders in all spheres of life, based upon mutual respect and not marred by sexual distractions. This is in addition to protecting the family unit, and hence the rights of women, men, and children alike. What a stark contrast this is to the ‘free-for all' liberal societies with their personal and sexual freedoms that have devastated family life, ruined the lives of children and reaped social and moral chaos within their societies.

 

 

CONCLUSION:

• In conclusion sisters, the secular media has created its own prison for the Muslim woman, unwilling to hear our voices, attempting to cage and contain us within the four walls of an outdated false narrative that we feel oppressed by our Deen, seek protection from our Islamic culture and Islamic rule, and yearn for salvation through the Western liberal lifestyle and system. It is therefore down to us dear sisters to break the bars of that jail, to no longer accept for others to speak on our behalf about how we think and feel about Islam; or to allow these lies to continue to be the lens through which the world views us and our status in the Shariah - lies which are used to implement oppressive anti-Islamic policies, or invade our Muslim lands, or fight the resumption of the Islamic Khilafah "Caliphate" state - all supposedly in our name!

 

• Winston Churchill, the former British Prime Minister once said, "Sometimes the truth is so precious, it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies." So sisters, let us not let the truth about the beautiful, unrivalled status that the Shariah affords women to be concealed by this blanket of deceit, nor accept for our Deen to be condemned and accused without coming to its defence. Let us strive to get our voices heard and our opinions known in the mainstream media - in discussion shows, in the papers, and in news outlets; or set up and support our own Islamic media - in real life or online, as well as effectively utilize social media to fight this propaganda and make the truth known. But in a manner where we never ever become apologetic for our beliefs, or shy away from being frank about our values, or let others steer the direction of the discussion. But rather to dismantle the absurd accusations, while also raising a 21^st century debate, away from pieces of cloth and isolated Islamic laws to the true causes of women's oppression and what set of values and laws can truly secure respect and rights for women. And never, ever underestimate what your contribution to this debate can achieve sisters - for just the image of a Muslim woman raising her opinions confidently in the media, saying that she feels empowered and respected by her Islamic beliefs, is enough to undermine a mountain of lies. So sisters, the media may want to use us in the frontline of their propaganda attack against Islam; but it is us who can and must be in the frontline of the struggle to present the truth of our Deen. Allah (swt) says,

((يُرِيدُونَ أَن يُطۡفِـُٔواْ نُورَ ٱللَّهِ بِأَفۡوَٲهِهِمۡ وَيَأۡبَى ٱللَّهُ إِلَّآ أَن يُتِمَّ نُورَهُ ۥ وَلَوۡ ڪَرِهَ ٱلۡكَـٰفِرُونَ))

"They desire to extinguish the light of Allah with their mouths but Allah will not allow it to happen, for He seeks to perfect His light even though the disbelievers may dislike it." [TMQ At-Taubah: 32]

 

 

 

Dr. Nazreen Nawaz

 

Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir