News > November 13, 2008

By Caitlin Brooks | Asst. news editor

“The moment of the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001 contained two high jackings. One resulted in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the other was a high jacking of Islam. Junior Mustafa Abdullah, president of the newly formed Muslim Student Association (MSA), said, “When any sort of radicals use religion as a vehicle for evil means, their actions cease to be religious.” The MSA sponsored a lecture by Darlene May, visiting associate professor of Arabic, on the topic of Women in Islam on Sept. 6 as part of their effort to educate the university community on the realities of Islam.

Since 2001 American Muslims have seen a huge upswing in attention, most of which has not been positive. The words Muslim, Islam and terrorist are almost synonymous in many people’s minds, in large part due to repeated violent portrayals of the Islamic faith on news networks and in films.

“(The mainstream media) creates these images that appear to non-Muslims that all Muslims are inherently violent,” Abdullah said. “These are the stereotypes we are trying to debunk. We are not trying to make Islam seem all nice and soft and beautiful; we are trying to present the reality, that these pockets of Muslims in the Middle East that can be called extremists and radicals only comprise a small, small minority of Muslims from all over the world. When we focus on these small factions, it creates a very tragic view of the whole faith.” Followers of Islam comprise the second largest religious group in the world, only smaller than Christians of all denominations, and they can be found in many countries across the globe. Throughout the western world, particularly in America, misconceptions abound about the popular faith.

One of the hottest topics of debate is the role women play in the Islamic faith and in predominantly Muslim cultures. It was for this reason that the executive board of MSA decided that their first lecture would address the much debated issue. May, an American convert to Islam, stressed that the purpose of her lecture was to shed light on the traditional, theological role of women as written in the Quran and the Sunnah (the book of the sayings and the actions of the Prophet Muhammad) in an ideal world. She made sure to highlight the discrepancies between cultural views of women and the pure religious views of them.

She illustrated in great detail the role Eve had in the Islamic version of the fall from Paradise, very similar to that found in the Bible’s book of Genesis. Unlike in the Christian faith however, Eve is not blamed for Adam’s fall. Both Adam and Eve fall prey to the devil’s scheming and fall from grace together, which emphasizes the relative equality of men and women in the Islamic faith as emphasized by the famous Hadith (words of the Prophet found in the Sunnah) which reads: “all people are equal, as equal as the teeth of the comb.”

Despite this equality in the eyes of God, man and woman each has certain physiological and psychological characteristics that the other does not have. This means that they are complementary, rather than competitive. This also means that man has some rights and responsibilities that woman does not have, and vice versa. Where sexual characteristics do affect status and function, like in the family or in a marriage, women will find themselves superior. Whenever sexual characteristics are involved, however, “men are a degree above women. Men are the protectors and the defenders of women because God has given man more strength than women,” May said.

For example, men are totally financially responsible for the family in Muslim society, but women are spiritually superior.

They are more perfect reflections of God, as is apparent in esoteric studies of Islam, May said.

One of the key evidences many Westerners use to indicate the oppression of women within Muslim societies is the veiling of the female form. May suggested that taken in the strictly religious view, the veiling of a woman’s face is an honor. It is “symbolic that woman represents the inner nature of divine that is hidden from the world,” May said. “Woman in the west are always talking about how they want to be equal with males. In Islam, women are different, there is not the sense of competition so much as being complements.

“Not a sense of needing to be liberated from man or a fight for rights because rights are God given,” she said.

This is not true for all women in all households or cultures, but in keeping with a pure reading of the Quran and the Sunnah, a woman who follows the Islamic faith may be seen as having even more freedom and equality than women of other religions. May’s discussion was just the first of many steps toward the MSA’s ultimate goal; an open discussion on religious pluralism.

As Abdullah phrased it, “if you can construct institutions of extremism (like terrorist sects), then you can construct institutions of pluralism. It’s a matter of consciousness, education and understanding.”

Breaking down the barriers that prevent conversation across religions is a huge move toward this end.