One of the Qur’anic verses central to my understanding of the Qur’an occurs in Chapter 33, verse 35, and foregrounds the principle of mutuality and reciprocity between men and women:
In the Name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful
‘Men and women who have surrendered, believing men and believing women, obedient men and obedient women, truthful men and truthful women, enduring men and enduring women, humble men and humble women, men and women who give in charity, men who fast and women who fast, men and women who guard their chastity, men and women who remember God oft -- for them God has prepared forgiveness and a mighty wage.’ (Q. 33:35)
This verse has always inspired me to see an egalitarian principle in the Qur’an. Since the lockdown I draw from it new insights. With the COVID crisis, we increasingly realise how collective and collaborative efforts are essential for our survival in dealing with the virus. The verse indicates the importance of sharing responsibilities between the genders in the religious and societal spheres. Whether giving in charity, or being truthful, or fasting, or discharging one’s professional duties in the NHS or in any other sector, there is no way we can do this separately. Not only that, but the collective shouldering of burdens and duties by different members of society must be based on norms and practices which uphold justice and equality.
One of the things we have seen in the last few weeks is that our society still struggles with structures of inequality and discrimination, as certain sectors and minorities are more affected by the virus. We have also seen how more women are bearing the brunt of household labour and caring responsibilities within the family. It is becoming clear that women will be paying a higher price economically as the cost of their labour at home will remain unaccounted for despite contributing greatly to sustaining society.
As I experience the lockdown, I observe how the personal, social, and spiritual are all interlinked. In the last few weeks, I have found the time and space to share my deeper reflections on life and work with my teenage daughter, who often enlightens me with the wisdom of her generation. This getting closer within household spaces has allowed for more intimate exchange of thoughts as well as for discovering the rough edges of how we relate to each other during longer stretches of time together.
We are somehow getting to know each other anew. These possibilities are not only of a social nature, they, in fact, provide us with a more intense grasp of our existence in relation to others and permit us to have spiritual nourishment together – which is quite important for our mental and emotional sustenance. If anything, our interdependence comes into sharper focus these days and it demands from us that we confront and try to overcome the challenges we experience in personal relationships, as we disclose to each other who we are at the core and who we are becoming through these new circumstances. I have been reminded through these experiences of another Qur’anic verse:
‘O humankind we have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes so that you may know one another.’ (Q. 49: 13)
Many Muslim households have created prayer spaces to worship together; it is interesting to note how households, in general, regardless of how small or big, are wide enough to accommodate various spheres of our lives. Rooms and corners have become makeshift offices, makeshift schools and makeshift prayer spaces. Families in my community are praying together at home and experiencing forms of communal spirituality not always possible when men go to the mosques and women are not accommodated there. Within these household communities, a sense of the organic spiritual life of the first Muslim community is regained. Men and women do things together, including praying in the same space, which was the case during Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) time, but might not be possible at the mosque down the road where I live.
This has made me reflect on how important it is for individuals and organisations to become more sensitive to inequalities and widening gaps within society, and to become more active in changing some of these unjust realities after the lockdown. I take my inspiration from the many stories of early Muslim women who were proactive in dealing with difficult personal and communal circumstances.
One of the most moving stories in the Qur’an and the Prophetic tradition is about Khawla bint Tha‘laba. She was a middle-aged woman and was the breadwinner of her family. Her ageing husband who was becoming irritable divorced her using a pre-Islamic Arab formula, leaving her effectively neither married nor divorced. Angered by his behaviour, she refused to let it pass, borrowed a cloak from a neighbour and went to the Prophet (PBUH) to complain and requested that she be freed from her acquired status of neither wife nor divorcee able to remarry. She believed this was unjust despite it not having been condemned by the Qur’an before that incident.
We see here a model of a woman taking charge of her life and refusing to be cast away by her husband after a lifetime of companionship - refusing to be subjected to unjust practices. It is evident from the story that she has an interpretation of what ‘justice’ is based on her understanding and reception of the Qur’an. Why else does she insist on Revelation descending when the Prophet (PBUH) has no clear answer to her problem? And revelation does come to alleviate the hardship she has found herself facing and to support her quest for personal and communal justice – proscribing the practice which could affect other women:
‘Indeed, God has heard the statement of her who disputes with you concerning her husband and complains (tashtakῑ) to God. And God hears the argument between you both. Verily, God is All-Hearer, All-Seer.’ (Qur’an 58:1)
This is a very moving piece of revelation from a woman’s perspective, because as Khawla acts in protest, she is heard by an All-hearing intimate God attentive to the problems of a woman who had to borrow a garment in order to appear in public - a poor, marginal, disempowered woman by all standards in many societies.
Her taking responsibility, her confident agency, and her faith translated into action as she tries to apply her understanding of the Qur’anic message to her own circumstances is what I feel is important in the story. There is much to learn from Khawla for women still protesting different forms of gender injustice in society, including the gender pay gap, bullying and harassment in the workplace, and now the unequal shouldering of care responsibilities during the lockdown.
As the order of life and the order of social interaction continue to change during the lockdown, despite the uncertainties - perhaps because of the uncertainties, there is a regained sense of the importance of being together. It has been possible for example to organise virtual iftars (the breaking of the fast meal at sunset in Ramadan) or virtual Eid celebrations at the end of Ramadan. One of my non-Muslim university students attended the event and brought a friend. Both reported learning much from the experience. In her words, the student considered how this virtual iftar signifies the possibility of intercultural and interfaith networking at a global level. Her words take us back to the Qur’anic verse I cited earlier:
“O humankind we have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. (Q. 49: 13).
In the context of the COVID pandemic, I read in this verse a strong reminder about how our natures are fundamentally interactive.
As we emerge from the lockdown, with a transformed sense and experience of the global community, we no doubt want to continue to use all the technologies we have, and might develop, to better know each other. This is why the verse captures something many of us realise and feel more profoundly now; a greater appreciation of personal interaction with each other, within families and communities, and in our professional and public life. This knowing of one another is the purpose of God’s creation of humanity, and one meaning of knowledge in the Islamic Sufi tradition is love, you cannot know the other except through transcending yourself in your love of the other.
This is a longer version of the BBC Islamic Reflections, presented by Dr Shuruq Naguib and broadcast on 29/05/2020
