The issue is that those who are afraid of losing hold of power often resort to using spiritual abuse tactics in order to maintain their grip. That is rather damning and must be confronted by academics and activists in alliance with influential and sympathetic scholars.
Women are afraid that they will be shut out of the community if they talk bout Gender-Based Violence. They will rather speak in hushed tones or not speak at all.
The fact that these points are all taken and understood out of context, and that they cannot be found in the Qur’an and Sunnah as the only markers of the status of women in Islam must make one wary of lists like this.
women don’t have to do something major like save a nation or participate in politics to have their battles acknowledged. We are all Kim Ji Youngs; faceless young women, battling daily misogyny in our lives from our houses to schools to workplaces.
Contemporary historians failed to do justice to Lubna’s legacy. The why can be easily answered by the fact that she was a woman. A woman no less who earned her right to fame through skills and hard work. A woman who wasn’t the wife of someone influential, nor the daughter of a famous man.
“Are there women who are forced to veil? As much as there are women forced to do a number of things in different parts of the world. Islam isn’t a bunch of rules and restrictions, but a way of life. A guide through every hardship and joy.”
And although men understand that broad statements about gender roles are no longer acceptable, there exists an unspoken expectation that women will do all the domestic chores.
I do not, cannot and will not understand why I must reduce my capabilities as a wife to elevate yours as a husband. When bullying occurs in religious settings, you find out that men and women, although different, are very much similar.
There is a sense of defensiveness, of not wanting to acknowledge the diseases that we have within our community, because to do so feels equivalent to admitting to the non-Muslims that we are not as perfect and pure as we claim, or that we are as bad as they make us out to be.
Each time you shame another woman because you believe she rates lower than you on the scale of male desirability, you expose your deep lack of self-love and self-esteem. And to achieve a gender-equal world, where women are respected and valued as humans and not objects, rhetorics that define our humanity based on patriarchal standards must end.
