DoubleTake Podcast
22 / 50
S2E9 - Is Islam a Man's Religion? | DoubleTake
Islam was revolutionary at preserving and elevating the rights of women when it was revealed over 1400 years ago, but today’s challenges and sensibilities may cause us to wonder if that is still the case. However, many of our concerns have been addressed as early as the time of the Prophet (S), when female companions asked him about differences in the way men and women were addressed in the Qur’an.
Are the concerns of women secondary to the concerns of men in Islam? How can we make sense of Qur’an verses and Hadith narrations that challenge our understanding of the status of women? How can we better understand these issues at a time when it seems like good role models are hard to come by?
In this episode, join Mohamad Zaoud for a conversation on women in Islam with special guest Ustadha Zaynab Ansari.
Listen on:
Apple
Google
Spotify
Other platforms
Share your feedback!
Don't forget to follow us!
Instagram: @yaqeenpodcast Facebook: facebook.com/yaqeenpodcast
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. The companion of the Prophet ﷺ, Umar ibn al-Khattab, r.a, once said that in Jahiliyyah, the days of ignorance, we used to have no regard for women whatsoever. But when Islam came and Allah made mention of them, this caused us to realize that they have rights upon us. There's no doubt that Islam was revolutionary at protecting the rights of women, but sometimes nowadays, the conversation about the place of women in Islam stops there. Are the concerns of women secondary to the concerns of men in Islam? How can we make sense of Qur'an verses and hadith narrations that challenge our understanding of the status of women? Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Ustada Zainab Ansari about the role and status of women in Islam. I learned a thing or two, to put it simply. Double Take is a podcast by Yaqeen Institute about the questions and ideas around Islam and Muslims that give us pause. Remember to subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. It makes a big difference. Also, consider sharing your thoughts directly with our team using the link in the description. Let us know what you like, dislike, and what you'd like to see more of. Ustada Zainab Ansari has served as a member of the faculty of Ta'if Seminary since its inception in 2014, when she joined the Muslim community in Knoxville in the pioneering role of Women's Scholar-in-Residence, one of the first women to serve in such a capacity in an Islamic institution in North America. She is a lifelong student of traditional Islam and spent her formative years studying in Damascus, Syria. She has also earned degrees in World History and Middle Eastern Studies. Enjoy the episode. Ustada Zainab, Salam alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh and welcome to Double Take.
Wa alaikum salam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh. Thank you for inviting me. How's everybody doing? Alhamdulillah. We're in Sydney at the moment. We're in the middle of summer and I'm wearing a jumper because the weather's crazy. But alhamdulillah, we're good. Alhamdulillah. And that is dialect for sweater, correct? That's correct. That's correct. I love the different kind of dialects and different kind of words we use across English, you know, British English, Australian and American. I won't get into that because that'll take us the whole episode. But Ustada Zainab, our topic is a pretty dense one today. I'm a simple Muslim man who practices Islam and raises two kids. I have a loving wife and a huge extended family. And there's one topic that I think I would love your input on. And that is women as it's presented in Islam. Ustada Zainab, Islam, especially here in Australia, and I think across the world, Islam is always pictured in the media as being a man's religion. It's men who are to go to the mosque consistently. It's seemingly men who are addressed in the Qur'an consistently. It's men who are predominantly pictured as leaders of our faith over the centuries. As someone who cares about Islam and practices Islam, I can't say I haven't thought about this deep issue. I haven't thought about this deep down. And the question that I have in my mind is, is Islam more of a man's religion than a woman's religion? And are we presenting Islam as a man's religion in the 21st century? I know there's a lot to unpack there and we'll talk about the Qur'an and Hadith inshallah later.
But I'm really hoping that you can put this to bed for me right from the outset. So, Salam alaikum again and what a terrific question. You know, I was kind of teaching a class about a year ago on women's scholarship in Islam, and I wanted to really kind of subtitle the class, It's a Man's World. And I ended up kind of not using that title because I was kind of nixed by the person that was kind of looking at the course description. So, you know, I think about the idea of ideals. I mean, we love the idea of ideals, like what's the ideal believer, the ideal Muslim man, the ideal Muslim woman. We have that language in the Hadith of the Prophet, alaihi salatu wasalam, describes the idea of the kamilat, the perfect women. And he mentions peace be upon him, the idea of men who have perfection and women who have perfection. So, you know, this is a religion where we are taught to look at those who have more than us in matters of deen and less than us in worldly matters. So when I say paradigmatic, in other words, I mean, who is that person who represents for us that like the epitome of Islamic virtue? And I think often we are going to default to a male role model, which, you know, for me personally, it's not at all problematic. But I think that when you kind of look at this next generation of Muslims, this younger audience who are very sensitive to kind of issues of representation and minorities and gender and so on, I do think we have to think about that a little bit more, a little bit more deeply. And so that's why going back to that example that I kind of started out with when I was teaching this class on women's scholarship in Islam, I actually wanted to talk about this idea of are these just sort of female anomalies? Are these just like exceptions to the rule? And what is a man's world? Or do we need to think about this differently?
Is it that these women have always been there? They've always existed, that Islam has always been a faith for both genders, but that the language we've used has not been inclusive. And not inclusive in the sense of reflecting modern sensibilities, but in fact, reflecting what the Quran itself says about this religion as it addresses both genders. JazakAllah khair. I want to double down on the whole role model question, like in terms of, are there, is it just a matter of not having enough role models that are women in Islamic history, or that we just haven't kind of shone light on them? I want to double down on that in a few moments. But before that, in terms of you said, like, is this a man's world? Or is this a man's religion? I just want to focus on that for a sec, because I have a thing, like I always think about when I hear on the minbar, or when I attend a class about how Islam, what Islam did for women 1400 years ago, that it gave women rights in the inheritance. It gave women so many different rights. Is that true today? Like, does Islam talk to women today, just as it did 1400 years ago? Let me kind of unpack that for you. This question, is this religion just for men? Because I think when we ask that question, we're coming from the perspective of, well, look at public practice, look at ritual, look at leadership, look at authority, look at who's the imam, look at who officiates weddings, look at who has what who seems to have the upper hand when it comes to personal status law. So in other words, we can sort of bring in a rave of examples from Islam's textual sources to support that argument.
But what I would say, the reason why I think this question of this religion being for men, and how I think it's equally for men and women, and sometimes it seems there's even favoritism for women, I'm actually going to say that is because today, in the 21st century, we are the beneficiaries of, well, 1400 years of Islamic history, intellectual history, you know, kind of production. And again, the beneficiaries of 1400 years of Islamic scholarship and this legacy of amazing women. So for example, when you think about, say, the Ummahat Al-Mu'minin, and when you think about the fact that the Ummahat Al-Mu'minin were in their time concerned about this idea of what we would actually call like gender parity or gender equality, and they're bringing questions to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, because they're in the early days of Islam. That's the formative period, where obviously they're not looking back in retrospect at 1400 years of history and drawing firm conclusions. So it makes sense that they are asking the questions that they ask. Now, for us to be asking the same questions 1400 years later, I think the questions are valid. I don't want to dismiss those questions. But I think there's a way of sort of, you know, asking that question while being able to kind of take stock of the fact that a lot has happened, a lot has changed in over 1400 years. You've got not just sort of theoretical models of the possibilities of feminine spirituality, but actual lived examples that I think we really need to be highlighting for Muslims in this day and age. I asked you this question a couple of weeks ago in a conversation,
and you paused short of telling me that what a silly question. I want to know as a Muslim male, why is it a silly question? Like, I want to know why I shouldn't be asking something like, from a female perspective, from a Muslim woman practicing Islam, why have I got the actual framing wrong in terms of, is this a man's religion? This is what I say to my students. When my students come to me, they say, well, you know, you say that this is a religion that equally addresses women. You say that there's even perhaps some favoritism shown to women. But look at these examples, and they'll bring a number of examples. And I say, you know what, that's when we have to kind of reframe the question, because it's my contention. I really firmly believe that if we frame the question or the argument in terms of we want to be able to find full-on gender parity when it comes to the contributions of men and women to Islam's scholarly canon, and for every, say, just give an example, like say for every Mushtaqid scholar that's a male Mushtaqid, a male kind of legal authority within Islamic law, we want to be able to find that that person had a direct female counterpart. So when we can't do that, we walk away disappointed. And I remember reading something in Dr. Nadwi's book, Sheikh Mohammed Akram Nadwi, who writes an amazing book about women scholars in Islam. And one of the things he says is that we really do have to reframe the question, because I think that if we always start from the point of absence, the point of deficiency, this gap, you know, what's missing, I think it's going to be very easy to find evidence of that.
But if we're willing to be a little bit more patient to kind of dig deeper, I think we're going to find evidence of women's presence, women's role, women's contribution, that might even surprise those of us who feel we're pretty knowledgeable about the subject. Ustadha Zainab, the wife of the Prophet ﷺ, Umm Salama, had a pretty serious question to ask the Prophet ﷺ, and I'd love to hear your kind of thoughts on it. She said, why is it that we are not mentioned in the Qur'an as men are? Can you explain to me what this concern of Umm Salama was? What does it tell us about how the Qur'an views women and addresses women? You know, it's such a beautiful question that Umm Salama asks, so first of all, my sense is that there were conversations happening amongst the women, especially once the prophetic community is established in Medina. I actually think that Mecca is kind of more of a really fascinating case study for more gender equality than people actually imagine. Let me just kind of mention that, because a lot of us kind of think that women don't really kind of come into their own, until Medina, and I'm going to argue it happens way before that in Mecca. So this is just my interpretation, but my interpretation of these sentiments being expressed by Umm Salama, and she's not the other one, by the way. I have a hadith here that seems to be transmitted in At-Tabarani, who has kind of a number of hadith about women and women's concerns, where I don't have the name of the woman, I'd have to actually come back and see if I can find that. But a woman comes to the Prophet, and she says that fighting jihad is meant for men, and if they die as martyrs, they receive reward in the afterlife, and they're provided for by God,
and there are other hadith where women are expressing concerns that men have hajj, and men have jihad. So my sense, brother Mohammed and brother Tariq, is that there are conversations happening amongst the women in Medina, because they see that there's a very sort of public role for Islamic practice that doesn't exist in Mecca. So in other words, men are going on campaigns, and different acts of worship are being legislated, and of course, towards the end of the prophetic period in Medina, the Prophet, alayhi salatu wasalam, is announcing hajj, and we know that Sayyidina Abu Bakr, I think, leaves the first one, and the Prophet, of course, leaves the farewell hajj. So I want us to understand these concerns are being possibly expressed within that context. It's not that Umm Salama radiAllahu ta'ala anha is saying that women are absent in the Qur'an, because Umm Salama is someone that obviously is able to kind of look back on all the Qur'anic revelation that happened in Mecca. I mean, she was a Hafidah of the Qur'an, she memorized the Qur'an. So when she comes to the Prophet, alayhi salatu wasalam, with this question, my sense is that the women being so avid to participate in the life of the community and access that which is spiritually beneficial for them, that's the context in which she asks this question. Because I want you to understand, it's not that the Qur'an is somehow all this time silent about women, not at all. But when you do kind of an ayah for ayah, number by number count, you don't get 50% about men, 50% about women, you don't get that type of parity. So her question is an amazing question. It's a very feminist question, I have to say.
If a woman came in this day and age and asked a shaykh that question, you would automatically say this woman is expressing a feminist concern. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, does not say, you know, Umm Salama, he doesn't say, tsk tsk, what's wrong with you? Are you not grateful to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? Kind of, you know, go back home and don't worry about this. In fact, you know, this is an example of where you have several ayat in the Qur'an that are going to be revealed as sababa nuzul for collectively a conversation the women are having about women being addressed in the Qur'an. So, and by the way, there are several reports about this. According to Tabari, Tabari says that it was Sayyida Umm Salama or Hind bint Abi Umayya' al-Makhzumiya as was her full name, who asks the Prophet this question, why are we women never mentioned in the Qur'an as men are, as you said? And then others say that it might have been Asma bint Umayya' who comes from, Asma bint Umayya' who's coming from Abyssinia and she asks that question. And then I also have here that it might have been Nusaybah bint Ka'b, the very famous warrior of the Battle of Uhud, Umm Umarah who asked that question. And she said, I can see that everything favors men and that women are hardly mentioned by the divine words. So it's interesting that we get the sense that maybe multiple women are asking this question. And what we do know is that in response to this, really perhaps the same day that Umm Salama asks this question, the Prophet ﷺ actually announces during the Dhuhr prayer from the minbar that these verses have come down. And there are several verses, there's 33, 35, Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim, Inna al-Muslimin wa al-Muslimat wa al-Mu'minin wa al-Mu'minat ila akhira al-ayah, very beautiful ayah, I wish I could go through the whole thing.
That verily, and the ayah literally presents word by word, quality by quality, attribute by attribute, complete gender equality of the believers, of the male and female believers in Islam. It's a beautiful ayah. And then also another ayah that's revealed at this time, we have 33, 35, we also have 3, 195, Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim, Fastajabalhum rabbukum anni la udhiAAu waAAamalaAAamilum minkum min dhakrin waAAu unfa baAAdukum min baAAad. This is a beautiful ayah. So their Lord answered their prayer, I do not allow the labor of any worker from amongst you, male or female, to be lost. You proceed one from another. So that's 3, 195. Then we have, it is said that another ayah comes down about this as well. And this is an-Nisa chapter 4, verse 32, Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim, wa la tatamannu ma faddalallahu bihi baAAdakum AAala baAAad lilrijal nasibu mimmaktasabu walil nisa'i nasibu mimmaktasaban. And do not covet that which God has made some of you to have in excess over the others. For men, there is their share of what they've earned, and for women is their share of what they've earned. So that these ayahs are actually all revealed in response to the question posed by Umm Salama. So I think it's a very valid question because again, if you have, if you look at the way community life is unfolding in Mecca, men and women have very similar, very shared experiences of persecution and suppression and being forced to really be Muslim in secret. Whereas in Medina, now there is an undeniable public aspect to the faith where literally the iman of men is being put to the test. By what
extent are they willing to sacrifice and go out in jihad and participate in the community life? And it's not surprising that women are asking for something similar. Jazakallah khair. Now, thank you so much for that. I guess when it comes to weight in the eyes of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, obviously we know that men and women are equal. And just that ayah in Surat Al-Ahzab, which you mentioned, it just, it summarizes pretty much our whole religion and all the major characteristics that either a woman or man need to have. And it's there in broad daylight about the equality, you know, and other aspects, I guess, and correct me if I'm wrong, where women are differentiated from men in certain, it's more kind of the mu'amalat, it's the day to day actions. And that goes to kind of more of the role of women in Islam and the role of men in Islam in certain contexts as well. So if I was to summarize, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, when it comes to value in the eyes of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala where it's in broad daylight, it's very, very clear that, and the Quran addresses women equally as men. And then when it comes to certain contexts, certain day to day actions and different roles, it does differentiate. Do I have that kind of correct? You know, so what an awesome question. So, you know, I feel like you could make such an ironclad case for the complete spiritual ontological equality of men and women in Islam. And again, you said that this is a question for, like simplify it, break it down. So when I say ontological, I mean, ontology refers to one's essence, one's core, one's very being. In other words, you'd be hard pressed to find
anybody that knows anything about his or her faith. And especially we're kind of talking about male religious authorities who are going to come and say, well, you know, women are somehow not quite as human as men or they don't quite have the spiritual potential that men have. And we're not quite sure if women even, you know, have souls, which I know that sounds crazy, but that's something that was a belief of, it was a belief of pre-modern society. I think Aristotle could have had that view. It's a view that a debate that will take, that takes place in early Christianity. So I wanted to mention that, that if you look at the Quran and even the Ahadith of the Prophet, Aleyhis Salatu Was Salaam, even the Ahadith that appear to us to be a bit problematic, to use that term, that we don't, you know, we don't get the idea that women are somehow, you know, only valued as kind of like, I don't know, small men or kind of carbon, you know, or in other words that they're, you know what I'm saying? That sort of, there's the male archetype and women are just something a little bit different. And they're only valuable. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, and they're only valuable in terms of, to the extent to which they conform to like a male standard. However, we have to address the reality and the reality of, you know, so we've got the ideals, we have the idea of spiritual equality between the sexes, but what do you do about Islamic law? What do you do about inheritance, for example? What do you do about witnessing? What do you do about centuries of sort of a jurisprudence whose sort of interpretation and application very much has seemed to kind of favor men over women and give men in many circumstances, especially in the context of marriage, the upper hand. What do you do about that? So, and this, to me, this idea of equality under the law is one that I think that traditional alamat
have struggled to provide satisfactory answers to that. And I think that it's not necessarily that the alamat are not equipped or able to provide satisfactory answers. I think it also goes to the framing of the question and the expectations of an audience that's, again, looking at Islamic law and family law and personal status law and these rulings kind of related to women and gender. And they are very much going to look at these rulings and the kind of allocation of rights and responsibilities in a way that reflects modern day sensibilities. I don't really think you can blame a lot of Muslims for doing that. So for me, brother Mohammed, I think that is very much, like that's very much the elephant in the room. Because in other words, you're saying this sounds wonderful. You have 33, 35 in the Quran and you're talking about spiritual equality, but what do we do about the reality that when you have siblings inheriting, and not in every case, by the way, in some cases, when you have male and female siblings at the same level inheriting from a parent that the male is going to receive twice the portion of the female. So this is where I say that we have to be able to enter into a space of some, what's the term? I don't wanna say discomfort because that term can be off-putting to people, but I think we have to be able to enter into a space of understanding that Islamic law has its own internal logic and sort of consistency that oftentimes does not make a lot of sense if it is- Compared to the modern, yeah. Yeah, if it's removed from its original context
and it's also kind of juxtaposed against, sort of whatever kind of Western legal codes that you're looking at. And that's where I say that I know, and again, I know that not everybody's gonna be happy with this answer, but I think it becomes more conversation of equity over full-on equality between the sexes, to understand that it's actually fairer, it can be fair and equitable, while not a 50-50 distribution to say, yes, in this case, the male is gonna receive twice the portion of his female siblings, but the caveat there is that he's also going to be responsible for them if, say, for example, they don't get married or they fall in hard times or what have you. And again, that is difficult to understand by the Muhammad and by the Tariq without understanding the idea of qiwama. You know, the i.e. qiwama is sort of a way of understanding these balance of roles, responsibilities, rights, and privileges between males and females. People view it as patriarchal, it's obsolete, it's old-fashioned, but I think qiwama helps us to understand a way of organizing gender relations that I think can be really helpful when we are trying to interpret these different features of Islamic law that appear on their face to privilege men over women. Ustadh Zainab, alhamdulillah, I have a six-year-old girl. I've got plenty of nephews and nieces as well, and especially for the girls in my life that I'm playing a role in, when I wanna teach them about the role models that exist for them, of course, there are many male role models, plenty, like a plethora of them in Islamic history. We've got the prophets, we've got the Prophet, we've got the sahaba, the key sahaba that we hear about. We hear about the Asher Mubasherin al-Jannah. When I want them to have female role models in their day-to-day life that they can refer to,
it seems to me that there are quite, there's a lot less than the male role models. Is that because they're non-existent, or is it because we just haven't brought them to life? And I know you mentioned Dr. Akram Nadwi's book and his work, which is absolutely spectacular about al-Muhaddithat, but in general, for a simple Muslim family living in the West, say, for example, do we have less female role models in our history than male role models? I don't think that we have fewer female role models. I think that we just, there is sort of an imbalance, perhaps, when it comes to kind of excavating their stories and highlighting them, because often, this is our tendency, is to present the example of a female role model in a relational context. And this is actually what we find in the Quran, so I don't wanna be at all, I wanna make sure that I respect this convention, that this is something that's not viewed, by the way, in the Islamic tradition as being demeaning at all to women, that she's the um of so-and-so, or she's the wife of so-and-so, or she's the daughter of so-and-so, because I remember I had someone complain, like, wait a minute, I think we were, I was talking to someone a long time ago about women scholars or whatever, and I was kind of noting, well, so-and-so trained with such and such scholar, that was her father, her husband, and they're like, well, why can't she just kind of like stand on her own two feet as an independent woman? So I understand that point of view, but what we have to be able to kind of grapple with here is that in the Quran, we don't know, for example, the name of the mother of Moses, peace be upon him, Musa alayhi salam, we know her as the mother of Musa. We know Maryam, Sayyidina Maryam's name, of course, but we don't always know, we don't know the name
of the mother, or the wife, rather, of Sayyidina Ibrahim, alayhi salam. So we get, you know, some of our, in other words, some of our female role models, we know what their names are, and some of them, we understand them in kind of relation, in relationship to that, the man that they mentored or raised up or were married to, and I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily. So what I would say to that question is that I think we've had plenty of role models, and I think that this idea of, do we kind of have to sort of bypass all these male scholars and find more women as role models? Well, yes and no. I think that we need to have a more holistic way of looking at these male scholars and appreciating them for the contributions they made, while also making sure that we highlight and kind of center, to use that term, the stories of women. But I wanna take us back to Al-Ahzab, Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim. Laqad kana lakum fee rasoolillahi uswatun hasana. So verily there is in the messenger of God, laqad kana lakum, like for all of you, whoever is reading the Quran, male and female, young and old, whatever generation, community, historical epoch, for all of you, in the messenger of God is uswatun hasana. Because what does the next part of the ayah tell us? liman kana yarjul laaha wal yaum al-akhira wadhakara allaha kathira. So this is so gender inclusive here, that the prophet, peace be upon him, is the best example and the most beautiful example for all of you, for anybody whose hope is in God and the last day and remembers God often. So to understand that the prophet is not sent, Ali, salallahu alayhi wasalam, is sort of this role model that's only accessible to men. I mean, he's accessible to everybody from all walks of life. That's what makes his prophecy distinct, in terms of previous prophets and messengers
sent to specific communities. It's quite exclusive. The prophet, Ali, salallahu alayhi wasalam, the final prophet is khatib an-nabuwwa, he's sent to everybody. So that's what I would say to your daughter, may Allah preserve your daughter for you and your entire family and preserve your loved ones, you know, and preserve all of our children. You know, Allahumma ameen. You know, I would say is that, you know, don't become disgruntled so that we, oh, all of a sudden that's a man and I can't look at that person as an example. Let's make sure that we don't fall into that trap is one thing I would say. And the other thing I would say to that is that the prophet had this amazing balance of very like manly qualities. So he's this valiant warrior, but he also has qualities for so gentle and compassionate and very, what we would kind of identify as sort of qualities that are feminine qualities, because what he's modeling for us is the perfect human being. And he's sent to kind of remind these Arabs that, you know, these Arab men, you can cry and you can kiss your children, you can hug them and you can be compassionate and you're still manly. So that's one point. The other is the female role models. We have this idea that they stop with Sayyida Aisha radiAllahu ta'ala anha, or Sayyida Khadija radiAllahu ta'ala anha, and that's not the case. I mean, there is an isnad literally that's going to connect Sayyida Aisha ta'amra to the scholars that come after her through the tabi'een into the medieval period, into the early modern period, into modernity, whether we're talking about the muhadithat or whether we're talking in a more general sense about the women that have looked to these pious forebears, you know, as inspiration. I think about Aisha al-Ba'aniya. I actually taught a class on her, this idea of an Aisha after Sayyida Aisha. And she's really amazing. And by the way, most Muslims have never heard of her. I had to actually do the research and I stumbled across her. I was so, her story, I was so excited.
And then I was like, it took a, also it was a white European male that did the research on her, by the way. So her name is Aisha al-Ba'aniya, and she is one of the few women in kind of like female scholars in the pre-modern period to actually write books with her name on the cover of the book. And she wrote about spirituality. She was from Damascus, and she belonged to, I think, the Mamluk dynasty, so 15th century or so. So I would say to your wonderful daughter, SubhanAllah, I mean, I think that there is not, there's not a single historical era that she would look at and not find some amazing women. They are there, you know, they're there through every single period of Muslim history, even what we would view as the kind of, the sort of dark ages, if you will, kind of like imperialism, colonialism, they're still there. JazakAllah khair. Ustadha Zainab, I wanna sit more. I wanna talk more about this topic because it's such a rich topic and you clearly, you know, have your hands behind the wheel. We're gonna change gears and ask a couple of rapid fire questions if you're ready for them. Absolutely, bismillah. You lived and studied in Damascus, so I wonder what your answer to this question is gonna be, but your favorite qarah of the Quran. You know, so this is where my affinity for Bosnian culture is going to be expressed here. My favorite qarah is Hafiz Aziz Alili, who is Bosnian, originally, I think, from Macedonia. He's the imam at the Masjid al-Zagreb in Croatia, and I follow his recitation. Although I do have a soft spot, obviously, for anybody coming from Syria, but yeah. That's a first, that's a first for double-take.
So I look forward to listening to him. The latest book that you were reading. You know, I wish I could say it was a religious, because I'm surrounded by books and I always have these books I start and I wanna come back to. There are several books I'm kind of like working through, but in terms of the book that I most recently read, it was Ursula Burns. I think the title of the book is called Where You Are Is Not Who You Are. And you know, it's kind of funny, because she was a CEO, like the first black female CEO of Xerox, and I ended up reading this book, because I was just kind of so intrigued by the story. Awesome. And as someone who studied and lived in Damascus, what's your dream breakfast? And it can't be Syrian food. It's gotta be something else. My dream breakfast, you know, for me, as someone who routinely skips breakfast, my dream breakfast, subhanAllah. I would have to say right now, probably a stack of buttermilk pancakes with strawberry sounds awesome. It does sound awesome. Ustada Zainab, you won the Georgia 40 Under 40 Muslims Award in 2016. How did that happen? SubhanAllah, I don't think I was really deserving of that recognition, but it happened because I was part of an organization called the Islamic Speakers Bureau that got started in August, 2001. We were trained to go out and present about Islam and Muslims in August, 2001. And then a month later, we know what happened on 9-11, and we were just inundated with requests from the public in Atlanta, where I was living at the time, this, you know, major city in the Southeast of the United States, to speak about Islam and Muslims. So we all kind of had to step out into this really interesting space of presenting about Islam and Muslims after something so tragic and shocking had happened. So I volunteered for that organization for a number of years,
and the head of the organization, Mr. Sameh Khalifa, reached out to me and said, hey, you know, we're doing this Georgia 40 Under 40, you should really apply. I'm like, oh, I don't know. But she kept on kind of insisting. I'm like, okay, bismillah, I'll just go ahead and do it, but I don't think I was the most deserving recipient of that recognition. JazakAllah khair. And if there's a historical female Muslim figure that you look up to, who is it? This is a really tough one, because there are so many, but Sayyida Zaynab, the sister of the martyr Al-Hussein, radiAllahu ta'ala anhum, who stood up to the tyrant Yazid, I would love to know who she is. I would love to meet Sayyida Zaynab. Amazing. I mean, why her? Like, compared to so many others you could have mentioned. I know, I mean, there's so many. There's Nana Asma'u, there's Sayyida Aisha, there's Sayyida Khadija, there's so many, because this is a moment of just immeasurable trauma for the Muslim Ummah. Al-Hussein has just been martyred. He is the beloved grandson of the Prophet, alayhi salatu wa salam. He's been martyred in the sands of Karbala, and the women of his family, including his sister, Sayyida Zaynab, were taken to Damascus in chains. And there's this moment where she has to be the spokesperson for the family of the Prophet, standing up to this tyrant Yazid, and his palace in Damascus, as his soldiers are actually saying, which woman of Ahlul Bayt do you want for yourself? I mean, can you imagine that? And she stands up in that context. The courage of this woman is just, it's beyond what we can just, Pamela, even conceive of. Wow. JazakAllah khair. Final question. If you had unlimited resources to put together the ultimate resource for Muslim parents, what would it be? Wow, that, subhanAllah. I would have to say, the ultimate resource for Muslim parents, I would have to say it's to have 24-7 on-call therapists and psychologists and life coaches,
and academic tutors, not to mention someone to help with the cooking, cleaning and laundry, I suppose. JazakAllah khair, Ustazah Zainab. That was amazing. Thank you so much. And we look forward to having you again on Double Take. There's a plethora of topics we could really dive deep into with you. Well, jazakAllah khair. Anything good that I suppose from Allah Ta'ala, any mistakes were entirely my own. Thank you so much for inviting me. This was definitely a pleasure. JazakAllah khair.
Welcome back!
Bookmark content
Download resources easily
Manage your donations
Track your spiritual growth
1 items
1 items
1 items
25 items
9 items
