BEIJING — Could an old religious tradition from China help solve one of the world’s most pressing problems — violence committed in the name of Islam?
The irony of an officially atheist country possibly offering a way out of an international religious problem is intense. Yet that is what some Islamic scholars in China and elsewhere hope may happen as they point to a quietly liberal tradition among China’s 10 million Hui Muslims, where female imams and mosques for women are flourishing in a globally unique phenomenon.
Female imams and women’s mosques are important because their endurance in China offers a vision of an older form of Islam that has inclusiveness and tolerance, not marginalization and extremism, at its core, the scholars say.
Exact numbers are not available, but Shui Jingjun, a leading scholar of women in Hui Islam (the Hui are scattered across China and are distinct from the Uighur Muslims of the far western region of Xinjiang) estimates there are hundreds of female imams leading mosques around the country, educating boys and girls, and organizing social services in their communities.
Female imams and women’s mosques are not “a new thing here. It’s just a cultural tradition that was never interfered with,” Ms. Shui, an author and researcher at the Henan Academy of Social Sciences in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, said in an interview.
That is what makes it so important, said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a prominent Islamic legal scholar.
“The Chinese tradition of women’s mosques is rooted in Islamic history. It is not novel, a corruption or innovation or some type of heretical practice,” Mr. Abou El Fadl, a professor of Islamic law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a recorded interview.
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/asia/10iht-letter10.html?_r=0
I think this is very interesting so far how they've been able to preserve a culture of women scholars in Islam over there. It's something that is gravely lacking in Islam in modern times but it's strange to me how there has to be "women mosques" and "men mosques". It seems like there is a "women's Islam" and a "Mans Islam". Was this common in the time of the prophet (peace be upon him)? To have two different mosques for the genders? To silence the opinions of female scholars?
Sometimes I question the rulings that I read about women being able to contribute to the community and even in Islamic education. I read a fatwa online where the sheik when so far as to say that "men are better than women". It actually upset me because in the Quran translations that I've read it's never said anything like that and in some of the hadith I've come across I didn't find that either. So I'm wondering where these conclusions are coming from. Is it cultural?
The irony of an officially atheist country possibly offering a way out of an international religious problem is intense. Yet that is what some Islamic scholars in China and elsewhere hope may happen as they point to a quietly liberal tradition among China’s 10 million Hui Muslims, where female imams and mosques for women are flourishing in a globally unique phenomenon.
Female imams and women’s mosques are important because their endurance in China offers a vision of an older form of Islam that has inclusiveness and tolerance, not marginalization and extremism, at its core, the scholars say.
Exact numbers are not available, but Shui Jingjun, a leading scholar of women in Hui Islam (the Hui are scattered across China and are distinct from the Uighur Muslims of the far western region of Xinjiang) estimates there are hundreds of female imams leading mosques around the country, educating boys and girls, and organizing social services in their communities.
Female imams and women’s mosques are not “a new thing here. It’s just a cultural tradition that was never interfered with,” Ms. Shui, an author and researcher at the Henan Academy of Social Sciences in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, said in an interview.
That is what makes it so important, said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a prominent Islamic legal scholar.
“The Chinese tradition of women’s mosques is rooted in Islamic history. It is not novel, a corruption or innovation or some type of heretical practice,” Mr. Abou El Fadl, a professor of Islamic law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a recorded interview.
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/asia/10iht-letter10.html?_r=0
I think this is very interesting so far how they've been able to preserve a culture of women scholars in Islam over there. It's something that is gravely lacking in Islam in modern times but it's strange to me how there has to be "women mosques" and "men mosques". It seems like there is a "women's Islam" and a "Mans Islam". Was this common in the time of the prophet (peace be upon him)? To have two different mosques for the genders? To silence the opinions of female scholars?
Sometimes I question the rulings that I read about women being able to contribute to the community and even in Islamic education. I read a fatwa online where the sheik when so far as to say that "men are better than women". It actually upset me because in the Quran translations that I've read it's never said anything like that and in some of the hadith I've come across I didn't find that either. So I'm wondering where these conclusions are coming from. Is it cultural?
