Week 3 Fatima Mernissi

One of the most interesting ideas in the chapters from Mernissi’s book is how Islam and its laws became mysoginistic. In her articles, Menissi thoroughly examines the interpretations of mysoginistic hadith through looking at the chronological historical – the context within which the Prophet uttered these words/sayings – emergence of these hadiths. One of the most fascinating contradictions that Mernissi unveils, are the standards that are set in place by Imams about who can transmit hadith and who cannot, and who actually did transmit hadith. As an example, why was Abu Hurraira trusted when he transmitted the Prophet’s hadith, while Aisha have always contradicted him in hadith related to women (who within Mernissi’s description was perceived as a more legitimate credible source than Abu Hurraira)? If scholars knew that the Prophet was against the mysoginistic treatment of women during polytheistic era before Islam, why would they find such hadiths credible?

Mernissi’s supply of background information on hadith transmitters, such as Abu Hurreira, provides ample justification to why those men emitted such words. Islam was and still is ruled by men, thus taking away the voice of women in matters of the state. While Islam is a very patriarchal society, it is also a classist society that lacks democracy. Mernissi illustrates that through a young man’s words to Aisha in a mosque in Basra, “You decided, still without consulting us…” (p. 56). By “us,” he means the Muslim population. Another piece to add to this is Mernissi conclusion of power and knowledge and how power regulates knowledge. “What is being supervised and managed, in fact is memory and history,” and “no one has ever really succeeded in banning access to memory and recollection.” I think that what Mernissi is trying to convey here is that while the leaders cannot control what people remember, they can control what is communicated to the Muslim public, which in this case are the hadiths. Therefore, women lack the democracy to contribute the regulation of religion since that would get in the way of power-hungry mysoginistic Muslim men. Female Muslim bodies become regulated and marginalized from the public spheres, under the agenda of females are sinful, unable to rule, and pollutants to the male body.

reflection for jan 17

What struck me the most about the readings this week was how contextual the formation of the Hadiths were. Or in other words, that many of the Hadith currently used to defend the stringent gender binary in Islam are actually the product of hearsay. What is even more interesting is that this "defense mechanism" (of Abu Hurayra) was based on a two-pronged criterion of both an individualist and structuralist perspective. On an individual level, Abu Hurayra "had a very dubious reputation from the beginning" who "was attacked by Companions of his own generation." He was even contradicted several times by 'Aisha, both the woman and person who the Prophet is said to have loved the most. Obviously, being corrected by a woman prompted him to assume a defensive position in which preservation of his own interest subsumed the distortion of facts. He is said to have recited upwards of 5,300 Hadith by the end of his life. On a structuralist basis, Abu Huraya was a victim of an odd cocktail of semantics and economics. His name was actually a nickname, one might even say a term of endearment, given to him by the Prophet. However, given its "trace of femininity" he felt compelled to reject it, most likely because he had no tangible ties to any masculinity (aka he didn't have a job). Basically, he had nothing better to do than to follow the Prophet around, meaning he was anything but objective when recounting the teachings of Muhammed.

The Prophet was operating within the constraints of his time; Islam was emerging amidst a geo-political climate dominated by Judaism. As a result, Muhammed based his "Arab ideology" in a religion characterized by spirituality in lieu of dogmatics. "For Muhammad's mosque, unlike in other religions, is not a building, a construction, but a perspective. The mosque is everywhere: "The whole earth became my mosque." He was also said to be a man of timid character, which some cast as piety, but I personally found to be a lack of conviction. It was infuriating to me to read about this figure whose primary goal was to eliminate the misogyny imbued by Judaism, but was never capable of actually iterating specifically his agenda to one of his male companions. Sure, he admitted he loved A'isha more than any other man and woman in the world, and that the man he revered the most was one who "could not read the Koran without weeping," but he left the important stuff, the actual outlining of appropriate and inappropriate gender relations, up for interpretation. And men like Abu Huraya were the ones doing the interpreting. It angered me even more that A'isha had the nerve to stand up to the male authority figures "because she was conscious of the implications of what was being said," but Al'bukhari neglected to record any of her corrections. It was this discretionary method of dissemination that catalyzed the extremities familiar to modern day Islam.

Week 3

I extremely disliked the reading for the week. I usually don't get passionate about what I read, but this just upset me very much. There is just so much bias and one-sided-ness, I don't even know where to begin. She writes as a Muslim, but some of the claims she makes are clearly out of the fold of Islam at the most basic level. For example, she states, "Not only have the sacred texts always been manipulated, but the manipulation of them is a structural characteristic of the practice of power in Muslim societies" (Mernissi 9). The Qur'an is a sacred Muslim text, and it is a fundamental belief in Islam that it is infallible. It is true that hadith have been fabricated, but it is a gross exaggeration that it is "a structural characteristic of the practice of power in Muslim societies." Mernissi's text is filled with minority opinions, exaggerations, and plainly inaccurate statements.

Another passage that disturbed me was her entire commentary of the illegitimacy of Abu Bakra as a narrator of hadith. I've studied how hadith is narrated and the extent to which the scholars have gone to confirm the accuracy of each hadith, particularly those in Bukhari. Claiming that the hadith is fabricated is completely unacceptable based on the science of hadith. I can appreciate the mention of context but the way it is interpreted is faulty.

The other hadith narrator that is attacked by Mernissi as being misogynistic is Abu Hurayrah. It is entirely irrelevant that his name means "Father of the Little Female Cat", and the fact that the author goes into such detail about it is so misleading. It is simply a nickname given to the man by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as a term of endearment for his companion. This reminded me about the first week's readings on Orientalism that focused on certain aspects of the Arab culture and root words to depict Islam as backward and civilized yet again.

Week 3 Response

In the last couple of weeks, we've talked a lot about the notion that power over others can be solidified by restricting the access to and production of knowledge. I found it very interesting to think about this phenomenon while reading Mernissi's articles.

The best example of using knowledge to gain power can be found in Mernissi's analysis of the Battle of the Camel. She recounts how, at the time, the vast majority of Muslims respected 'A'isha, and even if they didn't, their motivations were political, not sexist. However, Abu Bakra rejected fitna not for wanting to avoid fitna itself but rather because "one of the parties was a woman" (A Tradition of Mysogyny (1) 57). Since, with his "fabulous memory," he conveniently remembered a Prophetic quote out of context, his perspective on women and power is one of the few preserved hadiths on the subject (50).

Abu Bakra and the men who later ensured that the quote in question became official hadith capitalized on their positions as male Companions of the Prophet to push their own agendas. Women did not have an opinion on what became hadith. If they did, we might have known the full story as Mernissi relates it. Instead, a skewed account has become Muslim doctrine. Unless one attempts to uncover the truth, 'A'isha is demoted from a crucial player in Muslim history to an obstructive woman.

As always, it is important to dig for context and examine motives when considering any "official" history.

Week 3 Fatima Mernissi

One of the most interesting ideas in the chapters from Mernissi’s book is how Islam and its laws became mysoginistic. In her articles, Menissi thoroughly examines the interpretations of mysoginistic hadith through looking at the chronological historical – the context within which the Prophet uttered these words/sayings – emergence of these hadiths. One of the most fascinating contradictions that Mernissi unveils, are the standards that are set in place by Imams about who can transmit hadith and who cannot, and who actually did transmit hadith. As an example, why was Abu Hurraira trusted when he transmitted the Prophet’s hadith, while Aisha have always contradicted him in hadith related to women (who within Mernissi’s description was perceived as a more legitimate credible source than Abu Hurraira)? If scholars knew that the Prophet was against the mysoginistic treatment of women during polytheistic era before Islam, why would they find such hadiths credible?

Mernissi’s supply of background information on hadith transmitters, such as Abu Hurreira, provides ample justification to why those men emitted such words. Islam was and still is ruled by men, thus taking away the voice of women in matters of the state. While Islam is a very patriarchal society, it is also a classist society that lacks democracy. Mernissi illustrates that through a young man’s words to Aisha in a mosque in Basra, “You decided, still without consulting us…” (p. 56). By “us,” he means the Muslim population. Another piece to add to this is Mernissi conclusion of power and knowledge and how power regulates knowledge. “What is being supervised and managed, in fact is memory and history,” and “no one has ever really succeeded in banning access to memory and recollection.” I think that what Mernissi is trying to convey here is that while the leaders cannot control what people remember, they can control what is communicated to the Muslim public, which in this case are the hadiths. Therefore, women lack the democracy to contribute the regulation of religion since that would get in the way of power-hungry mysoginistic Muslim men. Female Muslim bodies become regulated and marginalized from the public spheres, under the agenda of females are sinful, unable to rule, and pollutants to the male body.

Wk 3 Mernissi

One of the most interesting points occurs when Mernissi reveals how instances of insecurities and crisis of self-confidence on the individual and social level can pollute an individual’s recollection/memory. For example, she reveals the meaning of Abu Hurarya’s name “Father of the Little Female Cat” and explains that Abu Huraya “helped on the women’s apartments” which would explain “his hatred of women, and also of female cats, the two seeming to be strangely linked in his mind.” So although quite often there is discourse about the power of a scripture on a people, Mernissi shows the power of a people/culture, in this case a person’s insecurities, on a scripture. Mernissi explains that this process is important, she says that “it is our tradition to question everything and everybody, especially the fuqaha and imanans… What is being supervises and managed in fact is memory and history.Memory and recollection are the dawn of pleasure””. I thought this was beautifully written as to suggest that one must interpret the interpretation in order to fully understand the scripture. This is not backtracking nor is this to say that interpretations that have be tainted are useless and meaningless, in fact, they are full of meaning, as Mernissi shows. The process of reinterpreting the interpretation is about refining a recollection, improving interpretation, and reviving a memory that has been manipulated by alternative subjectivities. Likewise, analyzing those alternative subjectivities, reveals even more about the cultural and people that follow those scriptures!

This idea of reinterpreting the past and unveiling details about the editors or authors of memoirs, ties into the hijab concept not only because Mernissi interprets the scriptures in regards to the hijab, but the concept also ties to the overall significance of the hijab, which represents “space between two areas”. In other words, perhaps, there is space between the cultural practices and the scriptures and the hijab actually physically represents that space and acts as a reminder of that difference.

Mernissi work leaves me some questions: did authors/theorists and, perhaps, everyday people of the past question, perhaps even reinterpret the scriptures (as Mernissi does) and silenced, or does the modern society encourage reinterpretation in a way that didn’t exist in the past? What conditions make interpretation possible? Or maybe the conditions remain the same, but the people do not? What fosters writings like Mernissi’s?

Rachel's Week 3 Post

I think one big point that was raised in the two sections of "A Tradition of Misogyny" is the reliability of the misogynistic Hadith. The fact that many of them are merely things men claimed to have heard the Prophet Muhammad say shows that they cannot be taken as full truth. The example of Abu Bakra, the author of some Hadith, being punished for false testimony shows the dangers of treating Hadith like real truth. Some Hadith even appear to be contradictory to other teachings of the Prophet. Mernissi describes this conflict. "'Why would the Prophet' have said a Hadith like that, which does me harm? Especially since this saying doesn't correspond at all with what they tell us elsewhere about the life of Muhammad.'" This question which the author asked herself at age 16, shows the discrepancy that can exist between the teachings of Muhammad and some of the Hadith.

To illustrate this, Mernissi examines the Hadith, "Three things bring bad luck: house, woman, and horse," and the history surrounding it. According to 'A'isha, this Hadith was only part of a quote from the Prophet. "'A'isha responded: 'Abu-Huraya learned his lessons very badly. He came into our house when the Prophet was in the middle of a sentence. He only heard the end of it. What the Prophet said was: "May Allah refute the Jews; they say three things bring bad luck: house, woman, and horse.'" A lack of full context gives this Hadith a completely different meaning. So many factors, such as context and reliability of the narrator, influence the reliability of a Hadith. None can be taken as infallible.

Far from attacking the credibility of the Hadith or calling for their rejection, Mernissi brings up these examples to show that there is hope. Instead of just accepting the misogynistic Hadith as infallible truth, people have a right to examine these claims for reliability and how they compare to the other teachings of Muhammed. Women don't have to just accept that misogyny is the way things are. They can investigate for themselves the way the deserve to be treated.