Dr. Amina Wadud banned to speak in Madras University in India

Dr. Amina Wadud is Muslim scholar well respected around the world,  and has earned the distinction of being the first woman to lead the mixed congregation prayers on a Friday in 2003 or 2004. On that day and from that day forward, the whole Muslim orthodoxy has gone to work against her. Some of the placards held outside the prayer hall were disgustingly shameful. Muslims in general value free speech and subscribe to it but not the conservatives among them. Oddly the conservatives want to scream, stop and prevent others from free speech, but themselves? They want to have it all. They almost sound like my fellow Republicans.The only way to change is to speak up - enough of us to speak up to make sense to them.

URL - http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2013/07/dr-amina-wadud-banned-to-speak-in.html

On a Friday in 2003/04, just before the prayers Dr. Wadud, Asra Nomani and Saleema were on my radio show to talk about what it means to lead the mixed congregational prayers. 

I was fortunate to be a co-speaker with her at DePaul University in Chicago a couple of years ago and I was also thrilled when she used some of my symbols from my facebook. I wrote a piece on Sharia in July 2010, and she wrote an identical piece in November of the same year - both were novel write ups and followed the same logic to the point of being duplicate. Sharia was never looked in that fashion before.

Enough of us have not taken the time to nurture the values of respecting different opinions... and even expanding on Prophet's Hadith - combat evil (their perception) with good.

Muslim men, like all other men seem to deal with women from an insecurities of losing to her or acknolwedging her knowledge. "what does she know" or "she is a woman". It is a fashion among a few prominent Muslims to criticize women scholarship and discount their knowledge off the bat. Its the old generation, the new ones in America are growing up to believe in equality of men and women. However there are some out there who are trained by their parents to be bigots, again, it is not only Muslims, you find them among Christians, Hindus, Jews and even Buddhists and Bahai's.

The men need to learn to debate her and not be afraid to learn and share the knowledge exchange.  Even a non-scholar like Taslima Nasreen, deserves to be engaged in a debate, a fair debate; instead of physically pushing here out of the stage. A disgusting act by an elected official in Hyderabad, India.

Is bigotry shown towards Dr. Wadud because she is a woman? A lot of Muslims shamelessly discount women - what does she know? 

We all have to learn to grow up. Prophet Muhammad, the mercy to mankind liberated women from the ugly clutches of men giving her all the liberties that were God given – free to practice her faith even against her husband’s wishes, free to choose her partner, divorce, own property and business, and she was no more a man’s property. She is on her own and responsible for her karma on the Day of Judgment, not her husband. What you see how women are treated has nothing to do with any religion, it is the men! And we we need to work on changing by assuring them that by debating with a woman and losing should be no different than debating with a man.


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Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker and a writer on Islam, pluralism, interfaith and other topics and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day - all about him at www.MikeGhouse.net

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Courtesy of Wall Street Journal