The Perfect Muslimah

In the name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful

Assalamualaikum

Title: Women in Islam are oppressed?

Uh, not quite. You have to read this folks. This is a pleasant read. It got me boiling when I read the first few paragraphs about some wrong concepts in Islamic marriage that have been hislamised by man. The first few paragraphs of this article might sound biased but you have to read this till the end, so you'll understand the full story.This is gonna be a long read, but trust me, it is worth the read. [= 

The perfect Muslimah. She is shy and retiring. She covers from head to toe in voluminous black clothing, uncovering nothing of her face and only one eye to see her way on the road. She walks silently and with gaze downcast. She avoids talking and laughing so as not to allow the sound of her voice to fall within the hearing of a non-related man.  She eschews TV for her Qur’an, reciting ayahs throughout the day and night. She stands in prayer five times during the day and late into the night. She cleans her home with a thoroughness that would shame the keepers of the Ka’aba. She never contradicts her husband, always cooks his favorite food, defers to him in all financial issues, bears with silent endurance any shorting of her rights. She is the perfect Muslimah.

Why do we have women like this, impossible imaginary women like this, I might add, held up to us as role models? Why can’t we be good Muslimahs and be businesswomen (like our mother Khadijah, may Allah be pleased with her) who occasionally forget to put the dough away so the goat eats it (like our mother Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her) and who get jealous (like our mother Hafsah, may Allah be pleased with her) and who are divorcees (like our mother Zainab, may Allah be pleased with her) and who basically are good people, successful people, dynamic individuals and pious striving believers? When so many of our early role models of Islam are complex, diverse women of different backgrounds and experiences, why are we instead given a caricature to live up to?

We are not caricatures. We are living, breathing, striving Muslimahs. We pray and fast. We wear niqaab or hijab or just long skirts and loose tops. We listen to lectures on Paltalk. We finish nursing degrees. We write. We try not to sound stupid when we practice our Arabic. We try to increase our imaan bit by bit, day by day, and some days are better than others. We do what women have done throughout the history of mankind. We are ourselves.

Some women have lost the ability to be themselves. She read in a book somewhere that a woman is supposed to be subservient to her husband, to be chaste and quiet and not have friends that her husband doesn’t like. She heard a lecture by some famous sheikh that a woman should only go out of her house three times in her life; when she is born, when she marries, and when she dies. She truly wants to be a good Muslimah so she clamps down on her personality. She smiles when she wants to laugh. She wears a huge all-encompassing overhead abaya when she really would rather wear something a bit less overwhelming.

She locks up her jewelry so as not to make a display of herself. She makes a grocery list for her husband because he doesn’t want her to go out, even though she knows how to shop the sales and he’s for sure going to forget half of what’s on the list. She stays off the computer, even though she really loves to keep up with her friends, because her husband gives her the stinkeye if she is online when he’s home, even though he’s on his iphone half the evening. She only cooks the ethnic food he likes even though she misses her favorite food. She stays away from the mosque because he says it’s too much of a fitnah, though he goes every day to pray.

Wow, dang, you say. Overly dramatic much? What a big imagination you have! Um, no, not really. Everything, every single sentence in that last paragraph, I have seen a friend or acquaintance of mine go through. Right now, I know many of my Facebook friends and contacts, and real life friends in my local community, are in such unequal, unrealistic, unislamic relationships. They have been fed a line of crap by men who want to practice HISLAM and they are suffering because of it.

I am here to tell all my sisters in Islam that it doesn’t have to be this way. There is room, among the one billion Muslims on the planet, for you and your very own personality. There is room for you. Room for the woman who goes to university and wants to become an engineer or an architect or a doctor. Room for the woman who wants to homeschool her children and have a small business on the side. Room for the woman who manages the checkbook, does the shopping, and expects her husband to talk with her before he spends money on a car or a business opportunity. Room for women who are not quiet. Women who are strong, believing, striving Muslimahs, not perfect by any stretch, but working day by day to improve. There is room for you and you are the role model of Islam.

Do NOT allow yourself to be boxed in. Do not think that changing certain behaviors (dressing modestly, not drinking alcohol and going to pubs) means you have to change your personality. If you are that somewhat loud woman who laughs at all the jokes, go ahead and laugh. If you are the woman who absolutely hates to clean, that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. If you want to be a career woman, then do it, but make damn sure you marry a man who will let you be yourself and fulfill your dreams. Make sure the man you marry will be your partner and your helper, not your judge and jailer. Marriage is not a master / servant relationship, but I see far too many women acting like it is.

I know a lot of you are married, a lot of you are divorced, a lot of you have never been married. I know a lot of my friends have good, strong, healthy marriages based on Islam and honest caring for one another. But I know there are a lot, way too many, dysfunctional marriages that have skewed toward the master / servant model and that is just not right. You are equal to a man in the sight of Allah. Yes, we should be chaste (men, too). Yes, we should pray and fast and not flirt and not watch TV programs with nudity and bad stuff. Yes, we should support our husbands and rub their backs after they’ve had a long hard day at work. Yes, we should love his family and help them financially if they need it, and not buy expensive clothing or waste money on ten different purses or fancy shoes. Yes, we should be smart, and pious, and frugal, and helpmates for our spouses.

But we are NOT servants. We don’t give up our hopes and dreams when we become wives. We don’t stop being people. In a healthy marriage, your husband will see you had a rough night with the baby and he’ll stop and pick up a roasted chicken so you don’t have to cook. When you are feeling under the weather he’ll mix you up some weird concoction recommended by his mother and stand over you while you drink it. He’ll hold the baby so you can take a shower, he’ll praise you when you go back to school, he’ll rub YOUR back some days. He’ll be your partner, not your boss.

Wow, what a concept! [=

Source from: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/muslimahinprogress/2012/01/the-perfect-muslimah.html