
Quoted from the article below. On the sacrifices of men and the expectations from women.
Beloved readers,
The following is a guest post by The Fatal Feminist, whom we have quoted on this blog before and who everyone should know because she has an amazing blog and she’s an amazing writer – God put even more barakah in her writing and her life, aameen. (She’s on a hiatus with blogging until August, but she needed to share the following.) I’ve learned so much from her ever since I discovered her blog, and she makes for a great companion at conferences and whatnot (and generally for a great friend)! Surely, you all recall my having had a blast last year’s AAR conference primarily because she was there with me ❤
In what follows, she discusses the details of the incident (or anecdote, rather) that inspired one of my recent blog posts, the one where I lamented our (Muslims’) selective allure towards justice and attempted to remind us all that, shockingly enough, much, if not all, of what women face in the mosques is injustice, and we need to strive to fix that.
I love the way TFF has written the piece below. It’s as if reading someone’s diary, and, despite the daunting subject, it’s very soothing to the ears. Also very entertaining at times because, as many feminists would know, humor is an important tool for pointing out things people refuse to hear otherwise. I’m still cracking up at her brother’s being identified now at his mosque as Menstrual Man (well, “Period Man,” but he prefers “Menstrual Man” instead).
Enjoy!
All of what follows is TFF’s work.
“Feminist Ramadans, Feminist Jihads, and Unnecessary Feminist Sacrifices”
“You used to force women to pray in the back, behind a wall? You mean like a time-out?” ―children 20 years from now, to the uncles who were on the wrong side of history, and the wrong side of Islam
My favorite masjid is so severely sex-segregated that there isn’t merely a barrier for the women; there’s an entirely separate tiny afterthought of a room. But it’s my favorite because it is in the hills, where the stars are the brightest, next to sheds with horses in them (my mother once chastised me for feeding the horses before breaking my own fast during iftar time) and in the midst of wild plants, cats, deer, rabbits, and snakes—and, according to the claims of my brothers, jinn. It is a tangled, untamed place, and my heart always quakes at the glimmering city lights far away. On Ruby Avenue, my imagination is also wild, vibrant, and irrepressible. It was where I went to Quran classes as a child and studied under the imam, but because of the segregation, I rarely attend anymore, since I’m not fond of second-class citizen treatment; though aunties constantly demand to know why, the response from my mother is always that I’m busy with class and work, which they then proceed to make clear is an unacceptable excuse.
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