Women primary mentors of future generations
Dr Ali talks on engendering peace thru female roles
KUWAIT CITY, Oct 12: Dr Souad T. Ali, Founding Chair of the Council for Arabic and Islamic Studies at Arizona State Univeristy (ASU), delivered a lecture on ‘Engendering Peace through female roles’ at the Yarmouk Cultural Centre on Monday evening, as part of the Dar Al Athar Al Islamiyyah’s 22nd cultural season, in which she explored the role women can play using their knowledge of peace in Islam to help members of their communities negotiate and practice peaceful co-existence.
Dr Ali is Director of Arabic Studies, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature and Middle East/Islamic Studies at ASU and author of ‘A Religion, Not a State: Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq’s Islamic Justification of Political Secularism’ and the edited volume, ‘The Road to Two Sudans’. Her numerous scholarly articles have been published internationally and translated into different languages.
Dr Ali began her lecture by discussing the concept of peace, stating that linguistically, the root of the Arabic word Islam is silm, which denotes the English meaning of peace. The word also means submission to the will of God and peace to all humanity, she added citing several examples from the Holy Quran and Hadith.
In her talk, Dr Ali explored the role women can play using their knowledge of peace in Islam to help member of their communities negotiate and practice peaceful coexistence. She explained that theoretically, Muslim women and feminist scholars in general approach the concept of peace in Islam from the perspective of its original sources, the Holy Quran and Hadith. She pointed out that Cornell Professor, Nimat Hafez Barazangi’s approach to education and empowerment can be seen as a step further to evaluate the education of religion as a tool for peace as she uses Quranic pedagogical dynamics as the philosophical basis for Muslim women to develop an integrative curriculum that proposes a shift in learning, knowing, teaching and the application of the Islamic world view. She mentioned that advocates of religious education for women are also found in other parts of the world. Coexistence Her study draws on two African examples to address the theological and social principles of peace in Islam and her analysis suggests that the seeds of peaceful social coexistence can be sown and knitted in the fabric of society if women are able to educationally instil a culture of peace when raising new generations of citizens in any given country. She also sought to address what new approaches and methods are required to understand and evaluate women’s agency in peace building politically and socially in everyday life.
Speaking on Sudanese women, she pointed out that the position of Sudanese women religious scholars and preachers were part of an old tradition in Islamic history in which women played a unique role in the transmission and dissemination of Islamic knowledge. She informed that the Holy Quran makes no distinction between men and women in this regard. Sudanese written sources such as Kitab al-Tabaqat by Muhammad al-Nur Wad Daiffalla briefly discussed some women preachers as prominent figures and cited Fatima bint Jabir as one of the earliest women educators in the Sudan. Drawing on the wealth of this historical background, she revealed that many categories of female preachers can be cited in the Sudan and mentioned four categories — Independent, Islamist, Ansar Al-Sunna and Republican sisters. Although the latter groups are relatively new to Sudanese society, Independent women preachers have had deeper roots in Sudanese life.
Historically, since the fifteenth century, Sudanese women were active participants in khalawis ie religious seminaries, as teachers of the Holy Quran and Islamic education. Women’s khalawis specialised in female education in order to eliminate their religious illiteracy and to teach them elementary religious sciences. Women used to memorise the Holy Quran and learnt the art of recitation and the perfection of recitation in addition to some of the Sharia principles.
She further stated that by the 18th century many women preachers were as famous as their male counterparts such as Shaykha bint Ata, Shayka Rogaia bint Abdul Qadir and Shayka Khadijah al-Azhari. Even so women were considered followers of men and accordingly a system was enforced that deprived women of their independence and dictated that they should be protected by men. However women continued their personal efforts to maintain their Islamic education endeavours.
Dr Ali informed that one of the positive outcomes of women’s personal efforts was reflected in the fact that such educational activism helped to establish the basis of women’s educational work, as many of the pioneering women received their education from those khalawi sources. The first inspector of girls education, Medinah Abdallah, received her elementary education at the hands of Shayka Khadijah bint wad ab Safiya and the first Sudanese physician, Dr Khalda Zahir, received her elementary education at the khalawi of al-Faki Hassan.
In Eastern Sudan, a plethora of women’s khalawi flourished given that many religious families were concerned and made sure that women learned the basics of their religion. Hence, they paid utmost attention to women’s khalawi and opened several of them after 1890, a move which accorded the woman a high status. This, Dr Ali points, was the basis of a tradition that continued throughout subsequent decades in Eastern Sudan.
But unfortunately, the concept of the khalawi as a form of national education was neglected and fought under the British colonial administration in later years. “Such antagonism and inattention were reflected in different forms as a way to discourage them, including the refusal to pay salaries or to support those who maintained khalawi”, she stated. In 1938, with the establishment of the Sudanese Graduate Congress, some of these khalawi were re-established in a clear reaction to the British government and in an attempt to strengthen national work. She further stated that the educational traditional had continued and today a good number of female preachers are active participants in daily preaching in Sudanese society.
Turning to Nigeria, Dr Ali, provided the example of Nana Asma’u, a nineteenth century Nigerian Muslim scholar and peace advocate who used her faith as basis for the pursuit of her knowledge and who was dedicated to promoting peace among conflicting groups in her community. Nana Asma’u was devoted to promoting reconciliation, education and justice through peaceful means based on her knowledge of the Holy Quran and the prophetic Sunna tradition.
Change
Dr Ali informed that in the midst of warfare in the west African part of the Sudanic belt, currently Nigeria, Asma’u’s teachings greatly and positively helped change the culture in which she lived. She was an eyewitness to battle about which she reported in her written works. During the period of the Sokoto Jihad and thereafter, Asma’u’s personal and peaceful jihad was a jihad of knowledge that focussed on the education of women as primary mentors of future generations. Asma’u, Dr Ali shared, thus assumed the role of an active teacher of both men and women and did not confine herself to teaching students in her immediate community. Instead she reached out through other teachers to engage women in isolated rural areas.
She noted that given the early awareness of Islamic knowledge in general and on peace in particular, it is ironic to see grave misinterpretations in Northern Nigeria today among the Hausa ethnic group in the name of Sharia and Islam, as distorted by groups like Boko Haram.
She also discussed recent female scholarship on education and peace in Islam and concluded her lecture by stating that these important studies can open greater avenues for women from around the world to direct their education towards emphasising a culture of peace and to share their experiences on how to move from conflict and war to reconciliation and peace while reducing the negative impact of harmful cultural and traditional practices on the society. “Principles of democracy tolerance and openness are obvious requisites for a successful implementation of these endeavours”, she said.