Amina Wadud Responds to Tarek Fatah

By Amina Wadud

Earlier this month, MWU! published a report by Tarek Fatah, co-founder of the Canadian Muslim Congress, on Professor Amina Wadud’s lecture at Toronto’s Noor Cultural Center. This is her response. – Ed.

My dear Brother Tarek,

Without boast or butter, I would say you are the single most outspoken transnational Muslim I have known in NA who is cut to the chase aware AND outspoken on the matter of racisms in the context of Muslims. Yes we have talked about it extensively and I am usually profuse with my agreement with your assessments AND have on more than one occasion expressed my admiration to you about the way you deal directly with it.

African-American use the term "niggah" amongst ourselves without the derogatory implications of other, white or non-whites who use it privately (pretending they do not in public) or who have used it publicly to my face. Having lived through US segregation laws, lame attempts at desegregation, the civil rights movement AND participated in the Black power movement I expect but do not accept racism (between blacks, between non-whites, from pretend whites and most unconditionally not from whites (I live in one of the most racist areas of the US, even as I speak).

However, I did NOT experience racism at Noor. My blatant and blunt response to your question on racism was INTENDED to cut like a knife.

I am a niggah. Just in case people think I don't know of the internalized attitudes and politicized racial hierarchy in the Muslim community. As the follow up state ment about people "dealing with my Blackness" I meant to be frank enough to say I got no problem with my blackness, I am proud of the tenacity of my people, descendents of African slaves, hybrid American to survive institutional and subliminal racism. I consider my Blackness, my being a niggah as one of the features that have given me the strength and experience to face other isms. I am not in the closet about being black, but unfortunately, I am not dark enough to always be recognized as black when I wear hijab.

On gender I am still a reluctant mujahidah. I must turn my racial dignity into its parallel gender self-dignity, but 30 years of working on it and the opposition is formidable AND I experience too much of my Islam through the pervasiveness of sexism and patriarchy dominant in traditional texts and in jurisprudence, where women may have at different time in history (depending on class) spoken up against certain abuses, never the less, were NOT the scriptors of the entire process of codification and jurisprudence. They were always 3rd party, spoken to, and spoken of but never agents of their own legal constructions in cooperation with the men (literally) who developed the systems, AND commented on the commentaries (sometimes with more and sometimes with less patriarchy).

As for "no" to the Qur'an, let me summarize the work I have been doing to overcome some of the apologia of Qur'an and Woman. Yes the Qur'an, I believe and love is considered a form of Allah's self disclosure, but I do not believe God is locked into the 7th century Arabian context with its limitations based on coherency in that context,including Arabic (BTW my PhD is in Islam and Arabic, which I studied in the United States, since 1973, lived in Libya and studied in Egypt at the advanced level at American University in Cairo, attended a Philosophy course at al-Azhar and had a one on one tutor from Cairo University whose specialization was tafsir) to have a universal underpinning of TRUTH, justice and love.

I accept every word as sent by revelation from Allah to the Holy Prophet whose own example embodied and demonstrated those underpinning universal (he never literally beat any of his wives, for example). When I say "no" it is not the integrity of the literal text, it is to the implementation of some practices which is a 14 centuries long debate. That is why the jurist "set conditions upon" things like "beating" and "cutting". I consider that an interpretive intervention. Other interpretive interventions, like Qur'an and woman encourage the polysemic nature of reading and understanding and offer egalitarian interpretations against patriarchal ones, with no ONE having the final word. that belongs only to Allah and Allahu A'lam. But now I wish to point more directly that anything other than literal reading is a demonstration of agency to Allah, working in concert with the text, as words and intent to sustain the underlying principles and values, such that today, the Qur'anic approval of Slavery, for example IS NOT IMPLEMENTED. I wish to state my acceptance of certain problematic moral practices but with out and out refusal to implement them. AND to stop lying to make other people feel comfortable, I say so, with out losing a single ounce of my love of the Qur'an and my devotion to Allah.

Thank you for your time and trouble, I wish I had nothing else to do in my life but get into long tedious conversations that are circular with those people whose lives give them greater privileged of time. (NOT).

Your sister AGAINST racism and other phobias in our community,
Amina Wadud
ma'a salaamah