I watched this interview with Hamza Yusu…
So Hamza Yusuf can keep for himself his chauvinist binaries, his world wherein the problem with daycares is not that the women who work there are underpaid, but that they exist at all. He can have all the sensationalised tabloids he wants and read up as much as he cares to about pathologies whose symptoms include dumping babies in trashcans and jogging in the streets. I know a different reality, and I pity him that his world-vision is so self-absorbed and all-consuming that he has never and perhaps never will encounter anything like mine. That does not, however, let him off the hook for foreclosing that opportunity for everyone else.
And no one, however much he may call himself a representative of an Islamic community, however many followers he may have, will ever be able to convince me that I should be “ashamed” of my father’s decision to support my mother, or that there is something “wrong” with her because she left an indelible mark on the world.
abunoor, and 3 others are discussing.
plimfix 2:02 am on June 22, 2009 Permalink
My beef with Hamza is his assertion that “Islam” is “politically dystopian” (BBC interview with Mark Lawson), referring ? to the inevitable demise of humanity the further we move from the time of the Prophet (aws) – correct if I’m wrong here. I disagree. I’m probably a humanist at heart — and an empiricist. If you start with what your meant to believe, you’ll never see the truth. Seems Fathima is making a similar point. So quit the Orthodoxy police, Hamza. And go look.
Pretty Pink Unicorns 2:29 am on June 22, 2009 Permalink
Hamza is SUCH a jerk. Thank you for your lovely essay, it was really heartening.
I felt also like that interviewer lady felt really… off. I couldn’t tell if she was angry, uncomfortable or just a bad actress pretending to be Teh Evil Unhijabed Interviewer, but she was like a sore thumb.
abunoor 8:45 am on June 22, 2009 Permalink
Plimfix, I don’t know the interview you’re referring to, but it is definitely true that there is a strand of Islamic teaching that people are in some sense getting spiritually less close to Allaah (swt) as we get away from the time of the Prophet (saw) and the generation that was taught and nurtured by him and which was able to live in the shade of continuous revelation. The Prophet (saw) said the “best of generations is my generation, then the next, then the next.”
However, this is just one strand of teaching which although it has certain important implications for taking the companions and the salaf as spiritual role models, is limited in its consequences. It does not in any way serve as a reason for people in whatever time to strive to fear Allaah (swt) as best they can.
It is obvious in certain other ways (most unarguably technology) that things have gotten better and easier since the time of the Prophet (saw) although the spiritual implications and consequences are mixed at best.
Again, haven’t seen what you are referring to, but if it was a recent interview (post 9/11) then I’m pretty sure that Mr. Yusuf was employing this understanding in order to preach against the political utopianism that affects some Muslims and make people more appreciative of the good that is in contemporary (especially western) societies and to feel engaged and empowered to make those societies better rather than to feel one can only be satisfied with an utopian ideal.
Allaah knows best.
bingregory 10:44 pm on June 22, 2009 Permalink
Another hadith that points to the downward spiral is the one that begins “after me come caliphs, and after caliphs come princes, and after princes come kings, and after the kings come tyrants”. Work for the best, no doubt, but the world ends in one way only, and the signs of when that comes to pass are all over the hadith.
(By contrast, the idea of an upward spiral of ever-improving world spiritual consciousness is a dead giveaway of “New Age” religion, not that anyone here has suggested that.)
abunoor 10:00 am on June 22, 2009 Permalink
Plimfix,
You speak against starting with “what you’re meant to believe” and in favor of empiricism….What role then does revelation play?
Also, I think there is an incredibly strong almost impossible to overcome bias (at least in our culture, is this universal? Is this post-enlightenment phenomenon? Judeo-Christian-Islamic sense of time moving in one direction? Razib?) in favor of the progressive or whig (or materialist/marxist for that matter) view of history as continually improving because there is such a tendency to judge things from our perspective, setting the way things are now as the ideal, at least for now until ‘things’ get even better). But there is the contradictory tendency, of which the religious view of the Salaf as the ideal generation would be an example, to look back to some imagined (or constructed) golden age or ideal which has been lost due to the negative consequences of technology or other change.
See what I mean?
plimfix 4:36 am on June 23, 2009 Permalink
I once failed to notice my autistic son trying to tell me something because it was out of keeping with his developmental profile as defined by theories of autism and professional assessment. In fact, I only noticed because I was writing an essay on communication problems and analysed the event using frame by frame analysis. That didn’t stop me training to be an autism teacher — I just look more carefully before I analyse my observations in terms of theory. That’s what I mean.
Eb 7:40 am on June 22, 2009 Permalink
Please be a little more respectful about Shuyukh, even if you have a disagree with their sentiments, Pretty Pink Unicorn. Those kinds of comments do not help you put your point across.
Pretty Pink Unicorns 11:02 am on June 22, 2009 Permalink
I will not be more respectful of a man who wants me barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Shuyuukh need to be more respectful of me if they want respect in return, and he slags off half the world’s population.
abunoor 8:38 am on June 22, 2009 Permalink
Oh, no…let’s not start the “Mommy Wars” Muslim edition.
abunoor 9:31 am on June 22, 2009 Permalink
Let me just say that I don’t mean to sound flippant with this remark or to belittle the issue. I just mean to suggest that I’m not sure any progress or understanding on the complicated issues involved will be made in the context of a blog discussion, especially one which starts off by setting up two hostile camps.
Having now read all of Fathima’s long essay and having listened to the whole of Hamza Yusuf’s clip…I think both are worth people’s attention and both give valuable and important perspectives. I don’t think either is worthy of hostility or dismissal although I think Shaykh Hamza Yusuf would not express himself in the same way today because he has become more cognizant of the widespread effect his remarks may have. I think in a way Shaykh Hamza’s bluntness and seeming black/white view of the world that he would often manifest in his pre 9/11 public persona serves a purpose although it obviously has drawbacks as well.
Muse 11:54 am on June 22, 2009 Permalink
I read Fathima’s essay, though I haven’t yet watched the clip, but I just wanted to add that people who criticize Muslim women for putting their kids in daycare often assume that 1) it is emotionally easy for them to do so and 2) they have a choice, both of which are faulty assumptions.
@Fathima, thank you for sharing your perspective. My background is similar, though in my case, both my parents are doctors and my mom was (and is) criticized throughout her life for having a career, which plays out in interesting ways as I develop my career as a lawyer and prepare to start a family. I could pen an essay quite similar to yours.
@ Abunoor, I agree we’re not going to come to any sort of a solution on these here blogs, but that doesn’t stop us from discussing (ad nauseum) politics, and neither should it stop us from talking about the very important issue of shifting family dynamics – which ofcourse is not a “Muslim” issue, but becomes one when our scholars hold forth on the topic.
abunoor 12:14 pm on June 22, 2009 Permalink
Muse, I was not trying to stifle or discourage discussion by saying what I did.
In fact I explicitly said that Fathima’s entire essay was worth reading, and I have contributed comments both here and at her blog.
If anything I was hoping to try to avoid the dynamic usually characterized by the term ‘mommy wars’ in which people are supposed to line up on sides of the issue and ‘argue’ against each other, when upon reflection all of us would agree that the issues are complex and complicated.
Although I wish Fatima could have avoided the name calling aspect of her essay, in general her purpose was to show complexities (while accusing Hamza Yusuf of not acknowledging them, which I think is a charge fair in some ways and unfair in others.)
Unfortunately for the sake of productive discussion, others have chosen to go into pure namecalling mode.