Female Leadership
in Islam
By M. Majid Ali, CPA
New York
Islam is amazingly resilient.
Having laid dormant for 300 years under the crippling
burden of colonial rule from Java to Mauritania,
from Marakesh to Anatolia, from the Sahara to
the Indian sub-continent, through the western
parts of China and the Central Asian cities of
Samarkand and Bukhara, Dushanbe and Grozny, the
universal Arabic call to prayer rings the air
once again. Having led the world for a thousand
years, a great people lost for three centuries
in the abyss of internal decay and subsequent
colonial rule are awakening again.
The dreadful apocalypse of the Second World War
precipitated upon the planet in the last century
which resulted in the willful annihilation of
European Jewry and some 35 million deaths also
fueled independence movements in European colonies
from Asia to Africa. The process of decolonization
materialized first in Asia, quickly spread to
Africa and finally to the old Soviet Union as
it disintegrated and countries from Azerbaijan
to Chechnya proclaimed their nominal independence.
In the last fifty years, over 50 Muslim states
have emerged. While the extent of sovereignty
these Muslim countries exercise is low, it is
inexorably broadening as the Muslim people increasingly
reassert themselves. Despite the most extensive,
organized, willful and malicious propaganda, Islam
remains the fastest growing religion in the world
and in the West. In fact, since WWII Islam has
proven once again, repeatedly and in dramatic
fashion, that despite the absolute rending of
its social and economic fabric during the last
300 years, the faith of Mohammad lives on and
can lead where the rest of the world has failed.
The ascension of Ms. Megawati Sukarnoputri to
the Presidency in Indonesia, a country of 200
million people and the largest in the Muslim world,
was yet another case of a woman coming to power
in a Muslim land. Other Muslim countries to produce
women Prime Ministers, Presidents and Vice Presidents
in the last 50 years of nominal independence have
been Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh and Iran. In
Pakistan, the same woman was elected twice. Bangladesh
has now been headed by two different women. Even
in India, a predominantly Hindu country, the overwhelming
majority of the Muslim population voted for the
two term Prime Minster; Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Adding
up the Muslim populations of the aforementioned
countries, it can be said that roughly 750 million
or more than half of the 1.3 billion global Muslim
population has elected a woman as their leader
in the last 50 years. Notwithstanding the performance
of these women leaders, one thing is clear: the
Muslim electorate has no qualms about electing
a woman.
Perhaps, the gender drama in Islam goes back to
the seventh century when the lady Khadijah married
the Prophet of Islam. She was a businesswoman
and his employer. He was a man of modest means
and her employee. She was much older. He was young.
She proposed. He accepted. The annals of history
would subsequently lead us to the members of the
prophet's family where we witness the impeccable
idealism of the lady Fatima and the revolutionary
spirit of the lady Zainab.
Many centuries later as Islam reached and flourished
in the fertile plains of India, can be seen the
legendary figures of Chaand Bibi and Razia Sultana
who led in battle and in court as they ruled over
the diverse and rustic landscapes of the sub-continent.
We see the Empress Noor Jahan single-handedly
run the affairs of the Mughal Empire as it renders
the most glorious two hundred years in 5000 years
of Indian history. Still centuries later as the
echoes of a heroic Islamic age begin to wind down,
we see Fatima Binte Abdullah succumb while bringing
water to the wounded soldiers in a combat environment
on the battlefields of Asia Minor and the Rani
of Oudh who falls from her horse while in fearless
battle against the British in India.
Yet another glance through the misty lens of history
reveals that women have also been the focus of
three of Islam's great monuments. That giant tomb
of intricately carved marble immaculately embedded
with jade and rubies, the Taj Mahal and also known
as "love in marble," was built in the
affectionate remembrance of a Muslim woman. The
massive Bibi Khanum mosque of Samarkand and the
tomb of Imam Reza's sister in the holy city of
Kumm are other examples.
The ascension of women to the highest public office
in the few Muslim countries today that are able
to conduct nominal elections in a still neo-colonial
environment has shown that Islam has put women
on a pedestal which two hundred years of industrialization
at the peak of its power in foreign lands has
not been able to achieve. Notwithstanding this
amazing achievement by the followers of Mohammad,
it would be inaccurate to render the judgment
that all is well with the treatment of women in
Muslim lands. As the electorate rises from its
internal decay and pushes aside the continuing
servitude of the neo-colonial era and as it develops
and adopts indigenous solutions, its multifarious
problems will be alleviated. Meanwhile, the world
will do better to judge women from their abilities
rather than their dress-code.
A hundred years ago at the beginning of the de-colonization
struggles, the eminent Indian jurist Syed Ameer
Ali was right: "The light that shone on Sinai,
the light that brightened the lives of the peasants
and the fishermen of Galilee is now aflame on
the heights of Faran".
(The author is a CPA working in Investment Banking
in New York. He can be reached at Indus000@hotmail.com)
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