Sunday, December 22, 2024

 

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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