REACTING TO FEMINIST SISTERS VIEW ON HIJAB
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Summary
Jummah Kutbahaf is a podcast on the Islamic holy book, the Holy Qur and Sunnah, written by Muslim scholars, written in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In this episode, we discuss the controversial topic of what women should and should not be allowed to wear in the Muslim holy book.
Transcript
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Assalamu alaikum guys, hope you guys are doing well.
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I've got two dear guests here, as you can see, Muhammad Hijab and Brother Musa, they've
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come and I'm looking after them with fruit, look at Muhammad Hijab, Muhammad Hospitality,
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It's a good thing, because we actually talk about Hijab today, isn't it?
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I actually haven't seen this video we're going to be reacting to.
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When I kind of saw it briefly, and I was like, really, like, are sisters really affected
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Like, in a way, like, oh, like, she found something new?
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Yeah, brothers as well, both, brothers and sisters, like.
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Back in time, 1400 years, to the city of Medina, Saudi Arabia.
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When a woman awoke in the middle of the night with the urge to relieve herself, she would
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have to walk out past the outskirts of the city and into the wild by herself.
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Believe it or not, a group of men actually began to see an opportunity in women's nightly
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A jilbab of centuries ago was a status medal, like a Burberry trench or a Chanel jacket.
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It announced that the woman was free, and a free woman was protected by her clan.
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She would have no problem speaking out against the attacker and identifying him.
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But if the woman walking out at night wasn't wearing a jilbab, if she happened to be dressed
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a bit more freely, and the men knew she was a slave, and they attacked her.
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Concerned members of the community brought the situation to the Prophet, and like so many
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other social, political, and familial issues that Muhammad faced during his Prophethood, he
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And a verse was revealed for the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
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O Prophet, it reads, tell your wives, your daughters, and the women of the believers to
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This is better, so they may not be known and molested.
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As we'll come to realize, it's a very specific kind of garment, which covers this very specific
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There's another part of the Quran which says that, which hopefully she'll mention.
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Basically, the verse advises that all women dress similarly, so that they can't be picked
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How would she function if her body was constricted by a coat?
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In the end, the early Muslim scholars ruled that a woman's way of dress should be based
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A woman's function in society, her role, what we might consider her job, and the society's
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Now, Muslims like to take historical rulings and apply them to the modern era.
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So she's saying the scholars have said those two things.
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She's saying the principle for what you wear is who you are in society.
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That's her social status and how the norms of society.
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What the scholars are doing in the state is bringing that to today's time and saying, no,
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She's saying what scholars are doing is making historical evidence.
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Because there are some things which are therbet in the deen which are very straightforward.
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If you use the same logic, so okay, five prayers that are our historical ruling, you
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Is there anything stopping us from praying now?
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What's the difference here between the injunctions of prayer and injunctions of anything else?
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So she's attempting to draw the line in a place where it suits maybe her personal self or preference.
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But then she has to be asked, where are you getting this information from?
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And this is really important because a lot of people that come and say, I, me, me,
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Because we're saying, look, the Quran, the Sunnah, and the Salaf, yeah?
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If somebody comes and says to you, I, me, we, interpret it like that, be careful.
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Because we're looking for Quran, Sunnah, and the Salaf, yeah?
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A woman's way of dress should be based on custom and function.
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So what does that mean for a Muslim woman living in America today?
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First, it means that I have a function, a role in society, a contribution that I can
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Second, it means that while I'm making that contribution and living in a society where
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veiling is not the custom, and where, in fact, if I veil, it might actually lead to
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harassment, then wearing what is the custom, such as a dress, a pair of jeans, or even yoga
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Yoga, bro, yoga pants, like them yoga pants, like tie, tie, leggings, leggings.
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So, okay, where, the question is, where is she getting this information?
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Before she got this information, what did she say last week?
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Because she said it's, what is it, detrimental?
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No, she goes, it's because, okay, it's because harassment now, it's wearing a hijab.
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No, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's ridiculous.
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Because what she's, she's basically trying to say, and it's not what she's trying
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For example, let's say, let's say, we're in the niqab.
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It's come to a point, it's so dangerous, a sister's life's in danger here, the scholars
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might come and say, look, sister's better with a hijab.
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What she's saying is, look, full out, basically, I have to look like you, so then I'm not...
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Yeah, you're saying what she's wearing is fine, basically.
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What she's saying is that, we have to bow, is what she's really saying.
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We have to bow to the post-colonial, Western expectation.
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And if we don't bow to that, because we're going to be harassed otherwise, then we're
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And therefore, if we're fearful of our harassment, we shouldn't practice our religion.
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So if tomorrow they say, don't pray, we should say, okay, the same thing applies with prayer
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And if after tomorrow they say, don't say the shahadah, don't say you're Muslim, then
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the same thing will continue to apply until there's nothing left of Islam.
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And so if she, because the thing is, she's going against the...
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You know, of course, look, just say this, bro, just say this.
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I find it hard to wear it, but the commandment is clear.
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After all, haven't we all come to assume that a Muslim woman must veil?
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Well, that veiling is a requirement of her faith.
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There's even a term that we've all come to associate with the Muslim woman's veil, an Arabic term
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that we've all heard Jews whether or not we've been aware of it.
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Maybe the requirement that a woman veil isn't a different part of the Quran.
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For those of you who don't know, the Quran consists of 114 chapters.
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Out of 6,000 plus verses, three refer to how a woman should dress.
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The first is the verse I've already told you about.
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The second is a verse that directly speaks to the prophet's wives, asking that they begin
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to dress a bit more modestly because of their role, their function in society as his wives.
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And the third verse is similar to the first in that it was revealed in direct response
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Early records show that the custom, the fashion during the pre-Islamic era was for women
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But since she's going to come out now and reinvent the wheel, we have to be convinced
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of her qualifications and her ability to have access to the Quran.
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The word she was trying to actually pronounce was khimar.
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Now, I'm not, believe you me, I'm not trying to be petty here.
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But I'm saying if you're going to come out and reinvent the wheel and you can't even
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pronounce the word properly, that shows something about your...
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But don't have the courage to spread your ignorance.
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In the front, a woman wore a tight vest or a bodice, which she left open, exposing her
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When Islam spread through the Arabian Peninsula, a verse was sent down asking that women use
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this scarf or any other garment to cover the breasts.
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That's basically all there is in the Quran concerning how long.
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وَلِيَضْرِبْنَ بِخْمْرِهِنَّ عَلَيْجُوِبِهِنَّا
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So let them, i.e. the women, throw their khimars over their bosoms, yeah?
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This khimar here, the word khimar itself, look at any Arabic dictionary of the...
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Lisan al-Arab, Taj al-Aruz, Mufraza al-Qur'an, anything you want.
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Because the Jahili poetry, the old Arabic poetry, it tells us what the Arabs used to...
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Look at any of the ahadith that are used of the Prophet.
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The word khimar means a head covering that goes down.
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But what I'm saying is that it's from the head.
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The word itself, something which starts the head and goes down.
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And this is where the discussion is with the Muslim scholars.
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Some scholars, which are the minority, we have to say.
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But still, just because it's a minority, doesn't mean that they have a weaker opinion.
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And some others say, no, it goes down like this.
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So in other words, it goes down, but it allows the hands and the face to be shown.
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Now, this is a very well-known difference of opinion.
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The other thing, if there's any doubt about it, it would have been talked about by someone.
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But there's no doubt about it whatsoever that for the 1,400 years of Islamic history,
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and the hundreds, I'm not talking about tens of thousands, I'm talking about hundreds of thousands,
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if not millions, of scholars that have discussed this matter, yeah,
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have always confined it to this difference of opinion.
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Either it's the face and the hands that are covered.
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Has any scholar ever come and said he doesn't cover it?
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No scholar in the history of Islam has ever said that no head can be covered for a free woman.
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It turns out, God doesn't get a bullet point of all the parts of a woman's body that he wants hidden from you.
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And in fact, it might be argued and it is argued.
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I cannot stress enough that it is argued by many Muslim scholars.
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The reason these verses were left intentionally vague is so that a woman could choose for herself
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It's just, I could, it's like me, I could sit here and say, guys,
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loads of scholars, loads, man, so many have said that me drinking wine is cool, man.
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If we stood in front of a Christian, or a Jew, or an atheist, or anyone, because we argue
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We say, look, a lot of your scholars say this, a lot of your scholars say that.
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At the time, before Islam, before Islam, would the woman go, would women go around the
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So, this actually goes against her initial point.
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Because she said that there needs to be, it needs to be a societal norm.
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You need to be dressing in a way that your society is comfortable with.
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A full jilbab is not what the Arabs were comfortable with at that time.
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If they would go around topless, and if they would go around the Kaaba naked, how is
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Wearing a jilbab in this country is more of a societal norm than you would have been
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wearing it at the time of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
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Isn't it referred to, because I can remember that I did a video about this a long time ago,
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isn't the word khimar actually refers to like, hey, hey, like, wear your socks.
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Like, what I'm trying to say is the word itself is that when it was used to the Arabs, when
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they would look at a horse, and if the horse was white, and this part of his head onwards
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was black, they would have said, oh, look, he's wearing a khimar.
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So, doesn't the khimar, the word actually mean, that it's the word within itself, it's
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This is, sorry, I think this is the only reaction view I've ever done that I stop every 10 seconds.
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This, you know the word, why there's a big problem here?
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The word hijab has got nothing to do with the veil anyways.
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We have come to this country, and in this country, we've referred to it as a hijab.
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And even, by the way, in Arab countries, they call it hijab.
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In Arab countries, yeah, they refer it to us as hijab, yeah?
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Now, what she's done is, there's this new word that's been made, and she is using this
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argument to say, hey, the Quran doesn't mention hijab.
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The word hijab is always made for, like, barrier or something like that.
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But what she's missing out is, she's saying, look, the hijab isn't mentioned.
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What is the core fundamental belief of a Muslim?
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The core fundamental belief of a Muslim is believing in one God.
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How many times is Tawheed mentioned in the Quran?
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But I'm saying, if we were to use that argument.
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How many times is Christian mentioned in the Bible?
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I personally feel like it's just a personal thing for her.
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Because this just shows to me, anyone that would believe this and take this.
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If the word hijab was used, she would probably have an argument.
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But the fact that the word khimar is used, and jilbab, or the plurals of both of it, she's
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Because the word khimar actually specifies a location, actual centrality from the head
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So, if the word hijab was used, it would be more unspecific than the word khimar or jilbab.
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You're flipping, squeezing your flipping bladder.
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It turns out that the Prophet's first wife was what we would define today as a CEO.
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She rode into battle on the back of a camel, which is equivalent to a woman riding into battle
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One woman became famous as a general when she let her army of men into battle and crushed
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Women even loudly debated with the Prophet himself.
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With society to 600 AD, it might be a huge step forward.
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She's saying, if we go back to that time, the woman actually have more rights.
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That was a profound point that I would give it to her sister.
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And that's why the problem is we found out that she's a feminist.
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Now, this is what we say when we give our talks, yeah?
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We say, look, if you want to abolish the abuse of women by men, acid attacks, beating, whatever
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Bring something that's man-made 1,400 years later, or like she said, go back 1,400 years
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If we want to get over, beat this abuse towards women, et cetera, yeah, we should implement
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Oh, Prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and the women of the believers to draw upon
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A garment is a veil that covers the entire head and the face, the neck, the breast, all
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the way down to the ankles, and all the way to the wrists.
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Everything on a woman's body is exposed except for one eye, because she must see where she
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She tried saying that the people who have been entrusted with the interpretation of the Quran
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And as if all the people that have been entrusted with the interpretation of the Quran have been
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Okay, so let's think about even at the time of the Prophet, which women were at the fore
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of interpreting Quranic jurisprudence or Quranic verses in the light of jurisprudence.
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People like Aisha, people like Umu Salaamah, people like Zayna.
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These are the women who we have, I would say, I don't know, but the majority of Ahadith
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They specifically translated these verses to mean what?
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When these verses came down, when the mothers of the believers, they heard these verses,
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they are the ones who not only, they knew what it meant, but they acted upon it instantaneously
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I heard that Ansari women would actually rip parts of their clothes when the verses came
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So were they women or men that were doing this?
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They were the women that were interpreting the Quran.
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So what she's doing here, the first problem is that she's doing a disservice or something,
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Number two, let's just say it is all men for the sake of argument.
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I mean, there is a considerable amount of Islamic scholars that are women.
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Hundreds of thousands of Muslim scholars, men and women, they colluded.
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They colluded together to intentionally superimpose a very specific type of meaning onto the verses
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And you don't want one of them, or at least a community of them, who have reputation,
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who understand the sacred sciences, will stand up and say, you know what, let's do the right
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thing and interpret the verses in the correct way in light of the Arabic language.
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The word Khimar, as we said, it means from the top to the bottom.
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But I'm just saying, that list is within the scope of discussion.
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What she's saying is not within the scope of discussion.
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Even when she referenced the Quran, she didn't reference it.
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Any sister, anybody, whoever, that watches this and sees it as something that affects them.
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So guys, As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.