Gender Relations

Salaam,

Hahaaaa...you thought I had disappeared off the face of the earth...well sorry to disappoint but I am still here...just about. I'm at home now for the xmas break and inshaAllah will be here until the 1st of Jan and then back to work. I'd like to dedicate the coming resurgency in my blogging to S.A.M (aka "The fake Sheikh" (a good nick name I think..lol)) who has had trouble living without my ramblings...he himself now runs a blog from the distant lands of Qatar..I would advertise it here but I fear some of his content may be inappropriate for my innocent masoom readers...if you clean it up, I may well advertise..anyway here you go sidi...:

A few weekends ago I had a much delayed reunion with some friends of mine from university. Alhamdulilla it was really good to meet them all as for some, it was nearly a year and a half since I had last seen them.It was quite a "unique" thing as all the people I met were non-Muslims. This might sound an odd observation, but all my life I've always lived around Muslims - my primary school was 100% Muslim, secondary was 80% and even the college I went to for A levels was 70%. The area I live in is also pretty much 100% Muslim (I know, I know, for my US fan base this will seem incredibly odd....). So going away to university was the first time I was faced by having to deal with being in a majority non-Muslim environment and to be honest, it pretty darn hard at first.

Anyway I'm digressing here. At the meal I sat next to one of the guys who I know pretty well and the topic of gender relations came up. He at the moment is sharing a flat with a "feminist" Muslim girl (*SIGH*)....who was complaining to him about why women in mosques had to pray behind men....so I replied back saying the debate really isn't on where women pray, but on whether women should be in the mosque in thefirst place... (he wasn't too happy with this). So from here we got into a debate about the role of men and women in society.The debate wasn't really to do with the Islamic perspective per se ora ny religious perspective (he's quite a hard core Christian himself) but more general than that. For example he was saying why is it the norm that women stay at home and look after the kids and men go to work..why can't it be the other way round...? And why is it that men are taught that they shouldn't cry whereas this is OK for girls etc etc...and his reason was that this is what society forces on them and thus they are made to conform with the "norms" of society...to which my response was although this might be true to a certain degree biologically men and women are born with difference which make women intrinsically more caring and "soft" whereas men who have more testosterone and are more aggressive (don't know if this is actually true...but I had to saysomething..!).

Then he replied back saying that studies had shown that as kids, girls are equally as likely to get into fights as boys and boys are equally as likely to cry at things as girls (I was thinking Damn...lol). Then I reverted the topic back to the specific prayer one saying obviously if you're trying to be holy and connect with God, if women are in front of you or next to you, it's not going to exactly help you concentrate..and the guy opposite who was a Hindu came to the rescue saying he could understand this and that segregation was present in many Hindu festivals. To which the Christian replied with the classic "why can't the women pray in front with a barrier separating them and with the men at the back?"....and so the conversation went round and round...

Anyway at the end we concluded that we were all correct in some way and parted ways. But I thought the whole conversation was interesting. I suppose for me the key thing to the Islamic perspective on Gender relations is accepting that women Are different to men and that what is expected off each is different, but this in no way means that onthe whole one gender gets a rougher deal than the other. For example...if I was a girl....(you won't hear me say that again..! Lol) I'd love to work for a charity and help the needy, but because I'm a man (grrr..) I feel that I need to be able to provide for my family and give them a platform to do well so I need to work in a "proper" job where the pay is better so I can do these things. This problem doesn't exist for muslimas as they have no obligation to provide money for the family and so they can easily work for a charity and the low pay they get paid doesn't matter that much as their husband is paying for everything. And loads of other examples I think where females in Islam get a better deal than males.

So yes - men, women, men and women, it's all a messy world out there.But with trust in Allah coupled with compromise, patience, sacrifice and just treating others how you would want to be treated, I'm sure we'll get there.

Salaams