Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Political, not Religious

by : Pamela K. Taylor
co-founder, Muslims for Progressive Values
"On Faith" panelist Pamela K. Taylor is co-founder of Muslims for Progressive Values and director of the Islamic Writers Alliance. She is a member of the national board of advisors to the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and served as co-chair of the Progressive Muslim Union for two years. Taylor is a strong supporter of the woman imam movement, which seeks the full participation of Muslim women in every aspect of life, including the pulpit. In July 2005, she became the first woman in centuries to officiate Friday prayers in a mosque when the United Muslim Association of Toronto and the Muslim Canadian Congress invited her to serve as guest imam. (This event followed a number of services, sermons and prayer sessions led by women held in private venues because no mosque agreed to host them.) In February 2006, when the former Grand Mufti of Marseilles visited Toronto, he requested that Taylor lead him in congregational prayer as an unequivocal demonstration of his support for female imams. Taylor has also been active in interfaith dialogue for 20 years, both in local initiatives and speaking at numerous conferences, universities, and churches. She received her MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and writes regularly on spiritual matters and the Islamic faith. She has essays in Nurturing Child and Adolescent Spirituality: Perspectives from the World's Religious Traditions (2006) and the forthcoming The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics (2007). She has written hundreds of articles and opinion pieces for newspapers, magazines, and journals, and is an award winning poet.



Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Political, not Religious

The premise of this week's On Faith question represents one of the most common misnomers about Muslims -- that everything we do is motivated by religion. The fact of the matter is that the Palestinian objection to Israel is not religious at all, but political.

In 2006 head of the Hamas political wing, Khalid Mish'al, wrote in The Guardian:

"Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion "the people of the book" who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us - our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people.

"We shall never recognise the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognise the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else's sins or solve somebody else's problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice."

It is not Hamas's understanding of Islam that make them hate Israel, it is the fact that they are a dispossessed people, a people who's land was given away by Europeans, stolen from them more often than not at gun point. Whole villages fled in fear of terrorist groups like the Irgun or the Stern gang, expecting to return a few days or weeks later, only to find that they never were able to go back to their houses.

I recently heard a piece on NPR about a man who had grown up in Jerusalem. He had the deed his home. His wife wore the key to the front door around her neck. They had fled the fighting in 1947, expecting to go home in a matter of days or maybe weeks, and have never been able to back to their house. Instead, a Jewish family was settled there -- without any payment, or acknowledgment that this house belonged to someone else. The man was now an old man, and the family who lived there, at first oblivious, had grown increasingly uncomfortable with what their occupancy meant. They went so far as to invite him to come visit. He cried seeing the lemon tree he had climbed in as a boy. The family was not prepared to give up the house they had called home for many years, and yet, you they felt horrible that this man's home had been essentially stolen from him, and that they were the benefactors of that theft.

This man's story is not unique -- the millions of people living in Gaza are predominantly from the area where Hamas's missiles fall. They can look across the border and see land that once belonged to their family, had been in their family often for hundreds and hundreds of years.

We Americans have a hard time relating to that -- most of us move two or three times in our childhood and then move out of our parents house when we are young adults. The emotional attachment to a family farm that has been passed down from generation to generation, that supplied the livelihood and food for that family, for eight hundred years is something we cannot begin to understand. The pain of living a few miles away from that farm, that your family fled because they feared a pogrom, and which was then occupied by people from a distant country, is unfathomable.

And, to make matters worse, we, as a nation, sit in the same position vis a vis the original owners of our lands as Israel does vis a vis the Palestinians. We expelled Native Americans from their homes -- often through extreme violence -- and pushed them into reservations where the living conditions were, and continue to be some of the worst in the country. The Indians fought back ferociously, as have the Palestinians. Atrocities were committed on both sides, as has been the case with Israel and Palestine.

As an American, my response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is colored by that past. I see Israel doing exactly what we did to the Native Americans and I shudder.

As a Muslim, my faith teaches me to stand up for justice. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, justice is a tricky question. The European treatment of Jews has been horrible for centuries and centuries. The Holocaust, while taking anti-antisemitism to a new level, was a manifestation of a long-standing and deep-seated hatred. I can empathize with Jewish desires to leave behind a region that treated them the way Europeans did, though European eagerness to move their Jewish populations to somewhere, anywhere, else is reprehensible. At the same time, I empathize with the Palestinians too. As Mish'al said, why should they have to pay for the sins of the Europeans? Why shouldn't the Europeans have to pay for their own crimes?

I do not believe that the Holocaust, as horrible as it was, justifies the wholesale disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people. Being victims of one of the worst criminal acts in the history of mankind does not give you the right to victimize others. One wrong, does not justify another wrong.

At the same time, while I do believe that people have the right to defend their persons and their property, I believe that there are limits to that defense. Islam teaches justice, balance and moderation. In particular, it limits the kinds of action one can take in warfare, and militants in Palestine have clearly crossed the boundaries. While I support the Palestinian drive for self-determination, decent living conditions, and basic human rights, I cannot support some of the techniques that they have used to fight for them, especially suicide bombings, and actions that target civilians.

No doubt, there are many Palestinian Muslims who view their struggle for a place to call home in terms of religious duty -- the fight for justice is a religious struggle in as much as Islam tells us to stand up for justice. I myself see my positions on the Middle East (and pretty much everything else) as a manifestation of my faith's teaching for justice, equality, and harmony among humankind.

I believe that this issue can be resolved, that peace can be achieved, and that some day Jews and Arabs (Christian and Muslim and whatever other religions they happen to adhere to) will live together equitably in the holy land. I look at the example of South Africa. In the days of my anti-apartheid activism, I shuddered to think what was going to happen to the Afrikaners when black people took over. I was astonished and delighted at the Truth and Reconciliation process, and I believe something along those lines could work wonders in the Middle East.

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Women as Imam - excerpt from Muslim Women's League - USA

The word 'imam' as used in the Qurân means a source of guidance (e.g. Qurân 2:124). The meaning is not limited only to prayer. Thus, the leader should guide the people along the path of Islam. In other words, the role of the leader is to follow the teachings of Islam and to act as a role model.
(M.F. Osman, "The Contract for the Appointment of the Head of an Islamic State", State, Politics, and Islam, ed. Mumtaz Ahmed, 1986, p. 56).

Leading prayer is not a necessary criterion for leadership, although it may be symbolically desirable. The leader himself or herself need not actually lead prayer. The leader can delegate this function to another. Prophet Muhammad, on two occasions, assigned Ibn Umm Maktum to lead prayer in Medina. On more than one occasion Muadh would pray isha with the Prophet and when he was finished he would return to his people and, with the Prophet’s permission, he would lead them in prayer. Thus, the assumption that the leader must actually lead the prayer is not necessarily valid.
(As-Sayyid Sabiq, Fiqh us-Sunna, American Trust Publications, 1989, vol. 2, p. 57).

Several ahâdîth set forth the criteria for leading prayer: an ability to read the Qurân, knowledge of the Qurân, knowledge of the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, and being accepted by the congregation. The following hadith, related by Ahmad and Muslim and reported by Ibn Masud, states that the Prophet said: "The imam of a people should be the one who is the most versed in the Qurân. If they are equal in their recital, then the one who is most knowledgeable of the sunnah. If they are equal in the sunnah, then it is the one who migrated first. If they are equal in that, then it is the eldest. And one should not lead prayer in another’s house without permission."
(As-Sayyid Sabiq, Fiqh us-Sunna, American Trust Publications, 1989, vol. 2, p. 56).

As-Sayyid Sabiq, a renowned Islamic scholar from al-Azhar, states that the following people are prohibited from leading prayer: someone with a legitimate excuse not to pray and an incapacitated person. He further states that the following people are discouraged from leading prayer: an evildoer and someone who changes the religion. Thus, maleness was not mentioned as a criterion. Moreover As-Sayyid Sabiq states that it is preferable for a woman to lead other women in prayer and he states that Aishah used to lead the women in prayer.
(As-Sayyid Sabiq, Fiqh us-Sunna, American Trust Publications, 1989, vol. 2, p. 58).

According to Ibn Rushd, Imam al-Shafii believed that a woman could lead other women in prayer; however, both al-Tabari and Abu Thawr believed that a woman could lead both men and women in prayer.
(Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, University of Minnesota Press, 1993, p.33 (citing Ibn Rushd, Bidaya al-Mujtahid wa Nihaya al-Muqtasid, Dar al-Fikr, vol. 1, p. 105)).

Umm Waraqa bint Abdallah, an Ansari woman who was well versed in the Qurân, was instructed by Prophet Muhammad to lead ahl dariha (ahl dariha means the people of her home where 'dar' means home and can refer to one’s residence, neighborhood, or village), which consisted of both men and women, in prayer. The "people of Umm Waraqa’s home" were so numerous that Prophet Muhammad appointed a muezzin for her. Umm Waraqa was one of the few to hand down the Qurân before it was written. Umm Waraqa wished to be known as a martyr so she asked Prophet Muhammad to allow her to participate in the Battle of Badr (624 A.D./ 2 A.H.) so that she could take care of the wounded; from that time on Prophet Muhammad referred to her as "the female martyr."
(Wiebke Walther, Women in Islam, Markus Wiener Publishing, 1981, p. 111 (citing Ibn Sad, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, vol. 8, p. 335).

In 699 A.D. (77 A.H.) a woman named Ghazala led her male warriors in prayer in Kufa after having controlled the city for a day. Not only did she lead Muslim men in prayer, she recited the two longest chapters in the Qurân during that prayer. Thus, although the practice of women leading prayer is not commonly accepted, one cannot simply conclude that it is prohibited without first conducting honest and unbiased research.
Note: Some traditional imams do not accept Ghazala as a legitimate precedent because she belonged to the Kharijite sect, a group of puritans, known for their piety, who revolted against Ali and Muawiya; however, this does not necessarily invalidate her actions).
(al-Tabari, History of Messengers and Kings, 51:80; Ali Masudi, Gardens of Gold, Dar al-Andalus, Beirut, 1965, 3:139).

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Published in the 1-15 July 2005
Women cannot lead men in prayers
By Muhammad Abdus Samad
The Milli Gazette Online

Of late Juma prayer led by Dr. Amina Wadud as imam in the US has given rise to an opportunity to the enemies of Islam to criticise women’s rights and duties under Islam.

To start with, Jumu’a prayer is not Fard (obligatory) for woman, it is Fard only for men in Islam. So where does she get the right to lead men's obligatory prayer while it is not Fard for herself? To lead Jumu’a and Eid prayers is the exclusive right of a competent man in Islam. Women may voluntarily join Jumu’a and Eid prayers behind a male Imam with a view to gaining thawab (divine reward). By leading Jumu’a prayer of some men and women, Dr. Wadud has, in fact, transgressed her limits under Shari’ah. The Holy Qur’an announces: "Whosoever transgresseth Allah’s limits, he verily wrongeth his soul" (65:1).
At present the West demands gender equality in the name of women's liberation. Is this possible in reality? Man and woman cannot be equal because of their different physical structures and mindsets as bestowed on each of them by Allah. If, despite this, both man and woman are required to play the same role, it would certainly lead the society to indiscipline and chaos. This is why Islam has determined rights and duties of both men and women separately and it expects both of them to master their respective roles in order to secure a balance and parity between them. Islam thus wants to bring about this type of equity between man and woman.
In Islam a person is considered “Muslim” who believes in Allah and His prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and acts upon the divine laws (Shari’ah) revealed to the Prophet. Islam has ensured the rights and duties of both man and woman and they are required to enjoy these righs and duties within the limits set by the Qur’an and Sunnah of the Prophet. As such Islam maintains a demarcation line between man’s rights and duties and woman’s rights and duties which are based on their physical structure and mental abilities. No one is allowed to encroach upon others’ rights and duties. It is factually true that the man is naturally stronger than woman with regard to physical and mental power. Due to this reason man has been placed a degree above woman and granted some additional rights and duties than the latter. The Holy Qur’an announces: "And they (women) have rights similar to those (of men) over them in kindness, and men are a degree above them. Allah is Mighty, Wise " (2:228). Men are protectors and maintainers (qawwamun) of women" (4:34).

Since man is the protector and maintainer (qawwam) of woman as per the Holy Qur’an, he reasonably deserves the post of Imam (leader) of Jumu’a and other congregational prayers and guiding Muslim society. Any attempt contrary to this will violate the rights and duties as accorded to man in the Holy Qur’an.
Imam means leader, highest position in Islam after prophethood. Prophets of Allah were the best leaders and guides of humankind. It is a historical fact that no prophet was raised from womanfolk. Prophets led and guided their respective people in accordance with the divine law (Shari’ah) revealed to them and thereby tried to make them qualified for redemption in the next world. The first man who was formally made Imam for leading and guiding his people was Prophet Abraham (on him be peace).

"Allah said to Abraham: Lo! I have appointed thee Imam for mankind. Abraham said: And also of my offspring. Allah said: My covenant includeth not wrongdoers" (2:124). Respecting the right of Prophet Ibrahim (on him be peace), prophets succeeding him were traditionally appointed to the post of Imam for leading and guiding the ritual and social affairs of the mankind and in absence of prophets, this responsibility falls on competent men in the Islamic society. It is also a fact that only man are appointed as religious heads in Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism.

The Imam in Muslim society is appointed for a stipulated term and the success of Muslim society in both worlds in based on the role played by the Imam. Duty of Imam is confined not only to leading Jumu’a and other congregational prayers but also to leading and guiding the Muslim society in accordance with the divine law (Shari’ah). An Imam in reality is the head of the Islamic state (Ameer) elected or selected by its citizens. One of the most important duties accomplished by an Imam as the head of Islamic state is to lead Jumu’a and Eid prayers in the capital’s central mosque (grand Masjid). Besides, he has to look after the defence and other social and international affairs concerning his country.

Islam does not permit a woman to lead a nation as the head of state. A Hadith says that when the emperor of Persia died, his daughter was made the ruler of Persia by its people. When Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was informed about this, he warned, saying: “A nation ruled by a woman will not succeed".

It is expedient to mention here that there is a great difference between a Muslim state and an Islamic state. A state cannot be called an Islamic state until and unless it is governed by the Shariah. Neither Muslims, nor Islam, are safe in Muslim states. Islam and Islamists are facing persecution in Muslim states like Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Similarly now we see the misuse and misinterpretation of some words like Imam, Ameer, Khalifa, Ilm, Jihad etc.

However, where Muslims are in a minority they should lead a collective life having an Imam elected or selected by them and this person leads Jumu’a and congregrational prayers and guides the Muslim society. Muslim are obligated to abide by the Imam (leader) they have elected or selected.

If a woman is made Imam for a stipulated period for leading Jumu’a and other congregational prayers and managing defence and social affairs in Muslim society, she would not be able to discharge her duties regularly due to some of her physical requirements such as pregnancy and post-delivery, rearing and breast feeding of baby and menstruation durations. A woman becomes ritually unclean and physically weak when she experiences such condiditions which require her to abstain from entering a mosque or offer prayer and keep fast. Under these circumstances a woman as Imam in Muslim society will not be able to discharge the required duties. Another reason that goes against a woman Imam is that if a man regularly leads Jumu’a prayer or attends it on Friday, it will be considered Fard for him while it is not so for women. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) did not regularly establish Tarawih prayers in Masjid fearing that Muslims may in future consider it Fard.

At present the West demands gender equality in the name of women's liberation. Is this possible in reality? Man and woman cannot be equal because of their different physical structures and mindsets as bestowed on each of them by Allah. If, despite this, both man and woman are required to play the same role, it would certainly lead the society to indiscipline and chaos. This is why Islam has determined rights and duties of both men and women separately and it expects both of them to master their respective roles in order to secure a balance and parity between them. Islam thus wants to bring about this type of equity between man and woman.

Has the West, which advocates equality between man and woman, been able to employ man and woman in all departments in equal ratio? No. Most of the departments in the West are run by men and 90% of staff are men. So how does the West criticise the rights and duties of Muslim women while it has itself failed to grant equality to its women?
The author is senior lecturer in P. B. College, Gauripur, Assam