Here, of course, I am referring to Virginia Woolf’s ground breaking essay ‘’ A Room of One’s Own’’. In this brilliant work Woolf argues rather cogently that a woman needs a space of her own and a steady income to write fiction. Woolf essentially lays out the material conditions needed to free a woman from the slavish desire to please or flatter a man on whom she is economically independent. Such economic independence, then, far from being rooted in a purported desire to imitate a male standard is actually an attempt to break free of male idolatry as the following quotation illustrates. It is worth quoting in full:

To begin with, always to be doing work that one didn’t wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning, not always necessarily perhaps, but it seemed necessary and the stakes were too great to run risks; and then the though of that one gift which it was death to hide- a small one but dear to the possessor- perishing and with it myself, my soul- all this became like a rust eating away the bloom of the spring, destroying the tree at its heart. However, as I say, my aunt died; and whenever I change a ten shilling note a little of that rust and corrosion is rubbed off: fear and bitterness go. Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, housing and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labor cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man: he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.’’1

Freedom from material want, then, allows the autonomous female subject to form a judgment that transcends the fear of worldly punishment or the desire for earthly reward. It means that things such as books or paintings or men can be judged from a critical distance for their intrinsic worth and with no reference to a male standard as Yasmin Mogahad naively claims.

Mogahad invokes the dreaded image of the monolithic Western feminist not from any deep knowledge of the diverse traditions or rich textual legacy but in order to discredit progressive forces within the Muslim world. Had she actually taken the time to read Woolf’s Three Guineas, for instance, she might not have made the naïve claim that women want to join the army in order to be like men. ‘’ When a man joined the army, she wanted to join the army’’. In fact, Woolf was a scathing critic of the British empire and military pageantry. And if Mogahad believes that such an aversion to the military is an exclusively western phenomenon, then, she might want to check out Leila Ahmed’s Memoir Border Passage to get a textured sense of how a Muslim mother can be the principled transmitter of a pacifist tradition in her own right. Ahmed recalls how her mother’s aversion to the military was rooted in a Qur’anic verse she often quoted, man qatala nafsan qatala al-nas jami’an, wa man ahya nafsan ahya al-nas jam’ian. "He who kills one being kills all of humanity, and he who revives, or give life to, one being revives all humanity’’. Ahmed writes of her mother:

She took her beliefs seriously, to the point of prohibiting my brothers, who were engineers, from working in any field that contributed in any way to weaponry, as well as from participating in any war as combatants. She had them swear this before her, as I mentioned earlier. She could not live, she said, with the thought that she had been responsible, through giving birth to them, for the death of another mother’s son. It would make her, she said, as well as them, a murderer.’’2

To suggest that Muslim women blindly mimic western women in a mad rush to join the army is not merely farcical; it is an insult to their intelligence, a blow to their integrity and an appalling denigration of their rich feminine traditions. As a Muslim Feminist who strongly supports the woman led prayer, I am appalled that my principled stance for gender equality in the mosque is being trivialized as a mindless act of imitation, one that glorifies a male standard rather than challenges male privilege.

So as a Muslim Feminist I often draw upon Virginia Woolf’s visionary writings to resist the temptation to please male masters, to retain critical distance vis-à-vis entrenched male authorities. In a similar fashion I draw much inspiration from the great mystic Rabi’ai al-Adawiyya to resist male idolatry for just as Woolf loved art for its own sake so Rabi’a loved God for his own sake; this early mystic- who according to one account was born around 717 A.D- sought to transcend the fear of punishment and the desire for reward through the power of sheer love.

Unlike Mogahad Rabi’a understood the conflict between worshipping an earthly master and worshipping God as the following anecdote clearly illustrates. This is Rabi’a’s response to a marriage proposal by the Amir of Basra:

I’m not interested, really, in ‘possessing all you own,’’ nor in making you my slave, nor in having my attention distracted from God even for a split second

And she told the governor:

Control yourself ; Don’t let others control you. Instead, better share your inheritance with them. And suffer like they do the common suffering of the time. As for you; Remember the day of your death. As for me: Whatever bride-price you come up with, Understand that the Lord I worship can double it. ‘’So goodby’’3

That is to say, Rabi’a maintains a distance from worldly authority that she may freely critique power relations here on earth for no man can give her what she doesn’t desire and no man can punish her by withholding material rewards. Yet Rabi’a is not indifferent to the suffering in the world and to the injustice of the times.

By way of not so brave contrast, Mogahed’s seemingly detached stance from worldly matters disguises a deeper complicity with earthly power structures. Heaven may be at the feet of mothers but such compensatory devices are mighty useful right here on earth. So Mogahed’s essay shifts it focus away from a woman’s relationship to God within the mosque and curiously slips into an ideologically motivated segregation of the sexes that extends to the domestic sphere. Paradoxically, it is in the domestic sphere that a woman is defined in relation to her child-bearing activities and her earthly master (s). There in a state of domestic bliss a Muslim mother can realize her relational being with direct reference to her adoring sons and earthly master (s).

Invoking the monolithic Western feminist, then, is merely a rhetorical devise to dismiss Muslim women’s concrete grievances and to slavishly please socially conservative forces with the American Muslim community. By the same token, Mogahed conjures images of the monolithically dignified Muslim woman in order to maintain a comfortable status quo and forestall all change. The dignity of Muslim women granted by Islam 1400 years ago becomes a code word for saying those who have been given all should ask for no more. Now just as Mogahed initially invoked the Monolithic Western Feminist to maintain an oppressive status quo so now she evokes images of Muslim mother on a pedestal to advance the politics of eternal deferment, to further the interests of her male masters. Is it any wonder that many of them are praising her on the internet more fitting for a mother day’s parade rather than a serious intellectual debate?

This, in short, is no more than the reactionary politics of putting Muslim women back in their proper place. It is hardly surprising that Mogahed appropriates the racist discourse of separate but equal to justify discrimination against women in cute girlie terms like ‘gender distinctiveness’’. How else can worldly subordination be rendered palatable to denigrated subordinates at the back of the mosque? What Mogahed fails to acknowledge is how her own discourse doves rather nicely with another kind of Western woman; namely, the socially conservatives types like Dr. Laura who wax eloquent about the glories of maternal life and domestic bliss even as they make millions hosting talk shows or writing articles or going off to graduate school. Do we see a pattern emerging here? Is it any wonder that Mogahed shows such insensitivity to the plight of working mothers in what can only be characterized as a secret affinity with her less feminist Western sisters? One is not likely to hear condemnations of Western contamination in such instances, at least not from socially conservative American Muslims or their adoring fans.

So:

It never occurs to Mogahed that millions of poor Muslim women don’t have the luxury of being married to decent husbands who making a living wage.

It never occurs to Mogahed that meaningful work can be a source of deep fulfillment for women, whenever it is available.

It never occurs to Mogahed that millions of Muslim women don’t live in the fantasy land of 1950’s domestic bliss and labor in the fields or factories to sustain their families.

It never occurs to Mogahed that millions of toiling men dream of early retirement to escapes lives of drudgery and low paying jobs.

But then again in Mogahed’s highly stratified world men and women are not suppose to dwell on what they have in common, let alone recognize their common humanity.

It never occurs to Mogahed that some women cannot be mothers. It is hardly surprising that our maternity priestess hardly concerns herself with the plight of the repudiated, childless Muslim woman. That’s just not Pedestal material. She might want to check out Leila Abouzeid’s novella Year of the Elephant: A Moroccan Woman’s Journey Toward Independence to get a feel for how economic dependence on a fickle male can be truly degrading for women East or West!

But then again Mogahed hardly concerns herself with the plight of domestic servants.

It never occurs to Mogaded that women are complex beings with complex needs.

But then again this is the politics of diminished options in which highly idealized women are expected to choose between the twin polarities of man or God.

For many feminists, Muslim or otherwise, meaningful work, loving relationships, decent material conditions and intellectual rigor are central to their liberating vision. For many feminists- East or West- there are emerging alternatives that hardly fit into Mogahed’s simplistic dualisms.

But then again it is so flattering to circulate caricaturized versions of women’s liberation, of crazed feminists abandoning their maternal responsibilities so they can be just like rational men! And so Mogahed’s rhetoric flows rather effortlessly into the liberal bashing of the times!

Endnotes

1. Virginia Woolf, A Room Of One’s Own. ( New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957) p. 38
2. Leila Ahmed, Border Passage. ( New York: Straus and Giroux, 1999) p. 76
3. Charles Upton, Door Keeper of the Heart: Versions of Rabi’a. ( Threshold Sufi Classics, 1993) p. 11

Ginan Rauf is a board member of the Progressive Muslim Union