- May 9, 2006
- 3,261
- 5,192
Hi everyone
So my curiosity got the better of me tonight and I watched an episode of an Islamic da'wah program. It happened to be about women in Islam and was a recording of a Western woman who converted in the late '70s giving a talk at a US uni campus Muslim conference in 2002. Gee, I wish I paid this much attention when my boss was talking to me...! Anyway, this subject and the presenter had me transfixed to the tellie for the duration.
The presenter talked about her initial exposure to Islam when she was a uni student, talked about how she was lucky to come to Islam through books and not people (who often have their own version of things), how she learned that Islam is often mixed up with cultural practices that are at odds with Islam which you need to separate and she is lucky not to have that kind of cultural heritage because she can separate easily. She spoke about being challenged by American feminists about Islamic women being oppressed and the misconceptions. I could relate to this woman because I've seen some of this myself with Sikhi.
The second half of her discussion was about her understanding of the Hadiths and Quran with relation to women and the historical context surrounding Islam. She talked about the rights afforded to women in Islam which they didn't have at the time. Rights of inheritance, rights to vote, rights to education. And she spoke about how in America women only got the right to vote in early 1900s and in some states only got rights of inheritance in the '50s.
She said, the problems come up when people put culture before Islam. And I found myself thinking she's probably right.
Then I got thinking, if you could take a bunch of Sikhs, remove their cultures (whichever ones they might be), and put them in a brand new stare all of their own, by which laws would they be governed? Islam has hadiths and the Quran tells you how to live. If Muslims were in the place of our hypothetical Sikh community in our example here, they would theoretically have all the instruction they need. But what reference material would our Sikhs use? What would inform their day-to-day lives on a practical level?
The lack of laws and rules within Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji is precisely why I think it is a truly universal, divinely inspired spiritual resource. But I find myself regularly wondering about the mundane, practical aspects of life and by extension what would guide Sikh governance.
In an ideal world I'm sure our Guru and our common sense would be all we need, but the majority of humans (myself included) are not up to that level of social evolution.
So I ask my cyber sangat here for your thoughts on this, please.
Ishna
sent from my iPod so probably dodgy, sorry!!
The second half of
So my curiosity got the better of me tonight and I watched an episode of an Islamic da'wah program. It happened to be about women in Islam and was a recording of a Western woman who converted in the late '70s giving a talk at a US uni campus Muslim conference in 2002. Gee, I wish I paid this much attention when my boss was talking to me...! Anyway, this subject and the presenter had me transfixed to the tellie for the duration.
The presenter talked about her initial exposure to Islam when she was a uni student, talked about how she was lucky to come to Islam through books and not people (who often have their own version of things), how she learned that Islam is often mixed up with cultural practices that are at odds with Islam which you need to separate and she is lucky not to have that kind of cultural heritage because she can separate easily. She spoke about being challenged by American feminists about Islamic women being oppressed and the misconceptions. I could relate to this woman because I've seen some of this myself with Sikhi.
The second half of her discussion was about her understanding of the Hadiths and Quran with relation to women and the historical context surrounding Islam. She talked about the rights afforded to women in Islam which they didn't have at the time. Rights of inheritance, rights to vote, rights to education. And she spoke about how in America women only got the right to vote in early 1900s and in some states only got rights of inheritance in the '50s.
She said, the problems come up when people put culture before Islam. And I found myself thinking she's probably right.
Then I got thinking, if you could take a bunch of Sikhs, remove their cultures (whichever ones they might be), and put them in a brand new stare all of their own, by which laws would they be governed? Islam has hadiths and the Quran tells you how to live. If Muslims were in the place of our hypothetical Sikh community in our example here, they would theoretically have all the instruction they need. But what reference material would our Sikhs use? What would inform their day-to-day lives on a practical level?
The lack of laws and rules within Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji is precisely why I think it is a truly universal, divinely inspired spiritual resource. But I find myself regularly wondering about the mundane, practical aspects of life and by extension what would guide Sikh governance.
In an ideal world I'm sure our Guru and our common sense would be all we need, but the majority of humans (myself included) are not up to that level of social evolution.
So I ask my cyber sangat here for your thoughts on this, please.
Ishna
sent from my iPod so probably dodgy, sorry!!
The second half of
Last edited: