Why Don't Muslim Women Support Amina Wadud?

There's been a lot of bru-ha-ha in the past couple of days about Amina Wadud and her efforts to fight for Muslim women's rights by purportedly acting as the first female imam in history. While the Western feminists are all over this and the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU) has helped create a media spectacle surrounding it, this is not an issue that regular Muslim women support or even care about. Why?

To Americans it seems an important step for Muslims toward "joining the 21st century". To fringe groups like the PMU is seems like a great opportunity to show Americans that we're "just like them". But to most Muslims - even Muslim women - it seems like much ado about nothing important.

As far as women's rights issues go, there are so many real issues that could be fought for - so many more important areas to spend one's energy on. Muslim women in some areas of Africa still suffer the horrors of radical circumcision - a practice left over from pre-Islamic times that destroys women's bodies and indeed their very identities. There are Muslim women who are illiterate and have no access to learning. There are Muslim women whose entire existence is marred by fear for their very lives, with Israeli or American or Indian or Russian missiles and soldiers breaking violently into their homes and killing their children and family members. There are Muslim women who are prevented by war or poverty or ignorant misogyny from accessing medical care for themselves and their children. And there are millions of misinformed Westerners who think that all those circumstances are caused by Islam itself rather than destructive economic systems, unfair foreign policy decisions made by their own leaders or deliberately ignorant Muslim men (who have deviated from their religion and enforce their deviation in order to maintain the delusion of their own superiority, much like skinheads).

Into the middle of all this injustice lands Amina Wadud, and she decides to spend her time fighting fiercely for...women's right to lead the prayer? Could there possibly be a more frivolous issue? The only people who care about it are the liberal Christians and the secular feminists. I even know a Catholic nun who says the same thing when accused of cowardice by some women in her own faith for not joining their struggle to get women ordained as priests: "If I'm going to fight for something, I'm going to fight for something meaningful - something that really helps women!" she declares. (And she does!)

And that's the crux of the matter. Wadud and her cohorts might really believe that women leading prayers would somehow improve women's status, but that's because for all their advanced degrees, they lack a basic understanding of Islam. They are chasing after the feminist dream of erasing gender roles - but that's not a Muslim dream. Not because Muslims are backward, but because it's not a healthy goal. It is a dream born of a sick society where only men and men's roles were valued. Their answers are not our answers.

There is wisdom and a primer for society in the way the prayers are performed. Men in front, protecting, serving and leading their families and communities. Women bringing up the rear - disciplining, nurturing and teaching the children, making sure they don't fall out of line or out of love in the community, and protecting them from the back-door dangers of the world - like doubt and negative peer pressure - with unflinching love and care. And the young men and women in the middle - secure and protected from all sides while they learn and grow into mature adults who will take their complimentary places in the community when they come of age.

This formula reflects a healthy society where men's and women's roles are different but both are respected. Where men and women have complimentary rights and responsibilities. Where men stick around and raise their families with kindness and piety. Where women are educated and independent, and participate in the life of the community just like the men, but don't abandon their responsibilities to their children and spouses in search of "self fulfillment". The dream and efforts of all Muslims should be to fully implement THAT system. Not to run around showing the dysfunctional Westerners how eager we are to implement theirs.