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Monday, June 12, 2006

Qur'an Menurut Perempuan

Recently I have been “carrying” a book entitled Quran Menurut Perempuan by Amina Wadud, the Indonesian translation of Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective in 1999. It is not a new book. I have known this book for some years. I’ve got the excerpt of it on the net. However, I “found” this book in a local bookstore last April 30, Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective published by Oxford University Press, New York 2006. It was just translated into Bahasa Indonesia and published in March 2006.
The book has been in my work bag since I bought it. As usual, I let my concentration to read this book distracted by many other things, including reading many other books at the same time. LOL. I didn’t mean to show that book to my workmates demonstratively but of course since I often “carry” the book, and once in a while I put it on a big table in the teachers’ room of my workplace, some workmates of mine have seen this book.
Yesterday a Catholic workmate of mine asked me, “What is the book about?” simply I answered, “Well, so far, Alquran has been interpreted by men so no wonder if the result is very male-dominated. And this book contains the different perspective; showing that if Alquran is interpreted by women, using women’s perspective, the result is absolutely different, even in some cases, shows contradictory interpretation.” This workmate of mine nodded, didn’t ask me further.
This afternoon, another workmate of mine said to me jokingly, related to the same book, “I told you not to read books about gender much. It is not good.”
I responded, “It is not good for you guys coz women realize their rights much better so that this world will not be male-dominated any longer.” LOL.


It reminded me of the middle age before Bible was translated into many other languages. Common people couldn’t read it; moreover understand it. Only limited ministers whose way of thinking had been “shaped” by Church could read it. And since they all had been indoctrinated the same way, of course all of them resulted in the same interpretation; they taught the congregation about the same thing, only from one perspective.


After reading the article entitled “Women In Islam Versus Women In The Judaeo-Christian Tradition: The Myth & The Reality” by Dr. Sherif Abdel Azeem at 


http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/humanrelations/womeninislam/womeninjud_chr.html#_Toc335566653 accessed on May 18, 2003 it made me question myself. According to Sherif Abdel Azeem, the illustration about women in Judeaeo-Christian Tradition shows the very low position given to women, but why in the reality, people consider Islam as the most chauvinistic religion of all? Islam that “lets men have more than one wife” is considered to degrade women’s position much more than the other two celestial religions mentioned by Sherif Abdel Azeem?

I related it to the fact that until now, Muslim people must recite Alquran, in its original language—Arabic. For me, Arabic is much more difficult to learn than English (coz I already become an English teacher? LOL) Many Muslim people recite Alquran everyday; however they don’t understand the meaning. To understand the meaning, they turn to the Tafsir (the interpretation of Alquran) produced by men. To help themselves understand Alquran and apply its teachings in their daily life, they turn to Alhadith written by men. They also turn to Fiqh which was written by men too!!! The result? You know that …


Again, I want to quote what Fatima Mernissi said:

“If the rights of Muslim women become problems for Muslim men, it is not because
of Alquran or Islam itself; it is because these rights contradict with the wants
of the elite Muslim men.”
If women themselves don’t struggle to reach their equality with men, for a better and equal world for both men and women, who else will do that?

PT56 21.10 100606

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kalo judulnya diganti "perempuan menurut Qur'an", gimana??

Nana Podungge said...

Jelas tidak bisa dong Lulu! Kamu tentu belum baca bukunya kan?
Thanks for dropping by anyway :D

Anonymous said...

Salaam sister
Amina Wadud is a disgrace. I don't know how any men and women being led to believe that she's the righteous one - to be believed and to be followed.
In the hadits, Rasul PBUH said : If you love Allah, follow me (follow Sunnah Rasul), and Allah will love you.
Every single step we take in our life, it has to be in accordance with Al Quran and Sunnah Rasul. Al Quran mentions :
33:36 No believing man or believing woman, if GOD and His messenger issue any command, has any choice regarding that command. Anyone who disobeys GOD and His messenger has gone far astray.
This ayah is saying that whatever Al Quran and Rasul say, whether we like it or not, we have to just do it, we don't have any choice !!
During his lifetime, have Rasul PBUH ever condoned a woman to be an imaam for prayer (shalah) of both men and women ?
Al Quran mentions :
[4:34] The men are made responsible for the women, and GOD has endowed them with certain qualities, and made them the bread winner. The righteous women will cheerfully accept this arrangement , since it is GOD's commandment,.....
The highlighted words emphasise that only women who are saleh will accept this ayah. Are we part of those women ?
Sister, I still don't understand the point that you're fighting for as a feminist ?
If Allah did will that women can lead both men and women, Allah would have created Rasuls from among women. But did He will ? Of course not, the above verses pointed out that men lead, women follow !
For us women to be contented (therefore no need to fight for this nonsense of feminism), we have to obey Allah, follow Sunnah Rasul, and ... be careful in choosing a man in your life, i.e a husband. A righteous husband will give us happiness in this world and will lead us to jannah in hereafter.
Look inside ourselves, do what we suppose to do devoutly. Read and follow Al Quran and Al Hadits, ignore those rubbish written by some power hungered megalomaniacs.

May Allah bestow His mercy upon us, may He lead us into His righteous path and make us die as a muslimah.

Salaam

triesti said...

as far as I know of, in Judaism they read their book in Hebrews. The difference I guess is in the societies where they practice their religions. Jewish (both secular or religious) are more literate at present than some of their moslem counterparts. It's all about educating the society.