I think the points you brought up were also my favourite parts. I really liked how open the women were in critiquing the whole framework for the discussion – not only the name and image, as raised at the beginning, but also later on, they talked about the issue of why it is we have to have these specific women-focused events, why these aren’t seen as concerns of the Muslim community as a whole. I really appreciated that, and how self-conscious they were that we can’t just sit back and be proud of ourselves for having this discussion, since even the context in which it’s happening is flawed.

The one thing I found really weird was that they looked like they were on a really tight schedule, which meant that there was very little time to answer any of the questions. It seemed like a lot of people were interrupting each other, and the moderator was having to cut people off, often before the full question was asked or before they were able to give an answer. While a lot of good points were raised, it felt like the conversation kept moving too fast for there to be much resolution on any of the topics (not that I was expecting them to solve the problems then and there, but a lot of conversations ended up feeling totally unfinished.) I guess that in itself is another sign of why it’s problematic to relegate women’s issues to short, hour-long events, rather than having these things as ongoing discussions… but I wonder if the event might have been more effective if they had made it more focused (in terms of both the topic and what they hoped to get out of it), rather than what seemed like a bunch of questions getting thrown out and not much time to properly consider them.