{"id":482,"date":"2008-01-30T02:04:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T09:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muslimahmediawatch.wordpress.com\/2008\/01\/30\/qaria-not-just-a-sura-2\/"},"modified":"2011-12-08T23:35:15","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T03:35:15","slug":"qaria-not-just-a-sura-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/2008\/01\/qaria-not-just-a-sura-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Qari’a: Not Just a Sura"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Recitation of the Qur\u2019an can be a spiritual experience for even those who don\u2019t understand Arabic. The sounds and rhythms of the words remind listeners of the Qur\u2019an\u2019s poetry. For those who do understand Arabic, the experience is only more profound. In the Muslim world, the professional Qur\u2019an reciter (qari\u2019) releases tapes and CDs and become a famous figure. But it doesn\u2019t take long to realize almost all Qur\u2019an reciters are men.<\/p>\n

I turned to The Art of Reciting the Qur\u2019an<\/span> by Kristina Nelson to find what I could about the female reciter, the qari\u2019a. The index references only two pages. These turn out to be nothing more than a footnote.<\/p>\n

Nelson writes, \u201cThe professional female reciter participates in another tradition, in which musicality is largely unconscious (and which men dismiss as \u2018having no art\u2019).\u201d Instead of public figures, women perform only for other women and \u201cthe presence of the audience can be attributed more to the particular occasion than to her particular talent as a reciter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Qur\u2019an is at the heart of Islam. Why would recitation of it be so limited to men? According to Muslims who consider female recitation<\/a> haram, a woman\u2019s voice is inappropriate for men outside her family to hear. The assumption is that it invokes sexual desire in what should be spiritual and chaste.<\/p>\n

So, if you\u2019re looking for Qur\u2019an recitations by females, you\u2019ll have a hard time. In international recitation competitions, women have participated, in growing numbers, since 1965. Female recitation is not marketed or distributed the same way. Even on YouTube it\u2019s hard to find recitations by females \u2014 that are neither for females only<\/a> or clearly not public figures<\/a>. There is an abundance of clips of little girls, even as young as two<\/a> and three<\/a>, hardly out of babyhood, reciting Qur\u2019an, but no indication of what happens to them when they lose the cute baby faces. At the same time, you\u2019ll have no problem finding women performing in other realms, such as film and music, as household names.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Southeast Asia is the prime exception to the rule. In this region of the world \u2014 primarily Malaysia and Indonesia but also Thailand, Brunei, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Singapore \u2014 female reciters do rise to the professional level. It\u2019s not clear what makes these countries special, but they\u2019re among the exceptions that pop up here and there. Egypt has had female reciters \u2014Umm Kalthoum was broadcast reciting the Qur\u2019an in the 1930s and 40s and 12-year-old Somaya Abdul \u2018Aziz<\/a> has been featured recently \u2014 but the art is dominated by men, as it is elsewhere. Another exception is Michael Sell\u2019s book, Approaching the Qur\u2019an<\/span>, which includes a companion CD of Qur\u2019an recitations for the reader can experience the sound of the Qur\u2019an. The CD contains two female reciters: Hajjah Maria Ulfah<\/a> of Indonesia (internationally recognized qari\u2019a and \u201ca bona fide celebrity<\/a>,\u201d pictured right<\/span>) and Seemi Bushra Ghazi<\/a> of Canada (professor at the University of British Columbia). Not only is the book not for a female-only audience, it does not even note the gender of the reciters included.<\/p>\n

Again, these are the exceptions. Female recitation is generally ignored by the media \u2014 radio, CDs, tapes, and television show men as reciters \u2014 due to negative societal attitudes towards women reciting. Not only are these views patriarchal (women should have no authority over men), sexist (men\u2019s voices cannot ever be \u201csexual\u201d), heterocentric (men are aroused by women\u2019s voices), hypersexual (a woman\u2019s voice, even reciting sacred text, is sexy), they\u2019re also objectifying: a woman is nothing more than the sexual messages her voice exudes. Females seem only to be appreciated for their recitation when they are of ages so young they can be trotted out as miraculous.<\/p>\n

Leaving women out of an experience so profoundly spiritual \u2014 or delegating them to second class \u2014 implies that women\u2019s spiritual capacity is burdened by their inescapable sensuality. According to this attitude, men can serve as religious public figures, but women aren\u2019t pure enough for that. In effect it denies Muslim women the same connection to the Qur\u2019an, the core of Islam, that men have. That doesn\u2019t sound very Islamic to me.<\/p>\n

And why is this issue not even discussed? I have yet to see a book or article on female Qur\u2019an reciters. Besides on discussions on forums, email lists, and in occasional parts of academic books, this topic isn\u2019t even considered. When will the media recognize that the Qur\u2019an reciter is not always a man?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recitation of the Qur\u2019an can be a spiritual experience for even those who don\u2019t understand Arabic. The sounds and rhythms of the words remind listeners of the Qur\u2019an\u2019s poetry. For those who do understand Arabic, the experience is only more profound. In the Muslim world, the professional Qur\u2019an reciter (qari\u2019) releases tapes and CDs and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":411,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturesociety"],"yoast_head":"\nQari'a: Not Just a Sura<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Recitation of the Qur\u2019an can be a spiritual experience for even those who don\u2019t understand Arabic. 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