Dr. Abdal Hakim Jackson. Image via Loonwatch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOn December 29, Dr. Abdal Hakim Jackson spoke about gender segregation, and how strict segregation is often justified as \u201cerring on the side of caution\u201d and \u201cavoiding the harm\u201d of men and women mixing freely.\u00a0 He raised the issue that there are other kinds of harm that we should be thinking about too, giving an example of a young woman who felt ignored and dehumanised when the Muslim brothers in her community would barely look at her or talk to her, despite all the work she does in the community, and despite how comfortable the men seemed to be in talking to women who aren\u2019t Muslim.\u00a0 Dr. Jackson described the psychological impact that segregation can have on women, and argued that this is another kind of harm that needs to be taken into account in discussions about segregation within Muslim communities.<\/p>\n
That part was great, and a really important challenge to the ways that discussions on segregation are normally framed.\u00a0 What was disturbing at the time was that he didn\u2019t seem able to make that point without first going into a long preamble about how he is not a feminist, and doesn\u2019t support feminist discourses, because they are based on something other than following God and God\u2019s Messenger.\u00a0 The next day, when someone asked him to clarify his comments about gender segregation, he again began with the same disclaimer, distancing himself from feminism and feminists.<\/p>\n
It won\u2019t surprise anyone that I was bothered by this need to disavow feminism, both because it implied that the concerns would be less valid if voiced by someone who did<\/em> identify as feminist, and because it erased the many feminists who do, in fact, centre God and Islam in our thinking.*<\/p>\nAnd then, on the final day of the Retreat, Dr. Jackson began by saying that he had an apology to make.\u00a0 He described his earlier comments about feminism, and told us that he was wrong to make them, acknowledging that there are indeed Muslims who are feminists, and that it\u2019s not fair to assume that all feminists are ignoring Islam.\u00a0 He acknowledged the diversity within feminism, and was clear that to generalise and misrepresent feminism as he had done was a form of injustice, one for which he took responsibility and sincerely apologised.\u00a0 It was a full-out, real, honest apology; not just an \u201cI\u2019m sorry you were offended\u201d or even \u201cI\u2019m sorry to offended you,\u201d but a genuine \u201cI did this, and it was wrong, and I\u2019m sorry.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, his remarks were welcome not only as a correction to his previous remarks about feminism, but as a model for how to acknowledge and apologise for things we\u2019ve done wrong. \u00a0I really appreciated his comments, as did several people I talked to, and my respect for Dr. Jackson definitely increased.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know what it was that made him change his mind, but it\u2019s possible that someone might have talked to him about his comments.\u00a0 If that\u2019s the case, much respect also goes out to whoever it was who took that risk to challenge one of the highly-respected RIS scholars, and who didn\u2019t simply let it go or tune it out.<\/p>\n
*Just to be clear, this isn\u2019t at all meant to be a reference to our debates on Islam and feminism from a few weeks ago.\u00a0 I think the arguments that Dr. Jackson was making were somewhat different from those being made in those debates.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday, we posted Sharrae\u2019s analysis of gender issues at the 2011 Reviving the Islamic Spirit Convention.\u00a0 Although I wasn\u2019t able to attend the Convention, I did make it to the Knowledge Retreat, a six-day series of classes with several of the RIS scholars.\u00a0 There is much to say about the Retreat, but one moment in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[1604,1605,1137],"class_list":["post-9815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturesociety","category-events","tag-abdal-hakim-jackson","tag-knowledge-retreat","tag-reviving-the-islamic-spirit"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.loonwatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/sherman_jackson.jpg\" "\\"Dr.")