Video: What is “’Awra”?: Women, Gendered Space, and Islamic Law

Full transcript: 

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: What is "'Awra"? Women, Gendered Space, and Islamic Law. October 27, 2022.

ANN BRAUDE: Good afternoon. While you keep enjoying your lunch and getting some food, I'm just going to give a bit of an introduction so that we can hear from Rahina Muazu for today's lecture. I'm Ann Braude, the director of the Women's Studies in Religion Program. And I extend a warm welcome to all of you.

Before I introduce Rahina, I just want to mention that our next lecture, and our last lecture for the semester, will be on Thursday, November 17th, when we will hear from Kinitra Brooks, our visiting professor, here in the Braun Room. And her lecture is entitled, "Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live, Dona Kimpa Vita & the Foundations of Conjure Feminism." So we hope to see many of you there.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Women's Studies in Religion Program. And every year, we have welcomed five visiting faculty members, pushing our knowledge forward of women, gender, and religion. There is a theme that has remained constant throughout all of that time-- the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The question of religious prohibitions on women's voice, this was a founding issue that led to the inception of this program in 1973 because of the realization that religious prohibitions on women's voice extended into the realm of politics, economics, ethics, personal life, safety. They extended everywhere.

If women's voice is unholy, the repercussions trickle throughout our social world and throughout history. Today we will hear from an extraordinarily innovative scholar who is really pushing what we can know and do know about women's vocality and religious prohibitions on women's voice and its repercussions.

Rahina Muazu began her education in Nigeria at the University of Jos. She received her doctorate in Berlin at the Freie Universitat and then held several post-doctoral fellowships in Germany before joining us here a year ago. I'm happy to say that her first WSRP lecture, which she presented, I think, in this room-- was it in this room? Or was it across the street?

AUDIENCE: It was on Zoom.

ANN BRAUDE: Oh, on Zoom, of course. Hence, all the problems, yes. That lecture has since been published. And I'm just looking for its title and location. "Why Invite Her Here? Her Voice is 'Awra!'-- Vocal Nudity Debates and Muslim Female Preachers in Northern Nigeria" appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Africa, joining a number of other scholarly articles that Rahina has published in the Journal of African Religion and Culture and other publications, all relating to women's voice.

And her work, I think, is so innovative because it combines in new ways the practical and theoretical aspects and meaning of women's voice in Islam. This semester, she has brought those all together in an extremely innovative course entitled Qur'an Recitation-- Theory and Practice.

She is, herself, trained in the finest aspects of Quran recitation as well as having done ethnographic research with women Quranic recitators as well as being a scholar of the Quran and the textual evidence related to women's voice. So we're very, very fortunate to have Rahina here to push this conversation forward. And we're grateful to hear from you today, Rahina.

[APPLAUSE]

RAHINA MUAZU: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful, salaam alaikum. Greetings of peace to you all. I'll be depending more on a paper I prepared, as I believe that will help me stay more focused. I'm so grateful to be here, given my second public lecture at the Harvard Divinity School.

I would like to start by thanking Ann Braude, the director of the Women's Studies in Religion Program, whose care and concern kept me safe and continues to safeguard my scholarship. I'm grateful to Tracy Wall for her kindness and for making things go smoothly.

I thank our Dean, David Hempton, and Charles Stang, the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, for his generosity and kindness. I thank Zat Jamil and my past and current WSRP colleagues.

I thank Sravana Borkataky-Varma and [? Sherab ?] Louer for their friendship, my friends and colleagues in Germany, especially [INAUDIBLE], and my family in Nigeria, my sister, Jamila, my daughters, my parents, and all my siblings back home. I'm grateful to all my teachers, especially those that have taught me the Quran.

Every project has a beginning. My quest for a deeper understanding of Islam and gender has a beginning as well. There were a few moments from my childhood which shaped me and the way I see the world. And it continues to foil my quest to quench my thirst in my studies of Islam, which I wish to carry on in my short journey on this planet Earth.

When I was about 10 years old, I heard verses of Quranic surah 55 recited by a girl called Fatima Zubairu. And the sound immediately enchanted me and captured my heart. Although I quickly recognized the Quranic chapter, that was the first time I heard the Quran recited in that melody.

Even though I did not then understand the Arabic language and did not know the meaning of what Fatima Zubairu was reciting, I felt as though the sound was coming from the sky, forming a visual image and taking on a life of its own. I was just a child of about 10 years old, who had a deep appreciation for aesthetics in sounds.

That led me to get enrolled in a local Quran school that teaches the melody. And building on what I [INAUDIBLE] learned in my local Quran madrasa, where I was using a wooden slate-- I'm going to show it here-- in less than one year, I learned the melody, which was not without difficult challenges.

I also won my school competition, the Izala district and zonal competitions, the local government competition, and the state, and had been chosen to represent my state [INAUDIBLE] at the National Quran Recitation Competition. I continued participating at Quran competitions under the banner of the influential and revivalist Muslim organization Izala and, along with other girls, won many trophies.

In 1997, Izala banned its female members from participating in public Quran competitions. They withdrew from the [? Emfordio ?] competition, an umbrella under which all Muslim groups showcased their reciters' talents. Among the many reasons leaders of Izala give for their cessation are the alleged bias of the [? Emfordio ?] judges against Izala members, the filthiness of immorality between gender mix caused by the [? Emfordio ?] competition, and the exposure in public of the awra of the female voice.

Of these three reasons, it is the last one that resonates most strongly with many Izala members. They feel that the female voice, in recitation, is part of a woman's nakedness and should not be heard by a non-related rada mahram male. I will return to the rada mahram later.

The question of the awra of the female voice in Quran recitation, speech, conversations, and halal songs has been debated by Muslim jurists for more than a millennium and is still debated in Nigeria and elsewhere. As awra is perceived as private, a woman's voice, if understood to be awra, prevents her from reaching the public space.

In this sense, the debate about the awra of the female voice is connected to perceptions of religiously and socially acceptable roles a woman can play in the public space. Since Izala's withdrawal from the [? Emfordio ?] competition and its restriction of the female voice, I thought about the implication of their position. What is "awra?" What does it mean to see the female voice as awra? And what is the implication of that understanding on women and the society?

"Awra" is an Arabic word and a term in Islamic jurisprudence that is difficult to render into English. It is translated as genital organs, genitalia, loins, private parts, pudenda, flow, blemish, and defect. Under Islamic law, Muslim scholars have defined awra as any part of the body that is not allowed to be exposed to those who should not see it.

It has been employed differently in the Quran in different contexts and circumstances to refer to times of privacy and spaces of vulnerability, among many other usages. In pre-Islamic time, Arabs used to refer to houses as awra at times when they lacked protective fences.

The English words "nakedness" or "nudity," that I use to translate awra, are insufficient, or even incorrect, as Joseph Hill, a scholar also working and on awra, pointed out because nakedness is the fact of being uncovered. Whereas, awra refers to something that is supposed to be covered and protected from view, whether it is covered or not.

So as a hijabi woman, myself, I see my hair as awra, even though it is always covered when I leave my home. This shows that most of usually people's awra is not naked. And [INAUDIBLE] translate awra as inviolable vulnerability. In his book, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]--

The Female Voice, A Jurisprudential Study-- Yusuf Ibn Abdullah Al-Ahmad, a Saudi Arabian contemporary Muslim scholar, activist, and professor at the College of Sharia at Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, in Riyadh, who is famous for calling for a more gender segregated Saudi society, studies female vocal awra from a jurisprudential perspective.

He wrote the book as a response to the increasing demand for Muslim female voices in media programs that engage in proselytization and Quran recitation and have their programs broadcast and sold. In the book, Al-Ahmad presents various views of classical jurists on whether the female voice is part of the awra and should be covered.

And covering the voice here means taking the voice out of the public space, a space where unrelated men-- the rada mahram-- are present. Although Al-Ahmad does not define what the awra of a female voice could mean, one could infer from the book that it is either one or all of the following actions-- A, speaking in a deceptive voice; B, speaking in an indulgent voice; or, C, softening the voice to attract or deceive male listeners.

The whole book revolves around the connection of the sense of hearing but, to some extent, also the senses of sight and touch with feelings and emotions, especially sexual emotions.

It is about the assumed effect of a female voice on a possible arousal of a male listener, whether the female voice comes from everyday, non-religious activities, such as media broadcasts, advertisements, music, telephone conversations, public lectures to mixed audiences-- like what I'm doing now-- or from rituals, such as Quran recitation, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which means Allah's remembrance, or Talbiyah, a prayer by pilgrims during Hajj, or [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the call to prayer, which are expected to promote piety.

The point of contention is the perceived ability of the female voice to cause fitna or [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], both terms used in this context to mean sexual desire, and lead to a form of fornication committed not through the sexual organs, but through the ears, refers to as the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

The term is taken from a Hadith. The [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], roughly translated as fornication with the ears, is understood to also entice other senses and the heart, in the realization of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] that the ears might have already committed.

So building on the above understanding, my research analyzes not only the varieties of jurist position on the female voice, especially in Quran recitation, but also how those positions shape women's lives and the society in general. Prior to Izala's restriction of the female voice in 1997, for a few years, I had learned Quran alongside six boys.

We were in a group of seven students. And I was the only girl. We got the same number of verses to memorize daily and were receiving the same training in tajwid, which is the science of recitation. After the ban by Izala, I have watched how the boys I was learning with continued to participate in state, national, and international grand competitions.

Some of them represented Nigeria and Africa at the Saudi Arabia international competition. They won awards and money, returned home, and bought houses and established businesses and married their first or additional wives. The implication of restricting the female voice, based on the notion of awra, was becoming clearer to me.

The boys in my class, who were at that time young men, made it a habit for them to visit me in a group during Eid festivals. As the years passed, where I grew from a teenage mother to an adult one, with more children, I will admire the power of mobility, which Quran competitions has awarded them with, the ability to be both physically and vocally mobile, which they were converting into an upward economic mobility.

As I began my research, it became clearer to me that the conversations about awra are not only limited to the parts of the body that should not be revealed or the voice that should be restricted, but about space, understanding of a gendered Islamic space which differs from Western conceptualization of space-- the rada mahram space.

The Western conception of the public sphere is based on Jürgen Habermas, who defines it as a domain where private people gather as a public to articulate societal needs with the state. Public sphere is also a discoursive space where matters of mutual interest are discussed.

In Islamic law, the space in which the female voice should not be exposed is defined by the presence of a man who is not a woman's male relative, referred to as the rada mahram, who is the opposite of a mahram.

This space is, which I sometimes refer to as public spaces, are either spaces outside of women's homes, such as mosque, street, schools, public transportation, TV, radio, and online social media, or spaces inside women's homes that a rada mahram, like a male cousin or a brother-in-law, might have access to.

It is based on who is in the space, not what or where the space is. A mahram is any male relative of a man with whom marriage is permanently forbidden. These men are allowed to see the beauty and ornamentation of a woman, which will otherwise be forbidden for them, and to accompany them along journeys. Quran 4:22-23 lists the category of women that are mahram for men.

The prohibitions mentioned are divided into three categories of people. The first are blood relatives. And these include mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts. The second category is based on in-lawship, or [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and these include the parents of one spouse as well as the children and grandchildren of the spouse.

The third category is based on suckling, or [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. So not only is the woman that suckled a child is prohibited for him in marriage, but also her siblings and children. Any person that does not belong to the above category is a rada mahram and can legally be married. Yet, once a rada mahram man is given access to a woman's awra in marriage, he becomes exceptionally the proper audience for her awra, sexual charms, and soft, lovely voice.

I focus closely upon the notion of mahram in defining these two kinds of spaces-- one, a space that is permissible for women because it is occupied by mahram and her husband and presumably other women and children, and, two, a space that is impermissible because it is occupied by men who are not accorded with the limits of mahram and marriage.

Many [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] texts-- that's a text of Islamic jurisprudence-- cover both the mahram and rada mahram in their discussion of seclusion-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- and travel-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. For example, a woman may not travel in the company of a rada mahram and must cover her awra in front of him.

Lately, we see the rada mahram discourse coming up as the Saudi Arabian government, the custodians of the two holiest Muslim sites, announce that women are no longer required to bring male guardian to Hajj and Umrah. Going back to the voice, the debate on vocal awra centers around the rada mahram, whom the female voice may tempt.

On the one hand, women are asked to be pure and clear in their speeches and should not speak in a manner that will instill a feeling in the heart of a rada mahram due to its leniency. Some jurists even suggest that women should speak with a harsh and rough speech without being feminine.

Conversely, the rada mahram is also prohibited from listening to the female voice, lest it lead him to infatuation-- fitna. For some jurists, this prohibition is in place regardless of whether the man listens to the voice with the intention of seeking pleasure, referred to as [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], or the speech infers temptation or seduction.

As I have pointed above, in these discourses, the physical or virtual presence of the rada mahram and the ability to listen and possibly be tempted is what matters, not the space where the listening occurs. In Nigeria, due to a culture of having an extended family living together in one compound, there are often many brothers that live in one house together with their respective wives.

In such a compound, each individual couple has a room. But they share the same courtyard, kitchen, and bathroom. And the brothers, and sometimes male friends, visit and enter the women's rooms. In Islamic law, these brothers and friends fall under the category of rada mahram. And the moment they have entered the rooms of the woman, they have turned their private spaces into public spaces.

And the law demands of the women to cover their awra. So the understanding of space, in terms of the rada mahram, shapes the society in certain ways. It is first and foremost based on a binary dichotomy of space into the private and public, and private and public not in the sense that most scholars of gender are working on, but in the sense of the private mahram space and a public rada mahram space.

Based on this understanding, even if women are allowed to go into the public, it is sometimes not really a public space but an extension of the private mahram space that is created. Scholars working in Saudi Arabia, for instance, analyze women's roles in public space in the last decade as well as leadership opportunities created for women to serve in several high ranking positions in the form of the creation of women-only spaces.

What is happening, I argue, is not the creation of a public space or allowing women to enter the public sphere, but an extension or an expansion of the mahram space. In the case of the reciting goals, I'm studying in Nigeria the restriction by Izala, a limitation of women's mobility, will have aimed at the creation of a mahram space, except that those spaces could come with high economic costs.

As the [? Emfordio ?] competition [INAUDIBLE], which continues to accept women and girls in Quran competitions also begins its constraint process through limiting audience only to women at national competitions, it is also gradually, through this process, expanding the mahram space.

Even though the [? Emfordio ?] organizers are of the view that the female voice is not awra, my argument here is that restricting female voices to the mahram space, or women-only spaces, equates to the legal position that says that the female voice is awra.

Before I move to how this is shaping the lives of women, I would like to point out that the understanding that validates women's access to the public sphere only through expansion of the mahram space can present a wrong understanding for the demand of the coverage of awra under Islamic law. Awra and its covering is demanded so that women could access public spaces freely without harassment. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

As Quran 33:59 puts it, demanding believing women to cover so that they should be recognized and not molested. "Recognition" and "molestation" are the two key words, not even protecting the male gaze, as so many wrongly assume. So can these two concepts of recognition and avoidance of molestation be extended to the voice?

In my humble opinion, I think, yes, they can be. We could say, in a context, when a woman will not be harmed due to the public usage of her voice or that she will not harm others, her voice will not then be awra. The word "harm," of course, includes fitna and fitna to herself or fitna to others, which is, however, very subjective.

The early Muslim community was not genderly segregated in the way we might assume it today. Aisha and other wives of the prophet [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] attended battles, tended to the sick soldiers, went to the mosque, and transmitted knowledge.

Based on the kind of activities the early believing women engaged in, it shows that the aim of the law is not to restrict women in a private mahram space or expand the mahram space, but provide them with safety in a public rada mahram space. My work is in no way attempting to associate agencies solely with publicity or with the public sphere and it's lack with the private sphere.

However, what my field work among the [INAUDIBLE] and women in the field of grand recitation has shown is that agency depended so much on mobility, to be able to move, not only physically, but vocally. To be able to travel while they recite and have their voices travel along with them, or even farther than them, determines how they can convert their voices into forms of capitals that benefits them.

To understand this better, I brought in the theories of the forms of capital developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to analyze the types of social, economic, and symbolic capitals the reciting girls are receiving through access in the public sphere with their voices.

For girls belonging to other Muslim groups, not Izala, who continued to recite the Quran publicly and win competitions at national and international level, they get rewarded with valuable gifts, such as land plots, cars, houses, and cash. They are also crowned as part of the royal family.

It has been challenging for me to analyze the other group of women who also form part of my interlocutors. They are pious women who will want more access to the public space when they think their voices do not constitute part of their awra. They will want to pursue mobility and thrive in the public space, but also stay within the limits of Islam.

To analyze the position of this woman, I began my project by asking the question, what does the Quran say about the female voice? But prior to that, I had briefly investigated the two other Abrahamic religions. In the Jewish tradition, there have been discussions on whether women can sing, raise their voices in the song, in what context, and in whose presence.

The voice of a woman, called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- or more appropriately, called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- should not be raised in [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], or female choirs, when singing in the presence of men. [? Barbara ?] Berts has mentioned that while someone's wife is [? arva-- ?] just like awra-- her hair, finger, thigh, and voice are all [? arva ?] and could arouse a man and lead to forbidden relations.

Quite apart from what is permitted within the Jewish tradition, in the Christian tradition, Bible 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-14 stipulates that women in the congregation should remain silent in the church. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission.

If they want to ask about something, they should ask their husbands at home. For it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. The Quranic command on the female voice seems closer to the one in the Talmud than to the biblical one cited above. It neither asks women to remain quiet, nor it is associated with Eve been deceived and [INAUDIBLE].

Although the Quran does not explicitly associate the female voice with a woman's nakedness, referring to the wives of the prophet, it entreats them not to be soft spoken. Otherwise, he who has a disease in his heart might succumb to temptation. The verse has set a precedent for varying and conflicting positions on the female voice. It says, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Oh, wives of the prophet, you are not like any other woman. If you keep your duty to Allah, then be not soft in speech, lest he, in whose heart is a disease, shall be moved with desire. But speak in an honorable manner. The word used in the verse is [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which can be translated as submit, give away, or surrender.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is the clause in the verse that contains the prohibition. It can be translated as, do not be soft in speech, do not be deceptive in voice, or do not make your voices lenient and soft. This verse has been interpreted in various ways by leading classical exegetes of the Quran, such as Abu Jafar Muhammad Ibn Jaleel Al-Tauberty, Ibn Kathir, and [? Abu ?] Abdullah Al-Khaltoby.

And their works are widely studied and cited in Nigeria and elsewhere. Ibn Kathir also, citing [? Al-Sugdi ?] and Ibn [? Zaid, ?] explains that the phrase, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in the verse, prevents the wives of the prophet from softening their voices when they talk to men.

He writes that, believing women-- that is, all Muslim women-- whom the ruling is generally understood to also cover, are commanded to speak with clear voice and not address men as they will address their husbands. [? Al-Taubery ?] explains that the verse commands the wives of the prophet not too soften their voices, as malicious people might want them to.

Deception in speech, he explains, is what is hated in the speech of women. He describes deceptive speech as the type of speech that appeals to men's hearts.

While that important exegetes, whose interpretations support the above view, Al-Bahawei, in his book, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and Abu Saud, in his interpretation of the verse, I have observed that while interpreting verse 33:32, many of the scholars have not made use of an important aspect of the methodology of classical [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], namely the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- translated, mostly, as occasions for revelation.

The [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] or the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are the historical circumstances and the context in which each verse of the Quran was revealed. In reconstructing the historicity of Quran 33:32, when the verse is singled out from other verses surrounding it, there is no direct historiographical event that preceded the revelation of that verse.

Nevertheless, when taken as part of the seven verses-- so that was 28:2, verse 34-- this set-- I call them a set-- those have a [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and could present a different understanding of the female voice. The Tafsir Works of Al-Tabari, Ibn Kathir, and Al-Khattabi have reported that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] for the revelation of the seven verses was an increase in worldly demand put to the prophet by his wives, particularly Aisha [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

The verses then came to give the wives of the prophet a choice. They were asked to choose between this world, with its charms, or Allah, the prophet, and the hereafter. If they choose the earthly life, the prophet was commanded to divorce them in a good manner. If they choose the hereafter, then Allah will prepare for them an animals reward.

And any of them who committed an act of filthiness will receive a double punishment. And an act of righteousness will receive a double reward as well. The next verse then told them that they were not like any other woman-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

And therefore admonished them, do not be soft in speech, but utter a customary speech. Other commands followed, which adds them to stay in their houses and to not display themselves, like during the times of ignorance, and to perform prayer and give [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and to obey Allah and his messenger.

In discussing the position of the female voice, verse 33:32 is always referred to individually. It has not been treated within the context of the surrounding verse. When taken as a theme, the overall message of the seven verses could be summarized in a sentence. The prophet's wives are not like any other believing women.

And with the injunctions and commands given to them, Allah only wishes to keep them away from uncleanliness as the people of the house and to purify them a thorough purification, which is what verse 33:34 says. Other verses that mention dialogue with women in the different chapters of the Quran have also not been given much attention, to create a form of, what I call, indirect historical [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] for verse 33:32.

When studied in the light of the broader way in which women are presented in the Quran and the way their voices are reflected, verses in different chapters may influence how verse 33:32 is to be understood. And some of these, for example, are verses 23 to 25 in chapter 28, the Al-Qasas, narratives that depict conversations between unrelated males and females in the Quran.

So I'll move a little bit to methodological challenges. When I began this work, I did what many scholars, such as Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas, do in their respective seminal works, the Qur'an and Woman, and "Believing Women" in Islam, I based my work on the Quran. It makes so much sense to start with the Quran.

It is the Muslim sacred text. And it is the primary source of law. Besides some few verses, such as Quran 4:34, which has received huge academic attention, it can easily be seen-- I mean, in the Quran, we can easily see what some scholars now refer to as the egalitarian nature of the text.

Therefore, I chose verse 33:32 as the focus of my research. However, I later came across Hadiths. Hadiths are sayings of the prophet. That [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]--

the whole of a woman is awra. So I ask, does this include her voice as well? Can I employ this to understand verse 33:32? These were some of the questions I asked. And analyzing Hadith presents several challenges different from an analysis of a Quranic chapter or verse.

First, unlike the Quran, Hadith is classified into several categories, such as the consecutive, known as the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the authentic, or sound, known as [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and the weak, known as [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. There are even Hadiths classified as fabricated, the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

And these classifications were done by Muslim scholars of Hadith themselves. So when dealing with Hadith, one needs technical knowledge to understand where to place the Hadith. Which category does it belong to? Is it [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]? Is it [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]? Or is it [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]?

What do I do when I come across two Hadiths that seem to conflict? I do not aim to go into the technicalities here. However, one of the things that aided my understanding and analysis of verse 33:32 is the Hadith of Asma Bint Yazid Al-Ansariyah, reported by Muslim Ibn [? Obeid. ?]

Asma Binti Yazid was a female companion of the prophet, a very fascinating woman and an orator. Unfortunately, the English translation usually does not capture the beauty of what's in the Hadith. So one day she went to the prophet [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] while he was seated with his companions and said, I came as an emissary to you from a group of women.

Indeed, Allah has sent you to both men and women. And we believe in you. Indeed, we women are limited and constrained, though we are the pillars of your houses. You men have been favored over us by congregational Friday prayer and by all of that congregational prayers, by visiting the sick, by attending funeral prayers, by performing pilgrimage after pilgrimage, and better than all of that, jihad in the way of Allah.

When men go out to perform Hajj, Umrah, or jihad, we protect for them their wealth, spin for them their garments, and raise for them their children. Shall we not share with you in this recompense and reward? The prophet then turned to his companions and said, have you ever heard any speech of a woman that is more beautiful than this woman's questioning regarding the affairs of her religion?

They said, oh, prophet of Allah, we never thought that a woman should be guided to something like this. The prophet turned and said to her, understand this, oh, woman, and teach this to those women whom you left behind. For a woman to be a good spouse to her husband, for her to seek his pleasure, for her to follow and cooperate with him, is equal to all of that.

That is all of the reward that men get for their strife or for their deeds-- for the deeds mentioned above. This Hadith happened in Medina after the prophet's Hijrah, which we need to contextualize in many ways. Why will the companions say they never thought a woman shall be guided to such a speech?

What kind of speech were they are accustomed to hearing from women at that time? How were they expecting a woman of a caliber of Asma to speak? In the society they were living, there was Aisha [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the youngest wife of the prophet, to whom they will go when they needed more knowledge on Islam.

There was [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], there was [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and many other great women. These kinds of questions revolve around my head when I read the Hadith. However, I brought this Hadith here to show an example of a woman addressing men, of a woman using her voice to speak to men. This is a classical example of a rada mahram space.

It is not an expansion of a mahram space in the form of a woman-only space. The [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are rada mahram to Asma. They spoke. She spoke. She addressed them. And they listened. The prophet listened and commended her speech. It is clear at the time she was speaking, even though other things might have mattered. What mattered more was what she was saying.

[CLASSICAL GUITAR]

SPEAKER 2: Sponsor, Women's Studies in Religion Program.

SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2022, the president and fellows of Harvard College.