Friday, October 26, 2012

backward

11/27/2002:
up late. my sleep has been off lately. fasting/working/praying/sleeping/eating... all weave in and out of my day quite randomly recently. all is well, though. God Bless.

i've been giving that conversation about girls' education and women's roles the guys and i had the other night some thought. the disparity between my point of view and that of, at least, two of the other young men was alarming.

so the question came to mind: am i too progressive/liberal? or are they too conservative? dare i say, backward. reflecting on it now, i feel like it's the latter... stagnant. regressive.

4 young muslim men talking about marriage

11/23/2002:
back from another long night at Buba's. we talked, prayed and talked again. the talking was about education again. girls' education. young muslim women in wum. why aren't they being educated? are their parents' perceptions of "western" education (post-primary) justified?

it turned into a far-ranging conversation on women and marriage. here are some of the questions/topics that came up:
  • educated muslim women, are they too independent? is there such a thing? too opinionated? 
  • what are the roles/responsibilities/rights of muslim women to their men? what of muslim men?
  • how will we raise our daughters? do we want to raise our wives? [i.e. wives much younger than us]
  • what kind of wives do we want? "educated" or "illiterate?" in what sense of each term, western or islamic literacy/education?
all really very interesting points that the two Bubas, Yusufu and i were discussing. each with a point of view leaning in a particular direction. me with probably the most liberal/western notion of who i want to marry and how i'd like her to be. one of the Bubas also more liberal than the other two. yet none of us saying anthing out of the norm in terms of 4 young muslim men talking about marriage.

we disagreed on most points except educating our daughters. a must. but in what sense?... some western, some islamic, and some both styles of education. again, i know that distinction is problematic. all of us understood that. 

i must say that having the conversation with these 3 other young muslim men was enlightening. as to their views on such topics and, in light of their views, my own. am i that liberal? is it the westerner in me? where is this influence from? my mother? my sisters? being around american women, muslim or otherwise?