Ep.109 - The War on Muslim Women with Lauren Booth - Abaya Bans and European Delusions
It is no exaggeration to say that in their quest to malign Islam, some in the West target Muslim women. Her position within the family, her place in society and, of course, her dress are placed under the microscope – and like colonialists in the days of empire, her emancipation is seen to be a means to a greater Islamic reformation. In recent days, France’s minister of education has announced that Abayas, the loose dress many Muslims wear for modesty, will be banned from schools. Apparently, a piece of clothing is an affront to French secularism and, yet again, another sign of separatism. In the UK, the former prime minister likened burka-wearing Muslim women is a those who chose to look like letterboxes and bank robbers.
Young Muslim women are subject to a barrage of what can only be called propaganda, traducing their religious dress and promising to liberate them from their religion. To help us understand how this works and to caution against some of the extremes by which the community can handle this onslaught.
Lauren Booth is a broadcaster turned activist and author. She is known for her principled activism on Palestine and regularly comments on Muslim affairs. Her book, In Search for the Holy Land is available to purchase from all good book stores.
You can find her book here https://www.amazon.co.uk/In-Search-of-Holy-Land/dp/1739384113/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2LLEMY7MPD86N&keywords=in+search+of+a+holy+land&qid=1692958858&sprefix=in+search+of+a+holy+land%2Caps%2C129&sr=8-1
Her social media here: Lauren Booth: IG/Facebook: @laurenboothofficial. Website: www.laurenbooth.co.uk
Subscribe to her YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@LaurenBoothOfficial
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Transcript
The War on Muslim Women with Lauren Booth- Abaya Bans and European Delusions.
This transcript was computer generated. Please check the transcript against the programme for accuracy.
It's no exaggeration to say that in their quest to malign Islam some in the West target Muslim women her position within the family her place in society and of course her dress a place under the microscope and like colonialists in the days of Empire her emancipation is seen to be a means to a greater Islamic reformation in recent days France's minister of education has announced that abayas, the loose stress many Muslims wear for modesty will be banned from schools apparently a piece of clothing is an affront to French secularism and yet again another sign of separatism. In the UK former prime minister Boris Johnson linked burqa wearing Muslim women as those that chose to look like letterboxes and bank robbers. Young Muslim women are subject to a barrage of what can only be called propaganda producing their religious stress and promising to liberate them from their religion. Now, to help us understand how this works and to caution against some of the extremes by which the community can handle this onslaught I'm delighted here on The Thinking Muslim to invite the writer and activist Lauren Booth. Lauren Booth is a broadcaster turned activist and author she is known for her principled activism on Palestine and regularly comments on Muslim affairs and she is also the author of this Memoir in search of the Holy Land which is available on Amazon and all good bookshops I think in fact Lauren I'm amazed that you've got a recommendation here from Nikki Campbell a fascinating read I couldn't put it down I mean Nikki Campbell often is characterized as someone who doesn't really have a good word to say about Islam and Muslim women how did you how did you get that.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatulahi wa barakatuh. Bismilah alrahman al Rahim. Thanks very much for inviting me I wanted to come on The Thinking Muslim podcast for quite a number of years now I really enjoy your content and your interviews Nikki Campbell yeah that was you've raised it and I'd forgotten how surprising that is and how it started so about five years ago we were having a spat on Twitter because he had said something so obnoxious that I just had to really pull him up about it we'd worked together previously radio five we've got on well in my former incarnation as a non-Muslim broadcaster what did he say he said on Twitter right he said I would it was about the burqa not being allowed in France and it was you know really we knew that a ban towards hijab ban towards the veil all of these things were coming up in France and he said I would rather my 15 year old daughter went mostly nude on a beach than she covered up like that and I'm sure he used something like a letterbox or but it was really obnoxious and so a lot of Muslims underneath had commented and I just put out on my on my feed look that is out of water it's a disgraceful thing to say it's awful on your daughter it's Islamophobic it causes all kinds of problems you have no idea about this and you actually have no right to put your foot into this and I said everybody who agrees with me bombard Nikki Campbell right now within the hour his Twitter feed had almost crashed with furious Muslims just you know really going at it and saying take this down take this down so he got in touch with me in the DM’s and he said Lauren I'm being harassed online because of you I said no Nikki you're being harassed online because of your obnoxious views he said okay that says maybe could you call off your attack dogs I said don't call my people dogs and but what I might do oh no then he said something he said I thought Islam was about being polite and I'm like oh
dying he's pulled to be nice card and what would the Prophet do yes so I said you know what if you're feeling harassed I will ask people to tone it down but you and I need to talk so we got into a discussion and I tried to make him see him talked about the hijab and he asked some really good questions he said can you advise me and it led to when my book came out I said Nikki I feel you should read this as a friend we've come to a kind of a very warm impasse and I'd like to send it to you and he read it and I said he loved it and I said I'm going to use your review on the front is that okay you said Lauren go for it wow. So, it just shows that people don't like to think of themselves nobody wakes up in the morning goes you know what I'm really going to annoy people today I'm really gonna pour hatred out there not if they're in any way ethically morally not bankrupt and they have half a mind you know for what words mean they
want to be talked around so let's engage that's my message.
Now, I provocatively use the word onslaught against the Muslim women or against Womanhood in my introduction and I suspect many made dispute by this as hyperbole, how do you assess the current discourse surrounding Muslim women?
When I look up first and foremost we use our own experiences as jumping off points and I know for certain that there are arenas where I am and my views legitimate well-informed journalistic views have no space anymore because I dress as a Muslim really yeah. So, I used to work part-time for the BBC I used to do reports on Sky News I mean the newspaper reviews etc. and when I put on the hijab that ended overnight then that's not a coincidence and that is the experience more importantly yeah of women across Europe there is something that the European Union and their the Parliament there in a report has ex accepted and acknowledged it's called the triple bind so if you're a Muslim woman in Europe you've got your degree and you want to go into the workplace you have these three factors against you ,one you're a woman anyway, two you're in hijab and three if you have a Muslim name and that means that that's three pretty much three strikes and you're out and that is a real difficulty it's a real prejudice and that's what we've been facing for a long time.
Recently, we're talking in a week where the French Ministry of education has banned the abayas in schools of ban the wearing of abayas in school and that follows you know a series of bans the ban of the face veil in in France and on streets is a fine for someone who wears a face fail in fact I remember they even passed a law which prohibited Muslim women from asking for a female doctor potentially they would get a fine if they requested a female doctor so there is this obsession and of course in France there's a ban on a hijab as well in in public buildings so there is this obsession with women's dress in France and across Europe what lies behind rather these this obsession.
You know what I'm going to agree with that but I'm actually going to extend it to a socially unwell society, right. Because I was on a plane a yesterday coming from Istanbul we were waiting for a plane actually everything had been backed up and I got into a conversation with a woman who lives in France and she said and I was saying exactly what you're saying what is this obsession with women's dress she said hey it goes deeper than that she her friend had taken her six-year-old son to a swimming pool and he had long shorts on and they said no you can't come in why not because you have to wear Speedos and she said are you seriously saying that my six-year-old should be in budgie smugglers yes don't even think about what that means and that's an obsession with a sexualization of the human body, yeah, and a minimal amount of dress so that everybody is accessible to everyone else. So, on the one hand if you're French sorry if you're Muslim and you're living in France you know it's about being Muslim but if you're a French person who wants a different level of
modesty you also know that there is a catchment area where you are different from the rest of the society so there's a sickness that really causes that society to focus on the Muslims there but it goes deep into every arena I mean to me France is a failed State it's a failing culture when you actually have to put a gun to a woman who is modestly dressed on a beach and tell her take your clothes off you've lost your mind and when you're telling children little boys you can only wear a strip of material like this or not come swimming you are really in an unhealthy situation.
Now, the online space and generally popular culture is a very confusing place I think for Muslim girls or young Muslim women in particular, and you know I've got a daughter and I think that unlike maybe my son she is impacted by a barrage of confusing messages about Muslimness about hijab about the obligations of wearing certain types of dress and it just seems to me that there is this deliberate attempt to target Muslim girls in particular, and to dare I say to try to read try to make them move off the path of Islam I mean am I exaggerating this what's your what's your perspective on this matter.
Can I ask how old your daughter is?
She's now 20.
So, she's 20 now yeah so she's made her decisions but all of that time probably from the age of eight she will have been really hyper aware of being different in the public space difference at school spoken about not spoken to others all of those things are really dynamic and drive a lot of girls into saying I can't do this most mothers of Muslim girls say in the UK right now specifically they will meet a point when one of their daughters will say to them in hijab perhaps at 13 I don't know if I can do it tomorrow I just want a day off and at that point you realize that that society is social engineering the Muslim Community by a criminalizing the young men there are more new laws in the last 20 years focusing on young Muslim men and Muslim areas to make men less successful boy is less successful you know Muslims are dire in education and yet we can get 34 a 16 year old Muslim girl got 34 gc ses at a and the young men you know don't worry about them let them fail the pots of gold that go to Birmingham are for secularized Muslim women women's groups by the way so you have that big draw if I want to be successful the Muslim women's groups that the government likes are all led by non-hijabi women and are not diverse and we've been saying this for a long time come on let us be represented even in our own communities so I would say actually brother that's it's gone so far into making us insecure that you're beginning to see workspaces run by Muslims and I've had this specifically with a convert sister who was sacked or no she was told by the Asian men she worked for who are Muslims don't wear black all the time it really puts off the customers. She's a convert to Islam trying to be modest in her way and learning her face yes told by Muslim bosses the way you look is putting off white customers right I mean where do you go with that right.
And why what I mean what you're intimating that there is a an atmosphere that has been created deliberately created to shoehorn to push Muslim women in a particular direction I mean can you speak to that what why is this atmosphere being created?
I think it's clearly an insecurity in our society about the strength of what our culture is and when I say our I say all of us as British people right you know when you go abroad and you're like well what is Britishness this has been something the conservatives have wanted to ask us for the last 20 years what does it mean doing British there's been lots of jokes about it I mean for me when I was 20 you know what it meant it meant scar music bacon sandwiches audubillah, and yeah Notting Hill Carnival that was Britishness now to my grandparents that would be apart from the bacon sandwiches and absolute and that's them all right yes so that what is being British doesn't allow yet for a diversity of experiences and that's making everybody insecure I mean you've got Rishi Sunak who has agreed to have an immigrant holding ship on the Tames in order to go along this anti-diversity this fear of foreigners movement I mean that really speaks to an insecure environment doesn't it.
Yeah, let me ask you about the hijab in particular because of course back to you know my daughter I mean when she was growing up she had conflicting messages from everywhere about the hijab to the degree that you had what seemed like people who were being very much sponsored by central government or at least sponsored by NGOs that were linked to separate central government discouraging her from wearing a hijab there's a lot of noise out there about what is the appropriate what is the correct Muslim dress now of course I know that some Muslim women find it very difficult to wear the hijab and you know that's not what I'm speaking to here but I also know that there
is just general confusion that probably has never been in Islamic history I suspect most of Islamic history Muslim women generally knew okay this is the requirements of Islamic dress how does a Muslim girl navigate this noise that seems to be out there which is discouraging her from worshiping Allah.
So, first thing we have to do is to really look at who we are following so each of us has our own individual timeline have you ever been shown some somebody in your family has said oh here's my Instagram feed and you're like that is weird what is that it's like going into somewhere really strange sometimes my husband will log in to his account for some reason on my laptop and I'll end up going through his feed for half an hour of going why is it in Arabic why is it so weird and go oh God I'm literally trolling my husband it's so different so their worlds are very different so number one you have to look at who are you following is it hyper-sensualized pop stars is it jokers on Instagram is it women who cover and where are you taking your face from so none of us can legitimately say that we're going to be as women taking our faith from a
woman who looks like she's in the Barbie film all right that would be like okay okay Harun Yahia tried it a few years ago yes that strange cult leader in Turkey he surrounded himself with blonde women hypersexualized and said this is the Deen and everyone went yeah yeah yeah you've lost your mind yes so if you're a young woman and you're saying right on the one hand I might like this pop music and I like these shows on Netflix and that right that's just social culture but when you come to the Deen you're not going to go to Netflix right because you know that that's outside our Dean so when you put in here's a little thing you can try saying this straight to your daughter and young women out there put into Google female Muslim scholar, not influencer not celebrity or personality okay we're talking about people who teach the actual deep and the basics the building blocks of our Islamic Deen yeah none of them will be uncovered now if these women know the Prophetic model and the Quranic model of expectations and they're paid and endorsed to teach this by the Ummah by the ulama then surely that's enough for me I'm a very simple person I have to be honest I don't need complexities I do something simple like that and I say you know your Deen you're teaching me and you're all covered then that tells me all I need to know.
Right, yeah that's a very good sound piece of advice I think there is a an argument or a discussion that seems to have gained currency in recent months and maybe even recent years about reinterpreting the Islamic texts yeah according Modern standards and one such strand of discussion is that maybe some of the Sahaba may Allah reward them immensely for their efforts and their struggles maybe some of the Sahaba had in inverted commas a misogynistic mindset and so when they conveyed Hadith they conveniently conveyed some Hadith which would today be regarded as misogynistic for example I don't know Hadith that places you know the man's responsibility to be at the head of the household for example.
Is that misogynistic or is that Common Sense?
Well so they call that misogynistic yeah I mean so that you know I remember there was a Twitter and again Twitter is in the world and I think that's what your what you said in the previous answer but in in one Twitter discussion
there was some discussion about Abu Hureira r.a being someone who was you know misogynistic in the sense that he conveyed some Hadith which the particular person dislike. I mean how would you address this sort of reinterpreting Islam from the modern lens?
No, the first the first thing to note is there has definitely been a deliberate collaboration of a certain type of Hadith telling people how to behave in interpersonal relationships between men and women and it's Salafi publishing and it has been very successful in the last 35 years in telling us one version one very harsh basically unlivable I would say to up to a degree version of what it is to be a man and a woman in a marriage, a marital and a housing relation you know a family relationship. So, there's been that editing most of us don't have the Arabic the Fiqh, the Sharia knowledge to delve into these matters who would I be right now to give my even if I placed it with in my humble opinion on the on these very deep matters I follow teachers and each one of us each of us needs to find a teacher and above all our connection to Allah ta’ala our prayers our Salah this is our connection to the truth of the Deen going and doing some search and saying it's all rubbish because I've seen the light I had a man come up to me funnily enough a lot, a lot happened in the last two days at Istanbul airport apparently he came up to me and he said oh you're a convert to Islam I know some truths about the Quran and I said oh he's I said where he from he said I'm Iraqi, I said are you a Shaikh, he said well it depends what you mean by Sheikh I said well a Sheikh is someone who learned from someone who learned from someone who learned from someone who learned from the Prophet peace be upon him he said oh I know more than them I said then you're very arrogant yes he said well I I'm walking away from this I said please do right so I think we need humility and I think we need guides.
What do you think about the current I know you live in Istanbul and maybe you've been immune to what's been going on in the West in the last probably a couple of years and it's a discussion about Womanhood and discuss about gender and its discussion about trans women and their status in society and again that's one of the complexities that we've found we've had to navigate around as Muslim parents as just Muslims in this community like how you know of course we are minorities and we have to somewhat navigate lots of complexities and challenges and as you I think said in an earlier answer it is it sometimes is a very it's a very it takes a lot of bandwidth to be a Muslim in the West you've got a there's so much on the road and you've got to just think about lots of things but anyway this issue about Womanhood has come along and it's a difficult subject to approach I mean how would you how would you approach what's going on here in the West in recent years.
You know what first of all I'd like to say I'm still a journalist and I'm married to a journalist so if only we were out of this awful you know the stuff that you're hearing the question being asked what is a woman and people say well it's someone who thinks that they might be and can be if they choose would be to wear no not to wear but goodness me yes you know adult female human is quite a simple answer to come to really we're looking at the erasure of women there's no doubt about it the erasure of it's quite a hard statement you know explain that what do you mean okay well I'm going to go back to the fact that a first of all let's start with women who are aging all right I worked I worked in I've worked in TV for 30 years now and about around since the last 20 years a host of TV presenters from the BBC have complained about this female presenters over the age of 40 saying hang on I was the head of three current affairs show suddenly I was ditched and the BBC has had to pay out record damages to a number of women because this Society not the Muslim Society but this secular society judges women based on their appeal I just got off a plane how many times am I mentioning planes today oh I think I'm still in the airport yeah it obviously had an impact on me but I was the way that women are used we if we are very good to look at then we are strict of our dignity and put on posters next to a water bottle going by this it's pure you know and it's filthy and it's horrible and I had to look for like you know four hours at this and eventually I took it out it was on the seat back and just turned it round and there was a man sitting next to me I said do you mind if I just take that out turn it round because I did not want to look at a naked woman so we're very visual as women in British society and European Society if we're attractive and near naked if you're aging you can feel already redundant ignored I live in Istanbul the women there are increasingly having duck lips, terrible amounts of Botox they're looking ill and so along with asking what is a woman how should we look is an obsession to everybody in this society and so when we have the guts and the serenity and the sheer unbridled guts to say I'm not showing you anything today oh yeah and you won't be seeing me tomorrow either you're just gonna get my face and what I say that is such a powerful statement.
Right, so your argument is that the hijab in a way it liberates women in in a sense but it's makes them into less of a sex object you know a someone that should be admired for their beauty and that's it to someone who one needs to engage with on an intelligent level but again the counter argument about by many in the West would be well where do where does that exist I mean you live in Istanbul are women in hijab treated you know in that way that idealistic way that you present.
Well, hold on a second I'll give you a couple of examples; lived in Qatar in 2015. Yeah and the first time I went there I remember being you know you go to the airport and there's the woman's line and I was taken out by the soldier and he goes or the customs officer he goes oh over here Madam and there's nobody there and I walk through like Royalton I'm like okay and all the men are queuing over there yeah and then I go shopping and I have my bags picked up and carried to the car and even now I go I went to Qatar for the World Cup and my husband who's a lovely Man by the way he always complains that when we go to Qatar I expect to be treated like a queen afterwards because I see the women in the airport and I'm and they're just wafting along in Black you know and their husbands or their sons or other people are carrying things my husband he carries most things but I still carry something and I'm like take my bag you know because it does it elevates us and gives us a break. There's a lot of beauty out there does this happen all the time in Turkey no but you know what hijabis have a superpower right we have superpowers told this by Albanian girls who don't wear hijab they said you know what when we see you in the street it's like you're gliding along and we want and it's like you're surrounded by light and you have a super power and so as a hijabi wearing woman you have that extra meter of space you're either beautifully invisible because it's quite nice to be invisible in the street or you're just you know you're left alone men don't press against you men stay back a bit and that's a nice experience because I've had the other one right I've been the woman in the in the shoulder there was a there was a BBC presenter who came to visit me after I accepted Islam yeah she said I can't believe you're the same Lauren I met at the election Party eight years ago I said oh whatever I said I'm sorry she said I would describe you as the woman with the biggest mouth in the shorter skirt I would yeah that would have been me right and nobody space no respect from the men it's very different in hijab mashallah it's a bonus, it's a bonus.
So, you live in Istanbul and anecdotally it seems to me that more and more Muslims have decided to leave the west and to move to Muslim countries like Qatar or to Kuwait or to Istanbul, I think in Istanbul we've seen you know a probably I mean last time I was there I saw a growth in a number of westerners Western Muslims have decided to live in and most of them say they just had enough of the criticisms they get in the west they've had enough of the racism maybe they get with islamophobia but also they fear for their kids it's now common for Muslims here to think about if not move into a different country to think about pulling their kids out of school I mean where do you stand on this discussion about how intense it's become in education and just general Society towards Muslims.
You know it's really interesting for 10 10 years A friend of mine called Anissa she's an educator Masha Allah she has been raising the alert you don't know what's in the books really she's been on these education groups that I'm on she's like mums wake up ask to see the books on your kids curriculum what age not 11 not 10 7 and 8 asked to see them and when you ask to see them the teachers say you don't need to or now increasingly you can't see them in case you protest because it is such disgusting content in children's books at schools that they cannot show it on the news the same nightly news that shows dead bodies and bombs falling and explosions and horrendous things going on cannot show the books that are being given to our four and five-year-olds this interestingly this is a sign of a failing society. There was a study done in 1936 by a British academic and he found the same trigger points for each failed civilization that he studied really yes rise in androgyny, liberal not liberation of women I forget the word but it's basically no protection of the women right and the sexualization of society, arise in homosexuality all of these things are happening it's a dire situation and I totally understand Muslim families wanting to leave it is I thought about 10 years ago actually brother that and I still do that if you really wanted to get the Muslims out of Europe yeah and you couldn't kill them like the French did with the Algerians just 30 years ago and then threw their bodies or 40 years ago through them in the Sena audubillah, that what you do is you just make it a little bit unlivable a little bit unlivable, let's say in France you can't have halal meat at school why is that no halal meat you have to eat pork if you're at school or go without what if we oh I know they don't like sex with outside marriage the Muslims how about we talk about that all the time and how about we force we say to their children homosexuality is an option and we do that at a young age that that is kind of social engineering now I'm not saying this only affects the Muslim Community we're not paranoid this is a devaluation of the human spirit across the spectrum but it really is helping us leave and I think it's a good leave I think it's a good a good thing yeah I think we should we should leave the sinking ship and we should be building up our countries and offering an alternative which is what the Ottoman and the Al Andalusian societies did was say: hey, come over here we've got beauty here we've got fairness here we've got a way that you can move up the ranks in society you're not trapped and for that reason hundreds of thousands millions perhaps of Christians came and lived in our Muslim communities and the Jewish Community thrived for centuries there.
I'm, I used to be an educator and I know that 20 years of the war on terror has in a way radicalized the teaching profession and today you've got teachers who see it as their duty to proselytize to convert Muslim kids into good liberals or you know or something like that you know this type of fear I think that Muslims face in in the society is very palpable. Now, not everyone's going to be able to leave the country you know we've got what two three million Muslims in Britain it's not going to be possible for those six million Muslims in France, economic situation for majority of those Muslims in France will not enable them allow them really to leave even if they wanted to leave because of just the sheer amount of money that's required to move to somewhere like Turkey you need to have some some you know some some Capital behind you I suppose so you know in your job right so in the absence of that how does a Muslim in this country still make it in these societies.
It's really tough there's no quick fix is there yeah I mean you live between here and Istanbul too right yeah I left but people do have to be here and they have elders and the people the families I know who don't want to move usually don't want to move because they had they want to look after their parents and grandparents which is a beautiful duty yeah and also these are our roots this is our home these are our villages towns and cities where do we go and start again it's pretty scary. I don't think there's a quick fix to this I but I do think that we need to improve our Muslim schools, I think if we do a good enough job that that the non-Muslims with an ounce of ethical grounding will actually want to come and be in our schools, I don't know if I don't know enough about the education who'd say can you fight can you argue with the Department of Education about what children see now and they're coming for homeschooling as well.
Yes, yeah that's very true can I turn to a broader question about how you perceive gender relations in Islam there's a there's a raging debate and again it's usually online about whether what is the role of the men and women in the family what's a role of men and women in society and of course there are some who have a very liberal interpretation and some will have an interpretation which makes it impossible for those families to function but I'm just talking about I want to know about you know the average, how do normal Muslims view this let's first consider the idea of patriarchy which is of course a buzzword in the West. Can we describe the Islamic faith to be a patriarchal faith because of the way Islam views the father as the as the authority figure in the family and the responsible person and the person who has to provide you know for the maintenance of the entire household, that for me sounds like a very patriarchal idea. But you know the connotations attached to patriarchy of course are very negative, so how would you navigate that term patriarchy.
I think our idea of patriarchy really culturally goes back to the Victorians because they're the man in certainly middle class and upper class society had absolute dominion over the women right property rights the inheritance you married you went from your father's house to your husband's house and you could carry none of that world wealth with you yeah right and if you if you if your father died and you inherited a great amount of land it was your husband's and he could do with it what you what he liked spend it drink it give it give it away yeah and so that is a terrifying prospect and I think really as Westerners as Europeans we as British people we're traumatized by that the women which were traumatized by this legacy which traumatized by the fact that there was no protection from the heavy drinking from the beatings that we couldn't escape because we had no money and this is not the Islamic this is not the Muslim experience, look at Khadija r.a she had inherited wealth from husbands, she had built an empire that she could keep after marriage we have always had this and yet we're supposed to look at Islam through the lens of Victorian patriarchy and superimpose then hyper feminine feminism on top of it reject all of that we don't want anything to do with that again.
We start a blank sheet.
Yeah and also where is the does Allah say this is a patriarchal religion women are lesser no these interpretations were never what was understood right you know the met the woman is a cover for the man the man is a cover for the woman the man has one over on the woman but what does that mean what does it mean he's got duties that are really heavy and beautiful and actually you know me and my husband speak about this a lot because he's he sees he studied alhamdulillah, he’s got ijaza and Fiqh and yes it's a man thrives with the weight of caring for people, and a woman thrives with that care being lifted and being looked after no point is one pressure right pressuring or destroying or saying to the other change but growing together and thriving yeah you know I want to say to my young sisters you're talking to someone who for 30 years as an adult lived the ultimate in feminism I've worked since I was 16 I was hugely successful at our age of 30 I earned more than my husband no one could tell me what to do I was entirely liberated from any man and what did that look like well I'm telling you have your time of the month you're tired there's nobody showing you sympathy because hey I don't need your sympathy I've if you said I don't need your sympathy 100 times don't expect on day 101 to go I'm in pain when you said you didn't need sympathy right I did I carried my own bags when I was pregnant no man was carrying my bags I had some really horrible experiences during pregnancy I remember once and I hope you keep this in because it's really telling about vulnerable moments that women have okay because we need to accept our vulnerability I was eight months pregnant I was showing off how I could carry my eight months pregnancy and still be at the labor Party Conference and it was one o'clock in the morning because I wasn't gonna go home early just because I'm pregnant and I started to have really bad pains I mean like stabbing pains and so I was sitting on a brightened pavement in the rain at one in the morning waiting for a taxi and the taxi came and two young men from Blair's government by the way jumped in jumped into the taxi and I went wait I'm waiting as well and they're like yeah whatever and I said but can't you let me go in and then one of them said he was 20 years old why I said because I'm pregnant he said well it's not my baby is it? sat really the society that we want is that really the liberty and egalitarian equality that we're fighting for don't be fooled. I want to give another example because this is this made me laugh I was on an underground train a couple of years ago and I saw a young black sister and she was looking like she was absolutely gonna faint I don't know whether she was ill or just had been working hard and she was exhausted standing up and next to me was a young man and he looked Asian I just love being an auntie that's something else by the way you know Islam gives you a status to grow into yes I can be as an ignore annoying and bossy and people like oh it's Auntie leave Auntie alone it's wonderful you know you have that space anyway yes the young man next to me young Asian guy and I said excuse me brother are you Muslim he said yes I am, I said then get out of that chair and let the Muslim sister sit down and he was like okay Auntie you know what she did no I'm all right thanks I said you're going to sit down and you're about to have a three-stop lecture from me about how to enable men to look after you yeah because we're not enabling our men any longer to be the carers and that makes them bitter and frigid I'm more likely to say I don't want to care for you, you don't deserve it you're this you're that leads leading to these schisms and illnesses and I just wanted to end on that point of the patriarchy Islam Allah ta’ala sees believers and cares about piety that's very clear from all of the texts there isn't a male female divide you know it's not men in this line oh yeah you get fast track to Jannah show me that tract show me where it says that doesn't alhamdulillah you know the patient wants a Sabirine the kind ones the good ones the ones who give charity the ones who pray to their lord the ones that that's our parameters not the patriarchy.
There's an interesting point you made there about the friction that exists in wider society in the spill over into the Muslim Community, I've noticed and again this may be and we don't have to talk about him in particular but the Andrew Tate effect where there is this extreme response to hyper feminism and a response is this machoism where with it comes this attitude that all women are bad I mean I think it's maybe a response may not be a response but there is an associated feeling amongst women that all men are bad or men are evil and that doesn't lead to very good relations between men and women. We've noticed and again you know you've been out of the country from for a while but we've noticed in his last year or two that the Andrew Tate type of ideas have started to develop currency amongst young men and young Muslim men and some of it may be may be positive you know giving them given but a lot of it actually is an unislamic way of viewing women I mean how have you come across this and it's a confusing world for young men as well as young women I suspect.
You know be right on the cutting edge of it with a daughter at University you have young men saying I get to dominate you I mean it's really it's like seven-year-olds going I don't like boys I don't like girls yeah you know I don't like you because I you're less than me and I don't like you because you smell it's pathetic and it really is damaging the relations between the genders for our young Muslims Subhan Allah you know you've got you've got an environment where a young man can and I've heard this twice recently in two potential marriages or two engagements and both times the young men said I have the right to check your emails and your phone wow really yeah and the family of the young women went hell to the no because that is psychologically controlling behavior yes and it's unhealthy but these sort of you know noises off if you like these surround sound I'm not gonna even name them these these people on social media there's men on social media who have their own toxic problems and they're in you know lack of spirituality it's a lack of spirituality from the brothers to look at themselves and to say am I how am I being beautiful how am I being kind how am I going to bring kindness into this that's leadership that is leadership being chivalrous is leadership and on the other side yes we have a fractured and what's it when it's not frigid it's easily breakable version of female femininity where they're afraid of the men and then that makes us more likely to run to the safety of the office, the safety of having our own money, the safety of a life without a family because I'm afraid of you and we all need to get breach that gap we we're all of us you know the learned people the ones who are who are you know role models or speakers however you want to call our elders we need to bridge that gap and say come on guys speak to each other let's because I think it's hyper individualism right is an issue here.
Right so to explain that hyper individualism it's that yeah it's about my rights and about my response, my obligation and that's it that's all that counts.
Yeah, you've I mean you know I mean we think so a lot of the brothers the young brothers are saying feminism and everything that a woman wants is now feminism she's the kind of woman who wants two dresses not one feminist what are you talking about she's the kind of woman who would like to have her own keys to the door feminine no what everything is called feminist now yes and it's such a derogatory term that's true isn't it yeah it's just bandied about for normative behaviors.
Yeah, jazzakAllah khayr and I think that's interesting I suspect there needs to be more effort probably from Islamic scholars or Muslim role models to address this subject in a more rational way in a more sensible way probably sure I know Imam Dawood Walid has written a book on Islamic sugar Muslim chivalry and he gives classes to young men as to how they should you know how they should respond to women and what should their response.
Brittle was the word I was thinking to my young sisters I'd say don't be brittle okay, if a young man says can I take your chair say thank you so much yes it doesn't make you weak it makes you cared for it makes you a part of that society I'm a big one for going to events and at the end the sisters always want to gather the chairs I'm like nope you don't move anything brothers get in there let's use those muscles that you're buffing up at the gym come and do something useful you know we need to give each other spaces and when I said hyper individualism what did I mean I meant there's a like you said there's a selfishness if you are a young sister and you want to go into marriage and you're like but I'm not going to cook and I ain't gonna do this and well what is the point of marriage you just want a flat chair basically with somebody
paying your bills no one's going to buy into that it's not fair and it's not nice it's not kind just be kind to each other why can't people just be normal.
Can I can I ask you a couple of political questions I know a lot of your book does discuss your politics prior to becoming Muslim and how you changed not only socially and change in terms of your spiritual attitude but also your political understanding and the Iraq War is I think a key milestone in your political journey and just how duplicitous may be the British political elite were and in particular the labor party were in taking Britain to War, I mean again you're from a from someone who now lives a lot of the year outside of the country has any of that improved do you feel that British politics has moved on since that disastrous Iraq war decision.
Well, you know this book really tracks a spiritual and a political Journey of a person who wanted to have beliefs but not do anything about it right and then was forced by as many were by the Iraq War to wake up in 2003 when I went on that March I was breast feeding one baby pushing another in a pram it was minus three degrees if people were there you they'll remember snowing and sleeting and I told my three-year-old it's not meant to be fun kids like you were dying okay which could sound kind of harsh on a three-year-old walking in the snow but you know if you believe in something you have to put yourself out there don't be an armchair anything and what I saw on that March was amazing there were there were women from middle England who told me I've never been on a March before you know dear but this isn't right what's happening you know shocking or is that what we're about now my grandfather, my father fought in the War and it wasn't about killing civilians all right so we had this idea of decency and what the Iraq war did was it wrecked our version of ourselves as British people.
This is before you became Muslim.
This was before, yeah, and I actually… I met use of Chambers because of my activity there and we he's the lawyer Muslim lawyer yes sorry yep yep and he invited me to give a speech at an event for Iraqi War widows and orphans and I bring it up because that that event was where the first time I'd really experienced segregation of the genders right in my life yes. So, I was speaking on the stage and then Yusuf said and then I saw all the cool guys sitting over there in the sheikhs and Cat Stevens use Yusuf Islam was there and I'm like I'll be sitting over there and you just went no no the women are over here and I went no yeah I really like a sulky child and I being a thinking person by the grace of Allah I thought to myself oh my god I think I'm a misogynist because I don't like women I don't want to say and not apart from that all the racist racism thoughts that I was having like oh God gonna be talking about Biryani and kids how real I mean these were all things that we can ignore or actually pick out in ourselves and Islam is a very reflective mashallah you know a spiritual way of life. So, I picked up on those anyway I went to the table and there was the first niqabi I'd ever spoken to right so she's sitting opposite the table and I thought I'll just be nice and engage her poor thing you know a little bit about kitchen
stuff so what do you do and I fully expect to say I've got seven kids and I'm a third wife and she said oh I'm studying civil engineering at the University of X Y and Z and my fourth year you know I got a first in this and then I'm leading my class and I was like and she wiped the floor with me intellectually she just she got the mop she put me in there and she wiped the floor with me and I loved it because I saw good on you and what she said to me coming right back and circling back to the beginning of our discussion what does modesty mean to her she said she used to be when she first started University to fit in she
was in a T-shirt and jeans and she noticed the men looking at her and when she got up she might she knew there was an uptick in the scoring but good because people liked her presentation because she was pretty and she said then I started getting closer to my Deen and I wanted to take away those triggers and protect myself from my Lord my family and now I have to work not twice as hard, exponentially hard in my presentations because I have nothing here but my words are good enough for me to be the head of that class I'm like boy I got it I think that's the moment I got modesty and that's the moment I started to like women.
Can I ask you about your book your biography your Memoir in search of a holy land I read a really fascinating section in the book about your experience I mean you were someone who was very much in favor of Tony Blair of course he's a relative of yours I mean our viewers would know that he's married to your sister and you were very much someone who was within the labor mode and you supported new labor as the alternative to you know to conservatism which was of course you know a horrid in in the 1990s.
Oh, it's horrid now.
And it's still horrid that's true that's very true but then there was a change in in your view of Labor and the Iraq War of course says you've just discussed you know comes into that but you know I found it a fascinating read and in a way it allowed me to understand how someone who is a non-Muslim viewed those years because from a Muslim perspective you know I saw it very much as a War on Terror this is a prime minister who's getting close to Bush and you know it's it's amazing every day there was something on TV about Muslims and every other day Tony Blair was announcing an anti-terror law and you know I just felt that Muslims were under siege during that period so it was fascinating to see from your perspective but just from broader sense I mean what lay behind why did you write this book your Memoir.
I wrote this for somebody like myself in my 20s who got a sense that this isn't it this table this mug this world isn't it the material world that there's something more out there but couldn't put my finger on it and many of the people that we meet they're exploring Buddhism and they're going through the tick boxes even veganism is almost like a religious cult now you're cleansing your body to get closer to some amorphous being right but the minute but what is the access point to a spirituality that leads to God I wanted to give that access point and also to run through the differences in the culture, the things that have been happening over the last 25 years who were we and who are we now and there's so much in there as well about traveling to Muslim lands and to accepting my own innate prejudices as well I hope I've done it in a humorous way I think people do tell me that yes I laughed my way through it and I cried my way through it but that honesty about what I thought about Muslims then you meet them and then you suddenly find yourself in a mosque waking up going oh my God, God is Allah and this guy Muhammad I kind of think he's the last prophet what do you do with that and so it takes us on that journey and I really wanted to do that for people like me in my 20s but I think more than ever my readers are Muslims, young Muslims asking themselves I don't know why I'm, I'm I don't know why I'm Muslim I'm Muslim by heritage but I don't know how to ask the questions and I don't know how to come over this hump if I can make it in modernity as a Muslim hmm it answers those questions In shaa Allah in what in one in one way from a Western perspective to an Eastern perspective from a from a Christian to a Muslim.
Can I ask you one last question about Palestine now you've been an advocate for Palestinian rights for a very long time and you know it's often quite perplexing to just see how Israel is treated in a very double you know it's become now common to say that there is a hypocrisy it has double standards and Israel is treated in a completely different way than any other country in the world it can get away with anything really and there would not be a uproar in the British press or in the American press or the European press, how do you understand this indefensible support for Israel in the West.
I don't think they're getting it all their own way anymore.
Right, it's changing.
Since, you know just in the little time span when I've been an observer and the other good thing by the way much better thing is that the Palestinians now have their own voice social media has allowed people like me to step back you know you don't need my voice now maybe you never did maybe it was white savior wa Allahu alam I just… You know we saw something and we wanted to reflect upon it with the world so there's a Palestinian voices now of pain of brilliance of cleverness of resistance and they're being heard so that's number one and the second thing is I think the exceptionalism is falling apart, alhamdulillah. Studies have shown that young Christians in America which is which is really Israel's capital state of support are now more likely to support the Palestinian cause than be Zionists, and that's huge I think a couple of weeks ago in Australia is it the government who said they're going to be referring to the occu… They're not going to be calling it The occupied West Bank they're going to be calling it Palestine now that for the Zionists is like the stab in the heart so yes there is still political exceptionalism and unfortunately it looks going to take many more deaths and much more pain probably for that to change but it is changing alhamdulillah, you know never give up never, give up Allah sees all they want to destroy Al-Aqsa a lot you know Allah is with the believers and the world is waking up so I actually feel much more positive than I did at the start of my personal experience with the quest this question in 2005.
Sister Lauren Booth jazzakAllah Khayr for your time it’s been fascinating.
Wa fik, is absolute pleasure.
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