Talk by Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad - Rhodes House, Oxford - 9 February 2009 - 1 hr 00 mins 04 secsTRANSCRIPTION PENDING
In another talk for OUISOC's Experience Islam Term, Sheikh Abdal Hakim offers some further thoughts on gender in Islam (which dovetail quite nicely with previous talks posted here and here). He begins, with characteristic catholicity, by discussing the career of Valentine de Sainte Point, an early French feminist and Futurist who in later life rejected what she perceived as the dehumanising trajectory of Western culture and converted to Islam, in which she found a more integrated and integrative understanding of human nature.
From that, the sheikh moves on discuss some aspects of the Islamic understanding of gender and sexuality, and how in this respect, as in others, the message of the Qu'ran and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) acted as a rectification to misinterpretations of previous revelation; in this case, the rejection and excoriation of human sexuality often manifested by Christianity. The Prophet, by contrast, as 'mankind perfected', embraced this aspect of his humanity as he did every other, according to the Divine Guidance. His role as exemplar was thereby extended to women partly through his marriages, which provided multiple models of exemplary female behaviour. The sheikh finishes by discussing this in relation to the Prophet's wives (may God be pleased with them) and Qur'anic examples of ideal women.
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Bismillah.
ReplyDeleteAs-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh . . .
May Allah reward all those who are responsible for this website. It is MUCH needed and greatly appreciated.
One piece of advice though... Please, please raise the standard of quality of the MP3 files. There is too much digital distortion. This particular file was encoded at 16,000 kHz. That is way too low. Needs to be higher. It is very tedious to listen to and the distortions are very distracting (especially for us audiophile types).
We should make sure that the noble shaykh's material is presented in the best possible way (even if it will increase the bandwidth). If money is a concern, then we should come together to create a maintenance fund. It is important to make this an effort of beauty to furthest extent possible...
Sincerely your brother,
khalil abu asmaa
www.ReflectOnThis.com
Walaykum assalaam wa-rahmat Allah wa-barakatuhu Sheikh Khalil . . . Thank you very much for your comments, and your advice which is appreciated. We will try to improve the sound quality in future as much as possible. Best wishes and salaams.
ReplyDeleteIf you found this article and lecture interesting, you may consider submitting an article to the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, http://www.irdialogue.org/submissions. Its upcoming issue is entitled "Engaging the Taboo: Gender, the Body, and Sexuality in our Religious Traditions" and dovetails nicely with the theme of this post.
ReplyDeleteReally breathtaking further informative topic. Thank you seeing sharing this.
ReplyDeletealhamdulillah
ReplyDeleteTim Winter's lectures is a treasure we must preserve :-)
ReplyDeleteIt's been my habbit to download this kind of intellectual khutba, debates, etc on Islam topic into my portable player and listen it while driving to office or returned home...
Traffic jam ..is no longer problem for me :-)
I don't like listen to music anymore while driving ...
I've found Tim Winter's lecture is very deep subject and also my favorite. I had to replay his lecture many times ....
How can I donate ?? I am far from UK ...
Very glad you enjoy the recordings, alhamdulilah :) . . . You can donate here http://www.cambridgemosqueismoving.org.uk/ using a credit card or Paypal. But if that's not possible for you, please pray for the project, which is even more valuable!
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