So how is it that when we have these clerical establishments that read the verses with such strict adherence, can just totally cast away this tradition that, you say, is old and is really deeply ingrained in the text? This is basically your earlier point, mixing culture with religion and taking cultural practices, the tribal practices, the primitive pre-modern prior cultural practices, and basically believing that it's a religion. Just to give you an example, I was in Afghanistan three years ago. No mosque in Afghanistan, women are not allowed to enter the mosque premise, let alone praying there, let alone holding religious leadership. It's unbelievable. Then when I challenge these people, what part of Qur'an you justify this? What example of the Prophet Muhammad? Half of his community was women. More than half of the Hadith literature, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, are narrated by the women. That means women have equal access to the prophet himself and were able to have conversations with him so that he have these sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. How do you base this? All the answers that they were able to give me, I just challenge them, justify me religiously. There is no way they can justify it so they end up saying, "This is our culture, this is our tradition, this is the way in which we manage our gender roles and relations." One more painful example if I'm not taking too much time. When I was in Saudi Arabia, in Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive. So my Saudi cab driver, after establishing some trust between us, I said, "Look, how do you even justify this?" In the very same land, the prophet's wives and daughters, they had their own camels. They rode their own camels. You know, the camels in that time is equal to BMWs of this time, it's Lexus, and Benzs of this time. How do you justify not allowing women to drive? What aspect of religion do you even base it? They don't even bother. So this cab driver was so honest. He said, "Do you think we don't allow women to drive because of religious reasons, for Islamic reasons?" I said, "What else?" "You're an idiot. You don't understand this culture." His answer will show you how patriarchal, how troubling a patriarchal the society, the Saudi society, is in many ways. He said, "They don't allow women to drive because the traffic is already horrible." The traffic is already, already horrible. I have nothing else to say. It's their culture, it's their unfortunate practice of patriarchy and male domination. But despite all these problems, even in the Saudi society, even in Pakistan, to believe that half of the society is nothing but submissive, obedient, voiceless, miserable, oppressed people, that's absolutely not the case. Many of those societies like Pakistan, they elected, democratically elected, female women prime minister more than once. And the women are part and parcel of economic life, social life, even religious life. That across the board generalization based on these bad examples is absolutely not true. Well, let's just talk about one example and I've discussed this with you, the time I attended services, Friday prayers. And the discussion, which was delivered by a student, was the question of whether women should be allowed to give a sermon from the head of the pulpit which currently is not allowed. I believe if they want to write one, they can have somebody else deliver it. So even in a highly progressive, here in the heart of the west, a community led by you, we see a pretty stark inequality. How- And tension. That's the tradition. This was never an issue. If you look, technically, there is no reason why women cannot deliver the sermon. Why women cannot, in my community, the woman writes the khutbah and a male member, one of the male students deliver the khutbah. Again, this is not a question of theology or the canon. There is really nothing. If they are knowledgeable enough to write a khutbah, they should be able to deliver it by themselves. But it's the question of tradition. This is not what we've been used to and it's very difficult to change old habits. But I believe in the United States, I, personally, I am not there. We are still debating, discussing, and digesting. I think in a couple of years, there will be mosques where women will be delivering sermons or even holding religious leadership. There are already examples of it. I think as the Muslim community debate and digest these issues, there will be a spectrum of responses, from absolutely no to absolutely yes. Very similar to the Jewish experience, the Jewish women struggles in the Jewish tradition. To conclude this, and, if anybody thinks that Muslim women are oppressed miserable souls because of their religion, I invite all of them to have a 15 minute conversation with a Muslim woman in the area, especially with my wife. They will see that that's absolutely not the case. Thank you very much. Welcome.
