Muslim Issues - 'I am a Nigger, and you will just have to put up with my
blackness,' Professor Amina Wadud Confronts Her Hecklers in Toronto.
Professor Amina Wadud Confronts Her Hecklers in Toronto
By Tarek Fatah
TORONTO - Her voice quivered. Barely concealing her anger, Professor Amina
Wadud's words bellowed across the hall, "I am a nigger and I can't do much
about it." Wadud, who was speaking to a Toronto audience on Sunday, was
responding to a questioner who asked her to address internalized racism
within the Muslim community and if that had anything to do with the
hostility she had faced from a section of the crowd.
The 300 people, who had packed Toronto's Noor Cultural Centre to hear the
internationally-known scholar of the Qur'an and the role of women in
Islam, froze in stunned silence as they digested the impact of her words.
Eyes piercing towards her hecklers, Wadud leaned forward and stared down a
group of men at the back of the hall.
"Usually I wear the hijab, and when I am wearing it, most Muslims do not
consider me African–American; I pass off as a South Asian," she said. "But
when they see me without a scarf, they can see my African locks and they
know I am Black and suddenly their attitude changes. The fact is I am a
nigger and you will just have to put up with my blackness."
This time, part of the audience erupted in applause, cheering her every
word. Others started walking out hurling insults, and two men were heard
jeering her, "You are just another CIA agent."
---------------------------------
Amina Wadud, Professor of Islamic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth
University and author of Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from
a Woman's Perspective, was speaking as part of a series sponsored by York
University and the Noor Cultural Centre that has brought a number of
academics to speak on the current state of Islam and the Muslim world.
Wadud's reputation preceded her, resulting in standing room only in
Toronto's most progressive mosque, the only place in Canada where men and
women pray side-by-side in separate enclosures
Midway through her speech titled "The Qur’an, Women and Interpretive
Possibilities," Wadud waded into the minefield by addressing some
difficult passages of the Qur’an. Breaking the ultimate taboo in the
Muslim narrative, she stated that despite the fact the Qur’an explicitly
asks for cutting off the hands of thieves, she did not agree with the
Qur’an. She said she understood that this was a very difficult subject to
talk about, but she would be dishonest to herself if she did not express
her views.
She maintained that as a Muslim with Allah close to her heart, in all
honesty she could not continue with the hypocrisy of lying about how she
felt about some verses of the Qur’an.
The basis of her talk was "How to be God's agent (khalifa) on Earth; to be
a moral agent of the Creator." In this context, she presented four ways of
looking at Qu'ranic verses which Muslims find difficulty dealing with. She
identified the four methods as: (1) The literal readings of the text, (2)
The legalistic arguments that constrain how verses are applied, (3)
Reinterpretation from alternative perspectives, and (4) Saying "No to the
Qur'an" when one disagrees with it.
Pursuing the last point, she declared that she could not intellectually or
spiritually accept some things in the Qur'an, for example some of the
hudud punishments like the cutting of hands or the permission to beat
one's wife. She made it clear that she was denying neither the religion
nor the revelation. "It is the Qur'an," she said, "that gives me the means
to say no to the Qur'an."
However, many in the audience were completely unprepared for her honesty.
She had barely finished her talk when a long line of people lined up at
the microphone to ask questions. One woman, who identified herself as a
professor of Arabic Language at a Toronto University, took the mike and
started lambasting Wadud, suggesting that she had come to her conclusion
because she did not understand Arabic and that she had misread the Qur'an,
saying, "You know only one verse of the Qur’an." Instead of a question,
Wadud was subjected to a rant that was largely incomprehensible. The
professor continued, accusing Wadud of supporting illicit sex, when Wadud
had made no such reference.
"That is the most idiotic nonsense I have ever heard," Wadud replied.
When Amina Wadud referred to the 9/11 tragedy and the fact that some
Muslims deemed it Islamic to crash planes into buildings and kill innocent
people, a section of the crowd interrupted her. "What about Israel killing
Palestinians," they yelled. One middle-aged heckler said, "She is a CIA
agent." Other men and women lined up at the mike to accuse her of all
sorts of things.
Another man, angered by Wadud's 9/11 remark, came to the mike and lectured
Her. "Let me remind you that no Muslim was involved in the 9/11 attack."
Wadud did not dignify his remark with a response.
One young man, with his oversized shirt hanging out, mimicking a rapper,
took the mike out of its stand, twirled around, and started addressing the
audience, with his back towards Wadud, accusing her of not knowing the
Qur'an.
Wadud responded to this outrageous display of rudeness by intervening and
saying, "This young man is uncomfortable with what I have said and so
instead of asking a question, he wishes to give a speech... why don't you
come up on the stage and I will go and sit in the crowd." Then she stepped
down from the podium and asked the young man to take her place, which he
did. Holding the mike in his hand, he harangued her and said she did not
know enough about Islam.
One questioner apologized to Wadud for the rudeness of some members of the
audience, suggesting very few Muslim men had ever seen or heard an African
American woman in charge and in command. She responded that as a black
woman, she knew what it is to have one's views rejected, she thundered to
an applause that started with a few hesitant claps and then rolled across
the hall.
Every time she used "nigger" to describe herself, most of the lighter
skinned members of the audience became visibly disturbed, squirming in
their chairs, perhaps uncomfortable at how she was destroying their middle
class comfort zone.
When an Indian man told Wadud that he understood racism, she replied, "No
you don't understand. You are not Black; you don't know what it is to be
Black."
Addressing Wadud, a woman with peroxide blonde hair and hip hugging jeans
said, "Even though I am not a practicing Muslim, I believe you do not know
proper Islam."
"Your response is not new to me," Wadud replied. "When I wear a hijab, I
don't look African and my words are measured with politeness; however,
when my hijab is not covering my hair, I become Black and my words lose
all value."
The straw that broke the camel's back came when Wadud, answering a
question, criticized Canada's proposed Shariah laws and expressed support
for same-sex marriage.
A deeply troubling aspect of the audience's reaction was that it was
clearly divided along ethnic lines. Arabs largely behaved as one group
heckling her, while South Asians bandied together in supporting her. The
few white Muslims stuck quietly with each other. And in a telling
indication of the profound divisions within the community, it appeared
that Wadud may have been the only African in the room, although Africans
account for about a quarter of Toronto's Muslim population.
Ahmed Bayoumi, an Egyptian-Canadian Physician who sat through the entire
lecture, reacting to the heckling said, "I find it fascinating that people
would question Wadud’s ability to speak Arabic because she has moved from
an interpretative understanding of the Qur’an to a literalist one. The
argument seems to be that if she can explain away troublesome verses by
resorting to nuance or obscurantism, her Arabic must be fine, but if she
accepts the meanings of the text at face value, well she must have lost
her previous fluency."
Describing Amina Wadud's lecture as "revolutionary and liberating,"
Bayoumi said, "I think Wadud is absolutely right. It's wonderful if you
can live with legalistic or interpretive explanations. I cannot. It was
liberating for me to hear somebody of Amina Wadud's stature say that she
also cannot, not as an excuse for wanting to perform bad acts, but from a
perspective of trying to be a true moral being and God's agent."
The knee-jerk reaction to being reminded of our internalized racism is
predictable: complete denial. Racism governs our behavior, yet we are
oblivious to our own prejudices and tribalism. With noted exceptions, I
saw this in action on Sunday. I heard repeatedly from Arabs in the
audience that Amina Wadud does not understand Arabic. Instead of debating
the merits of her argument, many invoked and sought refuge in their ethnic
and linguistic superiority.
Then there is the predictable reaction towards converts. If the converts
are white, all of us, Arabs and South Asians, simply go complete gaga, but
if we run into Black converts, we treat them at best in a condescending
manner with barely concealed disrespect, as demonstrated Sunday night in
Toronto.
Abbas Syed, an Indo-Canadian who witnessed the entire episode summed it
best. "When a white person converts to Islam, we try to make him the Imam
of the mosque. But when a Black woman converts to Islam, we expect her to
run the mosque day care for children during Jum'a prayers. Amina should
have worn the Hijab; people would have mistaken her for a dark Pakistani."
Tarek Fatah is host of the weekly TV show, "The Muslim Chronicle" that
runs on CTS-TV in Canada and Bridges TV in the US. He is a member of the
Board of Directors of the Progressive Muslim Union of North America.
Forward Ever (by any means necessary)!
Karen C. Aboiralor
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