“Is Allah a person?”
It’s a query that Lamya H (a pseudonym), writer of the brand new memoir, Hijab Butch Blues, requested her Qur’an trainer as a six-year-old baby. “In my thoughts, Allah is a girl, floating and ethereal within the evening sky,” she writes.
“Allah isn’t a person or a girl,” her trainer replied, giving a standard Islamic response to such a query, earlier than altering the topic.
Years later, at age 23 in New York, Lamya was at an occasion for Muslims the place a girl spoke about utilizing “she/her” pronouns for God, jarring and angering others who known as it disrespectful, even blasphemous.
“All of the Islamic feminists have been writing about it,” the girl defined. “It’s a extremely necessary strategy to combat the patriarchy.”
There’s certainly a quiet revolution underway inside the literary folds of Islamic feminism, whereby Muslim authors, teachers, and activists are utilizing feminine pronouns for Allah in an try and separate God from the concept of a “Divine patriarch.”
Many have been impressed by Muslim theologian amina wadud (who spells her identify with lowercase letters). Her guide, Qur’an and Lady: Rereading the Sacred Textual content from a Lady’s Perspective, has been foundational to discussions on girls’s rights and roles from progressive Muslim views. wadud’s work has additionally launched many to the vitality of Islamic feminism.
After I first spoke with wadud over Zoom, she informed me she began diversifying Allah’s pronouns after instructing an undergraduate spiritual research course at Virginia Commonwealth College within the late Nineteen Nineties. wadud requested her college students to discover the lyrics of Joan Osborne’s track, “What if God Was Certainly one of Us.” Whereas discussing pronouns for God, the boys within the class informed her that they might relate to God when God was known as “He,” however not when God was known as “She.” In that second, wadud determined to start out utilizing feminine pronouns for Allah, who, in response to conventional Muslim teachings, transcends gender, but has traditionally been described with male pronouns.
“It was not frequent then, and it’s nonetheless fraught with a lot of controversy now,” wadud tells me of the observe of calling God “She.” “Folks nonetheless get right into a tizzy, and I believe that’s price exploring – why is there such a tizzy?”
Attending to the Backside of Arabic Grammar
In accordance with Islamic teachings, the Qur’an was revealed in Arabic and all through many of the textual content, the masculine pronoun, Huwa, is used for Allah. But, the textual content additionally makes clear that Allah is neither male nor feminine.
“We’re obsessive about the masculine pronoun as if it’s a literal articulation of Allah, whom we additionally will say is past gender,” exclaims wadud.
wadud presently lives in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and tells me concerning the native language, Bahasa, which has just one pronoun. “Indonesians, regularly will say issues like ‘my husband, she’, or ‘my daughter, he’ as a result of their minds should not used to picking between these completely different pronouns in English, in order that they randomly select one from their information,” she explains. Languages similar to Bengali, Turkish, and Persian are related.
The masculine pronoun has prevailed for therefore lengthy in reference to Allah as a result of it presents a literal translation of the Arabic language – the language of the Qur’an. Nonetheless, wadud factors out that there are some instances within the textual content when Allah makes use of “we,” a pronoun that sometimes denotes multiplicity and grammatically appears to conflict with the idea of monotheism. But, Muslims not often acknowledge the plural nature of “we” and as an alternative select to heart the singular, masculine pronoun for Allah as an alternative.
In his guide Muhammad’s Physique, Assistant Professor of Faith and Cultural Research on the College of Central Florida, Michael Muhammad Knight writes that trendy Muslim discourses “usually dismiss God’s masculine pronoun as a mere accident of Arab grammar, which lacks a gender-neutral pronoun and thereby requires the inscription of ‘he’ or ‘she’ on each noun.” He additionally notes that inside growing, gender-progressive Muslim theologies, God’s “transcendence” of gender is a “prerequisite” for true monotheism. That’s as a result of Allah’s tawhid, or one-ness, requires God to be past gender – and that any binary view of gender, or perceived choice for one over the opposite, would negate this idea of unity, which wadud calls “the tawhidic paradigm.”
Ayesha Chaudhry, Professor of Islamic Research and Gender Research on the College of British Columbia, explains that each one pronouns we use for God finally “misgender” God.
“Our language forces God to be continually misgendered with the intention to be spoken about,” Chaudhry explains. She launched her memoir, The Color of God, in 2021, and in it, makes use of each masculine and female pronouns for Allah. “I exploit what feels proper to me in context of my writing, and don’t limit myself to at least one or the opposite,” she says. “If what we’re doing by gendering God is all the time misgendering God, then why misgender just one [way]?”
Creator Camille Helminski, who’s presently engaged on an English translation of the Qur’an, additionally avoids attributing just one gender to God. Helminski is a follower of Sufiism, the Islamic mystical custom, and her guide, The Method of Mary: Maryam, Beloved of God, is a complete account of Jesus’s mom that attracts on Christian and Islamic sources. When she interprets verses of the Qur’an, she refers to God as “He/She,” embracing a gender-inclusive outlook that’s usually extra frequent in Sufi discourse than it’s in orthodox interpretations of religion.
Balancing the Scale inside the Framework of Islamic Theology
There have been centuries of debate inside Sufism relating to God’s traits. Sufis usually describe God by metaphors since, in response to their teachings, our Earthly phrases can not start to replicate the sheer magnificence of the Divine. “Human language is mainly a mirrored image of our creativeness. And it might probably’t embody God. So we’re doing our greatest,” explains Chaudhry.
Sofia Rehman, Islamic scholar, educational, and writer of A Treasury of ‘A’ishah: A Steerage from the Beloved of the Beloved, agrees, deeming language – and any pronoun – to be “inept” and “insufficient” in capturing the totality of the Creator. “Allah isn’t imprisoned by the binary. Allah is a Oneness that none of us can expertise,” she says.
Rehman first got here throughout the potential of utilizing female pronouns for God within the Nineteen Nineties when she was 12 and studying a coffee-table guide authored by pop star Michael Jackson, who referred to God as “He/She.” Now, she leads a digital guide membership that discusses inclusive and feminist Muslim texts. She says that she personally veers away from “He” and “She,” and makes use of “Allah,” “God,” and typically “They,” when a pronoun is important. “It’s probably the most gender-neutral pronoun that I may use in English – it’s a snug medium,” she explains.
Nearly three many years after wadud first started proposing various pronouns for Allah, each Rehman and Chaudhry preserve her observe alive. Whereas instructing, each swap between pronouns – “He”, “She”, “They” and “It” – when discussing God, so college students can critically analyze their allegiances to sure pronouns. “The classroom is such a wonderful place, form of like a laboratory,” says Chaudhry, who has seen squirming and bodily discomfort round this subject, but believes it’s an necessary studying second, as a result of analyzing this discomfort will reveal our beliefs and biases about gender.
In Islamic theology, a central method to understanding God is thru Allah’s 99 names – similar to “The loving,” “The merciful,” and “The information.” These names are categorised as both jamali (female) or jalali (masculine) attributes.
“Allah has each jamali and jalali attributes, which means that Allah’s nature is inclusive, and never unique,” explains wadud. She provides that out of all these divine traits, two of probably the most frequent are Ar Rahman (the beneficent) and Ar Rahim (the merciful). These are jamali (female) descriptors, coming from the basis phrase which means “womb.”
“The Divine female nature is frequent and plentiful – and but relating to taking a look at tips on how to check with Allah, this fixation on the ‘He’ has confirmed that it’s greater than grammar, greater than a literal studying; it’s additionally political,” says wadud.
Masculine Pronouns Manifest Patriarchy
Emphasizing God’s masculine attributes on the expense of God’s female qualities can have political implications. For example, if Allah is deemed to be a supreme patriarch, being male might be seen as a prerequisite for spiritual authority. “When the faith is introduced to you so patriarchally, at some unconscious stage, Allah is being perceived as male, and that’s very problematic for therefore many causes, not least as a result of we additionally find yourself having spiritual leaders who’re additionally all the time male,” factors out Rehman. This has the reverse impression too – “if all authority within the human realm is male then all authority within the Divine realm can even be male,” she explains.
As a result of language is imbued with energy, patriarchal authority manifests with zealousness in communities throughout the globe – from the oppressive regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan, to situations nearer to house, the place mosques usually have all-male management and superior prayer areas for males, as an alternative of being inclusive homes of worship for Muslim girls.
Final 12 months, Assistant Professor of Faith and Politics at Washington College in St. Louis Tazeen M. Ali printed The Girls’s Mosque of America: Authority and Neighborhood in US Islam, which examines how some American Muslim girls have created their very own worship areas. Ali tells me that utilizing feminine pronouns can function a “highly effective corrective” to assist “reclaim one’s religion.” She believes that those that use feminine pronouns for Allah achieve this within the pursuit of gender inclusivity of their theological understandings of God.
Feminine pronouns can heart Allah’s loving, nurturing, and maternal qualities. Giving each pronouns equal weight can supply a extra balanced concept of God’s jamali and jalali attributes, and in addition affirm the gender equality and justice that many Muslims imagine is prime to their religion.
But, in response to Rehman, the widespread skepticism related to utilizing female pronouns for God suggests an perspective of “gender contamination” – that associating Allah with the female is “an act of air pollution.” Why are we uncomfortable with ‘She’ and never ‘He’? What’s ‘She’ endowed with that ‘He’ isn’t endowed with?” she asks.
“For us to fake that ‘He’ is impartial, and ‘She’ is essentially tainted by gender – that’s an issue,” says wadud, who emphasizes that language is just a symbolic means for communication. “It helps us specific our understanding of what’s past language, the prime and the sacred – and after we perceive that, then we is not going to be so fixated on preserving the masculine translation.”
The Difficult Ordeal of Unlearning Language
Whereas it’s principally Muslim girls who’re utilizing female pronouns for Allah, this motion isn’t one thing all Muslim girls assist. Actually, some discover the pronoun swap to be fairly destabilizing.
“Some individuals really feel once they check with God as ‘She,’ it could be disrespectful,” says Chaudhry, who explains that it may be “scary” and “threatening” for ladies to have their assumptions about their Creator challenged. “You might have an intimate connection: you’ve been speaking to him 5 instances a day, whenever you’re going to sleep, and whenever you’re scared, wired or completely satisfied, and this determine has a form and type in your thoughts, as a lot as you don’t wish to admit that. However then abruptly to consider this determine, with a special gender – I can perceive that might be unsettling,” she says.
“Some girls will resist as a result of they wish to keep inside the fold as they perceive it,” wadud tells me. “They haven’t examined how what we understand and expertise of Islam is all part of a assemble, and that language is one a part of the assemble.”
wadud transformed to Islam 50 years in the past, and over the course of her journey admits that she too has hung out in a consolation zone that is part of this long-standing institution. “I spotted that if I wish to free Allah from the field of patriarchy that’s been wrapped round Her, I’ve to be extra radical about how I problem a few of what I thought of to be the ‘generic’ when that generic is a assemble of historical past and cultures,” she says.
Another excuse why some Muslims could also be immune to utilizing non-masculine pronouns for God is due to the broader debate about pronouns in relation to gender and queerness – a subject deemed firmly taboo in most orthodox Muslim circles.
“I believe we’re occupying a political second when there are such a lot of anxieties round gender id. There’s this actual reluctance to maneuver past a inflexible, binary understanding of gender, and as conversations about gender pronouns change into extra commonplace, there may be pushback to those new practices,” explains Ali.
Ali believes that backlash to feminine pronouns for Allah is much like the backlash related to any developments pertaining to Muslim girls – whether or not it’s the launch of a brand new inclusive mosque, similar to The Girls’s Mosque of America in Los Angeles, which is the case research of her guide, or the incidence of a woman-led prayer service, such because the one organised by Muslims for Progressive Values (MVP) for Eid in 2013, nonetheless closely criticised on Twitter a decade later.
wadud isn’t any stranger to this form of controversy, having delivered a Friday khutbah, or sermon (a task historically solely carried out by Muslim males) in Cape City in 1994, earlier than main a mixed-gender prayer gathering in New York in 2005, which stirred up heated debate inside Muslim communities throughout the globe.
“We have now to keep up our course, the course of Ar Rahman and Ar Rahim, and Al Wadud (the loving) and Al Karim (the bountiful), till it turns into one thing that everybody is acclimated to,” says wadud. “We have to right the misunderstanding that in some way referring to Allah solely as ‘He’ is gender-neutral, by rising our use of ‘She,’ till it turns into snug. And when it turns into snug, extra individuals will use it.”
She acknowledges, nonetheless, that progress takes child steps, similar to it does within the wider context of ladies’s rights throughout societies, each spiritual and secular. “Issues like this take root slowly,” she says. In accordance with wadud, recognising the patriarchal politicalization of God as masculine – and the repercussions this may have, is step one. The second is being sensitized with the concept of the divine female – the jamali attributes of Allah, that are simply as key to the Creator’s tawhid, or one-ness, because the jalali attributes.
Muslim girls are more and more asserting their spiritual authority, as might be attested by the publication of The Girls’s Khutbah E-book: Up to date Sermons on Spirituality and Justice from Across the World edited by South African Muslim professors Sa’diyya Shaikh and Fatima Seedat, which highlights trailblazing feminine Muslims reclaiming their voices in spiritual areas. Half and parcel of this motion is a linguistic upheaval of the pronouns which have historically been related to Allah. Adamant that Islam values women and men equally, and that the Creator’s female attributes are simply as integral as their masculine attributes, there’s a rising variety of Muslim girls who will not tolerate their religion being cloaked within the garb – or language – of patriarchy.
“Language is highly effective,” says Rehman. “I believe the pronouns referring to God have to be disruptive, however claiming God’s feminine attributes is not going to be the tip of the combat; it would simply be the start.”
But, on the finish of the day, Rehman says she is going to prioritize the content material of her message over pronouns. “If I do know that utilizing ‘She’ signifies that persons are going to close their ears off to me, to listening to all the opposite stuff that I believe is extra necessary and that truly builds the inspiration on which individuals will change into extra snug with utilizing completely different pronouns, then I’m not going to make use of it only for the shock issue,” she explains.
Rehman provides that the Prophet Muhammad spoke to individuals on the stage at which they might perceive, “within the mode which might be most overtly acquired by their hearts.” She believes that utilizing this knowledge discretionarily is essential relating to Allah’s pronouns.
Hafsa Lodi is an American-Pakistani author with a B.A. in Journalism and M.A. in Islamic Regulation. Her debut non-fiction guide, Modesty: A Vogue Paradox (Neem Tree Press: 2020), explores the worldwide rise of the modest trend motion from cultural, spiritual, political and feminist lenses.