Liberating the Northern Muslim woman is an existential issue

One weird thing that stuck with me from my first visit to the United Kingdom in early 2014 was the pace at which London women walked.

As someone who was raised in a society that culturally stereotypes women as not only intellectually, but also physically, weak, I was intrigued by how ladies so casually strode past me with lightning speed. There wasn’t a fire alarm, child to be saved or anything dangerous; they were just walking in the ordinary course of business to the train station, their place of work or home.

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This so fascinated me that I conducted a little experiment. I stood for about an hour at Oxford Circus, a busy junction in London, to take a census of this phenomenon. I was surprised to observe that every woman I saw, young and old, brown, black and white, even mothers with pushchairs or children in tow, walked at speed. I later found out it wasn’t just me. It is one of the first reflections of virtually every Nigerian Northerner who visited the United Kingdom. Almost every guest I received in my three years of living in London (and there have been quite a few) would marvel at this ‘Great Discovery’.

Our shock is a powerful anecdote of how our society has relegated women. They are dismissed – and oppressed – as intellectually weak and physically fragile. They are not to be actively involved in certain family decision-making, let alone public policy and the economy. In the rare event that a handful of them break the glass ceiling to become judges, professors and whatnot, we stereotype them as emotional rather than logical and less discerning than men. In almost every way, Northern women are treated as less than men and are married, used and talked down to without much thought for their own capacities.

This treatment reared its head at the final Ramadhan lecture of the Nigerian Muslim Forum, London. The session focussed on finding solutions to the challenges facing women and youths in Northern Nigeria. Chaired by Sarki Muhammadu Sanusi II, an extraordinary advocate for women’s rights, the session featured three phenomenal women – Hajiya Zahra’u Umar Idris, Professor Fatima Batulu Mukhtar and Professor Aisha Abdul-Isma’il. Shaykh Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa was the icing on the cake.

As Professor Mukhtar eloquently spoke on the need for women to assert their self-worth and shake down the cultural shackles, some of those attending pushed back on her point that men and women are created equal and with comparable abilities and potential. “But Islam demonstrates that women are weak”, one retorted. “Whether we like it or not, women are feeble”, another said. A third commentor was more ‘liberal’: he felt girls should go to school but should only study medicine and other caring subjects.

The fact that Professor Mukhtar was introduced as the former vice chancellor of the Federal University, Dutse, and Professor Abdul-Isma’il had served as the director of the Centre of Gender Studies of Bayero University, did nothing to break their typecasts. These comments were not outliers. They represent the predominant sentiment, rather than the exception, in our society. That the commentators have achieved at least basic education (judging from their ability to join a Zoom meeting and to type comments) is revealing of the pervasiveness of the views they expressed.

For the rest of the session, I kept wondering: what in Islam teaches this misogyny? Thankfully, Shakyh Daurawa and Emir Sanusi were there to dispel these false notions. In actual fact, Islam aims to liberate, inspire and empower women. It teaches that men and women are moral equals in Allah’s sight and are expected to fulfil the same duties of faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and pilgrimage. It abolished the barbaric Arab practices of female infanticide and treating women as inheritable property. Instead, it recognised women’s full personhood, guaranteed them proprietary rights and the right to inherit. The Prophet concluded his divine mission by emphasising that women have rights similar to those of men and that a married man and woman are garments to each other. All this happened over 1440 years ago, before any thought of modernity, and it is glaringly obvious in the Qur’an we read today.

So where did we get our own Islam from? How can we deny women meaningful participation in the economy in the name of religion when Khadija bint Khuwaylid (RA) – the first Muslimah to have ever lived – was a successful merchant and a powerful woman? The Prophet not only approved of her, but worked for her and then married her. Are we trying to be holier than the Prophet? How can we continue to keep our daughters out of school or restrict their options and possibilities when Shaykh Usman Danfodio preached and practised the exact opposite? How can we keep these disastrous practices when both history and reality have proved us palpably wrong and the ominous clouds are clearly on the horizon?

The ‘Great London Discovery’ was more than a fun-learning experience for me. It helped to change my paradigm in unspeakable ways. I used to defend women by saying they may be physically weaker but are mentally equals. It dawned on me that I may be wrong even on that count. Having moved to the city, I witnessed how easily Northern Nigerian Muslim women transform, not just physically but intellectually too. This shows that our female counterparts are not naturally less than men; rather, they are held down and back by obnoxious cultural beliefs and practices that are passed off as religion. By this, I do not mean to demean us or portray other societies as superior. My point is that we have got a lot of catching up to do. The incredible women on the panel are a testimony that we have made giant strides in the right direction but we still have a long way to go.

The idea that Northern Nigeria will ever make meaningful progress when half of our population are treated as political and economic appendages is simply fanciful. No society has ever made it when half of its population quite literately is dependent on the other half. No household can break even when its only male member is burdened with the basic needs of all other members. No government policies or transformation agenda can make the desired impact when 50 per cent of the citizenry are excluded or involved only nominally or out of tokenism.

Women’s empowerment is not just a human rights or development issue. It is an existential problem for Northern Nigeria. The writing is on the wall that if we continue on this path, we are headed for the rocks. We have got to work assiduously and deliberately to remove the disadvantages inhibiting Northern Nigerian women. We must do this through legislation, public policies, projects and programmes. This must occupy a prime position in our conventional and Islamic school curricula, and boys and men, not just women and girls, have to be part of it. We must point it out in the media, on the pulpits and serve as personal examples at home, at work and everywhere. If we do not take the steps that may be seen as radical – even taboo – today, we will be in the same place, if not worst, a century from today, while the rest of the world will have moved on.