Mahram-less

The Muslim world takes something for granted, I think.

They take for granted the fact that a woman will have relatives to support and maintain her.

I will repeat one of the most insulting remarks ever said to me, since becoming Muslim, "Well get a mahram!" You'd think that he wouldn't take it for granted--he was a revert like me. Get a mahram. Easier said than done.

When women convert to Islam, their fathers, their brothers, in some cases even their husbands are no longer considered "Islamically" able to represent them. A woman's non-Muslim father may not act as her wali in marriage. The permission of a non-Muslim male relative is not sufficient for a married woman in some places to travel alone. The closed-minded person (who is usually a man) would say, quite simply, that the solution is for the woman to marry, and thenceforth entrust all her rights to her husband. I call it a closed-minded solution for a few reasons: suppose that there is no man who wants to take her as a wife? Or suppose that the only men who do or who she can find she cannot trust based on their behavior.

This is a problem.

It's not a problem with Islam, exactly, at least not in my mind, because I consider Islam to be perfect. It is a problem, however, with Muslims and their faulty and closed-minded interpretation of Islam. They take for granted that a woman would have a mahram, and therefore impose all these restrictions on her--restrictions that a woman in a traditional Islamic situation would not view as restrictions at all. It's the blind application of them to all scenarios which I say makes the mindset behind them closed-minded.

Some problems that I can see are the following:

A married woman who decides to embrace Islam, while her husband does not. The prevailing view today is unfortunately that she must divorce her husband. (BTW, I'm not saying this view is "correct" just it seems to be more mainstream.)

A woman who converts to Islam without mahram is unable to make hajj, or umrah.

A woman who converts to Islam must ask for assistance from a man who might well be a stranger to her in order to act on her behalf in situations of marriage.

According to some, a Muslim woman is not even allowed to leave the home. I call that nothing but foolishness, which is clear because the mufti who says that must immediately begin making exceptions when questioned regarding the situation of a Muslim woman without a mahram. What if she has no way to support herself? What if she has dependents and nobody to support them? What if, what if, what if. All these exceptions would not be necessary, in my mind, if the restrictions on women weren't imposed in the first place.

That women can't leave their home? That they cannot work? Cannot go to the masjid? Who says this, you might ask. Men who belittle the intelligence and value of women, is my answer. When faced with the question of how women are to learn their deen if never allowed outside, they insist that women can go to schools, forgetting that there must be teachers--and they insist on women teachers for women. You see the problem? Yes, it is a problem.

The growing numbers of converts to Islam among women are highlighting these issues, and forcing some long-held opinions (which I might add are not based on clear proof) to be questioned. Islam is not the tradition of the Arabs, the tradition of the Pakistanis, the tradition of anybody at all. Islam is a complete way of life prescribed for us by Allah, exemplified by his Messenger Muhammad saws.

The men who are so weak they feel the need to imprison women physically in their homes, and intellectually in their ignorance, have no right to this deen, no right to the noble scholarship which preceded them. And it is weakness on the park of the men indeed who act this way, and it's high time that the believers stood up and demanded justice.

And it starts with justice for women--and why not justice for the convert women, who found Islam in their solitude and follow it with fortitude devoid of communal familiarity, the women who have no support from husbands, fathers, brothers, the women who can depend only on Allah. There is a lesson in that, I think.