7:35
Ya banil Adama
Imma ya tiyannakum Rusulum-minkum yaqussuna alaykum
Ayati famanit-taqa wa aslaha fala khawfun
Alayhim wa la hum yahzanun.
O children of Adam!
If there come to you apostles of your own, relating My messages to you,
then all who are conscious of Me and live righteously - no fear need they have,
and neither shall they grieve.
What is that phenomenon we
call prophecy? How can we explain the
mechanism through which the prophets were inspired by our Creator? Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, was the last of the
Abrahamic prophets, but the message that he and his numerous predecessors,
beginning with Prophet Abraham relayed was that God is with us always and ever
was and ever shall be. And even though
the kind of prophecy described in their Books – the Torah, the Psalms, the
Gospels, and the Quran – ended with Prophet Muhammad, God’s presence is no less
real and close for us today than it was for them.
Quran assures us that every
people has had a prophet.
35:24
Innaa arsalnaka bil-haqqi Bashiranw-wa Nadhira.
Wa im-min ummatin illa khala fiha Nadhir.
Surely We have sent you with the truth as a bearer of
good news and a warner; and there was never any community but a warner has lived
and passed away in its midst.
The power of God’s presence
is and has been throughout history, in every human community, real and tangible. And throughout history, when people have
tapped into that power, even though they be not prophets, they have found the
strength to do remarkable things, and helped us all progress further along the
path of God’s guidance. I’d like to talk
about a few of those people today.
When I was in Berkeley a
couple of weeks ago, I gave some money to a homeless woman, one of the many who
line Shaddock Avenue every day. As I
started to walk away, she said, “Don’t forget to take your paper!” I don’t usually pay much attention to those
papers, but this one turned out to be more than the usual account of the
difficult lives of people who live on the streets. It was published by the American Friends
Service Committee, and contains a survey of many of the women who worked for the
abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage in the 19th and early
twentieth centuries. Their stories are
a testament to what people can endure when they are inspired by a cause they
know is right and true.
Some of them, like Harriet
Tubman and Sojourner Truth, escaped the horror of slavery, only to turn around
and continue to fight it, jeopardizing the very freedom they had won. What
made Harriet Tubman return to the South again and again, risking her freedom to
liberate many others through the Underground Railroad, and by working as a
scout and leading raids on plantations for the Union Army? What gave Sojourner Truth, after escaping to
freedom with her baby daughter. the strength to deliver a legendary speech at
the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in 1851?
What gave her the tenacity to try to end the segregation of street cars
in Washington, D.C. by riding in cars set aside for white people, 90 years
before Rosa Parks was arrested?
Other women gave up lives of
privilege and security to fight against slavery and for voting rights for all. Lucretia Mott, a Quaker minister, continued
to fight slavery even after mobs destroyed the abolitionists’ Pennsylvania Hall
meeting place. What made her organize
the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, the first active
political organization of women, and the launching pad for the women’s rights
movement? What made her and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton think they could organize the first public women’s rights meeting
in the U.S., the Seneca Falls Convention in July of 1848?
When simple organizing failed
to change the status quo, other women initiated bold new strategies, including
militant acts of civil disobedience.
Alice Paul led a group of suffragists called “Silent Sentinels,” who
were arrested for picketing the White House.
From 1910 to 1920, Paul was the main strategist of the women’s suffrage
movement, and leader of the National Women’s Party. She opposed the US entering WWI, “protesting
a battle for democracy abroad when there was so little democracy at home.” When jailed with other suffragists in the
notoriously brutal and squalid Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, she demanded
that the women be treated as political prisoners and launched a prison hunger
strike. Jail authorities tried to break
them with brutal force-feedings, beatings, and horrible jail conditions. This led to media attention and public
outrage and women flocked to Washington.
Her acts of civil disobedience were crucial in winning public support
for the Nineteenth Amendment.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
Susan B. Anthony worked together for many decades, in the long struggle to end
slavery, and for a federal amendment giving voting rights to women. What made Anthony try to vote in the
presidential election of 1872? And after
being arrested, tried and convicted for illegal voting, how did she have the
strength to refuse to pay the fine, saying, “I shall never pay a dollar of your
unjust penalty.” It took another six
years for Anthony and Stanton to get a bill giving women the right to vote
introduced in Congress. It took another
42 years for the Anthony Amendment to become the Nineteenth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution, in 1920. Many of
these women and others went on to struggle for full equality for women and
people of all races during the civil rights movement over the next many decades. They wrote, marched, held sit-ins, protested,
and were jailed, beaten, tortured, and sometimes killed.
As we know, the struggle for
equality is not over. I found a very
interesting quote in a book published in 1881, “History of Woman Suffrage,”
edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn
Gage. It was in my Great Aunt Bess’s
library, and is inscribed by Susan B. Anthony herself. Anthony was a Christian woman fighting for
equal rights in the United States over a hundred years ago. She says, in the introduction:
“With
fierce warnings and denunciations from the pulpit, and false interpretations of
Scripture, women have been intimidated and misled, and their religious feelings
have been played upon for their more complete subjugation. While the general principles of the Bible are
in favor of the most enlarged freedom and equality of the race, isolated texts
have been used to block the wheels of progress in all periods; thus bigots have
defended capital punishment, intemperance, slavery, polygamy, and the
subjugation of woman. The creeds of all
nations make obedience to man the corner-stone of her religious character. Fortunately, however, more liberal minds are
now giving us higher and purer expositions of the Scriptures.”
I found it supremely ironic
that I should find this quote in a distant relative’s 100 plus year old book of
history, and that it should remind me so much of what I find myself in the
middle of today. I would add another
woman to the list of feminist legends and icons of resistance - Dr. Amina Wadud, for delivering her Friday
khutbah and leading men and women in prayer in a mosque in New York City. She said it was “the continuation of her own
spiritual struggle to realize Islam’s liberation of all people, an outgrowth of
the African-American struggle for equality.”
Quran says, in Surah 14:11
Qalat lahum Rusuluhum innahu illa basharum-mithlukum
Wa lakinnal-laha yamunnu ala many-yashaa u min ibadih.
Wa ma kana lanaa an-na tiyakum-bisultanin illa bi
idhnil-lah.
Wa alal-lahi falyatawakkal il-mu minun.
Their apostles said to them: We are nothing but mortals like yourselves,
but Allah bestows favors on who He pleases of His servants, and it is not for
us that we should bring you an authority except by Allah’s permission; and on
Allah should the believers rely.
And in Surah 16:41
Wal-ladhina hajaru fil-lahi mim-ba’ di ma zulimu lanubawwi
‘annahum fid-dunya hasanatanw-wa la ajrul-Akhirati
akbaru
law kanu ya ‘lamun.
And those who leave a place of evil for Allah’s sake
after they are oppressed, We will most certainly give them a good abode in the
world, and the reward of the hereafter is certainly much greater, did they but
know.
I have focused here on those
who fought in the struggle for full freedom and equality for African Americans
and women in the United States. But my
larger question, the one I started with, is what makes people sacrifice their
safety and their welfare, their freedom, even their bodies for a greater
cause? This question is much broader
than the abolition and suffragist movements, broader even than equal rights for
all human beings. The question applies
to anyone who has given up their own self-interest to a greater cause. I have referred back to the Quran for
teachings on the phenomenon of prophecy, the supreme example of people who
turned themselves completely over to God’s will. God promised them “a good abode in the world,
and the reward of the hereafter,” but what does that mean? We can easily believe that the prophets enjoy
the fruits of Paradise when they die, but many of them suffered horribly for
delivering their message in this world.
I think it must mean that they were granted peace and serenity in the
knowledge that they were following God’s will.
I am not claiming that anyone
since Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, is like a prophet in the Quranic sense. But it does seem to me that when we human
beings are inspired by a sense of connection with God’s Truth, we get a new
perspective on our lives, and the strength to do things that we would never do
if we only focused on our individual comfort and security. The prophets are the highest examples of that
phenomenon. But we all have the
potential to tap into that power, and we can all recognize those exceptional
people who have been able to use that power to help change their worlds for the
better.
I have been thinking about
this a lot lately, and not just in the context of women’s equality. I have been thinking that in these trying
times we are living through as Muslims, we are all challenged to tap in to
God’s power, in one way or another. So
what does Quran tell us about prophecy and prophets, our forefathers in the
struggle to follow God’s Truth? Quran
tells us that they were tested, that people did not believe them, and thought
they were crazy, and tried to kill them.
But Quran assures us that God was always and would always be with them,
as long as they followed their calling. Whether
we feel called to travel to Jordan to help Syrian refugees, or try to write
inspiring khutbahs, or write poetry and stories, or donate our time to serve on
Boards, or help the homeless, or our own aging parents, or just help our
children negotiate their way between secularism, extremism, and Islamophobia – in
our own small humble ways, we all need God’s guidance, and we might be
surprised by where our openness to that guidance might lead us.
Ya Allah, help us to be open
to your guidance as much as we need it, and grant us the ability to tap into
your power, that is everywhere and always around us when we need it, and give
us the strength to follow your path for us, wherever it may lead.
Surah 22:78
And strive hard in the way of Allah, such a striving
as is due to Allah, who has chosen you and has not laid on you a hardship in
religion; the faith of your forefather Ibrahim;
He named you before and in this, those who have surrendered themselves
to God, that the Apostle might bear witness to the truth before you, and you
might bear witness to it before all humankind;
therefore keep up prayer and pay the poor rate and hold fast by
Allah; your Guardian; how excellent the Guardian
and how excellent the Helper!
Fa ‘aqimus-Salata wa atuz-Zakata wa-tasimu billahi
Huwa Mawlakum fani mal-Mawla wa ni’man-Nasir.
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