Sisters in Islam
Zainah was involved with Sisters in Islam for two decades as its leader. She was responsible for building the NGO from a small organisation to a global one and is invited to give talks all over the world.
In 1987, a clutch of women lawyers and a journalist friend including Zainah jointly founded a fledgling movement to look into the problems Muslim women had with the courts. In 1990, the movement formally became known as SIS. Its focus was to challenge laws and policy made in the name of Islam that discriminate against women. Eventually, SIS areas of work expanded to emcompass larger issues of democracy, human rights and constitutionalism.
Said Zainah in an interview with The Star:
| “ | It’s as if in Islam, women don’t have any rights at all. One woman asked, if the house were on fire, would she then have to seek her husband’s permission to flee! Women cannot even use their common sense to save their (own) lives. This cannot be Islam. God is just. Islam is just. | ” |
Aghast at what was being taught in the ceramahs, the founding sisters turned to the Quran to find out for themselves what the verses say, as opposed to various interpretations. What they discovered was a revelation. On polygamy, the Quran says: “If you cannot treat them the same, then marry just the one.”
| “ | That was a moment of epiphany. It was that kind of questioning that made us want to read the Quran with a new lens. It was a liberating process understanding that the Quran speaks to women and is lifting and empowering. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Zainah Anwar
Famous quotes containing the words sisters and/or islam:
“If the Christ were content with humble toilers for disciples, that wasn’t good enough for our Bert. He wanted dukes’ half sisters and belted earls wiping his feet with their hair; grand apotheosis of the snob, to humiliate the objects of his own awe by making them venerate him.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)