Failed Workshops and Gender Wars

Available for 29 days

Good Morning. I once ran a workshop for a group of activists and students of Islam from India and Pakistan. We had been working online for many months and decided to meet in-person for a component of the program. We knew the Indians wouldn’t get visas for Pakistan, and the Pakistanis wouldn’t get visas for India without tremendous difficulty, so we met in the beautiful and neutral territory of Nepal. As we sat in the impossibly beautiful terrain of the Himalayan range, I shared a verse of the Qur’an with them: “The believing men and the believing women are awliya, protecting friends, of one another”. I asked them to consider what it meant for believing men and women to be awliya of one another; what kind of world could be forged if we all actualised the call of these words. The Indian participants looked confused and said “but awliya means saints” and the Pakistani participants looked scandalised and said, “god forgive us! Men and women can’t be friends”. I explained but awliya literally means “protecting friends” and I urged them to imagine a world in which men and women were not at war but at peace, and more than peace, in loving harmonious, protecting and nurturing community. But the Pakistanis shook their heads and said “we observe strict gender segregation” and the Indians said “awliya are saints and we are not worthy to be amongst them”. And I stood bereft in between; a failed workshop exercise and the whisper of a vision promised in the Qur’an evaporating into thin air. I pray for a world in which men and women act as protective friends of one another, where everyone thrives, no one is exploited, and full human agency is afforded to all, amen.