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With an overflowing room of about 75 people in the Frick Center, Dr. Hassan, a Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at the University of Louisville, began her lecture with some background information on herself as well as her past, explaining to the audience what her motives and goals in life were, and what they are now.
"What I aim is to create an equitable and just society on the lines the Holy Quran propounds," says Dr. Hassan.
What began as a personal study for herself as a young Muslim woman soon blossomed into a full-fledged study of the rights of Muslim woman all over the globe, in particular Pakistan. In an attempt to discover who she was as a Muslim woman, in accordance to the Quran, the Holy book for Muslims, Dr. Hassan soon found herself fighting for the rights of all Muslim women, not just for her own. In 1999 Dr. Hassan developed a non-profit organization in which she addressed the issue of violence toward girls and women, known as The International Network for the Rights of Violence in Pakistan.
What seemed to be one of the most effective arguments in Dr. Hassan's presentation was how she analyzed the three main reasons why she believed women were perceived as being inferiors to men, and then refuted all such assumptions.
The first reason that she spoke of was how man was God's primary creation, and that it was believed that woman was created from man's rib. The second notion was that woman was the cause of "Man's Fall," in that she was the reason why man was expelled from the Garden of Eden. Lastly, it is believed that woman, in addition to being created from man's rib, was created for man's purpose.
Through the course of Dr. Hassan's meticulous study, she has arrived at the conclusion that these three assumptions are false and that they go against the teachings of the Quran. Dr. Hassan refuted the first notion using the teachings of the Quran that stated that men and women were created equally from God. In accordance to this, never in the Quran is it stated that woman was created from a man's rib; it could have been from anything or anyone.
The second assumption, "Man's Fall," was declared unworthy when Dr. Hassan used the teachings of the Quran again in saying that, "…the Quran provides no basis whatever for asserting, suggesting or implying that Eve was tempted by Satan, and in turn, tempted and deceived Adam, which led to his expulsion from the Garden." She claimed that in patriarchal Muslim cultures the Quranic text has been misused and misinterpreted for declaring "feminine evil."
The audience seemed to be eagerly waiting and attentively listening for Dr. Hassan's analysis of the third assumption, that woman was created for man. For this argument she stated that in the Quran, Allah has said that men and women are equal before Him, and that "there is no hierarchy in which men are placed above women."
From within the crowd of people someone had happily and laughingly stated that, "She just barbequed the rib story," causing laughter to echo throughout the room.
However, Dr. Hassan was greatly disappointed in the fact that many Muslim societies choose to twist the words of God and use them for their own objectives, in spite of the teachings of the Quran. She emphasized that there are three challenges that face the world today. Those challenges are "knowing Islam, not deliberately obscuring history in classrooms of Islam, and finding the appropriate people to teach Islam."
In a voice that seemed to suggest frustration, Dr. Hassan made it clear that knowledgeable Muslim and non-Muslim scholars should be the ones teaching Islam in classrooms and discussing it with the media, not some amateurs who became experts on Islam overnight after nine-eleven.
At the end of the presentation the audience seemed to be left with an abundance of knowledge about Islam and a sense of compassion and understanding not only for Muslim women, but for all of mankind.
Nancy Lee, a professor from the Department of Theology, said, "I think feminist scholars in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are taking a second look at the scriptures and finding that they are often more egalitarian than many people think and more egalitarian than later cultural interpretations."
Michael Bell, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty thought "it was a remarkable lecture, a delight to have someone committed to a genuinely, vibrant intellectual discussion of Islamic women; a hard-edged driving analysis of women articulated in the Quran."
Evidently, it wasn't just the audience members that had something to say about the presentation, but the spokesperson herself, had a few remarks of the college and of the listeners as well. Dr. Hassan closed the night by saying, "What a wonderful college and what a wonderful audience."
Sabiha Malik
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Riveting, intellectually stimulating, funny, sincere, informative and other adjectives among these were the words that some members of the audience chose to describe Dr. Riffat Hassan's lecture on The Rights of Women in Islamic Communities, conducted at Elmhurst College on Wednesday, April 3.