Sheikha Stories and Women in Islamic History

For the second week of class, we delved into the past, looking at women in the history of Islam and how it pertains to cinema. Having studied Islam as a subject in previous classes, I was interested to revisit the material with a gendered lens. We watched Sheikha Stories, a collection of short documentary pieces directed by Brigid Maher about women across the Arab world who are involved in teaching Islam and religious studies, and complimented the information provided by Leila Ahmed from her book, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of Modern Debate.
In her chapter “Women and the Rise of Islam” Ahmed discusses the different roles of the wives of the Prophet Mohammed and how through the various marriage practices we see the role of women shifting. While Mohammed was monogamous with Khadija, his first wife and the first convert to Islam, following her death he married multiple women at a time, his favorite being Aisha, the daughter of Abu Bakr, his most ardent supporter. In Sheikha Stories, a number of the sheikhas often look back to this earlier time and point to the wives of Mohammed, particularly Aisha, has having taught both men and women about Islam. Aisha also provided around 2,000 Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet, which still contribute to Islamic jurisprudence until today.
The issues of the veil, polygamy, and divorce are also discussed by Ahmed, and Sheikha Stories offers a counterpart to the historical data. In the piece “Magda’s Calling”, Magda Amer, a trained caller and teacher of Islam, teaches her students about women’s inheritance, an often-contested issue in the West with regard to the Muslim world. One of Amer’s students remarks that she feels a purpose when there is “more knowledge, more faith.” A trained doctor and professor of immunology, Amer describes her teaching method as one part scientific, one part religious.
All of the women in Sheikha Stories are extraordinary intellectuals and scholars, but Viola Shafik, author of Popular Egyptian Cinema, explains that female representation in cinema has faced enormous conflicts throughout history, and it is refreshing that filmmakers such as Brigid Maher are dedicated to portraying Muslim women in films. Shafik believes that even when feminist films began in Egypt, access to them was limited by class and profession. Furthermore, in the 1970s and 1980s, women were mostly portrayed as adjuncts to men, and when they had professions it was out of economic necessity or for fun. She believes that this is a reflection of society; at independence, Egyptian women were at odds with men over the right to vote.
Sheikha Stories has a few examples of the sheikhas relationships with men. Amer’s husband, for example, is interviewed saying that all that Amer does is for god (Allah), and therefore he supports her fully in her teaching. In the story “Mosque of Light”, the male director talks about how over 100 female instructors teach about 20 classes a week, with the curriculum ranging from religious studies to history, geography, math, and foreign languages such as English and French. In “Ladies of Brilliance”, the female professors at Al-Azhar University in Cairo emphasize that there is no difference in the quality of education that men and women receive.
And while none of the subjects, nor authors such as Ahmed, Shafik, or Sonbol, who discusses women’s lack of opportunity in a Jordanian village, argue that gender equality has been achieved, the examination of the role of women throughout Islam as well as the strides that individual scholars and sheikhas are making is certainly noteworthy.