To pick up the dialogue from Twitter, you had tweeted [screenshot] about tagging and with regards to the focus of my response:
Thank you for the response though you didn’t inform or tag me anywhere for me to know that you had responded.
Most of your response simply asks: What would happen if we embraced the Islamic ideology?
But I didn’t see any substantial response to the original argument made.
— Farhan Iqbal (@FarhanIqbal1)
Your follow up tweet [screenshot] suggested that my comment on your post represented a red-herring fallacy:
You have made arguments about hijab and purdah which are not the topic and not part of the original argument.
This is a red herring fallacy that is employed multiple times in your post.
— Farhan Iqbal (@FarhanIqbal1)
Let’s unpack these in turn.
On Tagging and Notifications
As I originally responded to you on Facebook with a comment, I expected that you would receive a notification on Facebook. By default, responses to one’s own Facebook post do trigger a notification for the original poster. It sounds like you’ve turned off this default behavior to minimize notification overload.
More logistical notification details
In the future, as best as I can remember to, I’m happy to include an explicit tag in a Facebook comment response to any post/comment that you make, to better ensure you receive a notification.
I often cross post on a few platforms to share discussions. When I do, would you like me to tag you on each platform? For example, I was under the impression that you’d implicitly be notified on Facebook, but if I share on Twitter, would you prefer that I also tag you there?
Sometimes, tagging can be perceived as goading to continue a discussion, and sometimes it’s just a notification. I normally don’t tag people where there’s a risk of misconstruing the former (unless I really am looking to have the discussion continue on multiple platforms instead of just one; something which can get confusing for others and for both of us). That said, I’m happy to also tag you on Twitter when I share, should you prefer that.
Finally, many of us are often discussing these topics on Reddit. If you’d like, I can tag you there too, when referencing something you’ve written elsewhere. Please advise which Reddit handle you wish that I use for this purpose, if being tagged on Reddit is of interest to you.
The Substantive Response
Your most recent Facebook post from July 17, 2018 showcased that some women in the West, not driven by religion, were creating women-only spaces, of their own accord. In your first tweet, you state:
But I didn’t see any substantial response to the original argument made.
The reason for this is that in the first part of my response, which addresses the crux of your post, I didn’t actually have much to disagree with you on!
You’ve relayed that some women in the West are creating women-only spaces. You’ve shared links. I simply acknowledged this, stating that indeed, this is true.
My comment on Facebook starts out with the following:
I believe the key part of your post is this statement, which people who critique gender segregation generally, like myself, don’t deny:
“Clearly, independent folks in the West are finding segregation to be beneficial in some situations.”
The operative word here, is ‘some’. And that includes to me, some situations some of the time; not necessarily across the board.
In an Islamic society however, we don’t have these choices. They are dictated top-down.
As I am agreeing with you that some women in the West find women-only spaces beneficial some of the time, what point exactly, did you want me to respond to, that I did not?
Now, after agreeing with you and acknowledging that this women-only spaces phenomenon exists in the West, I presented two key distinctions:
- No single narrative represents what all women want.
- Choosing to opt-in to segregation is different than imposing it top-down with religion, i.e. removing real choice.
The First Distinction
The first distinction is simply this: no single narrative represents what all women want at all times and places.
It is not a given that women who opt-in for these women-only workplaces must necessarily wish to be segregated from half of their family when vacationing at the beach or attending a wedding.
In my original response, I have even acknowledged that there exist female converts to Islam who’ve had an instinctive preference for covering their bodies with more modest clothing. This fact, when generously interpreted, can be a reasonable proxy for one having a disposition and a preference towards segregated spaces. I have generously steel mannned your Islamic position.
I then followed up with a counter-example (i.e. women who don’t like modesty culture) that contextualizes this steel man; placing it within the wider landscape of preferences actually found in society.
Let’s review that part of my response:
I know of testimonials from female converts to Islam who talk about having never felt comfortable wearing shorts, and feeling at home with Islam’s modesty doctrines for women.
I also know of many more testimonials of ex-Muslim women and Muslimish women who find hijab and burka stifling. They want to wear shorts and skirts in the summer. They want to feel the wind in their hair out in public; they want to feel the water and sunshine on their back as they relax at the beach.
What does this speak to? It speaks to there being no one female experience/preference. Women exist across the spectrum. Perhaps we can picture the range of preferences as a normal distribution and there are some women in the “tail” of that distribution who prefer women only spaces. These are valid, genuine views none of us should deny. Are you willing to acknowledge and accommodate the women in the rest of the distribution, perhaps the bulk of them who want the option not to be segregated?
The Second Distinction
Next, I argue that the reason I can agree with the examples in your post is because of a second key detail that should be emphasized, but which is missing in your presentation: all of these women had a choice. To clarify, I am not saying that women who have a real choice to create women only spaces (whether in the gym or in co-working spaces) should be denied such freedoms. I have never taken such a stance.
I have demonstrated, however, what real choices look like today, through counter-examples where women in your own Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at don’t truly have such choices in their own lives.
Given the social structures of the Jama’at, and given one’s natural compassion for their own parents, true choices don’t often exist in your Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
See Reason #25 for a brief discussion on why real choice doesn’t exist for many in your Community.
Consider if a mixed co-working space and women’s only co-working space opened up next to Peace Village in Maple, Canada. This next paragraph from my Facebook comment provides some hypothetical examples in that vein:
Coupled with a general agreement with your cited examples in the Western world, these two distinctions of mine strike me as a rather substantial and sufficient commentary to your post.
Perhaps you didn’t feel that this was a substantial response because you expected me to deny that some women in the West choose to be segregated some of the time?
Did I disappoint by agreeing with you, that some women prefer women-only spaces, some of the time? Or was it that I emphasized key distinctions that you had omitted in your presentation that more comprehensively frame the wider issue?
Red Herring Fallacies? No. A New Question? Yes.
In the last part of my original response to you on Facebook, I do take liberties to riff on a related but different topic after I’ve commented on the core takeaway from your post. In your tweet, you characterized my extended commentary as thus:
Most of your response simply asks: What would happen if we embraced the Islamic ideology?
In fact, it’s just the second half of my response that tackles this question, not the majority of my response. For posterity, here’s that portion of my response comment which pivots into a new discussion:
If we look at how Ahmadiyyat models segregation and purdah today, and extrapolate that onto an entire nation, it *is* reasonable to suggest that as far as covering and segregation is concerned, such an Ahmadiyya-Utopia (dystopia?) would resemble Iran.
Most Ahmadi Muslims tolerate the Jama’at and the theology b/c they only deal with this at the masjid and religious events. If the Jama’at were to plainly spell out their vision for what everyday society would look like in an ideal Ahmadiyya dominated nation, it is my sincere opinion that most Ahmadi youth in the West would run the other way.
This is why it seems to me at least, that the Jama’at is careful to “boil the frog slowly”. You can prove skeptics like myself wrong, by laying out a detailed manifesto or essay on an example Ahmadiyya society that focuses on substance, and not fluff. For example: no women in the olympics, you’d strongly discourage women in politics, universities would be segregated, movie cinemas would be shut down, no one would be in the movie, TV or music industries.
We talk about isolated facets of society, such as women opting for segregation here. However, this is just one piece of a larger picture; and it is not in the Jama’at’s interest to spell out the vision plainly to people in the West, including its own members.
Had I been disagreeing with the examples cited in your post, then me pivoting to a related but new question would have indeed been a red-herring fallacy. However, that was not the purpose of my extended response.
In fact, after having made the key distinctions contextualizing those parts of your post with which I agreed, additional thoughts came to mind which I shared. I was simply zooming out and moving on to the larger conversation in the second half of my response. Call it stream-of-consciousness writing. You’re even welcome to call it a rant if you wish. I have no problem with that characterization.
Yes, this second part of my response was indeed a new, but related topic which was perhaps best presented as a new post. However, it was not written to avoid responding to your post’s content, since as you can see from above, I already gave you a succinct yet substantive response in the first half of my long Facebook comment. Namely, one of agreement with you, that some women choose segregation in some contexts.
I am more than happy to paste the second half of my original comment response into a new post and begin a new discussion on this wider question if that helps clarify matters. You’ve succinctly captured this wider question in your proposed restatement: What would happen if we embraced the Islamic ideology?
Allow me, however, to restate your same question in a more directed fashion:
What would the day to day rules look like for men and women in an ideal Islamic society informed by Ahmadiyya fiqh, if we transitioned Canada or the USA into a majority Ahmadi Muslim nation within a generation? How would the structure of society, our institutions, and our political campaigning and governance change such that all aspects of life were the most complete manifestations of Islamic prescriptions possible?
Yes, this is a hypothetical scenario but it is not a hypothetical concern. Ahmadi Muslims deserve a concrete answer. They deserve a concrete blueprint that represents the best approximation we can make from what we believe Islam/Ahmadiyya actually prescribes. Why? Well, because they deserve to know what it is that their time, energy, and financial sacrifices are seeking to build, minus the stock slogans.
Do we, for instance, bring back your second khalifa’s efforts in Rabwah to not even build movie cinemas? Should existing cinemas get shut down and turned into prayer halls, since no Ahmadi Muslims are going to be in the entertainment industry anyways? Do we stop female professors giving lectures to male students to mimic how Jalsa Salana is increasingly getting more conservative each year, as women no longer give speeches now, to the men’s side? Would Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift never be singers in such a society because music is effectively haram—especially women’s voices that unavoidably, will be heard by men?
I’m doubtful that Ahmadi Muslim officials want to answer these questions with anything other than public relations fluff and emotional platitudes. Consequently, and one day soon, I hope to illustrate through a blog post, what the alleged Ahmadi Muslim utopia actually translates to in terms of rules, segregation, and everyday life on the ground—based on the Jama’at’s own track record and statements of its founder and khulifa. Perhaps brother, you’ll want to take the first crack at such a project before I weigh in.
Cheers.