Save Our Childrens Lives

Tickets can be booked Here

Engaging with Muslim Women - Perspectives on the Bloom Review

Date: May 17 2023 18:00 - 20:00

Venue: Committee Room 1, Houses of Parliament, SW1A 0AA London

Tickets Available From: https://billetto.co.uk/e/engaging-with-muslim-women-perspectives-on-the-bloom-review-tickets-832252

 The Bloom Review is an independent review into faith engagement and how the government needs to recognise faith groups as a force for good. It says that a better understanding of faith will help the government tackle systemic issues such as forced marriages, child safeguarding and extremism.

Basira warmly welcomes you to join us in discussing different perspectives relating to this report.

Host:

Dianne Hayter, Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Speakers:

Helena Kennedy, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, KC

Manzila Pola Khan Uddin, Baroness Uddin

Dr Ann Olivarius, KC (Hon) OBE

Ahlam Akram, Director of Basira

Nadeem Kazmi, Lawyer

The Bloom Review And Muslim Women

House of Commons, London  

17th May 2023

On Wednesday 17th May, Basira held a Panel Discussion with expert speakers from across all parties and none. The event focused on The Bloom Review, which looked at the Government’s relationship with faith and how it needs to be recognised as an ‘overriding force for good’.  

Basira welcomes the Review and indeed shares many of its findings. In our opinion, the Review correctly asserts that, ‘a small number of individuals and groups can undermine the fundamental rights and values of our society,’ and ‘it would be naive to think that corrupt people do not operate in the faith sector’.   

The Review is right in identifying key areas that need strengthening based on the values and basic knowledge of the faiths themselves. The Report is significant in encouraging faith communities to reflect on how best we are protected as citizens living in a country ruled by democratic values. Moreover, it is a timely wake-up call for Muslim communities to evaluate the way scriptural texts are interpreted and thus highlight those verses in the Holy Qur'an that positively restore respect to religion.

Whilst many people of faith are essentially good, honest, decent, upstanding citizens of our diverse country, we recently witnessed challenges with the rise of the Far Right and Political Islamism. Basira’s intention is to fight against both types of extremism and  to protect the core values of our democracy by putting women's rights at the centre of achieving and maintaining justice and equality. Muslims are obliged by the precepts of religion to follow the laws of the country in which they reside, being enjoined by Islamic rules of etiquette and good behavior in society not to create problems. This was confirmed to me in a meeting with Dr. Saad El Dine AlHilali, a high-profile Egyptian professor who is a graduate of al-Azhar University and who teaches there.  

Muslims believe that Islam is a suitable system by which to serve humanity and protect the dignity of individuals and society anywhere and at anytime; therefore, as humanity evolves, so must all our laws.  Many Muslims all over the world believe that  it is time for a fairer interpretation of Sharia by adopting positive verses in the holy texts to protect all of us.

Read more: The Bloom Review And Muslim Women

Muslim Women & Religious Law - Written by Ahlam Akram

Edited by the novelist Tim Symonds

In one of early Basira meetings in the Houses of Parliament, the Egyptian Muslim scholar Yasmin Amin said that there is Islamic law but nothing called ‘sharia law’, because the latter did not come in one command and it is not code.

My opinion is that this Islamic law derived from two separate sources: from verses of the Quran gathered 23 years after the death of the Prophet, and from the sayings and actions of the Prophet 250 years after his death by Muslim scholars (i.e. collected and recorded by humans subject to change). Both contradict the tenet of equality and justice for women, core values of any religion, despite the emphasis on these values in many other verses.

Those verses interpreted by four male scholars more than a thousand years ago have created a close, negative knit between religion and culture, each one enhancing the other, making it next to impossible to separate them, thus making all values of Muslim societies connected to women’s bodies such as modesty, virginity, purity of  lineage, and family honour. All are owned by the male guardian. No woman owns her own self. It is the male guardian who owns her life.

This connection created a society besieged (chained)  by a culture of fear and complete submission by women, because of fear of family, society and God.

Read more: Muslim Women & Religious Law - Written by Ahlam Akram