Windows into the house of Islam: Including women’s spaces

Perspective/windows onto the house of Islam

Metaphorically walking around the house of Islam, we can picture it with different windows opening into the different parts of the house. There is the men’s room, the more public area where male guests may come and talk: this area can open up into other public spaces, including the mosque and the market. Then there are the windows into the women’s space, the private or more domestic part. Permitted men can enter the women’s part: and women can also go into the public areas: but each face restrictions in the other space. As we look at the house of Islam, through what windows have we been focusing our gaze? How can we achieve a comprehensive view? Klingorová and Havlícek (2015: 8), writing on the status of women in world religions, note that “Religious studies tends to be a rather androcentric discipline.”

Their comment rings true in the field of Islamic studies, both by Islamic and Western writers. While there are increasing female authors writing, overwhelmingly the books and articles published on Islam are still by male authors. Men writing about religion tend to focus on official religious texts, formal religious rituals, and public space. This is one viewpoint, a window through which to look into the house of Islam. It is an important viewpoint, one which needs to be included and not dismissed. But there are other windows, offering different perspectives, that also need to be considered in order to see the whole house. Women’s frame of reference includes also patterns of daily life, family space, and rites of passage.

Physically where I am standing shapes my view—I can see some things, but others are obscured. People in another part of the building, or even people who are sitting in another place in the same room, will see things that I cannot see. In the same way we know that as researchers, where we stand inevitably guides what we see and don’t see, the questions we ask and don’t ask, how we look and what we look for. Yet surprisingly there has been little discussion of how this shapes the way Islam is understood or taught.

It is surprising because recognition of the importance of perspective in research is not new. It is nearly 30 years since Lather (1991: 71) noted that “ways of knowing are inherently culture-bound and perspectival.” Feminist studies have helped to unpack how “rational knowledge,” by making claims of neutrality and universality, effectively hides the reality of how the research and the knowledge it offers are shaped by the experience and background of the researcher: with the consequence that female experience is often made invisible or else distorted.

We can see this pattern of restricted analysis in other fields beyond religion. In anthropology, male anthropologists have access to and write about the men’s world. However Abu-Lughod (1986: 23, 31) suggests that in gendered societies such as the Arab world the flow of information between men’s and women’s worlds is asymmetrical. The hierarchy of power means that men would speak to each other in front of women, but not the reverse; and young and low-status men would tell female relatives the news of men, but “a conspiracy of silence excluded men from the women’s world.” For example, Steve Caton in Yemen was confined “almost exclusively in the world of men in this sex-segregated society. . . . His access to the domestic world of home and intimate gatherings of close friends and relatives was limited.” ¹

This gendered asymmetry finds architectural expression in the traditional lattice windows in harem walls which allowed women to look out and see who came and went. They had a view onto the comings and goings of the men’s world, but it was impossible for those outside, those in the men’s world, to look into the women’s world. So too Sullivan (1986: xi), introducing his book on women in Egyptian public life, suggests that “when men view the roles of women in society, they often see little more than the reverse of their own self-image. Women, on the other hand, frequently see a more objective picture of themselves and of men.”

So then this is not a critique in any way of those who study the world of men. We believe that it is an essential area of study. The critique is only when that world is assumed to be the only area or even the normative perspective.

How do we approach a field of study?

I suggest that there are two ways. One is to assume a normative subject in the field that is the object of our study. Then it follows that everything that is different to that norm is perceived as deviant or abnormal.

Wadud (1999: xi) in her groundbreaking book Qur’an and Women describes

the underlying presumption that the male person is the normative human being . . . Are women the same as men; different or distinct from; alike and unequal to; or unlike and equal to? Each of these questions rests on a single rhetorical flaw—that women must be measured against men—that inadvertently reinforces the erroneous notion that men are the standard-bearers, which, by extension, means that only men are fully human.

What are some of the implications for Muslim women? In her book Muslima Theology, Lizzio (2013: 174) writes of how in Islamic legal discourses the menstruating and post-partum female is proscribed from participation in ritual prayer, reading the Qur’an, fasting, and going around the Ka’aba in Mecca. She comments that

the periodic preclusion of the female from such key ritual performances defines her pietistic capacity in her difference from the normative male who experiences no such reoccurring mandated interruption of devotion routines. In this way, the perception of female irregularity contributes to the formation of a social hierarchy of genders.

This normative approach has been around for a long time, across many fields, not just among Islamic scholars. Generally when we say “human” we mean “man.” For example, in medical studies the male body has been primarily studied and used to establish norms; so the female body then was treated as abnormal. It is only recently that researchers have recognized that the female body has its own norms—but they are different to the male ones. The calorie or step count on fitbits can underestimate steps during housework by up to 74%, and calories burned by as much as 34% (Perez, 2019: 177). Researchers have found sex differences in how every organ system in the human body functions, as well as in the symptoms and severity of nearly all common human diseases. This of course has major implications for understanding how diseases may present and be diagnosed (or go undiagnosed) in women as well as men and how to respond to and treat them. Recently Australian news reported the findings of a team at Sydney University, describing the symptoms of heart attack for women. They rarely have the intense pain in the left arm and side, typical for men: instead they experience nausea, dizziness, and shortness of breath (Branley, 2019). Is misdiagnosis the reason that following a heart attack, women are more likely to die than men? Similar examples exist across almost every area of human activity and research.

What about missiology? What are the implications for how we train people, our plans of outreach, how we use resources: and even more fundamentally how we understand the communities with which we are seeking to engage? Kenneth Cragg (1985: 99) wrote about Islam with poetic and profound theological insight. In his Call of the Minaret he described how for Muslims, “Everyone’s prayer mat is a portable mosque and wherever they choose to spread it they can find their Qiblah and worship God.” But Cragg was writing here only about Muslim men. Women cannot always turn public places into prayer sites as men can. I have met women in sheltered places, even in old and ruined mosques, putting their handbag in front as a sutra/barrier, and prostrating on the bare and dusty stone floor; but they do not pray in open public spaces with the same freedom as men. Requirements of modesty, cleanliness, and ritual purity constrain their freedom to turn outside space into places of worship; their primary place of prayer is the home. ² If we follow Cragg and other similar writers uncritically, not realizing that his “everyone” in fact covered less than half of the Muslim world in how they sought to worship God, however are we to realistically think, dream, and pray about how the whole Muslim community might encounter Jesus?

What then is the other way of approaching a field of study?

Rather than basing it on a defined or (more often) assumed single standard or point of reference, we can take an approach that understands diversity and difference as normative—and diversity can include gender, also geography and ethnicity. I suggest that taking diversity and difference as normative was Jesus’ approach. There has been a lot of attention given to the male–female pairs in the Gospel of Luke. Perhaps less attention has been given to how these pairs occur in Acts, in the other Gospels (for example, John 3 and 4, with Jesus’ conversations with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman), and in the Epistles. This male–female pairing in the New Testament is so strong that Witherington (1990: 63, 71) suggests it has to go back to Jesus’ teaching.

What are the implications for us if this is true? It could mean that every sermon should include male and female examples, male and female applications. The reference lists and bibliographies for our writing and teaching should include material by both women and men. And our lectures, our teaching, and writing should be based (like the example of Jesus) on the explicit recognition of diversity, with the consequent development and application of material incorporating different perspectives: rather than assuming a neutral normative stance. ³

House of Islam

Let us return again to dar al-Islam, the house of Islam. Our diversion into wider fields of study helps us recognize why for the most part we have looked through one window in Islamic studies, into the male part of the house. What will happen if we look now through some different windows, into another part of the house, into women’s space? We will of course encounter some of the same subject matter as in the men’s space, including history and sacred texts, but from a different perspective. Other matters of faith, culture, and community, such as rites of passage, family, hospitality, purity, shame and honor, are not ones that are covered in most formal texts on Islam. Nevertheless they are issues that deeply shape daily life for both Muslim women and men. We don’t want to substitute women as the norm instead of men: but rather ask how including women’s vantage point can help us re-view our understanding of Islam for both women and men. Through including women’s perspectives, we can gain a more comprehensive view of the house of Islam and the people who live within it, both women and men: and how the gospel might encounter them.

What are some of these areas that we encounter through women’s windows, and what insights might they offer—both missiological and theological—as we return to read the Bible in the light of the questions that we encounter with our Muslim friends? We could begin with the areas of rites of passage and family, purity, and prayer. Let us take a brief look at them in the space that we have.

Rites of passage

In Egypt as I visit the house of a new baby, the room is full of women, with men also joining in on the edge of all the activity. In the center the child, just a week old, is carefully wrapped and laid in a large decorated sieve. The women ululate loudly and one of them bangs a brass mortar and pestle noisily, so that the baby will grow up brave even in the face of threatening sounds. The new mother carefully steps seven times across the incense burner, as the smoke wafts through the room, as protection from the evil eye. The grandmother takes the sieve, shaking it horizontally, telling the baby to be obedient to the family. And then the baby is carried through the house, with one of the women scattering salt or rice as they process round the area, for protection or prosperity. Afterwards the extended family and guests sit together, enjoying candy and nuts together with the mughat ⁴ drink, given to help the new mother in breastfeeding, and served to all those who attend. This is the Egyptian seven-day celebration after a baby’s birth, to name the baby, keep away the evil eye, and make sure the child grows up brave and obedient.

Much attention has been given to the official rites and practices of Islam—the liturgical prayer five times daily, the Friday sermon, the fasting month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. In anthropological terms these are rites of intensification, rites based on the weekly or yearly calendar, which serve to intensify or reinforce community values. ⁵ Most rites of intensification take place in official/public religious space, and are led by men.

The other kinds of social rituals are the rites of passage, rituals which mark transition from one stage of life to another, that are based around life times rather than calendar times. Birth, marriage, and death are all times of significant rites of passage. Van Gennep et al. (1961: 26) who first described these rites suggested that societies were “similar to a house divided into rooms and corridors.” Douglas (1966: 97) adds that “passage from one [room] to another is dangerous.” There is risk in moving from childhood to puberty to adulthood. Societies across the world reveal a variety of traditions around protecting the dangerous time of pregnancy and new birth.

Most rites of passage tend to happen in domestic space, and are presided over by women. It is women who are responsible for enabling family members to pass safely from one life stage to another, and for maintaining health and harmony within the family.

What are some of the roles that women play in rites of passage? At birth women are in attendance, when even fathers may not be present. My neighbor called me to go with her to visit another neighbor’s niece who had gone into labor. The father was still waiting nervously outside in the street when we arrived and went inside, to where the young woman was sitting on the floor where she had given birth and the midwife was cleaning up—this was women’s space, even for those not closely connected. In west Java, women lead the communal Tingkeban ceremony in a woman’s pregnancy to thank God that the woman and fetus have made it safely to the seventh month, and to ask for their protection and blessing (Kay, 2019). ⁶ At the ancient Subu’a ceremony that is celebrated throughout Egypt seven days after the birth of a child, it is women who direct the different parts of the ritual to seek health and long life for the mother and child. At male circumcision, women can be the ones who are celebrating, with dancing, music, and sweets (Doumato, 2000: 193). While it is men who sign the official marriage certificate in the mosque, it is women in the family who are usually the ones involved in negotiating and deciding which girl is an appropriate bride for their son or nephew or brother. Women would knock on my door to ask if I had a daughter or sometimes friend who was available for marriage. And the mother of the bride may visit the newly married couple to ensure that consummation has happened successfully. Mothers are more often the ones accountable for children succeeding in school. At times of sickness, women take responsibility to care for family members. At death, women wash the bodies of women who have died. Mullins (2006: 81) suggests that

we could say that religious power and authority resides both with the Muslim imams and with the women. While the power and authority of the Muslim imam is community-based and exercised through established authority in the mosque, women will engage in rituals and [what she calls] superstitious practices quietly within the family context.

Attention to rites of passage helps us to reread the Bible, in particular the Gospels, which are built around not just feasts like Passover, but also rites of passage, weddings, and funerals. Luke’s Gospel for example, starts in official religious space, in the temple and the time of prayer—and Zachariah the official religious representative responds to the angel’s message with disbelief! But then the Gospel narrative moves swiftly to rites of passage, women’s space—conception, pregnancy, birth, circumcision, and naming—and ends with death, women going to anoint the corpse with spices, and so becoming the first witnesses to the resurrection.

Returning to look at rites of passage in Islam, we want to ask more about the part played by both men and women. And particularly, recognizing how Jesus used rites of passage to tell about the coming of the kingdom of God, we ask how we can use these times—births, coming of age, weddings, funerals—to share the hope of eternal life for both men and women with our Muslim friends.

Family

I knocked on my Muslim neighbor’s door one day and she opened it, dressed as she so often was in the all-covering prayer skirt and top—they were always convenient to hand so that we could be properly covered if any man was at the door. As we sat and drank sweet Arab coffee together, and talked over the affairs of the building and the day, her two-year old pulled out her prayer mat and tried to put on her prayer skirt and top himself, imitating what he saw his mother do so often.

The home, domestic family space, is where religious identity is formed from the earliest years of childhood. If in the West one of the strongest relational bonds is the bond between husband and wife, in many Muslim countries the strongest relationship is that between mother and son. ⁷ Children learn their faith in their earliest years from their mother’s example and teaching in the home. Under Islamic law, children take on the religion of their father—but what really happens in daily life? Even an informal survey of marriages of mixed religion in Indonesia suggested that two-thirds or more of children actually take up their mother’s religion into adult life (Handayani, 2018: 20). This gradient of authority is summed up in the tradition which tells how ‘Aisha, the young wife of Muhammad, asked him, “Who has authority over a woman?” Muhammad told her, “Her husband.” ‘Aisha asked again, “Who has authority over a man?” And Muhammad answered, “His mother.” ⁸

Women have an especially important role in maintaining religious identity at times of pressure or persecution. Mother will whisper secrets of group identity to daughter, reinforcing cultural values and traditions through life-cycle rituals. Women may continue proscribed religious practices in the home away from state supervision. Under 70 years of Soviet rule, Tajik Muslim women continued practices of prayer and fasting, and in women’s group rituals in village communities “a female learned in religious matters would lead others in prayers or in problem-solving ceremonies” (Tadjbakhsh, 1998: 174).

Family is an all-important institution in Muslim communities. Sayyid Qutb, whose teaching inspired the Muslim Brotherhood, commented that “The family system and the relationship between the sexes determine the whole character of a society and whether it is backward or civilised, jahili or Islamic.”9

Sayyid Maududi (1981: 2), who founded Jamaat-e-Islami, writes in his book on the status of Woman in Islam that “The so-called moral concepts, which the Western world had adopted a century and a half ago, have already resulted in the disruption of family life, and produced licentiousness and sexual anarchy to the extent hitherto unknown in history.” An Islamic website agrees and suggests an answer:

The family, which is the basic unit of civilization, is now disintegrating. Islam’s family system brings the rights of the husband, wife, children, and relatives into a fine equilibrium. It nourishes unselfish behavior, generosity, and love in the framework of a well-organized family system. The peace and security offered by a stable family unit is greatly valued, and it is seen as essential for the spiritual growth of its members. A harmonious social order is created by the existence of extended families and by treasuring children. ¹⁰

As Christians, we stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers against more secularizing social trends in affirming the value and sanctity of family as created by God. But it is not just a social value. The family is also a picture of what we are called to become through what Jesus has done—becoming part of God’s family, God’s own children, in relationship to our Heavenly Father. We are helped to see afresh how radical this new status and relationship is, beyond that of created beings in relation to the Creator, even beyond being obedient servants or slaves of God. ¹¹ The Muslim emphasis on family means that we can take it up as a rich redemptive analogy for Muslims of what God calls us to through Christ.

Mallouhi (2004: 134) reflects on how the focus on family that she encountered in Muslim community has helped her to understand more deeply both the Fall, and also Jesus’ saving work for us. Describing how family morality works, she comments that

This reflects the same understanding of sin that Adam displays in the story of the Fall. He hid from God because he was ashamed and he was subsequently put out of the “home.” In Arab society the consequences of sin are shaming your father and family, and being put out of the house. The only way you get back into the house is when an intermediary comes and takes you home to reconcile you with your father. The Gospel story directly speaks to these societies and the good news is that Christ took our blame and shame and is the intermediary taking us back to the Father’s house.

To be a Muslim is to be part of the ummah, the international community of Muslims everywhere (the term is linked with the Arabic word for “mother”). The New Testament calls us to remind one another that we are part of God’s worldwide family of believers. This means that as people give allegiance to Jesus Messiah, they are becoming part of a much greater family of mutual belonging right around the world. For us as Christians, and members of Jesus’ family, we are committed to care for and be strengthened by one another even beyond our blood or ethnic family loyalties. This metaphor of how we live out our redemption in Jesus also means that we cannot exist independently as individuals or individual churches, but are all to depend on one another so that the family, the body of Jesus Messiah, may be complete with all its members and equipped for all that God calls us to.

Purity

I was visiting a Muslim friend in hospital. As we talked, I commented on the Qur’an on her bedside table, and asked if she was reading it. “I can’t,” she told me. “I’ve got my monthly period. And you—do you read the Bible when you’re menstruating/impure?”

Hibbert (2008) describes standing outside the meeting place for a church of people of Muslim background when a young (unmarried) man arrived late and came up to him. After greeting Hibbert, he whispered in his ear that he had just had sexual intercourse, but that he had not washed. Could he go into the meeting, he wondered. He did not think so, and Hibbert realized that in the young man’s mind the problem was not the illicit sex itself, but the fact that he had not washed to ritually remove the uncleanness before approaching God.

The subject of purity was not part of the standard teaching of books and courses that I took on Islam. Yet it is the topic with which all the books on fiqh (jurisprudence) begin. It is part of the daily preoccupation of both Muslim women and men: at every moment they are either in a state of purity (tahara) or impurity (najasa). Ritual pollution, or impurity, prevents Muslim women and men from being able to perform ritual prayer, to fast, touch the Qur’an, or circumambulate the sacred Ka’aba (black stone) in Mecca.

While purity affects everyone, women are more impacted. All of the categories that cause major impurity apply to women, but only half affect men (Table 1). I encountered the subject of ritual purity as a frequent part of Muslim women’s discussions in domestic gatherings, sandwiched among recipes and household concerns, with its impact on their daily lives and religious practices.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Categories of Impurity.

	Minor impurity	Major impurity
Impurity	Passing urine or gas, defecating Emission of blood or pus from body Vomiting, sleeping Losing consciousness Touching anything that’s unclean	Menstrual flow Emission of fluids from private parts Sexual intercourse After childbirth (~6 weeks)
Washing to regain purity	Wudu’ (washing face, forearms, feet, as prescribed)	Ghusul (full body washing)

To be a woman is to be impure for at least a week of every month—a quarter of her life—from puberty/menarche until menopause: if she is married and having sexual intercourse, and if she is caring for children, changing nappies or cleaning up after them, then she may be impure for most of the time, unable to participate in ritual prayer, fasting, or reading the Qur’an. Buitelaar (2007: 542) comments that, although “this only means that women are more often impure but certainly not inherently more impure than men, in practice women tend to be more strongly associated with impurity than men.” A woman of Shi’ite background describes how “I used to struggle a lot, I was always in doubt. ‘Am I still clean to talk to God, or not?!’ As a woman in Islam, I was always najas.” ¹²

The famous hadith about women lacking intelligence and piety links with their inability to fulfil religious requirements due to impurity. Muhammad tells a group of women that they are deficient in intelligence and religion, and when they ask why, he says, “Isn’t the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man? . . .This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn’t it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast while she’s menstruating? . . . This is the deficiency in her religion.”13

It is easy to dismiss this concern for purity as legalistic and unrelated to our daily life and faith. Yet we find that the Bible is also deeply concerned with purity, both ritual and moral. Much of the Torah, particularly Leviticus, lays out detailed rules of ritual purity as part of participating in God’s community. ¹⁴ The Old Testament taught the importance of sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins in order to approach God. In Jesus, sacrifice is not abrogated, but rather fulfilled—after his willing sacrifice of himself for all, there is no other sacrifice needed. So too in the Jesus community, ritual purity is not abrogated. We do need pure hearts and bodies to be able to pray, to encounter God’s Word. But as we are baptized, ritually washed, through the cleansing blood of Jesus, we are so completely purified that there is no other ritual washing needed in order to pray or to read God’s Word.

The three Gospel stories of the Gerasene demoniac, the bleeding woman and Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8:26–56; Mark 5) are clustered around the issue of impurity. Here we see a man possessed by unclean spirits and living among tombs where dead bodies lie, a bleeding woman, and a dead girl. Each of these would cause someone coming into contact with them to become unclean, requiring ritual purification. However, as Jesus touches them he is not defiled. Instead we see the unclean spirits cast out (into pigs), the bleeding woman healed, and the dead girl called back to life. In the Old Testament, as in Islam and many other cultural and religious contexts, defilement, impurity, is contagious. Whoever touches something unclean becomes defiled. However, in Jesus we see the opposite—we see that Jesus’ purity is contagious, casting out uncleanness. As he touches people, purity is restored to them.

These three stories tell us that in Jesus we can be purified from all defilement—from whatever we have done or whatever others have done to us that defiles us, Jesus completely purifies us. And this is Good News indeed for all.

Prayer

As I sit upstairs in the women’s section of a Middle Eastern mosque, it is a time of dhikr prayer. Women are sitting in silent concentration. It is quiet, just the sound of lips moving, and someone’s periodic murmur. A few of the women are rocking their bodies a little as they sit, some are passing prayer beads through their fingers. The outside noises of cars and voices come in from the road. Inside the women are quiet, still, concentrating. The girl beside me is weeping softly, as she continues to pass the prayer beads through her fingers. A low voice begins to recite something, and others join in quietly for a little while. Then there is silence again, with only the muted sound of voices whispering to themselves, lips moving. A woman in the front row begins to sing quietly, a song of worship. A‛ariftak ya rabb bi-qalbi wa-fikri (I knew you, O Lord, in my heart and my thoughts). She sings this a few times, and some other phrases. Others women sit quietly, some moving their lips, or rocking their bodies slightly.

In learning about Islam we are taught about the five daily times of prayer that punctuate the daylight hours, expanding and contracting through the year. Muslims around the world, in mosques and homes, follow the same words and actions. We learn about the use of liturgy in Islam, and use of the body to give form to their worship; and about requirements of purity, which mean for Muslim women in particular that for one week of every month (and often much more) they cannot pray salah prayers.

However, there is much more to Muslim prayer beyond the formal salah prayer. There is dhikr and du‘a prayer, both less constrained by requirements of purity. And they both evoke deep emotional expression in prayer.

Dhikr prayer uses rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration, whether through repeating popular prayer invocations or songs and choruses, to focus the attention of the praying Muslim on God. Dhikr is traditionally associated with Sufism, mystic Islam. However, it is more widely practiced by people who do not claim any Sufi affiliation. In particular dhikr prayer has found its way into the growing Muslim piety movement, spreading among Muslim women and men around the world, together with other elements of Sufi orders, including an emphasis on teaching, the practical application of teaching on piety and everyday life, and participation in a wider organized religious group. Dhikr is a form of corporate prayer—perhaps we could liken it to ecstatic Pentecostal group singing. And there is also du‘a (supplication), a deep river of devotion flowing through the everyday life of Muslim men and women.

At the end of a time of dhikr at the mosque, there is a slight shifting of position of women, leaning forward slightly, hands together, palms up. One woman leads in the du‘a. There are about five minutes of petition for Muslims throughout the world, for our sisters in Iraq, in Palestine, asking God to heal us, our land, our society. Don’t cut us off from your service. God, purify us from our sins and trespasses. The women join in with ‘Amin’ after each petition. The leader finishes by saying, “The Fatiha” (first chapter of the Qur’an) and the women murmur it quietly with her. At the end a number of them wipe their faces with their hands.

Du‛a finds its way into every part of life. It is not as bounded by rules of purity and language as salah, not as controversial as dhikr with its Sufi associations. ¹⁵ Du‛a includes invocations for rewards in the next life, but is perhaps even more important for seeking power and protection for the needs of this life. Hence it has an important place in the lives and practices of Muslim women, who must find a way to access divine power to fulfil their responsibilities for family harmony and welfare, amid the restrictions of bodily purity which are so weighted against women. Written, recited, or spontaneously uttered, du‛a voices the piety and deep desires of women and men across the Muslim world. I have seen women and also men gathering at shrines from Syria to Sumatra, murmuring prayers from the booklets that are usually in a small pile for the visitor seeking extra efficacy or baraka (blessing) from the holy person buried there.

Du‘a supplications are generally related to particular situations, more often than for specific needs. Thus invocations are prescribed for an extensive category of occasions such as entering and leaving the bathroom, putting on new clothes or undressing, when it thunders, or the new moon is sighted, when travelling, when you hear a dog bark, or when you see the first dates of the new season. ¹⁶

A common supplication is the A’audh b’illah / I take refuge in God, from whatever lurking dangers are encountered. This finds Qur’anic authority in Al-Nahl Q16:98: “and when you recite the Qur’an seek refuge with God from Satan the accursed.” ¹⁷ It occurs frequently in the books of recommended du‛a. “Taking refuge” is part of formal salah as well as the exclamation of the ordinary person in the street who has a fright.

Du‘a can go also beyond formal phrases and set repetitions, to express the inner hopes of the petitioner, whether in Arabic, another language, or the most inarticulate expressions of heart longing. In this, du‛a recognizes the possibility of God who is present to, and who may intervene in, every part of our lives as we seek Him.

Textbooks on Islam describe God as unknowable. Yet Muslim women around the world speak of God in relational terms, experiencing a sense of God’s closeness, of peace and calm when they pray. I have seen women weeping freely in both dhikr and du‘a. How can we build on their longing for relational closeness and emotional expression in pointing to God who comes to us in Jesus?

When we talk about prayer, using just one word in English can mean that we don’t get further than talking about salah prayer in Islam; and miss the different words that indicate different kinds of prayer for Muslims. The Bible uses a rich range of different words for prayer, expressing different kinds of prayer, formal and informal, different ways of speaking, singing or crying out, different body postures, both corporate and individual prayer. As we learn more about prayer in Islam, it takes us to seek more deeply to understand the riches of biblical expression and patterns of prayer, and ask how what we see in the Bible can be taken up into our own lives, individually and communally.

And we can ask how the Bible can help us engage with the different expressions and longings in the hearts of Muslim women and men.

Conclusion: Where have we been? And what are the implications?

We have walked into the heart of a Middle Eastern city, and into a Muslim home there: and in the home we found different windows, offering different perspectives on Islam and the lives of Muslim women and men. Becoming aware of these different perspectives, we asked how we approached fields of study. In focusing on a particular normative subject, what perspectives and insights might we miss out on?

As we looked at the house of Islam, looking into the windows in women’s space, we found a number of areas to explore. These included rites of passage, family, purity, and prayer. As we began to look, we found that even a short visit to these topics could offer new insights, not just about Muslim women, but about Islam and Muslims generally, and about rereading the Bible to engage with Muslim women and men. There are other topics we have not had space to explore here, including shame and honor, hospitality, blessing/baraka, and patronage. ¹⁸

From this look at the house of Islam, we can ask ourselves: What windows have we been looking through—and through what other windows and perspectives do we need to look, in our study, teaching, and engagement with people?

How can we follow Jesus’ example, and make diversity, rather than a single norm, the basis of our assumptions, what we say, or write or teach, and how we relate to others? Who are my Muslim friends? Who am I sharing life deeply with, so that every part of my life and theirs becomes a bridge for the gospel, for them to encounter Jesus Messiah? If we each one had a close Muslim friend, what would we learn, and more importantly, what would they see of Jesus?

As followers of Jesus, all our study should lead us to worship God more.

The questions that I have encountered through my meetings and conversations with Muslim women have helped me to see Jesus more clearly together with what he has done for us. These questions have taken me back to the Bible to read it again, and in doing so, to love more dearly the Jesus whom the Bible teaches. Through these encounters and questions I seek ways to invite my Muslim friends, women and men, to join me in following that same Jesus more nearly, day by day.