By: Ustadh Ubaydullah evansResident Scholar, ALIM 
“Empty feminine packages...and blank slates,” this is how Umm Zakiyyah describes the self-effacing ethic Muslim women are expected to assume in their romantic partnerships. In her view, the Muslim community has arrived at this impoverished understanding of womanhood thru an inversion of Islamic teaching.
The Qur’anic teaching is clear in its mandate to men to “maintain and protect” women. However, attitudes like those expressed above encourage women to shrink in order to maintain and protect the egos of men in their fragility. Umm Zakiyyah is a novelist, spiritual leader, and advocate for women. Her work focuses on fostering wholistic wellness and equanimity through purposeful engagement with Islamic practice. My wife, Hadiyah Muhammad, had been studying with Umm Zakiyyah and encouraged me to review her recent book, But Do You Feel Safe with Him? 10 Reasons Why Performing Femininity Never Works in Love. I read the book and am thankful to them both for an opportunity to enrich my perspective. 
We live within a media landscape that degrades encounter and trivializes exchange. When ideas are reduced to soundbites and thinkers and social commentators are herded into camps, we don’t need to talk. Conversation is easily substituted for affiliations: Liberal/conservative, Left/Right, Republican/Democrat, traditional/progressive, feminist/red-pill, activist/scholar, immigrant/indigenous, woke/MAGA, etc. In that connection, regrettably, when I was initially introduced to Umm Zakiyyah’s work, I dismissed it. I didn’t dismiss it as lacking substance or value—not in the least. I had peripherally heard some of her instruction and could clearly discern the depth and profundity of her thinking. However, I dismissed—or perhaps it’s better to say ‘contextualized’—her work in the same way I would much of my own: The leader of an affinity group speaking to the concerns and priorities of the members of that group.
Put succinctly, if Hadiyah found value in Umm Zakiyyah’s teaching and it resonated with her as a woman, that was great, Mashallah. But me? “...and every people knew its watering place...” {2:60} This verse literally refers to each tribe of the Israelite nation quenching its thirst at a place that had been designated for it. Figuratively, the verse is used to describe our spiritual thirst. We, too, know our watering places. And seeing as though the classes Hadiyah had been attending were restricted to women, there was no way I thought Umm Zakiyyah’s work would contain anything for me. Men have developed an entire discourse online—sometimes facetiously referred to as the “manosphere”--where women are often the topic of conversation but very rarely conversational partners. I assumed Umm Zakiyyah’s work to be a contribution to a discursive equivalent but attuned to the needs of women. Thus, when encouraged to read the book, I prepared myself to engage empathetically with the concerns of women, but I didn’t expect to be challenged. So when the text turned to the topic of Qawwama or support that husbands are commanded to offer their wives, I immediately thought of the hard-working men I know. These are men who take great pride in providing for their families and they should be esteemed. Nonetheless, it is important that men not suspend their support at financial provision. Being a supportive husband, the author asserts, also entails providing emotional security. Emotional security is a difficult idea for me for a couple reasons. Most notably, I had grown-up with a single working mother with an incredibly positive morale. Our family experienced its share of trials but I can’t recall my mother (May God preserve her) ever expressing the full range of emotion that I would now simply identify as human. She was a single pillar holding our family together without any external support. It was never SAFE for her to express fear, frustration, exasperation, disappointment, pain, etc. I had been raised with an ethic that treated heightened identification with negative emotion as a sign that something inside of me needed adjustment—never anything extraneous to me. And while that teaching taught me great resilience (or to feign indifference when you lacked resilience), it also taught me to have disdain for vulnerability. Umm Zakiyyah forced me to consider: If I give little quarter to negative emotion within my own experience, how can I offer my partner a safe space to live, process, work-through and ultimately transcend those emotions in her experience? Quite the reverse, if I refuse to acknowledge the negative emotion I experience, I will meet her negative emotion with scorn, ridicule, indifference, and hyper-rationalization. If the space to be authentic in one’s feelings and emotions is denied, the only thing that remains is performativity. Hence, the subtitle of the book, 10 Reasons Why Performing Femininity Never Works in Love. Refreshingly, the prescriptions and insights contained in the book weren’t directed at instructing women to engage in “equity wars” with the men in their lives. Nor did the book reinforce a hackneyed “us vs them,” adversarial discourse. The book is unapologetically written from the perspective of a woman and its author doesn’t shy away from pathos. However, the text shines most brightly in its ability to challenge men to be better to women through challenging them to be truer to themselves. My fear is that, as men, we will forfeit our role as protectors and supporters of our families through insecurity. Is our position in the lives of our women so precarious that the slightest critique or criticism from them should provoke an angry rebuttal? For some of us, this isn’t rhetorical. Is it that existing under a regime of sense that condemns us, our faith, our heritage doesn’t leave room for our women to challenge us without demoralizing us? I don’t know the answer to that question. However, it was enriching to dialogue with Um Zakiyyah about her book and move beyond silos and echo chambers. After reading her book, I was able to host her at Beni Adam for a series of conversations that we will be releasing this month. Please join the conversation.
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