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women_in_islam

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Hind bint Utba

She was the wife of Muhammad's final opponent, abu Sufyan. SHe eventually becomes a ruthless enemy of the Muslims before she and her husband convert.

“Women on both sides joined the troops in battle to fight, to nurse the fallen, and encourage the fighters” (p66).

“Go forward!

The Daughters of al-Lat,

the Daughters of the Morning Star

cannot abide cowards!

Are you afraid? Are you children?

Go forward!” (p87).

Source: Heath, Jennifer, The Scimitar and the Veil

Umm Omara

Also known as Nusayba bint Ka'b. She was one of the numerous early Muslim women who fought with Muhammad against the Meccans and other battles.

She is known to be a great healer and interpreter of dreams.

During a battle, she is led by Hind (above) and charges into battle to pull fallen soldiers off the battlefield and treat their wounds. At one point Muhammad is near her and she sees he is being attacked. She takes a sword blow for him and helps him fight off the men until help arrives. She is mortally wounded and carried off the battlefield where she lays next to her wounded sons.

Source: Heath, Jennifer, The Scimitar and the Veil

Khawla bint al-Azwar al-Kindiyyah

During the battle against Heraclius the Byzantine and his 200,000 soldiers, Khawla and her 3 captains, Alfra, Oserrah, and Wafeira, charge into battle and kick ass. Khawla is portrayed as “the black knight.” WHen it is asked how women came to be trained as great warriors, Oserrah exclaims, “The pegs” (217). This is a reference to the above and the women training to fight with tent pegs. Khawla was a Bedouin, so it is likely she was trained as a warrior since childhood.

Source: Heath, Jennifer, The Scimitar and the Veil

Aisha bint Abu Bakr

“Other noteworthy female fighters related to the Prophet were his favored wife Aisha bint Abu Bakr (614–678) the “Mother of Believers”, who led an army against Ali on the back of a camel at Basra (656)—hence the name of “Battle of the Camel” originated—and his granddaughter Zaynab bint ‘Ali (d. 682), a die-hard fighter whose embroilment in the Battle of Karbala (680) at the side of her martyred brother Imam al-Husayn would later become the symbol of female militancy against injustice among Shi’a Muslims.19 Historical memories around the leadership and fighting skills of these two exceptional women, especially in the latter case, have been essential to (re)-crafting modern gender roles in times of social and political upheaval. The burden of responsibility assumed by sister Zaynab after the death of al-Husayn is, for instance, one of the leitmotif of Shi’a devotional literature produced in nineteenth-century colonial India by Urdu poets like Mir Babar Ali Anis (1802–1874). “Zaynab Made Islam Safe from the Flames”, one of Anis’s most famed nawhas (lit. lamentation-dirge), offers a portray of the woman as an everlasting symbol of assertiveness and endurance in defeat.” (Previato 304)

From Neglected Genealogy of the Martyred Heroinby Previato, Tommaso

women_in_islam.1673123265.txt.gz · Last modified: 2023/01/07 20:27 by jl