I was asked to speak about the topic better hidden question mark. This topic, the little blurb says should women just be homemakers and stay out of the affairs of men and the domain of men such as public life, formal education, specialized training, employment, financial independence, civic engagement and so on. You probably have an understanding why they put me to talk about this topic. Alright, let's get right to it then, Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Where we'll start the conversation is where the assumption comes from. The very first thing I'm going to tell you, my dear sisters, is that always question assumptions. Where does the assumption that so many of, we hear this, we hear this not just by the way, it's not just from men. I hear this very often from women too, that a woman should stay at home. It's an assumption. Where does the assumption come from? That's the question. You see when you say a woman's place is her home, it can mean a lot of different things and this is what we're going to break down together. I have heard in scholarly circles, both men and women, try to use the verse in the Quran that talks about, does anyone know the verse? Thank you. Wa qaruna fi biyu tikun. Now, those of you who have been attending the Friday Night Halukahs, we're going over the text called Mahalim al-Lisan, the prohibitions of the tongue. And just a few weeks ago, we talked about the prohibition of taking out of context verses of the Quran or hadith. You see the Quran was revealed in which it has multiple and heavy meanings. And even if you are a native Arabic speaker, you can't just open the Quran or even the body of hadith and say, oh, I think it means this. Even if that's what seems it like on the surface or seems like a literal explanation of the verse. You see this ayah is ayah 33 in chapter 33, al-Ahzab. And it starts out, wa qaruna fi biyu tikun, but it is right in the middle of a series of verses that come before us. The context is everything. You have to understand, sabab al-nuzul. Why did this ayah, why was this ayah revealed? What was the sabab of its revelation, the reason for its revelation? There's a series of verses. And it starts out addressing the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and his wives. It's a series of verses that talk about at the way, you know, the point of it is sallallahu alayhi wa sallam saying to the wives of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that you wives are the mothers of the believers. You have a special place in Islam. You thereby, you have special rules that belong only to you. Furthermore, you have a choice. If you wish the dunya and the embellishments of the dunya, the Prophet can free you and you don't have to be his wife. But if you choose to be a wife of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, you have special rules that apply to you. If you want Allah and his messenger, these are the rules. And this waqaruna fi biyutikun is embedded right in the middle of these verses because if you look even at verse 32, the verse right before it, and the verses prior to that too, they start out with ya nisa annabi, oh wives of the Prophet. It's talking to specific people. And thereby, the rules are for a specific set of people, the wives of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And it says, lasunnaka ahadin min annisa. You are not like any other woman. Now, sisters, when people take something from the Qur'an and try to extrapolate it and apply it to everybody, you can see where the problem is. Let me tell you, in case anyone's still feeling a little like, well hold on, isn't it supposed to be that we understand these are the wives of the Prophet? What about the mothers of the believers who have very special rules even after the death of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam?  They are almost like an intensive training with the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to be the educators and teachers because they are the ones who are living directly with him and they become the teachers of our ummah, right? So somebody might say, but wait a second, we thought that this was something that people often say, a woman's place is our home, a woman's place, where is it coming from? No, we have different ethnicities here, so let me try something out. I've heard with my own ears, people who are, and I don't want to any, please don't be offended by this, but these are true statements that I've heard. I've heard some Moroccan people say, and very similar statement by the way by many of our Pakistani community, who will say something to the effect of the woman only should leave her home twice, have you heard this? She leaves her home, probably other ethnicities too I'm sure. She leaves her home, her father's home to her husband's home, and from her husband's home to the, so you know this statement, and you know it so well that you immediately quoted it. Or I can't, I can't do the Persian subhanAllah but our Afghan sisters will say, and you have to help me with the wording here, that woman should either be home, or what? Or in the grave. So you know the statement, nonsense. When I was younger, I think I would have been a lot more careful and PC and careful in my wording, and I think after all the years of therapy that I've done and counseling of families and people, this is cultural nonsense. And it has caused so much pain and so much difficulty for so many people unnecessarily. And I'm not blaming just the men, because we women do this to ourselves too. And we do it to each other as women. And it is incredibly important to understand context, because context is everything. And I want to keep this conversation very balanced. Ansa Sosen, who's actually here last conference, if you remember her, much along with my very dear teachers, had this beautiful model, and I want to start with this, and I'll probably wrap up with it again at the end. She calls it the circles of concern. Your circles of priorities. Your circles of influence. Think of it as a circle, within a circle, within a circle, within a circle, concentric circles. And at the core, if you really want to know your priorities, the core is what? Is your relationship with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala? And nothing tops that, nobody. Now here's where people get confused. You see there's a pre-marriage set of circles, and there's a post-marriage set of circles. Because pre-marriage, the circle right after your relationship with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is your relationship with your parents and your siblings, then comes your extended family, then comes your community, then comes the ummah, then comes all of humanity. Post-marriage, there is another circle for those who are, Allah has written for them to get married, which is not everyone. There's another circle that comes in, and it kind of elbows out the circles a little bit. And people get really confused at this one. Because right after the relationship with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, right at the core, once married, the next circle out is actually the spouse and the children. They go, oh, what about my parents? Well listen, this is why Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala put it this way. In his eyes, Jalla Jalaluhu, and how he judges us, he puts and says, who is the only person who can be responsible for this circle? Earlier this week I was doing a training for Imams, and I said this exact same thing to them. I say this model by the way to everybody. Imams, non-Muslims, here are your priorities, right? Right? Because it's a human thing. Not just the women's thing, not just the Muslim thing. And I said to the Imams, that next circle out after Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is your wife, and no one else can be her wife but you. Now the opposite could be ostensibly different, not our conversation for today per se, and my guess is not many of you would want to be in that case. But your spouse is your spouse, and no one else can be your spouse, that person's spouse but you, which is why they're in the next circle.  Other people can parent and help, but no one else can be the biological parent, which is why that's there. And for siblings, if you have them, the parents, the responsibility of parents can be shared. Do you see what I'm saying? Okay. This is true men and women. Which is why when we look at the ayah we're looking at, the concept of isn't it better to be at home, Islam says it is encouraged for both men and women. There is no difference. The priority of your spouse and your children and your home is equal to men and women. No one else can be the husband other than him, no one else can be the father other than him.  Do you see what I'm saying? Which is why the companions of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, understood this so well. So you look at someone like Abad Dardat, one of the famous companions of the Prophet and he's just beautiful saying that he says, nama sumatul rajuli baytuh. The best monastery for a man is his home. It's for men and for women because the priority as we showed in the circles is for men and women. So this concept of be in your home and you women should always be in their home, let's look at the Mufassirun. Let's look at the scholars of hadith. Now this is beautiful. Earlier we heard An-Sunni had recites, masha'Allah. And she recited it in the house recitation. As you know there are 10 different recitations of Quran and there is a beauty in the fact that there is some differences and nuance, most of them overlapped by the way, but there are some words and some differences between them. This verse is one of them. In the Hafs recitation we read Waqaruna fi biyutikuni, which translates into, again talking to the wives of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and settle or stay in your homes. But that's not how it's always recited because in the scholars of the narrators of Kufa and Basra, they recited as Waqaruna fi biyutikuni, with a kasra, Waqaruna, which changes the meaning, not totally, but there is a different meaning. And there it means and remain dignified and remain dignified and serene in your homes. So there are scholars even in the recitations of the Quran and the tafsid that said even for the Prophet s wives, there is a difference of meaning, let alone the rest of us. And so then the scholars of tafsid come and say, and you have the very famous Tabbari, Imam Tabbari, who says that because of this difference of meaning, and even in the original, I mean to say in the Hafs recitation of the word, whether it's Qaruna or Qirna, they have both said that this means that it is an encouragement, but not an obligation. Likewise, Ibn Battal said that this is not an obligation, but an encouragement. You have another, Ibn Hajar. These are all Mufassir, all scholars of Tersir, exegesis of the Quran, and he says the same thing, it's not compulsory. So where do you get people on the mimbar in the khutbahs, because I've heard it in a khutbah, and stay in your homes, right? Stay hidden, it is better. It's better for men and women. What is this thing, this fascination about it's better for women, because if everybody knew their priorities, everybody would be spending more time at home, right? And then we don't have these very odd questions about like, should a woman get married or educated? Why is this an either or question? Why is it an either or question? Because that's not the tradition of Islam. That's cultural nonsense, masha'Allah. That's not the tradition of our noble predecessors, not of the women, not the Prophet's wives, our mothers of the believers, and certainly not of the Sahabiyahs. You want stories of the Sahabiyahs here? Let's do this. Let's talk about some of the Sahabiyahs quickly, masha'Allah, because you see what happens when we rely on knowledge of our deans, see what happens if a woman stays at home, I love this, one of the scholars said, if the woman who really does is forced to be home, then she's not able to engage in society, learn and trade and finance and figure out knowledge and go and seek and come and travel. All the benefits of that are taken away. So you know what happens instead? Literally taken in the book it says, she becomes petty. If you are not living a purposeful life, something with purpose and meaning to it, then life is just the chore, the chores of life, and it becomes petty. The conversations become petty. The conversations about what she wore and who got what person, what shoes and what car and who's kid went to what school, and it starts to become very petty or even worse. Yeah, I think that person on that show should have married that person. At that person, could you imagine this and that happened, and that happened, and this happened, and no, that bachelor should have married this. But I would have been out of garbage.  And yes, and maybe you call me harsh, fine, but it's petty. It's pettiness. What are you spending your time actually doing? I didn't ask you to be a scholar of Islam. But with the focus, men and women, at leading a purposeful life, there's no time for this nonsense. Masha'Allah, right? Look at the, look, if you want to, let's, let's, now that we kind of question, now that we kind of question that assumption of that ayah, about whether women should be home and hidden, okay? Now let's look at proof. Proof from the Sahabi'at. Let's look at directly at the time of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Because sometimes when we talk about modern cases, they're like, ah, but what about, what about the Prophet's time? Okay, let's talk about the Prophet's time. Let's talk about one of my favorite, I don't have a lot of favorite stories, but I love the story of Khawla. Khawla bin Thalaba. Do you remember the story of Khawla? I love the story of Khawla. So Khawla bin Thalaba is a very important companion, Sahabi'ah of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But the story I'm going to tell you here takes place as she's an older woman, and it's at the time of the Khalifa of Sayyidina Umar, okay? And she walks up to Sayyidina Umar, who's walking through the, with his, with his companions, you know, the Khalifa, right, the, the kawaf of the Muslims, and she stops him. He's on his way for another meeting, and she stops him. And so he sees her, and he goes to her and talks to her. And she tells him, it's beautiful.  And she tells, now this is the Khalifa, okay? Umar, out of all people, okay? And she says to him, I remember you when you were just Umayr. You were just little Umar, masha'Allah, in the marketplace of Al-Qas. And I remember when you were just herding your sheep with a stick. Now aunties do this, they totally embarrass you, right? Okay, here's, you're some important person, and they're totally embarrassing you. Masha'Allah. And so, and then she says to him something very heavy. She says, fear Allah in your role as Khalifa and taking care of people. And know that if you fear the threat of punishment in the hell, in the hereafter, you'll realize that the hereafter is not that far away. And if you fear death, then know you're going to miss opportunities in this life. And you focus on the present and be careful with that responsibility of the people that you're in charge of. So she's giving him this advice, but this is the Khalifa, Umar. So his companion says to him, you left and you got late for the meeting with a man to talk to this old woman. That's what he said, that's literally what he said. So Umar says to him, whoa, he literally goes, whoa to you. Do you know who this is? This is, this is Khawla bint Baalaba. This is the woman who if she were to speak to me all day long, I would stand there. Unless it was a prayer time, I'd go and I'd come back and keep listening to her. Because who am I not to listen to her when Allah listened to her from the seventh heavens. And because of her complaint to Allah, Allah revealed verses in the Qur'an. What am I referring to? Surat al-Mujad. Ad-Sami'ah. Allah has heard the one who complains to you about her husband in the Qur'an. This one, earlier in life, she had went to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam because her husband had tried to divorce her and mistreat her. And she complained to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and long, long story short is that at the time, the Prophet can't speak of his own desire. He has to use right revelation. He said, I don't have an answer yet and Allah sent the revelation to answer her question. So here's Umar saying, who am I not to listen to her when Allah has listened to her from the seven heavens and revealed verses. They had no problem walking up to the caliphs. They had no problem going to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam asking questions. Look, another example quickly. Ummat Darda'a, who overheard one time the Khalifa, Abdul Malik ibn Marwan, all right? And in the night time, he was looking for his servant, his helper. And so he calls out to him and the servant didn't answer. Maybe he was sleeping. So he curses him and she hears this. In the morning, she says to him, okay, Lif, I heard you curse your servant. So they check them. They didn't just, they don't just question and ask and go up to, they even check them, right? If women weren't out and about and part of the system and part of the society and part of the education and part of the learning, how do you get stories like this? So here is Ummat Darda'a saying to the Khalifa Abdul Malik, saying to him, have you not heard of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's hadith where he says, those who curse others shall not be accepted as intercessors or witnesses on the Day of Judgment. Oh well, almost. This is wrong. No, for my activist sisters out there. This is what you call truth to power. Do you understand what I'm saying? This is really important that we start to understand who our noble predecessors were. So when people start to say, no, no, no, sister. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Young person. Get married, stay at home. The issue isn't about marriage or about staying home because we all need to stay at home. The issue is about integrating and understanding and educating yourself about the deen. That if you have questions, the woman in Sahabia would hear something and if they weren't sure of it, they'd go up to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam themselves. They asked the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam for their own day of learning just with him. But they would also be, they would also be at the general learning circles with the men and the woman and at the prayers. Because we have several narrations where it says, and I was praying in the first line of the woman, right after the men. Like, you know that they were there. Look, I'm going to share with you one more person because I just love her, Masha Allah. I have too many people in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the stories. But her, that I love, her name is Shefa, Shefa El-Adawiyyah. No. Little later, we're gonna talk as I close up, we're gonna talk about financial literacy and financial independence, because this comes up as a question too. You tell me how in counseling, literally in counseling today, there are women who I'll ask them that there's tensions in the marriage and the issues and financial issues and I'll say, do you have access to your own account? It's a joint account. Do you have access to the account? No. You don't know how much is in your joint account? No. You don't have a way, no. Everything is blocked off. I'm like, there is a real problem, an issue when women don't have financial literacy. This is something Allah has given you and as Muslims on a silver platter for the first day of Islam. Why do we let our cultures take it away from us? Oh, that's what they do about, no, no, no, no, no. Garbage, nonsense. It's not Islam. How do you have Shifa Al-Adawiya? Speaking of Sayyidina Umar and the Khalifa of Sayyidina Umar, he appoints the first minister of finance of Islam, the very first minister of finance of Islam, is a woman. And her name is Shifa Al-Adawiya. Shifa is actually a nickname, her name is Layla, originally Layla Al-Adawiya, and they named her, they called, they named her Shifa. And she was given the role of all of the finances of the market. Now, when I say the market, do you understand what this means? You have to be able to go into the market. You're dealing with men and women, you're dealing with money, and you're dealing with debts and bankruptcy, you're dealing, and then she had this role that if anybody didn't know the rules, now, look at this, the rules of trade and finance in Islamic fiqh, fiqh al-mu'amalat, the fiqh of transactions, in the section of the financial, this is, we would, as fiqh students, we would call this chapter the headache chapter. Because there's so many complicated rules that, well, Allah ha'ani, masha'Allah. And so here, the most fiqh, the most knowledgeable of this topic of finances was a woman. And he appoints her this role, and it says she would go into the market, and if she saw anybody who didn't know, men or women, who didn't know the rules well, or was trying to scam somebody, or was trying to cheat, or just didn't know the rules, she'd kick him out of the market. Masha'Allah. And under her leadership, the finances, the treasury of the Muslims expanded greatly. Is someone going to question the wisdom of Amr? That he puts a woman in this role, and puts a woman in the marketplace, and knows who's best suited for the job? Yet we can't even get women on our masjid boards, let alone be the treasurer of the boards. Okay, masha'Allah. Now, somebody could say, okay, you started the ayah about Qadrna fi butzikun, and the wives of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, does that just mean that they're home? I want to clarify this point in case anyone was confused by it. We don't have time to go into all the different wives of the Prophet, but let's just say one. Let's use one, maybe one that we don't speak of, frequently, umsalama. Okay, you have umsalama, for example, who we know not only was she present in a lot of everyday matters, but the wives were also present in the battles. They didn't just stay home. They were always part and parcel of the Muslim society. And so umsalama, one time there's a story about her where she's doing her hair, and they hear the call out for the Prophet calling out for people to come and listen. And so she says to her helper, she says, I'm gonna go, and the helper says, no, no, he's calling the men. He says, no, she said, no, the call said all people. I'm a person? I'm going out to see what the Prophet said. And so she goes out and she listens, and the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, that day was talking about the hawt, the pool, right? And later, what's interesting about the Prophet's wives, Aleyhi Nassalam, is that Aleyhi, you know, Ridwana Allah, Aleyhi, is that they would learn the same lesson that the Prophet said publicly later in their homes. Like he would give them their personal lesson. Remember, he was training them to become our teachers. So she was gonna hear this again later, but she wanted to be out there in the fabric of society. There are other narrations that talk about in the battles. You could see the wives of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam back and forth, running back and forth, trying to give people water and help people and remedy people and even, even she felt, the reason she got her nickname, she felt, the one about the finances, not a wife, but one of the companions, Sahabiyah, is because she was actually also on the battlefield helping medicaid. So she got the nickname because she was very specialized in being able to treat sores, right? Polymaths, Mashallah. And so, and then, and think about Umsalama too, in another instance, when the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was trying to enter Mecca the first time and was stopped. And he wanted to tell all his companions, we need to turn back and nobody wanted to listen. Who did he ask advice from? Umsalama, his wife, he said, I don't know what to do.  Indicating, it's done. And then they will follow you and shave their hair and everyone can leave. Now, how would he have asked her advice if she wasn't there? Do you understand what I'm trying to say? It is really important to understand the context and to question the assumptions about what does it mean a woman should be home. Now, we talked about priorities. Where I'm gonna end my sisters, inshallah, is really thinking about things like education. I said before, why is it an either or between education between our religion, between marriage, between having children? There's a balance. Here's the balance. There should be not some false Islamic pretext that people say, oh, but Islam says it would be better for you to be a mother. I saw my teachers balance beautifully whatever Allah gave them. Some women, Allah gave them marriage, some didn't. And from those who were married, some Allah gave them children, some didn't. But whatever Allah gives you, there's a perfect balance to the best of your ability. But you know what that means? You know what happens in our societies? We have extremes. We push people, push, push, push to education. And so you have women who are told, prioritize your education, prioritize your job, prioritize climbing up that corporate ladder to the neglect of potentially getting married and forming a family if it's even written for her. Then you have the other extreme of, no, no, no, forget higher education. You'll never get married and have children. Extremes, both are extremes. And then we have members of our society that want it all. We have family members and aunties of ours who want everything. They want you to be the superwoman. But then when you really need them, where are they?  My family told me we can see that you can do higher education, but you're gonna get married too. And so while you're doing this, you're going to, we're gonna figure this out in parallel. And when you do that, you need to show up. And they showed up, that's a botical law. People come up to me all the time and say, how did you do this? And I say, I didn't do anything. There were a lot of people whose hands were in the pot allowing for this to happen. My eldest who's here with us, my love Lester, inshallah, will tell you that there were a lot of hands in raising the children. Subhanallah, that there were a lot of hands helping out because if you're going to push forward somebody to join and be leadership and be in leadership and be in education, then into traditional societies, it said that there were at least four hands for every child that was born, four different pairs of hands that could help out. In our nuclear family type societies that we have here, especially in the West, there's some research that says it is the nuclear family that is actually one of the reasons for the amount of child abuse and neglect that we have. There is something to be said about multiple hands helping out. And if you're going to push your kid towards education, you better be there when they need your help for kids too, right? Just saying, inshallah. And if they are not educated, then we deal with people believing weird cultural and misconceptions like what we have here. I talked already about financial independence and how it's important that we have this and I'll just ask you this. Last conference, I spoke about Khadija, Radhya Allah Wanha. How do you have Khadija having an entire business, incredibly wealthy unless she had financial literacy? How do you have Ashifat that we were talking about today being the minister of finances unless this was something already part of what the woman did of Islamic societies? Lastly, civic engagement, and this is where I'll end inshallah, serving your communities. If the circles of priorities, I said I'll end with this inshallah and so if you were back with it, if the circles of community mean that your core, which is your relationship with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is solid and your family is in a good place, then of course, by all means, part of charity isn't just money that we give. Charity in Islam is also our time. It is our knowledge. It is our effort. That is charity. When you tutor somebody with the knowledge you have, that's a form of charity. It doesn't have to be dollars in a box. When you volunteer of the time, you say I don't know a lot, but I have time to help, right?  That's a form of charity, even if you didn't pan anything out of the pocket because you didn't have much. All of these are forms of charity and forms of civic engagement. When you take the woman out of that, or you go to the other extreme of what we call the social justice warriors, right? You end up with what? You end up with people, and I'm gonna use this example because I have people in my life who love dolphins, beautiful, majestic creatures, but they're all about save the dolphins, and their house is a wreck. Save the dolphins, and for the younger people, your room is a mess. This is a lack of understanding our priorities. It can't be one extreme or the other. Masha'Allah. And lastly, our yardstick, my worry about civic engagement and people going into social justice type work, is people jump on a bandwagon of anything and everything that's happening today, even if it doesn't apply to us. We have a yardstick that we measure things by, and that's called the Sunnah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. If that cause out there fits with Islam, by all means, help. And if it doesn't, you have no business in that. Sheikh Hisharawi said this beautiful statement, and some of you have been in my holocaust, I've heard this before because I love it, and he says that mankind has been in darkness and Allah gave humans the ability to try to figure out light. So somebody figured out a candle and that was the amount of light they were able to bring. The next person figured out electricity, and so they created a light bulb. So more light and more sustainable light. The next person said, let's put multiple light bulbs on a chandelier, more light. Now you have lights that are so powerful when you think of a stadium, athletic stadium at night, playing a game at night, it is so bright in that stadium, right? When you're in it, it feels like it's daytime. That's how bright it is. So different people have been able to get different amounts of light depending on the gift Allah gave them. But when the sun comes up in the morning, you literally have to squint to see whether that stadium, powerful stadium lights are even still on or not. The sun is like the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in his sunnah. It outshines everything and anything that's man-made and that humans came up with. And so we have a yardstick. It's called the sunnah, the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. If your civic engagement falls within it, alhamdulillah. And if it doesn't, toss it out. And so I hope, insha'Allah, as we talk about this and really talked about the different facets of a woman being hidden or outside or inside, we understand some core things. We all need to do better in our homes. We all need to do better in our priorities. And insha'Allah, this is inspiring to really help us move forward, baraka allahu fi kun. Forgive me for any mistakes. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala help us and preserve us and really make us from the type of woman who understand our priorities because it is with thought that Allah gives us the baraka and the tawfiq, the success to really be able to do well. We'll sallallahu alayhi wa sallam ma ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Thank you so much. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.