Consider This from NPR - If Allah Has No Gender, Why Not Refer To God As 'She?'

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

When people speak about God in various religions, the deity is typically referred to using the masculine pronoun "He."In Islam, Allah is not depicted as male or female — Allah has no gender. Yet Allah has traditionally been referred to, and imagined by many, as a man. Some Muslim women have begun to refer to Allah with feminine or gender neutral pronouns.NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Hafsa Lodi, who wrote about this movement in the religion magazine The Revealer, about what's driving this.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. How do you picture God? In my mind, you know, he was like an older Arab gentleman with like a strong jaw and like a beard. Aisha Chaudhry is a gender and Islamic studies professor at the University of British Columbia. And for the longest time, this is how she pictured Allah as a man. In Islam, Allah is neither male nor female. God is beyond gender.

I mean, if we're every time we speak about God, we're misgendering God, then why not she? So Chaudhry started using different pronouns whenever she talked about Allah, including with students. I do remember like a particular class where, you know, I just refer to God as she, and I just remember this male student, he had a physical reaction to me doing that. And I was a little bit like surprised by that, but I was also curious about that. I sort of realized, oh, this is this moment of discomfort is like a learning moment for all of us. Like it's a learning moment for this person. You know, I always say that to my students, like when you have a reaction, an emotional reaction, a physical reaction to something you're learning, it's important to pay attention to that and go deeper into that. Using feminine pronouns for God has given Chaudhry a different perspective. Using these different genders for God, I think helps me personally come up against the limitations

of my imagination of God. And it helps maintain the mystery around God and help me understand that I can't encompass all of God and that actually God is always beyond me. It struck me as blasphemous. It struck me as outrageous. It struck me as disrespectful and uncomfortable. That's Sophia Rahman. She's also a gender and Islamic studies scholar. When she first heard someone refer to Allah as she, Rahman was taken aback. So she sat with her discomfort for a bit, tracing where it could be coming from. Our first reactions to things, whatever they may be, whether we're talking about the pronouns with which we refer to Allah or anything else, really, the first reaction is our socialized reaction.

Rahman says it can be a problem when God is only ever depicted as male. Society is organized on patriarchal lines quite often, and so there is this undercurrent to so much of, you know, gendered issues that imply a superiority of the male over the female. After some self-reflection, she now almost exclusively uses gender-neutral pronouns whenever she's talking about Allah. For me, Allah is just this perfect blend of everything that is on a plane that is much higher and transcends these gender binaries. I don't need to think of Allah as a loving mother or a protecting father. Consider this. There's a quiet revolution happening. More Islamic scholars are using female or gender-neutral pronouns to refer to the divine, which raises questions about

how Islam understands women, gender, and God. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Tuesday C's apply. on the web at theschmidt.org. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. It's Consider This from NPR.

To understand this move towards feminine or gender-neutral pronouns for Allah, I spoke to Hafsa Lodi. She wrote about this movement in the religion magazine The Revealer. I guess what's revolutionary about it is just hearing the female pronouns or the feminine pronouns she and her, when referring to Allah, God, who has traditionally in Islamic thought and in Islamic scholarship always been referred to as he in the masculine pronoun in English. So

to hear Allah being referred to as she at a time when Islamic feminism is gaining so much traction, it's really revolutionary. So God has traditionally been referred to using masculine pronouns, but in Islam, although I know it's a vast and diverse religion, is Allah generally understood to have a gender? No, definitely not. I mean, the Quran, the holy text of Islam, implies time and again that Allah has no gender. Allah is beyond gender. Allah is no man, no woman. Allah has no spouse or children. But the Quran was revealed in Arabic, and linguistically, Allah is referred to as he, which. But the Quran was revealed in Arabic and linguistically, Allah is referred to as he, which is the masculine pronoun huwa in Arabic throughout the Quran.

And so, Hassaloti, what other reasons did people give you for this exploration? Yeah, so many. I mean, one of my friends, actually, after the article was published, she pointed out something that I hadn't even thought about before, was that, you know, for some females, the pronoun he might be triggering if they've had negative experiences with abuse, with males in positions of authority. And so for them, she might be a better way for them to connect better with the creator, with the divine. And I found that kind of beautiful in a way. One expert told you people still get into a tizzy about this. So tell us about the tizzy. What's the pushback? So yeah, there's a lot

of pushback. You'd think it would be mainly from men, but it's from women as well. The pushback is that the Quran is perceived to be an immutable text in Islam. You know, it's never been changed and we can't change it. In the Quran, Allah is referred to as he, huwa, the Arabic pronoun for he. So we cannot go in and change that. Allah never self-identified using an English pronoun, so there's no wiggle room to call Allah she. That's what the pushback would say. I could imagine a hundred arguments in response to that, but is it really about authenticity and devotion to the original text, or do you think it's about something more? Yeah, definitely. I think Muslim cultures particularly take patriarchal forms historically,

and so those in power don't want to see these gender hierarchies changed. They don't want to see them rocked in any way, and calling God she is like a big linguistic shift. Also, we are in a time when there's a lot of anxieties regarding pronouns in general so just the small matter of a pronoun shift which in itself shouldn't be so controversial there are all these kind of wider arguments and conversations going around that kind of are influencing the pushback to this has writing about it changed your ideas about god's gender and and how it is talked about in Islam? A few months ago, before I even started working on this story, I was stuck in traffic at a traffic

light with my daughter. My four-year-old daughter was in the back. This is right after picking her up from school. She really had to go use the restroom. And she's saying, no, mom, hurry up, hurry up. I really need to go. I really need to go. And so exasperated, I said, okay, pray to Allah that he turns the traffic light green really quickly. And so she's like, whisper something under her breath and says, okay, I did my prayer. I pray that she changes the traffic light to green. And so instinctively I said, he, you know, like I kind of barked it. And it was so interesting because I caught myself and I thought, no, it's so good. My daughter is, you know, like praying to God to turn something as minute as turning a traffic light green. But, you know, she's connecting and she kind of envisions God with this she or female form.

She's four years old. There's no harm in this. Why am I being that kind of upholder of the patriarchy and correcting her to he. And it really made me rethink how I teach religion to my children and how I kind of carry over these values that were kind of instilled in all of us in previous generations of Muslims. At the same time, I feel like my perspective has been broadened, knowing that there are scholars who argue the permissibility of using the feminine pronoun, knowing that, you know, everything's not black and white, changing the pronoun that you refer to your creator by, it really doesn't change your belief system. It doesn't change your religiosity in any sense.

It's just helping you connect with your creator in a deeper way. And I think that's really profound. That was Hafsa Lodi. Her piece for The Revealer is called The Muslim Women Using Feminine Pronouns for Allah. At the top of this episode, you heard reporting from NPR's Lina Muhammad. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.