In “The Challenges of Teaching and Learning in the Creation of Muslim Women’s Studies,” Amina Wadud, a well-known American Muslim philosopher explains her experiences as a researcher, teacher and a Muslim woman in the context of U.S. academia. She addresses Muslim-women studies inside that specific situation and the limitation of teaching of Islamic studies. Throughout the article she mainly focuses on Gender issue in Islam which is one of the major issues faced by Muslim in this modern world and how patriarchy in Islam is seen by the West. Throughout the Text she uses her own experience and challenges in the creation of women Islamic studies to explain that how such encounter remain a core inspiration to her and shaped her identity. She emphasizes on the popular media of the west that how it views Islam and spreads negative stereotypes about Islam; however, it also forms an important condition to her experiences in the study of Islam. Amina Wadud argues that to study and understand Islam and women, the Islamic intellectual discourse is essential and one should have sufficient background. What I like best about Amina Wadud’s Text is mentioning about her personal experiences to clarify the challenges that current generation faced under the heavy pressure of export of western ideas about Islam and Women through colonialism and cultural imperialism. The same experience is also discussed by Musa Dube in her book “boundaries and bridges journeys of a post-colonial feminist” that western culture and imperialism creates troubles to understand the biblical text (Dube 141). What capacity can the experience of women, Muslim activists and researcher would be more than significant however deficient advance of detailing our encounters and building up a basic cognizance?++ Am I stuck with these questions? I am frequently stuck with inquiries that do not have answers, like while I am reading one of the ideas of Edward Said’s Orientalism(Wadud 57), they make me aware of issues, the traps, the problems characteristic in the creation of information, my calling, and the activism I strive for. I have another worry that in the environment of academia where male normative view still subjugate intellectual questions, it seems to me that women scholars like Amina Wadud threat being reduce through their personal experiences when she decides to share it. Her criticism over orientalism(page no)’ the way in which non-muslin scholars in western academia have approached the study of Islam and view Islam, Wadud's analysis of the manners by which Muslim ladies have been examined and the power elements at work in such investigations is blunt, towards Male Muslim scholar and non-Muslim western scholars: “The neo-Orientalist propensity toward academic hegemony has allowed non-Muslim male and female scholars to give the determinations of what qualifies as academically acceptable within the Muslim Women’s Studies context, while bold-facedly constraining the diverse intraMuslim academic contributions. Overwhelmingly, Muslim male academics participate in or agree with this hegemony, because it justifies their own limited efforts to radically interrogate gender as a category of thought in the Islamic Studies areas of the academy, which still privileges them over Muslim women scholars” I agree with Amina Wadud at the point that this extractive approach to the study of Islam, as a part of orientalism, causes the demonization of Islam by political agendas of oppression and imperialism which is supported by intellectual discourse, and this led to construction of Muslim women’s studies which have face complications and obstacles in academia. She effectively uses her observation and experience as Muslim scholar to let us see why creation of women’s studies is important. When she explains that “Muslim women studies is the sub-discipline of Islamic studies”, she helps me to understand how vital it is to have sufficient knowledge of Islam. However, when she says “although we learn something even new from the existing literature by Muslim scholars, neo-orientalism or western feminist scholars in the past decade”,(wadud 72) I partially disagree with Amina Wadud because the literature which was written in past decades have no such evidence whether it is true or not, and why should we learn a new idea even past literatures do not contain enough information? Interestingly, her choice of words is awesome. When she is discussing about scholars who continue to write a literature in which they have very little information, she has used the word “vast umbrella” name given to Islam and women. I like this because I think this vast umbrella cannot be understood having insufficient information. Wadud has critically analysed how Islam is understood as patriarchal and how it is seen by the west. When she says that after she transferred to Islam she experienced the honor of being free and protected that she never felt before accepting the Islam. I felt that she is thankful to Islam because she is being free from the limitations where women are convinced to accept the honor in the domestic authority. However, the author seems to feel that she is not actually happy with the goal of the Islam for women. According to her, Islam pretends that such types of limitations do not exist, because, in Islam women had been given full rights fourteen hundred years before the west (wadud 60). In my opinion, this is true because still in today’s world men are not practicing authentic Islam. As I experience myself many times that I was being told to be a good Muslim girl. Such authorize concepts about women’s role create hurdles for Muslim women to express the perfect Islam that they wish to represent. She argues that restriction for women in concert with their interpretation and practicing of textual in Islam seems that in Islam patriarchy is being practicing (wadud 77). When I compare Ayesha’s view about the patriarchy in Islam and interpretation of text with the views of Wadud then I think both have similar ideas. Ayesha in her book “domestic violence and Islamic tradition” supports the gender-egalitarian interpretation of Quran that believes in equal rights to men and women in Islam (AYESHA page 8). For Ayesha justice is a central value of Islam (Ayesha 8-9). She expresses the human-divine relationship, and descriptions of the divine (theology) through the language of law and Quranic exegesis (ayesha 12) and the same is in Wadud’s article that Quranic exegesis helped her to sustain her faith by equipping her with the hegemony without limiting her sacred believes (wadud 81). In my opinion both women believe in men and women possess equal human value before Allah. Amina wadud has been gone through many hurdles in American academy e.g. the popular media of U.S.A ,that without having knowledge of Islam and what type of Islam is practicing, spread the negative stereotypes by defining Islam in their own way that hinder the learning process of women and Islamic studies in the academy. I feel very bad here that how the media put the life of many Muslims in truoble. Apart from this she experienced the discrimination and critiques by her students in the American Academy of Religion because of her wearing hijab. However, her concerns of being judged is what she says rather than who she is. In this essay I found wadud as absolutely brilliant and a challenger, and it truly appears through her past endeavors to affirm her place inside Islam as an African-American lady, her perceptions about sex, and her understandings of the Qur'an and how those elucidations influence the ummah in general. She composes with a power and assurance that are extremely splendid, and challenges a ton of unsafe suspicions about the hijab, sexuality, and femininity. Having said that, I do make the most of Wadud's methodology, however, have just one significant issue that her message is so far away to the right that she neglects to be relevant to the Islamic world outside of the most fundamentally liberal/Western circles.
