Category: Journey of Discovery

A review of Journey of Discovery: A South African Hajj

By Khadija Magardie

Published in Mail & Guardian, 12 January 2001

Journey of Discovery, the recently published collection of writings by activist couple Na’eem Jeenah and his late wife, Shamima Shaikh, opens with a dedication “for all those fearless enough to say and act according to what they believe is the Truth”. For anyone who has followed the lives and careers of this extraordinary couple, it could not have been more aptly put.

Their jointly authored book relating their experiences on the Muslim pilgrimage or hajj is less of what Jeenah himself describes as “a how-to book”, than it is a vivid and indeed brave testimony continuing the couple’s tradition of rigorously applying the Qur’anic principle of “standing out firmly for justice”  – at a sometimes heavy cost.

Recalling the lives of Shaikh and Jeenah, the words of Margaret Thatcher come to mind, who once remarked that her father had installed in her “upright qualities, which entailed a refusal to alter one’s convictions just because others disagreed, or because you became unpopular”.

Shaikh never got to see the book published – she died of cancer in January 1998, at 37, soon after the pilgrimage. Yet the words of the tenacious young activist speak throughout the book, doing on paper what she had constantly done throughout her relatively short but remarkable life. She spoke out for equal rights and participation for women in all areas of public and religious life, where others would not.

Earning the derision of many, Shaikh wore her supposedly pejorative name – “That mad Shaikh woman” – like a badge of honour. Whether it was leading groups of women to storm mosques to demand access for women, or battling traditionalists on the airwaves of the radio station she and Jeenah were instrumental in founding, Shaikh’s commitment to racial and gender equality was admirable because, throughout their lives, the odds were never stacked in their favour. But the fruits of her labour live on in the community radio station The Voice, and in the archives of the progressive Muslim newspaper Al-Qalam, which she used to edit.

Journey of Discoveryis primarily a narration of the pilgrimage to Mecca, a compulsory tenet of the Islamic faith. Its viewpoint – that of a couple so finely tuned to an “equality frequency” – makes it stand out and lends it a South African flavour. The book illustrates, perhaps even painfully, how the racial lens through which South Africans have been conditioned to see the world influences even the simplest issues. The one ugly incident that mars the high spiritual state for the couple, noted in the book, relates to a racially charged incident between a South African pilgrim and a group of dark-skinned pilgrims.

Shaikh questions the narrow interpretations of women’s role in the mosques back home, when she, a woman, could pray freely and without hindrance in the holiest site of Islam.

The interest for non-Muslim readers of this book is simple. It is a “spiritual travelogue” that opens a window to a ritual and place that few in fact have the opportunity to be privy to. The words speak for themselves, allowing the reader to “feel” the hajj. The book is simple, easy to read, but with a deeply touching message – that the path to God does not lie in the length of one’s beard, or the number of university degrees one has acquired.

Shaikh was well-known for disarming those who condemned her audacity at claiming her rightful place in religious life, and asked her to furnish her credentials for her claims.

“I’m just a housewife,” she would retort.

Journey of Discovery is published by Full Moon Press and is available from the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa

© Mail & Guardian

Journey of Discovery: A South African HajjBy Na’eem Jeenah and Shamima Shaikh

Review published in Al-Qalam, November 2000

What is unique about these reflections is that they are the experiences of a young activist couple whose identities as man and woman are lived in absolute equality. They become almost indistinguishable as the relationship reaches a plane of spirituality where mutual love and respect elevate them to gender neutrality, if such a spiritual union is at all possible! It is all the more poignant against the backdrop of Apartheid ravages, religious bigotry and personal travails that end the death of one of them.

The Journey of Discovery is unique in its authorship, the young writers are Muslim South Africans wedged between repression and transformation, committed to challenging injustice in all its guises. Shamima Shaikh and Na’eem Jeenah waded through the difficult times that often saw the potential of marginalised youth thwarted, their dreams constrained and shattered by structured tyranny. The Marxist ideologies and the Black Consciousness Movements were appealing asylums for most young South Africans in the seventies and eighties and the young couple immersed themselves in the student protests and activities. It wasn’t enough. They were too astute, too insightful to undermine the strength of their faith, their belief in the One Compassionate and Merciful God, and it is within the comforting receptacle of Islam that their social identities were burnished.

It was a bold step, the terrain was made even more hazardous by conservative backlashes and zealous exclusions and the misconceptions that abounded both within and outside the community. The Iranian revolution had shifted the focus to a wider screen and Muslims throughout the diaspora began to stir, much to the chagrin of dominant political and religious interests. This did not deter a vulnerable group of young Muslims in whose company Shamima and Na’eem sought to define their spirituality, God consciousness and social action.

In recent years many dissertations have been written about Muslims, some have sought to understand the position of Muslim women, a pitied and fashionable cause celebre for radical feminists who have made mileage out of every conceivable feature of Islamic life which seems anathema to their perceptions of liberation. Muslim writers, including Fatima Mernissi, Rana Kabbani and Nawal El Saadawi have retaliated in some measure to restore authenticity and dignity to the debate. The Journey of Discovery is the first work emanating from a uniquely South African experience; that it is written by a man and a woman in synergy lends itself to greater profundity than was perhaps intended.

The Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, symbolises the multiple levels of the Journey of Discovery, but it is by no means a ‘how-to book’, nor is it austere and staid in its style as most religious works tend to be. This account of the Hajj is personal and warm in its inclusion of the reader, intimate details delightfully become shared experiences as the couple discovers the joys of the rituals of performing their obligatory prayers. The immense thrill of being on the plains of Arafat among millions of other Muslims, in the heat of the Arabian sun and feeling an unbearable closeness to each other and God are treasured moments that make this account so different. The encounters, both spiritual and real are recounted within the context of the Qur’an and Ahadith , the utterances of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), the conversational short vignettes illuminate the subject with undertones of humour and sarcasm and some tongue-in-cheek observations of truly South African Muslim characteristics. It is a light and luminous text that even when dealing with the sad facts of Shamima’s illness and passing embody a spirit of surrender to the will of the Creator.

If there is a pulse that resonates throughout the book then it must be Shamima’s declaration that “I have struggled, I have exhausted myself because that is what I was created for, just as my ‘Imamah’ Hajar was created for. I can tell my Creator that I have striven.” Ultimately the Hajj – and life – is about struggle. Shamima’s life was about struggle. In the words of Amina Wadud, the eminent Muslim woman scholar, it was an ‘engaged struggle’ and Shamima was never afraid of engaging the forces that oppressed. She challenged the patriarchal structures that distorted the equality given to women by Islam, she forced men to open the mosques to women, she encouraged women to relook at the sciptures and revalue themselves as equal in the eyes of Allah, she set examples by initiating discussions around Muslim Personal Law and its inclusion in the Constitution, sounding the warning bells that if women did not insinuate equal participation at all levels of its formation much would be left to the male religious bodies and women would not be consulted and their equality imperiled.

Shamima’s emulation of Hajar, who ran between the hills of Safa and Marwa searching for water for her starving baby, is nothing short of a miracle. She believed that the striving is an end in itself and that struggle does not necessarily end in reward, but is a journey of the soul in its quest for Allah. The events recounted in the Journey of Discovery open a window to the brilliant and visionary mind of this gender warrior who still has a profound influence on women who have had the privilege of knowing her. Like Hajar, her struggle will not have been in vain as a younger generation of Muslim women strive to assert their equality and proudly reaffirm their faith knowing that women in Islam are unconditionally equal. If the feminist agenda is to change the world, then Shamima Shaikh was a Muslim feminist – and that is not a contradiction.