Musalla | Imam Afroz Ali on equality

Bismillah.

Musalla is an Arabic word for our Malay version for surau - a small room in a building or an outbuilding reserved for Muslims to perform our five daily prayers when we are out and about. Musalla at shopping malls in Malaysia is known for being below par. The one at BSC (Bangsar Shopping Centre) in KL, in my opinion, is par excellence. 

  

Today at the BSC musalla, Imam Afroz Ali of the Seekers Guidance and the founder of Al Ghazali Institute of Australia gave a talk on 'Equality in Islam.' The event was jointly organized by Radical Middle Way of UK and Young Muslims Project of Malaysia.

It was my first time attending an event in KL, which had a different approach in the way it was moderated. Imam Afroz wanted it to be interactive, and attendees were encouraged to discuss and express their views openly.

Because I wasn't expecting that, because I was feeling exhausted from traveling and because my comprehension level of spoken English was rather weak, I could not absorb as much information and knowledge as I had hoped.

Some points I did manage to jot down: 

• Love needs not to have a definition. Love may have a description of how you have experienced it.
• We should not worry about form. We should get ourselves concerned with meaning instead.
• The secret of knowledge is service.
• Man and women are biologically different. Research shows that colors mean nothing to an infant male as he sees motion more than anything. A female infant, on the other hand, recognizes color better and is more conscious of soft and hard objects. 
• Our education system is male-centric.
• Men tend to look for a solution, and women just need to express themselves.
• When we speak of equality, an aspect of it is sameness.
• There is a 'sameness' between men and women, but we are different, and in the eyes of Allah, we are the same except in terms of piety (taqwa).
• Two key Arabic definitions concerning equality for us to note:

1. Musawa - from Arabic word sawa or sawiya meaning equality, which means to be the same, to put on the same level, to put on equal footing, non-discrimination before the law. 
2. Adala - means justice of equality that is to be fair and impartial to rights, the honor of integrity, and non-discrimination before the law.

When talking about equality in Islam, we should use adala instead of musawa. Equality in Islam is about returning to "whole." It is about equitable justice. It's about the wholeness of equality.  

One typical example is the authority a man has over a woman in a marriage. Imam Afroz said a man being a leader is not a privilege but a responsibility. Though a man may seem to have the upper hand in a marriage, he is actually subservient to a woman, his mother. So overall, in Islam, this wholeness of equality becomes apparent. 

    

Allahu a'lam.