Think of all the problems
we have right now in this world;
The history of it says
they were mostly led and participated and designed
top to bottom almost entirely by men
By that I mean women were largely excluded from the process most of the time
Especially in terms of decision-making.
Meaningful participation for women was just NOT a thing.
Life in this male-dominated structure kind of feels like a hamster wheel.
Generation after generation of women being shut out from coming up with solutions
and when you think of the women at home and the sort of solutions and work they do at home
and kenduris (large Malay gatherings) and events
and how great your aunts can be at mobilising and making stuff happen
and taking charge of family discussions and family issues...
Imagine that sort of energy and potential harnessed on a larger scale
in all the industries of our world
and in major decisions
from economy to policy
environment to education
Half of the world are women and girls
Half of them.
Alhamdulillah more women in history educated now than ever before!
Why are they not being included?
Why are structures still shutting them out from accessing power?
Why are we still limiting women
and policing them at every turn?
This kind of stuff is exactly why I’m feminist.
It's not because I hate men
it's just that I really believe the world will get better when more educated girls
and more educated women
are given the training, and space, and power to be capable
brainstorm ideas and solutions to a variety of world issues
to be taken as seriously as boys and men are
work side by side even!
The world cannot get better if we keep pressuring girls to repeat the same social patterns as women of the past
I am not my grandmother today, and I’m not my mother either.
At this age my mother was married with a kid
Although I know many people my age now married with a kid
at this exact age i just finished learning a Qur'anic Intensive course with Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan
There were a lot of women in that room
I now have one less middle-person, middle-man, in between my relationship with God.
I can now read the Qur'an for myself.
I am taking power away from someone who I would usually need to listen to about the Qur'an
and I have more on me.
and I get to read the Qur'an with my perspective.
(For) a lot of Islamic scholarship, women were excluded from for centuries
During the "Golden Age of Islam" there wasn't a single woman in that room.
Contrary to what the Prophet (ﷺ) did at the time with women
He encouraged them to participate meaningfully in public.
Instead of seeing me as a target or something that needs to be controlled
and commented on and criticised and feedbacked.
I want to uplift everybody that a male-dominated structure has disappointed.
This includes men, and it includes sexual minorities, it includes refugees—
A lot of things are feminist issues!
Migrants and refugees are feminist issues.
Sexual minorities are a feminist issue.
The financially oppressed are feminist issues.
People who are milked for profit and domesticated on this cocktail of consumerism, entertainment, and monthly salaries—
salaries they don't even spend to support and uplift people who DON'T have these opportunities that they have
That's a feminist issue!
I think it's easy for feminists to sort of just focus on  defending and explaining and policing
importing Western feminism into our own spaces
that it becomes the equivalent of women who just stay at home all the time
instead of taking their true potential out of the house and into the world
I really do believe women have so much potential to fix problems
We already see them very differently than men do.
Now's the best time for women to stand up and participate meaningfully
demand that this [disrupting male-rule] thing happens.
This is the change I want to see in the world!
To stop wars from happening
(because srsly wars are the kind of stuff people decide on when it's just a room full of men we all know this)
We could be spending our budgets differently
The priorities that we have right now could change entirely when
there are an equal amount of women in the room making those decisions with men.
and not be made fun of based on dinosaur stereotypes of what women should be doing with their time.
We shouldn't be focusing so much on defending feminism anyway!
We live in a patriarchy right, so people are not going to be able to understand feminism
because feminism resists and wants to dismantle the patriarchy
and when someone wants to resist and dismantle everything you stand for, you're going to
... spend all your energy and money insulting and belittling and painting the worst image of these women.
I frankly see nothing wrong with feminists.
All they want is as much opportunity and space as their male counterparts, any man in history would have
let's not even talk about race yet, because
there's a whole layer
another form of supremacy that we still need to unpack together.
whatever change it is, it definitely needs to start with equal decision-making with women
Women who identify as feminists can get distracted by people who are too lazy to Google
yet spend their whole days obsessed with policing and controlling them
There Will Always Be People who try to limit women's potential when you live in a male-dominated society.
DON'T BE ONE THOSE PEOPLE
The patriarchy has failed many, many people.
We can talk about these failures without ever mentioning the word 'feminism.'
Just like how Mad Max was an amazing movie with lots of feminist values and it never said the word 'feminist.'
(and MRAs were pissed off with it anyway!)
There are feminists out there in the Global South
Who are doing work to help these people. People that patriarchies have failed.
All these people who are not given spaces and opportunities to at the moment because we're too busy discriminating them.
These are people who could someday fix a problem that we all badly need fixing
The only thing that's in their way is
Power.
Power that is not in their hands
Power they're told
can never be in their hands
Their potentials
and what they want to do 
and their ideas are not as important as
the bad habits they're doomed to repeat over and over again.
that we're all just cycling through like a hamster wheel
This can trickle down from large topics 
like the ones I've mentioned
but also to little everyday things like—
Stop pressuring me to get married!
What is the big deal about wanting to attach me to somebody and create more people to put through this mess?!
Maybe that's not how I want to use my body, and maybe it's none of your business.
Stop telling me how I should look
Stop telling me that you know what is inside my heart better than God ever does (and that feminists = enemies!)
Stop telling me that there's a way for you to help me get closer to God but it involves you controlling my life.
This isn't what justice looks like and
resisting that not only makes me feminist
but it makes me a Muslim feminist
Looking at feminism, it's not a monolith
There's not one big thing, there isn't the "Qur'an" of feminism
Feminism is just a response to how male-dominated societies have failed you.
and there are so many ways that male-dominated societies fails us all around the world,
that there are lots and lots of feminisms (yay!)
and we should just be focused on working on our feminist values (together).
Feminist values are things that will dismantle these structures instead of just keep them going, instead of fueling them, instead of repeating our mistakes and doing the same old stuff
Anything that encourages change of habits (in male-rule) is a feminist thing. It's a feminist value, it's a feminist principle, and should absolutely be supported.
That kind of resistance is not just punk, it's feminist, it's also very Qur'anic.
And as a result of processing all these things through my own lens, I am a feminist.
I think everyone should just stop, ask themselves:
Are they distracting and limiting women and girls in their lives from achieving something the world could badly need someday?
Together we can turn around and focus on the bigger picture.
Thanks for watching! <3
