Jum'ah Journal- Essence of God

 "Divine Feminine"
 A note from a Muslim feminist appeared last year that I happened to come across now. She tries to search out and emphasize feminine qualities of God and through that she tends to contend God could be just  as much feminine, so why the male-oriented Islam or Muslim jurists and Ulama are stuck with God being masculine only. She quotes some Qur'an and some Hadeeth in support of her contention which is what all Ulama do ; extricate what they think is important from any aya or from any hadeeth.
 No! I have nothing against that tendency after all we need to learn from the scripture. But is there a point where the flow becomes reversed that is knowledge coming from scripture seems to take a reverse gear?
I am frankly intrigued by that feminine thinking for I am not against feminism itself but I worry about excess, going overboard and that is true for both sides of the equation. In general we have known for example that Allah has chosen to refer to Himself as male knowing that He is NOT MALE (NOR FEMALE) as is apparent in the Qur'an. We also know that when in our conversation we refer to "Man" it means mankind inclusive of men and women (Are all the cultures of the world and languages "male-oriented" or dominated by male?) When I first herd from a girl saying to her friends, "Are you guys going to the same place?" I was kind of surprised because I learnt English in the villages of Punjab, purely bookish and did not get used to "English medium" until much later so 'Guy' in my book was only for men. (Just giving some examples.)
 She also quoted Jalaluddin Rumi and other soofi literature which sometimes shows the object of love being 'feminine'(Because the poet is male) as God is 'treated as such for poetical purposes just as in some Urdu poetry beloved is sometimes treated as masculine and compare it with Hindi literature where even though the poet may be male but writes as female pining for male deota or acting as "Bhagwan ki dasee".
 The finer characteristics such as benevolence mercy etc. are 'considered feminine' and she takes that approach also to advance her point of view. I think that essence of God is best left to HIM alone calling Him as such knowing fully well that He is not Male any more than female and He is not female any more than male. He is what He describes Himself. "There is nothing like unto Him" and leave it at that.


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