Qubaysiyyat

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The Qubaysiyyāt ( Arabic القبيسيات) are a religious-traditionalist women's movement from Damascus , Syria. The Qubaysiyyāt offer women the opportunity to continue their religious education by providing female religious scholars with the same level of education as male scholars.

For several years, members publish the Qubaysiyyāt on various topics of Islamic Studies ( Koranic studies , Sīra- , Fiqh - hadeeth nanosciences and others) and thus contribute to the extension of the landscape of publications to female scholars votes in favor.

Their publications have also enabled the Qubaysiyyāt to address a wide international audience. There are branches of the movement in Indonesia, Malaysia, the USA, Canada and Great Britain, among others.

Emergence

The Qubaysiyyāt arose around their founder Munīra Al-Qubaysi in the 1980s, although there is no exact date of foundation. Al-Qubaysi initially resisted the use of her name as a group name in order to preserve her anonymity, but the title "Al-Qubaysiyyāt" gained popularity over time. The members of the movement call themselves ānisat al-ğamāʾa (Arabic for "women of the community"). Munīra Al-Qubaysi met for a long time, probably until the 1990s and 2000s, with her students in private study and study circles. The private rooms of members were and still are the preferred rooms.

Rise of movement

Munira Al-Qubaysi maintained good relations with the religious authorities Aḥmad Kuftārū and Sa'īd Ramaḍān Al-Buṭi from the beginning . She is also said to have had close contact with Badr Ad-Din Al-Hasani and Shayk ʼAbd Al-Karim Ar-Rifa'i. Above all, Aḥmad Kuftārū's good contact with Syrian politics helped her to expand her movement at the beginning.

Still, it had been very difficult as a religious movement to operate in public since the 1980s. The Syrian government had a very bad relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood at the time. After the unsuccessful assassination attempt on President Hāfiẓ Al-Asad (father and predecessor of Bashār Al-Asad ), the Syrian military took revenge in the Ḥāma massacre, which killed 38,000 civilians. Given the occasion, the ānisat remained very reserved in the period that followed.

According to some sources, the Qubaysiyyāt have presided over 80 private madrasat religious schools for girls in Damascus in recent years . This corresponds to the estimated number of 75,000 female students.

Munīra Al-Qubaysi

Munīra Al-Qubaysi (* 1933 in Damascus , Syria) was the only one of the daughters of her family who attended secondary school and graduated from university. She received her first of many degrees from Damascus University in natural sciences. After her first degree, she taught at state schools in Syria for a long time.

She began her religious studies in Damascus in the 1960s after she was dismissed from school without good reason after preaching in public. During this time she already knew the Grand Mufti Aḥmad Kuftārū, who was to play an important role in the development of the organization in later years. She graduated from university with a degree in Islamic law and began to set up her learning circles for women.

Basic idea

The Qubaysiyyāt message can be described as easily accessible and understandable. It is essentially apolitical and emphasizes religious spirituality and social engagement. The movement supports its members in the acquisition of religious as well as secular education, since in their eyes both contribute to the service of God and fellow human beings. The goal of Qubaysiyyāt can be described as “religious education by women for women”. Thus the movement tries to offer religious education at all levels.

The own members rise through constant further education in the hierarchy. First, there is the complete memorization of the Koran ḥifdh and the perfect recitation of its tajwīd , then follow Koran exegesis tafsīr , the study of the prophetic tradition ḥadīth, and biography sīra, the examination of the Islamic jurisprudence fiqh , the Islamic dogma ʾaqīda and finally that Learning etiquette and appropriate behavior adab.

In terms of social commitment, the group offers literacy courses for destitute women, for example, in order to create the basis for them to later devote themselves to religious studies.

organization

The members of the organization come from higher layers of Damascus and are specifically recruited. It is structured strictly hierarchically, according to which the founder is the highest authority. Schoolchildren form the lowest level until they become teachers and preachers (shaykas) themselves on the next level. Each member should be a learner and teacher at the same time, advancement within the hierarchy is explicitly desired. There are several levels between the beginners and the founder's management level. The hierarchical structure makes the organization of the Qubaysiyyāt easy to control and monitor, which has contributed to its success, among other things.

successes

According to Sara Omar, a researcher at the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Harvard, the success of the religious women's movement can be traced back to several external and internal factors of the qubaysiyyāt. First of all, however, reference must be made to the following background aspects. Back then when the organization was founded, but still today, it can be difficult for girls in Syria to study at a university that teaches both sexes. This applies to both secular and religious education. Thus, in Syria, the movement has discovered a loophole by offering religious education from women to women for the first time.

In her publication on the Qubaysiyyāt, Sara Omar names the following external factors for the rise and success of the movement: embedding in a network of religious authorities and politicians, popularity in society through social engagement, ideology tailored to Syrian culture, gender boundaries become one's own advantage exploited and the subversive undermining of male authority in relation to religious education. Omar names the opening of access for women to education and the abandonment of an individual lifestyle for the ānisa community as internal factors for advancement and success.

literature

• Islam, Sarah (2012): The Qubaysiyyat: The growth of an international muslim women's revivalist movement from Syria (1960-2008).
• Omar, Sara (2013): Al-Qubaysiyyāt. Negotiating Female Religious Authority in Damascus.