Amina Wadud’s 'Once in a Lifetime' explores Islam’s five pillars from a progressive feminist perspective

It’s 2012, and Amina Wadud is making her Hajj pilgrimage after her sister passed away and left her some inheritance money.

Amina has finally made it to Makkah – not an easy feat as a single woman without a mahram and at the mercy of unreliable travel agencies.

She is concentrating on her Asr prayer when her cell phone rings – the ringtone is a Rihanna song, much to the displeasure of a woman in a black niqab praying next to her.

She chastises Amina, telling her that it is “haram” to bring music into the mosque.

"50 years later I’m still in love with my choice, and of course, those 50 years involve multiple personal relationships with the sacred practices: the five pillars"

Amina, the African American-Muslim theologian and author of seminal Islamic feminism text, Qur’an and Women, recounts this scene in her latest book, Once in a Lifetime, which was published last month with Kantara Press.

In this chapter on Hajj, she writes about navigating the gender politics in Makkah’s Masjid Al-Haram, and her finding of the women’s prayer section behind door #89 – ironically named “door with no name,” while the other 99 doors to the mosque are named after historical events, important cities, Muslim male figures and Saudi royals. “Don’t you love the symbolism of a women’s section by the door with no name,” writes Amina.

Amina’s friends warned her that as a woman who advocates for inclusivity and female equality in Islam, she would face challenges on her spiritual pilgrimage.

“Almost without exception, they all said you know it’s going to be so difficult, because the Saudis have so much intervention in a women’s experience, and I thought, ‘Oh darn, I want this heavenly experience, I want to go off and just be transformed, I don’t want to fight the gender jihad!’” (a phrase used in the title of her 2006 book, Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam)

She decided that recording her experiences through journal-style blog posts would help her reflect on the process. A decade later, those 100 blog posts have been reorganised and edited – a task largely completed during the pandemic – to create her third book.

The chapters of Once in a Lifetime are themed around the five pillars of Islam. The first is the Shahadah, or proclamation of the faith, which Amina took in 1972 in Washington DC. “This is my 50th year as a Muslim by choice, and when I made that decision at 20 years old, I had no way of knowing that it would be so life-altering,” Amina tells The New Arab.

“50 years later I’m still in love with my choice, and of course, those 50 years involve multiple personal relationships with the sacred practices: the five pillars.”

Amina’s lens is progressive and inclusive. She denounces the patriarchal customs that often cloud contemporary Islam, as she examines how each pillar can be practised by modern-day Muslims.

"Her discussions of each pillar are interwoven with her own memories, thoughts, musings and critiques. Not every Quranic reference is cited, and she includes colloquial language like 'sorta', 'kinda' and 'ain’t'"

“Introductory books to the five pillars are very conservative, they make a lot of assumptions that I don’t agree with, that I find reasons to challenge,” says Amina.

“The overwhelming conservative nature of books about the five pillars shapes the way readers look at Islam – and there are many people who experience trauma around these pillars,” she says, referring to those who may be forced by their families to perform certain rituals like prayer.

“I want to be a part of changing the narrative when it comes to thinking about the five pillars because as a spiritual person, I have lapsed and waned with mine. I am not shy to talk about my spiritual ups and downs, because I think it also helps people,” she explains.

“I think being honest is my way of saying, ‘no I’m not perfect and don’t do everything right always’, and yet I still want to inspire with the ways in which I do think these spiritual practices help us to be better human beings.”

“I think people who are really familiar with my work know that my spiritual life is equally as important to my intellectual life and my activism,” adds Amina.

Anyone familiar with Amina’s plethora of published writing throughout her various roles as professor, author, advisor, speaker and contributor will also know that her typical writing style is very academic.

Her latest work by contrast, is written in a style that’s more candid and casual, and the effect is resoundingly relatable.

Her discussions of each pillar are interwoven with her own memories, thoughts, musings and critiques. Not every Quranic reference is cited, and she includes colloquial language like 'sorta', 'kinda' and 'ain’t'.

“I had to discipline myself to non-academic writing for the first time,” says Amina. “I enjoy writing more accessibly. I was able to write from my heart, and I’m hoping it will give some inspiration to people who haven’t been able to manage the more academic work.”

Her motivations for penning Once in a Lifetime are in fact, quite intimate. Amina turns 70 in two months and hopes to leave a legacy for her six grandchildren, who will be coming into university age within the next five years. “I really want to think consciously about how I present my work and my life trajectory, so that they may draw from it even in my absence,” she explains.

"I take feminism as an intentional engagement with my identity as a Muslim and that means it’s pervasive in everything"

As Amina contemplates the ways in which she can direct her attention toward her grandchildren’s generation, she questions whether her work will continue in book form.

“It might be a series of videos. Because of the digital world, maybe a book form of something is not going to be the most accessible in the future,” she says. “I’m trying to get up to speed with that and appreciate what that means – like maybe doing podcasts. I’m looking into what I can do to continue to share the blessings of the knowledge that I have received.”

Amina currently resides in Indonesia, where she recently launched QIST – Queer Islamic Studies and Theology. “My objective with QIST is to reinvigorate the study of Islam with the study of sexuality,” explains Amina, who has developed a strong relationship with Queer Muslims over the past two decades.

In Once in a Lifetime, Amina describes the increasing flexibility she has discovered of her faith, and her ruminations are instinctively imbued with inclusive interpretations of Islam.

Her feminist stance explored deeply in her previous books, is also made clear, though she tells me it’s translated onto paper subconsciously. “I take feminism as an intentional engagement with my identity as a Muslim and that means it’s pervasive in everything, but I don’t feel like I was working on some sort of feminist manifesto with this book,” she explains.

Her use of consciously-feminine language and references are nonetheless abundant, from removing gendered language from her translations of Hadith, to sometimes referring to God as “She” rather than the traditionally-used “He” pronoun.

Her chapter on Ramadan is titled The Queen comes for a visit, where she makes a compelling case against the traditional rule (formed by male jurists) that menstruating women must make up for their missed fasts during Ramadan, laments the inferior status of women entrances and facilities at mosques and points out the many gendered inequities she witnessed at Hajj. “It’s sort of anti-spiritual, isn’t it?” she tells me as we discuss the injustices towards women propagated by “cultural” Islam in supposedly-spiritual spaces.

In her section on prayer, Amina not only recounts her experience leading mixed-gendered prayers (inspiring her social media moniker, “the lady imam”), but also recounts a khutbah she gave in South Africa in 1994.

The topic she chose was the female-centric experience of childbirth, which she saw to be a lesson on understanding Islam as “engaged surrender”. She points out that this was a universal reflection highlighted at an event that was traditionally used by men to privilege men’s experiences.

At the beginning of our interview, I share with Amina that I’m pregnant myself, and due to give birth in a few weeks.

And at the end, when I tell her that there’s just a minute left in our Zoom meeting, she decides to use the remaining seconds to voice a prayer for my remaining weeks of pregnancy and upcoming labour – a fortuitous act of grace from “the lady Imam."

Hafsa Lodi is an American-Muslim journalist who has been covering fashion and culture in the Middle East for more than a decade. Her work has appeared in The Independent, Refinery29, Business Insider, Teen Vogue, Vogue Arabia, The National, Luxury, Mojeh, Grazia Middle East, GQ Middle East, gal-dem and more. Hafsa’s debut non-fiction book Modesty: A Fashion Paradox, was launched at the 2020 Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. 

Follow her on Twitter: @HafsaLodi