As musicians, politicians and fans remember Sinead O’Connor, some Muslims are disappointed that the Irish singer and lifelong activist’s religious identity is not being highlighted in tributes.
UK police on Wednesday said the 56-year-old was found unresponsive in her London residence on Wednesday and that there her death was not being treated as suspicious.
Since the news of her death, Muslim fans of the 90s superstar have said her conversion to Islam, a cornerstone of her identity, was inspiring, but that some media reports have failed to note her religious beliefs in obituaries.
O’Connor, whose chart-topping hit “Nothing Compares 2 U” helped her reach global stardom, converted to Islam in 2018.
“This is to announce that I am proud to have become a Muslim. This is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian‘s journey. All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant,” the songstress tweeted on October 19, 2018.
At that time, O’Connor tweeted selfies donning the Muslim headscarf, the hijab, and uploaded a video of her reciting the Islamic call to prayer, the azan.
She took on the Muslim name Shuhada’ Davitt – later changing it to Shuhada Sadaqat – but continued to use the name Sinead O’Connor professionally.
One social media user said imagery of the singer without the hijab points to the glaring lack of Muslim reporters in newsrooms.
Meanwhile, some said that O’Connor was an inspiration for queer Muslims globally.
In 2000, she came out as a lesbian during an interview. But the singer, who was married to multiple men throughout her life, later said that her sexuality was fluid and that she did not believe in labels.
Some found joy in O’Connor’s conversion growing up, seeing themselves represented, while others, just learning about her Muslim identity at the news of her death, also took inspiration.
O’Connor was no stranger to controversy.
A lifelong nonconformist, she was outspoken about religion, feminism, and war, as well as her own addiction and mental health issues.
In 2014, she refused to play in Israel.
“Let’s just say that, on a human level, nobody with any sanity, including myself, would have anything but sympathy for the Palestinian plight. There’s not a sane person on earth who in any way sanctions what the f*** the Israeli authorities are doing,” she told Hot Press, an Irish music magazine.
Her iconic shaved head and shapeless wardrobe defied early 90s popular culture’s notions of femininity and sexuality.
In 1992, she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II during a television appearance on Saturday Night Live, vocal against the Catholic Church’s history of child abuse.
The late former star was also a firm supporter of a united Ireland, under which the United Kingdom would relinquish control of Northern Ireland.
I have to admit that I always thought she was agnostic, if not atheist, from that Pope stuff.
I idly wonder why a gay feminist would convert to Islam. Aren’t those things incompatible? Is this my ignorance showing? Are there sects of Islam that are more open minded, like there are sects of Christianity?
In short, yes, Islam varies a lot based on the actual community you’re a part of. Few places are as extreme as Afghanistan, even if you look at other conservative theocracies. When you’re looking at Muslim communities in Western Europe, it’s a very different situation.
Well, TIL a few things. Thanks.
Additionally, most of the world’s Muslims don’t live in the Middle East or North Africa. South and and Southeast Asia combined have by far the largest Muslim population in the world. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. And the way they practice Islam is quite different from the Middle East and North Africa. According to Wikipedia, there are about 241 million in Pakistan, 236 million in Indonesia, about 200 million in India, and 151 million in Bangladesh.
Worth noting that fundamentalist Islam is exported from KSA, similar to how evangelical Christianity is exported from USA.
Only one brand of fundamentalist Islam is exported from KSA. There are a lot of brands including ones brought from Iran and Afghanistan not to mention whatever ISIS was doing.
I believe ISIS is Salafi, just like KSA. The Taliban were inspired by the Deobandi of India, who were extremely anti-colonist.
They are a Salafi Jihadist group but they had their own idiocy added to Salfism which in itself has roots in Wahhabism.
To my knowledge Salafi and Wahhabi are synonymous, is that not the case?
She herself seemed to lack this sort of nuance. She refused to play in Israel, for example, effectively accusing and dismissing an entire nation as oppressors.
I suspect she was, deep down, not a particularly reflective person. We all know people like these. Feel a feeling, act on it immediately, and maaaybe consider the implications and consequences later. Maybe. Or just double down, and never dare to truly look at yourself in the mirror.
It’s unfortunate because these types of people also sometimes turn out to be incredible artists. I assume it’s the combination of talent plus the ability (/curse?) to experience raw feelings much more strongly than the rest of us.
Mental illness.
Yeah - her anger was directed at the church not religion. Wearing a hijab, however, seems completely irrational for a feminist. But doing something people don’t expect to get attention and make people mad is definitely on-brand.
If it’s her own free choice, I see absolutely no contradiction there.
Then I doubt that I could explain to you why it is.
If you think its feminisn to tell a woman what shes should and shouldn’t wear, I don’t know what to tell you.
I’m not telling women to wear anything. Many militant islamists, however, have used hijabs to control women. Like it or not it’s become a symbol of oppression as a result.
You’re insuinating that feminism is incompatiable with women choosing what they wear if it’s a garment you don’t approve of. Feminism does not tell women what they can and cannot wear. Furthermore you claim its a hate image despite millions of Muslim women saying it’s part of their culture and not representative of a radical minority. How many women do you intend on speaking over in your persuit of “feminism”?
Feminism is incompatible with sexism.
Something Islam teaches as a core concept.
I’ve met plenty of sexist feminists.
You could say the same thing about a Confederate flag though.
Not that I’m saying the two are comparable, but that it’s not a very good argument.
That’s because that was me telling the guy I responded to how he was implying it is in any way a type of feminism to tell someone what they can’t wear after he said he never said what women should wear, not an argument why feminism doesn’t tell people what to wear, or why the hijab is not a hate symbol. Though I suspect you just responded to whatever sentence you could think of a counter to so it doesn’t much matter.
What I’m actually saying is that wearing a garment that has been used to terrorize and oppress thousands of women is incompatible with feminism. Most religions are incompatible with feminism since they tend to preach that women are a second class that can’t hold leadership positions.
She absolutely has the right to choose what she wants to wear. She choose poorly is all. It’s like showing up to a wedding as a guest and wearing a bridal gown. You don’t do it.
Except it’s not. The freedom of individuality means you actually don’t have to give a fuck about the symbolism.
It isn’t “telling a woman what to wear” to call out it is logically inconsistent to champion the independence and equality of women, and also wear a sign of patriarchal theistic oppression.
The Qur’an doesn’t tell women to wear a hijab. It’s up to the woman to decide whether she feels called upon to wear it. Plenty of Muslim women don’t wear one and governments and men who force women to wear one are assholes.
PS feminism is about choice.
It isn’t “telling a woman what to wear” to call out it is logically inconsistent to champion the independence and equality of women, and also wear a sign of patriarchal theistic oppression.
You have to speak over a lot of women to call a hijab a symbol of opression since there are millions of them that wear it of their own will, in places it’s not required, and will gladly tell you that it’s part of their culture and not representative of a radical minority. What you doing is akin to saying anyone who wears a crucifix necklace supports priests abusing kids.
Hundreds of million more women are forced to wear it…
Why people defend something as disgusting and abhorrent as religion I’ll never know.
Where do you think most Muslim women live? Because the answer is the asian pacific region. You just think the entire religion is the Middle East and North Africa because that’s all you’ve been shown. As long as you’ve been alive those two regions have never been the majority of Muslims.
Don’t care, all abrahamic religion is trash. Symbols of that “brand” come with all available baggage.
It is logically inconsistent to care about freedom, equality, etc and subscribe or put any stock in organizations that work to the very opposite of the spectrum.
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That is not how the majority of Muslim women who wear hijab of their free will see it. Often it is framed in you hide what is most important to you. For Muslim women who have to wear hijab and do not want to it is seen as a tool of oppression. The difference is choice.
We are past second-wave feminism for the most part. If you can choose what you want to do, it is OK to choose traditionally feminine things. I am not Muslim. But I love kids, cooking and cleaning. It is OK. I can be more than one thing.
The majority of Muslim women live in countries where they are forced to wear it.
Stop acting like it’s a choice for so many just because a few privileged westerners get a choice.
the majority of muslim women live in southeast asia, try again.
Hijab is not compulsory in majority of the Muslim countries legally to wear hijab. Socially it is in many, many more. But enclaves of choice among this is to purely Western perpgative. Choice is part of decision commonly in places like North Africaq, Jordan and Turkey.
To be clear: people can wear whatever they want Their life. Outside of a discussion like this, I don’t care.
Second, I don’t have a specific axe to grind with Islam. Only organized religion that doesn’t put equality in everything as their first tenet.
Regarding this person, and this conversation, my point is that to put yourself out there as a champion of equality and freedom, then wear the uniform of oppression (any artifact of a patriarchal, power abusing, non equality based religion is such a uniform) is inconsistent.
You can’t just start wearing a swastika in the nazi motif and claim you just wear it for yourself, and you have your own personal narrative with it, that it empowers you. It doesn’t matter if millions of people do it, or wear a headscarf, hijab, etc. Even if every one of them claims they like it, and do it only for themselves, they got that idea from a poison well.
The swastika is still used in Hindu spiritualism because thats the origin of the symbol. No one bats an eye at Hindu temples that literally have that symbol carved into them, because that was it’s original purpose. Now what changes about that situation when its a woman wearing a hijab instead of a temple or other holy things with a swastika. Spain and Italy still celebrate religious events that use uniforms that look like the KKK uniform becaus its the garment that the KKK based their uniform off but because that wasn’t their original purpose, no one tries to stop them, and I’d wager you’ve never expressed any disconcern with either of those, but when it’s a women who chooses something for himself now suddenly you have an opinion.
To be clear: people can wear whatever they want Their life. Outside of a discussion like this, I don’t care.
Second, I don’t have a specific axe to grind with Islam. Only organized religion that doesn’t put equality in everything as their first tenet.
Regarding this person, and this conversation, my point is that to put yourself out there as a champion of equality and freedom, then wear the uniform of oppression (any artifact of a patriarchal, power abusing, non equality based religion is such a uniform) is inconsistent.
You can’t just start wearing a swastika in the nazi motif and claim you just wear it for yourself, and you have your own personal narrative with it, that it empowers you. It doesn’t matter if millions of people do it, or wear a headscarf, hijab, etc. Even if every one of them claims they like it, and do it only for themselves, they got that idea from a poison well.
Let me guess, “It’s a symbol of oppression!”?
If so, then my reply is that she certainly didn’t think of it as such. And when it comes to what she wants to wear, her view is much more valid than and outsider.
Many western men have forced wives and daughters to not wear revealing cloths. That doesn’t make a loose pullover an instrument of oppression. The intent and reason of the person wanting to wear something is all that matters.
Bubba the redneck doesn’t think of his confederate flag as a symbol of oppression.
But it’s not up to him to determine that now is it?
One is a flag, literally a symbol of a group or a state of oppression and the other is a widely used religious garment where millions of women wear it out of their own free choice. Context matters.
And millions of women have it forced upon them under threat of imprisonment or death. One of whom was beaten to death in the street quite recently. Context matters.
Not if you understand that feminism is first and foremost about the freedom for women to choose what’s best for ourselves (rather than have, usually a man, often with no knowledge of your history or culture, tell you what you should or shouldn’t wear), and that neither feminists nor Muslims are a monolith and that members of either or both come from all walks of life and have a variety of views and opinions.
Perhaps try gaining a better understanding before you make such bold (and Islamophobic and sexist as well as ableist) claims:
https://daily.jstor.org/muslim-women-and-the-politics-of-the-headscarf/
I think you missed a few “ists” to accuse me of.
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And those values will in time annihilate religion. Islam and Christianity are nasty expansionist cultural viruses that rely on social force to keep their roots and spread their lies.
Integrating into Islam and spreading tolerance kills Islam.
Muslim here, so I can reply to the question as opposed to someone who only knows about Islam from what the media or the predominant islamophobic content we find on the internet tells them about what to think about it. When you have a question about the Mercator projection, you normally don’t go to a flatearther…
She was a theologian, so she studied religions and left Islam to the last, which she ended up accepting based on the scripture once she studied it.
As to the stance of Islam with regards to being gay, the sexual act is forbidden as in one should abstain from actually doing it. Thinking about it or having the desire without acting upon it is not considered a sin. There are punishments in the Islamic law for when a person has been seen by 4 eyewitnesses performing same-sex fornication. To my knowledge this has never been followed through by a judge in the Islamic state of the 4 caliphates as the prerequisites are, intentionally, hard to come by: spying invalidates the testimony, the act should take place out of the privacy of their home etc. So it’s really if the person is doing it in the open… Now I don’t speak about what western media uphold as THE Islamic states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia which are not following strictly the law (and its prerequisites). They have laws that are quite… theirs. Also being gay and being Muslim are not incompatible, since a Muslim is always striving to submit to the divine will and overcome one’s own desires. As long as a person is sincere and keeps repenting for his/her eventual shortcomings and never disbelieves in God they remain a Muslim.
About why would a feminist accept Islam, if you study it you’ll know that it is not misogynistic (ie. considers women as lower than men or is hateful against women). Rather it has a fundamentally different and more factual stance: women are psychologically and physically different from men. So it is about equity and not equality: women do some things better than men and men can so some things better that women; women desire different things than men. To each their role in a family and in society as a whole. Both are honoured in what they do, and you’d even find women are even more honoured, revered and protected.
“Openness” has less to do with sects and as another person commented is more about the society. Muslims, +90% of which are Sunni, have the same source of law but the differences do not come from the religion but are societal.
I don’t have enough knowledge to discuss the ins and outs of your religion, but I can point out that your use of misogyny seems very narrowly defined, perhaps solely to fit your stance. Telling a woman “you aren’t allowed to do that because you’re better suited for this” is misogyny. I don’t know for a fact that this is what you mean, so clarification wouldn’t be remiss, but I suspect due to your wording that your religion does tell women what they can and can’t do.
The religion tells both males and females what they should and what they should not do. Most of it is the same, some of it is different depending on the gender.
I genuinely don’t see how the above is misogynistic.
I encourage you to study it. Find reliable Muslim sources who know what they are talking about and increase your knowledge. I may recommend sine YouTube channels like Muslim Lantern or Dawahwise.
because unless that thing they’re told to do involves having specific sex organs, it has nothing to do with their sex. Like, if it says women should stay at home and care for the kids, while men go work and earn the money-- that’s bigoted; there’s no real reason for that except that it results in compliant, financially dependent women. Abuse flourishes in this type of scenario.
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I am an atheist. I do, usually, try to let the religious do their own thing as long as they’re not forcing other people, but as far as I’m concerned, all religions make just as much sense as people that believe in astrology. I just wish society would start treating religion like astrology. Imagine the SCOTUS reaction if someone from Hobby Lobby suggested they couldn’t provide birth control healthcare coverage because mars was in retrograde and they’re born under the sign of Aries. haha
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Sex organs are something that males and females have in different forms, but it is disingenuous to say this is the only difference.
The man MUST provide for the house. The woman is not obliged to work and bring money, but she can do it if she wants. The way you phrased it can be understood that she is barred from working when this is not the case. Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) first wife Khadija was a successful tradeswoman for example. So the religion does not automatically make women financially dependant. There is abuse in some Muslim countries, no doubt like everywhere, but religion is not the reason.
Moreover, whatever the woman earns is 100% hers if she chooses to, and the man has no claim on it in Islam. She can put that to use for the house expenses, or not if she chooses to. It’s her right. Usually working women help the household’s finances but it’s up to couples to decide how they want to function.
Its the only meaningful difference in this context. And don’t think I’m giving a pass on the religion telling men what they can and can’t do. That’s also bigotry.
We do not have the same paradigm, that’s for sure. That’s why we need to learn about each other’s views.
Islam’s is: God created mankind and put it on earth for a propose. He gave us this life which is a test with do’s and don’ts. And depending on whether we follow the rules or not there is eternal bliss or eternal punishment.
Why am I or others positing this? Because God sent throughout our existence messengers to remind us of our purpose.
Why should we trust these so called messengers? They were granted miracles, ie. things others cannot perform like splitting the sea, reviving the dead, splitting the moon etc.
He also gave these messengers scripture with the laws to abide by. Where are these scriptures? Most of them were lost (Abraham’s tablet, David’s psalms…) or demonstrably corrupted by people (the old and the new testaments). The last scripture revealed is the Qur’an which is demonstrably preserved for everyone to read.
Read it and read about Muhammad’s life and you’ll understand what so called “Islam” (“peace through submission” in Arabic) is.
I don’t really need magic in my life, and I haven’t seen where belief in magic has helped society at all. It is possible to have a moral framework without magic.
I have only one question. Can women worship with men and be imams in their mosque?
If no, then you don’t have equality and it is wrong.