Muslimah Media Watch » Pasha’s Perfection: Mother of the Believers.
This is not to suggest that Pasha paints an overly rosy picture of early Islam. He deals with issues in this novel that scholars and historians have grappled with for centuries, such as the strained relationships between A’isha and the Prophet’s family, the accusation of adultery made against her, her role in the Battle of the Camel, the bloody and tragic events at Karbala, and the power politics amongst members of the Prophet’s community. Pasha manages to confront all these issues, with both the objectivity necessary and the poetic license in order.
It is worth noting how other women in the book, from early Islam, are depicted. Pasha gives them life too, through A’isha’s eyes. A’isha is known in the traditions to have been a fiercely jealous woman, and her relationships with the Prophet’s other wives, even with the “memory” of the deceased Khadija, are known to have been strained. Yet Pasha does not turn A’isha into a crazed, possessive wife.
Another sore point in A’isha’s life is her inability to conceive. Pasha lets her speak of her own anguish at witnessing her husband with other women, her own pain at being barren, without suggesting that barrenness or jealousy make a women any less worthy. A’isha spent the most part of her life as a widow, in fact her story only really begins after the death of her husband, when she takes up her role as scholar, preacher and advisor. Pasha rations the story accordingly, without focusing too much on her marriage, but on her independence, her own worth separate from her husband, father and other male figures.
Pasha even managed to maneuver sexuality its own place in the novel. The book maintains both the Prophetic example of openness and transparency about taboo subjects, as well as the Islamic principle of modesty. This is certainly not one of those historical fiction novels filled with sexual encounters at the turn of every page, but neither is it a trapped within a chastity belt. Pasha presents sex in a healthy way, associated with love, marriage and fidelity. Pasha speaks of nothing the Prophet and A’isha themselves did not speak about in the Hadith.
As a Muslim woman, I am immensely proud of this novel. It is a pioneer in that practically non-existent genre of Islamic fiction (fiction written within the framework of Islamic ethics and principles). I am also greatly moved that a Muslim man could write with such depth about such a complex female character as A’isha.
