u/thatsouthamerican

I feel extremely ashamed of my situation. I’ve made my shahada on my teens and, for years, I repeated the speech that it’s a choice. 15 years later, married and with kids (the dream of every revert, right?), when I decided I don’t have the mental health to wear it anymore, I’ve found out it isn’t.

I wear it under the threat of divorce. I’m still “allowed” to wear it as a turban to get less attention, but I still cry when I have to pick up my kids at school because I’m putting on clothes I hate.

Every passing day I hate the headscarf more. I hate sleeves. I live in a very hot place.

I’ve cried because, studying the religion, I don’t believe anymore it’s mandatory. I wish I could press a button and be a silly girl that loves wearing it again, but I can’t unsee what I learned.

I feel so ridiculous I’m having my life to become worse because of a tool that was used to differentiate slave women from free women in medieval Arabia. I’m not supposed to go through this.

I wish I could just accept the situation and move on, but the bonus is that I have dermatitis and get rashes on the places of my body that sweats the most. Mine isn’t as bad as some people.

I can’t stop thinking about it because it’s literally on my body. It’s making me hate the religion and my in law family.

How to cope?

Why is the age of Aisha recorded even if they didn't track the years at the time?

This question came up to me after I read [this post a](https://www.reddit.com/r/progressive\_islam/comments/1ur1dl6/comment/owra33d/?screen\_view\_count=3)nd I thought it deserves it's own discussion.

**I know she wasn't a child bride, that's not what I am questioniing here.** I know that according to Al Tabari all of Abu Bakr's Children were born before Islam, that's why she couldn't be a child when they moved to Madinah. I know she herself narrated about the early revelations and the conversion of her father. I know all of that.

But there's a problem here: arabs didn't have an organized calendar until Umar's caliphate. Even thought they marked the months, they didn't mark the years (for instance, that's why we say the prophet was born in the "yer of the elephant", because they deignated the years by important events that happened, not by number), that's also why we don't have how to say "arabs were in the year X before quraanic revelation".

Google it, they didn't mark the years in their calendar. That's something we started doing after the prophet's death.

All other sahaba's age is estimated. We don't agree on which year the night journey happened. We don't agree on the order of the surahs during Quranic revelation.

Why then do we have a hadith talking about Aisha's age, in a culture where they didn't even celebrate birthdays? Even if it's unreliable and wrong, what is the point of recording that?

And why record ONLY THAT and not record the age and year of anything else?

Was it political? What was that about?

Assalamu aleikum.

I'm having doubts that I think I can't reconcile anymore with believing that Islam is from God. I need help because I want to believe.

When we learn the sirah, one of the first things we learn about is Quraishi tribalism. We know that if you went to Makkah as a foreigner and a quraishi cheated on you on business you wouldn't have nobody to help you unless you had another quraishi ally.

Basically that their tribalism was such that they didn't respect anyone who didn't have a strong tribal allegiance.

We also learn that, when Khadijah (ra) hired the Prophet (saws), she was impressed by his honesty and proposed to him in marriage~~.~~ I remember watching a video of Rania Awaad about Khadijah's life and she mentioned that she started her business when she was only about 17 years old.

Can you imagine how many times the sexist and tribalist quraish tried to cheat on her throughout the years? Of course she was a woman of lineage but she was still a woman.

That's why there's such a big issue with the idea of financial testimony being "two men or one man and two women - so the women can remind eachother". It wasn't women's testimonies that were unreliable in Arabia at the time! It was the men's.

All of us here know from experience that women are completely capable of remembering their financial responsabilities. I live in a non-muslim country and women being able to be witnesses is nowhere close to a problem. Quite the contrary.

Not to mention that, even thought men are supposed to be "providers", most people in the history of the world have been poor, and women have always contributed to the household income. Women at the time of the prophet included.

It is also very contradictory for the need of "one man and two women witnesses" when we consider the fact that Khadijah was also one of the main sponsors of the message. She spent every single coin she had on the ummah. To be honest, it is contradictory with the whole relationship the Prophet (saws) had with women in his life in general.

We also know that women in Madinah had a bit more freedom than the Makkah ones, and even some of the muhajirun had a problem with the way they behaved.

I'm starting to think that, maybe, the Prophet (saws) did want women's full rights, but he was prevented from doing so because of the culture of the time.