Sometimes I imagine Medina, a city graced with the presence of our beloved Prophet whose pure heart received the Revelations of God. Medina, open to the Heavens.

Did the average woman, walking along the busy market streets, or perhaps the quiet roads, stop to stare up at the sky–overcome with tears for the Revelations from God that had freed her? Was she gripped with wonder as she gazed at the stars suspended in space, and thought of their Creator?

Did the longing turn her to water?

Did she dread the Prophet’s death because she knew the sexist men who fought him? Did she stay far away–in the shadows, as the people who loved him surrounded his deathbed–feeling unworthy of disrupting his presence, though she could not stand to be without him? And praying, fearfully, that her rights would not be revoked? And wishing, quietly, that the Revelations could only continue? Into forever. For what is better than to be close to God?

What could she have asked God but, meekly, “So how are You?” only to then feel embarrassed to be incapable of not reducing Eternity to her own human understanding? This is best, she assures herself, for it is what God wills.

Oh, beloved Prophet! If only you could see how the very men who claim to follow you are the most rigid and unaccepting and unkind–the very characteristics that are intensely against your teachings! Gentle Prophet, who turned your face away when sinners came to confess, because you did not wish to punish them! “It’s hadith,” say the men, but they choose hadith that were surely fabricated and contradict the Word of God–yet they accuse us of doing just this! They overturn your path–your sunnah–with the claims of others. They say “Abu Huraira says that women must pray in the back, and therefore a woman cannot lead” and “Jabir ibn Abdullah says a woman cannot lead” when you–the Prophet of God–appointed Umm Waraqa, a woman, to lead a mixed congregation while you were alive. Yet they do not follow your sunnah, until it is convenient for them and their sexist agendas, and they accuse us–feminists, jihadists–of picking and choosing.

“It is best,” the woman assures herself. “For if he lived, to see this, surely it would break his heart!”

This is sunnah. Correct yourselves.