Laury Silvers 🕋 should not be online for Ramadan Profile picture
Muslim author of mysteries and thrillers set in the past and present. Sufi Mysteries Quartet/Ammar’s Agency/Rat City Chronicles/Toronto Thrillers • Ally 🍉🌈
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Jun 22, 2022 9 tweets 4 min read
A few of us were talking about how we were taught that a woman's silence is her piety. Yeah, no. Here is one traceable account of how this notion came to be a thing and examples of how these and other damaging positions are portrayed in my Sufi Mysteries Quartet. An 8 Part 🧵 The second in a thread of how the notion that women's silence is her piety and other damaging positions came to be a thing with and how the social realities arising from them are portrayed in my Sufi Mysteries Quartet.

May 2, 2021 20 tweets 6 min read
Seventh in my series on Hafsa bint Sirin. I pause in my story of Hafsa's life to consider classical storytelling about her life and its intents, specifically motherhood, before the final thread next week where I share what I think her social life was really like. A veiled woman in a western manuscript depicting the actions Earlier threads detailed how the sources tend to paint pious women as recluses. The message over time is that good women restrict their social lives, especially their public social lives, even if that means restricting spiritual or scholarly engagement.
Apr 25, 2021 31 tweets 6 min read
Sixth in my series on Hafsa bint Sirin. I continue the story of Hafsa’s life, here we touch on her elite status, her students, her hadith transmissions, and her personal losses (with a touch of plague). Image of medieval manuscript of men preparing a man for buri When we last left Hafsa, she earning her mother’s ire for taking her father’s side in his multiple marriages, especially the niece of Anas ibn Malik. The match raised him, and his children, to family of one of the Prophet’s companions.
Apr 11, 2021 29 tweets 10 min read
The fifth Hafsa bint Sirin thread. Despite taking part in legal debates as a social and intellectual elite and a well-known Qur’an reciter in her day, she comes to be known in later sources for being a pious recluse. Grrr. So how and why? Artist Habiba El-Sayed, "Shared Pain." two clay arabesque shapes that are fired dark brown except t As I mentioned in the last thread, the idealization of women’s pious withdrawal in the world extends to secluding women from public exposure in the texts themselves, which is exactly why they are at the centre of my novels, The Sufi Mystery Quartet.
Mar 28, 2021 35 tweets 10 min read
Second in my series about Hafsa bint Sirin (d. 719), Muslim women’s religious life and the history that informs the world of my novels The Sufi Mysteries. Today we look at Hafsa bint Sirin’s role in securing women the right to attend the Eid prayer in Basra. A manuscript image of two M... I know this seems odd to some, that it was ever thought impermissible, as Eid prayer is typically attended by the whole family. Alas, it was once. And it may be Hafsa who helped make today’s openness to all a thing. A recent photograph of youn...
Mar 14, 2021 17 tweets 0 min read
Mar 7, 2021 31 tweets 9 min read
Early pious and mystic women were famous for their stubborn trust in their knowledge of God and making their own way in a world that was threatening to exclude them. A taste of early Sufi women's authority in thread of twenty-three tweets. "Bronze Carpet": ... Some of what follows may be familiar to you if you've read my novels, especially The Lover. Zaytuna and Tein's mother is a composite of early Sufi women and her life story and dialogue and is adapted from these sources.

llsilvers.com
Feb 7, 2021 9 tweets 5 min read
A female imam is a woman who leads others in prayer. Her question is akin to asking how many women drink coffee. Her arrogant ignorance on the nature of prayer leadership--it is both practical and institutional--is sadly typical. A thread. Practically, when a woman leads anyone in prayer, she is an imam. Women lead their children, they lead family members and friends (including men), they lead other women in and outside the home. Far less often, women lead in institutional contexts (women-only or mixed-gender).