Author: Hisham Zoubier
"As salaam allaykum. Peace be upon you.
For those of you not familiar with that Islamic greeting, it is said between all Muslims and Arabic speaking peoples around the world; white, black, man or woman. I have invited you here today because it has become increasingly apparent to me that the image of women in Islam is one of sexism and degradation. One of inferiority, and one of disgrace. One of inequality, and one of male domination. In fact, nothing could be further from orthodox Islamic teachings. Many of you will look at me with disbelief, and with skepticism and I fully expect it. However, everything I tell you here today will have it's justification by historical fact and by Quranic quotation.
The Quran is the basis of all Islam and history shows that the application of it has not always been one of contradiction. Now, in Islam there are very specific rules relating to the equality of men and women. They are both looked upon as being equal in soul and in mind, and in spiritual responsibilities. Of course, they are not looked upon as the same; but merely different.
You cannot say that the role of the mother is the same as the role of the father, or vice versa; because they are different. But you cannot say that one is inferior to the other. The mother cares for the newborn baby a lot more than the father does and this sort of motherly love is held in the highest regard in Islam. The Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, was asked by a follower one day whom he should treat with more affection. The prophet answered, "Your mother." The man asked who was next in line, and again the prophet replied, "Your mother." He asked again and the response the same; it was not until the fourth time that the prophet said, "Your father." The prophet also said," Paradise lies at the feet of mothers."
In the West, female assault (ie, assault on women) is very common. Statistics show that 25% of all reported crime in the UK are violent assaults on women. The question of violence towards women in Islam is very clear. IT IS NOT ALLOWED. The honour of women is of extreme merit, and no man may dare to infringe upon it. Islam does not permit any sort of abuse to women; verbal or otherwise. Wife beaters were declared by the prophet not be Muslims and it has been reported that the prophet never hit any child or any woman. In fact, rape or any assault on women is a very serious crime in Islam. Here, there has been much talk about "date rape". I've been told that rapists can get off with a year or less in jail here. And this is justice; this is the law, in the civilised world. A man can violate a woman's honour and put her under all sorts of duress and harm, and scar her emotionally for life.... and a few months later, he can walk out of jail, free to continue his life with barely a thought to what he has done to that woman. In some countries in the Middle East, rape can be punishable with life imprisonment or lengthy prison sentences; although, I am sure that many would prefer to simply remove the problem from down below and get it over with. That sort of safety in those countries, which is alien in the West, is why my sister can walk the streets at any hour of the night on her own and feel completely safe; secure in the knowledge that no man will trouble her or molest her, because he knows that as soon he crosses that line, he will be held accountable for his actions. How many of you would walk the streets alone at night in the West's towns and cities?
Spiritual Equality in Islam:
In Islam, women are not regarded as the fountain of all evil; Eve is not blamed for Adam's mistake; both were at fault and both repented. In spiritual matters, a woman is as responsible as the man is; this is clear. Both have to fulfill the requirements of being a Muslim; in fact, the woman generally has the easier time! During Ramadan, which is the Muslim month of fasting and cleansing, a woman does not fast, if her menstruation cycle happens to be in place. This also applies to their praying; they can be excused from praying during this cycle. Men, on the other hand, always have to fast; unless they are ill and are incapable or their health is in jeopardy (same as women). Women, like men, have to pray, have to do Hajj (which is the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca), they have to give Zakat (which is charity to the needy); all men and women have to perform these duties; there is no difference between them, and they all will be held accountable by God. "Whoever does deeds of righteousness, be they male or female, and have faith, they will enter paradise and not the least injustice will be done to them" [Nisaa 4:124] The Quran also says," They (women) are garments for (men) while (men) are garments for (women).
Education and Social Status of Women in Islam:
The woman in orthodox Islam, is not held back. She is expected to care for her children; but that attitude is universal. All mothers care for their children. And the mother has a bond with her child that no man, including myself, can ever really understand. But the idea, that she is not allowed to leave the house without her husband or his permission or participate in the running of the society, or be ignorant is not in Islam. The husband does not rule the woman's life. Some may think they do, but they do not. As a matter of fact, and this is interesting, under certain conditions, the wife runs the husband's life!! If the man is not tending to his familial duties, or is squandering his wealth, as opposed to providing for his family, the wife is permitted to seize control to help the family.
In providing for her family, the woman has a special privilege. The husband is supposed to provide for his family; in fact, sacrifice his worldly goods and himself to do so. The wife, on the other hand, does not have this compulsory duty. Although in many Muslim families the woman gives much of her own wealth to provide for the family; in fact, I have a Sudani cousin whose parents split up and he lives with his mother, and she provides, through working, for him. But the obligation of the wife sacrificing her assets, or her wealth, is not in Islam. She is permitted, under Islamic law, to spend her money as she chooses.
In education, the woman also has the paramount duty to learn. The man is not allowed, under Islamic law, to prohibit or restrict her quest to do so. The woman is ordered by God, as much as the man is, to learn, to read, to seek truth, to educate themselves. "The search for knowledge is a duty for every Muslim, male or female." And since her primary duty of caring for the children diminishes as time goes by, she has a lot of time with which to do that. In fact, a matter of history, Islam was far and away the first social system that gave women equality. Hundreds of years ago, more than a millennium before the rest of the world caught up, Islam gave women the right to own property. And as far as running businesses are concerned; the Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him, was employed by his own wife Khadiga, may Allah be pleased with her. Women were eminently active in their societies in the time of the Prophet. In fact, it is on record that a woman debated with the prophet; something barely any man would dare to do! And it is also recorded that there was a debate between a man and a woman and the woman was declared correct and accurate, by the prophet.
Marriage:
In matters of finding a mate, Islam also has very clear rules about the practise of arranged marriages. It doesn't do them. The woman and the man are both free to marry whoever they choose and free to divorce one another at any given time, although divorce is looked upon as the final resort. There is a story related about a woman who came to the prophet and complained that she had been married to a man without her consent; her parents had forced her into it. The prophet told her that she was free to annul the marriage if she wanted to, since she had not freely agreed to marry him in the first place. As a matter of fact, she was happy with the marriage; but she complained so as to make the point to Muslim women that they were not under the command of any human being. Only God. It is also said in the Quran that:
“Whoever does deeds of righteousness, be they male or female, and have faith, they will enter paradise and not the least injustice will be done to them.” [Nisa 4:124]
In the Quran we are told that the believing men and believing women should, and I quote:
“lower their gaze and guard their modesty." The hijab is not what many of you think it is; the basic hijab, in fact, the complete hijab, is a scarf that a woman puts on her head, and drapes onto her shoulders. It is NOT a mask, or a veil. Many Muslim women do wear the mask, and the veil, but this is out of cultural demands on a people; not Islamic. There is a sound hadith that supports that notion; the prophet said that all the body must be covered except for the hands and face. The second point of the hijab, is that it is not a sign of inferiority. Many people view it as such, but anyone who meets a woman who has converted to Islam out of her own free will, which is, by the way, a fundamental rule of the religion; freedom to choose, the woman will tell you that the hijab is a sign of respect. It identifies her as being a noble Muslim lady, a woman who does not want to be harrassed. Women have told me that when they wear the hijab, a miraculous transformation takes place on the streets. They are not pushed when they board buses, and the men around them are careful not to bump into them. And another Muslim woman will see her and treat her as a sister, because in Islam all Muslims have a singular bond to one another, which I have never seen outside of Islam. But more on that, at another time. The hijab, as hard as it may be to believe, is not a degrading symbol. It is merely a symbolic gesture to the world, when the woman is on the streets, she does not want to be harrassed. And that the woman is an honourable lady. Just as the man's clothing regulations attribute the same to him; on fact, many Muslim men also cover their hair. Of course, they do not wear a scarf; their hair isn't long enough. And lastly, and this should make my point clear, when the woman is not in public or amongst strangers, she does NOT have to conform to any real clothing regulation. She is permitted to wear as she pleases; amongst her family, amongst her sisters, amongst her extended family( in Islam the family is massive). In fact, the only time that is she is requested to wear the hijab, is when she knows she will be among male strangers that are over the age of puberty and when she is over the age of puberty and before she reaches an older age where she no longer anticipates marriage or when she is praying. Although, many older women do wear it as an example to the younger generation. And no one is to be forced to uphold even these slight regulations. The command from the Quran states very clearly, "Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands clear from error." I knew plenty of Muslim women who were devout, including my own mother, who has done more charitable endeavours than any person I know, that do not wear the hijab, unless they are praying. I'm not encouraging it either way; I am not a woman, so I cannot really speak for it. I do know that it is said in the Quran for a woman to guard her chasitity, as do the men, and the hijab is a means of that, amongst other things. But the wearing of the hijab alone does not make the woman pious; many women who wear the hijab are not at all pious. But they wear it to give that illusion. The prophet said that actions were by intent alone; the intent for a moral existence must be there.
The history regarding women in Islam is also astounding, considering what Muslim women are thought of today. If you look at the historical account of women is Islam, then you will find there as well that women were not devalued. Before Islam came, the people of the world disgraced women. They treated them as cattle, as dishonourable things. In fact, many families would kill a newly born baby simply because it was a girl. Can you imagine that? It is dire indeed; the prophet thought so, because one the many things that he put a stop to was that. But before Islam came, women were not allowed to marry who they chose, or own property, or businesses; in essence, their role was to be pretty, stay in the home for all their lives and be breeding stock. And then, in the Islamic world, over 1400 hundred years ago, that all changed. Women were given the right to own; in fact as I said before, if their husbands were incapable of handling their businesses or assets properly, wives were permitted to take over from them! The wife of the prophet, may God be pleased with her, was not only his wife. She was also his employer; he worked for her! Oh, and by the way, he did not ask her to marry him; she asked him to marry her. And because of her righteousness, because of her decency, she is regarded to be one of the most reliable sources of information regarding the prophet's life. If she were inferior, why would the prophet have accepted her proposal? If she were inferior, why would he have worked for her? If she were inferior, why would male Muslim scholars today still accept her observations regarding the prophet? History shows that in the beginning, Islam was the true emancipator of women. I quote now from Fatima Mernissi's book, the Veil and the Male Elite; a Muslim lecturer in Morocco who is a devout Muslim and a devout feminist. "Women fled by the thousands to enter Medina, the Prophet's city in the seventh century,, because Islam promised equality and dignity for all, for men and women, masters and servants. Every woman who came to Medina when the Prophet was the political leader of Muslims could gain access to full citizenship, the status of sahabi, Companion of the Prophet. Muslims can take pride that in their language they have the feminine of that word, sahabiyat, women who enjoyed the right to enter into the councils of the Muslim umma, to speak freely to its Prophet-leader, to dispute with the men, to fight for their happiness, and to be involved in the management of military and political affairs. The evidence is there is the works of religious history, in the biographical details of sahbiyat, by the thousands who built Muslim society side by side with their male counterparts."
And all this, more than 1400 years ago.
The sign that the majority of people, who convert to Islam each year, are women further shows that Islam is not sexist. The first adherent to Islam was a woman; If Islam was sexist, then why would they do such a thing? What Western woman of common sense would convert to a religion that would degrade her? They are not forced into it; if you do not believe that Islam is fundamentally against forceful conversion, then believe the laws of the Western governments, where they live! Islam is not a sexist religion. I know that you have heard various things, seen various things; but believe me, you have been misinformed. The application of religion, no matter what school of thought, is not always representative of the actual teachings; be it Christianity, Judaism or Islam.
Before I leave, I have one last thing to say.
"For Muslim men and women, for believing men and women, for devout men and women, for true men and women, for men and women who are patient and constant, for men and women who humble themselves, for men and women who give in charity, for men and women who fast and deny themselves, for men and women who guard their chastity, for men and women who engage in Allah's praise, for them has Allah prepared forgiveness and a great reward."
That is the 35th verse of the 33rd chapter of the Holy Quran..
Salaam wa allykum.
Contact Information:
e-mail address: hishamzoubeir@hotmail.com
In Recognition of Women
Author: Dr. Khalid Abou El Fadl
WHEN Imam Zuhri, a famous scholar of Sunna (Prophet Muhammad's traditions), indicated to Qasim ibn Muhammd (a scholar of the Qur'an), a desire to seek knowledge, Qasim advised him to join the assembly of a well-known woman jurist of the day, Amara bin Al-Rahman. Imam Zuhri attended her assembly and later described her as "a boundless ocean of knowledge." In fact, Amra instructed a number of famed scholars, such as Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Hazama, and Yahya ibn Said.
Amra was not an anomaly in Islamic history, for it abounds with famous women narrators of jurisprudence, starting with Aisha, the Prophet's wife. A conservative count would reveal at least 2,500 extraordinary women jurists, narrators of Hadith, and poets throughout history.
That was then, but now we encounter hardly a single Islamic woman jurist. Women are all but absent from Islamic public and intellectual life. There are remarkable women activists in many Mosques and there are a few impressive writers, such as Zaynab al-Ghazali. But these are exceptions. One will rarely find a woman lecturing to a mixed audience about a gender-neutral topic such as "riba" (usury), for example. And while it is common to encounter professional Muslim women in every walk of life, it is very rare to find them on the boards of Islamic centers, or holding leadership positions.
There are several reasons for this alarming phenomenon. A particularly disturbing one is the derogatory attitude that seems to have infected many Muslim men. Very few are willing to be instructed or taught by women. Muslim men, in North America and elsewhere, seem to have developed a woman-phobia that consistently aspires to exclude women from conferences, meetings, gatherings, and even the Mosques.
May God bless Fatimah bint Qais, who tenaciously argued with Hazrat Umar and Hazrat Aisha over a legal point and refused to change her opinion. And there was Umm Yaqab, who on hearing Abdullah ibn Masud explain a legal point, then confidently told him, "I have read the entire Qur'an but have not found your explanation anywhere in it."
The fact is, that Islam neither limits women to the private sphere, nor does it give men supremacy over the public and private life. One notices that the Greek and Roman cultures that preceded Islamic civilization did not produce a single eminent woman philosopher or jurist. Likewise, until the 1700s, Europe failed to produce a single female social, political, or legal jurist. Islam did exactly the opposite in every respect, so much so that Hazart Umar bin al-Khitatab used to entrust Shaffa bint Abdullah as an inspector over the market in Medina. Moreover, Islamic history is replete with examples of female professors who tutored famous male jurists.
Yet the sad legacy of our time is that we have taken women back to the pre-Islamic era by excluding them from public exposure or involvement. A modern scholar, Muhammad al-Ghazali, once described this phenomenon as the "ascendency of Bedouin fiqh (jusrisprudence)." What he meant by this term is that in much of contemporary culture... the world revolves around men and everything is channeled to their service.
The sunna (traditions) of the Prophet reveals that he used to assist his wives in household duties. But most modern scholars have not had the probity to suggest that the practice of men lending a helping hand in the home is to be recommended or even required in certain circumstances. Most men are content to ignore this and selectively emphasize whatever in the sunna serves only their interests. It is well-known that women like Aisha, Umm Salamah, Laila bint Qasim, Asma bint Abu Bakr, Khaula bint Umm Darda, and many others, were trusted with preserving and teaching one fourth of our religion.
Isn't it time we again trusted women to contribute to our public and intellectual lives? May the Muslim community in North America lead the way in producing the first Muslim woman jurist in more than two centuries. It is certainly long overdue.
[Edited slightly from an article first published in the July/Aug 1991 issue of THE MINARET and reprinted in VOICES, vol. 1, no. 2, Dec/Jan 1992, by Professor Khalid Abou El Fadl. Dr. Abou El Fadl is a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he specializes in Islamic Law.]
WHEN Imam Zuhri, a famous scholar of Sunna (Prophet Muhammad's traditions), indicated to Qasim ibn Muhammd (a scholar of the Qur'an), a desire to seek knowledge, Qasim advised him to join the assembly of a well-known woman jurist of the day, Amara bin Al-Rahman. Imam Zuhri attended her assembly and later described her as "a boundless ocean of knowledge." In fact, Amra instructed a number of famed scholars, such as Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Hazama, and Yahya ibn Said.
Amra was not an anomaly in Islamic history, for it abounds with famous women narrators of jurisprudence, starting with Aisha, the Prophet's wife. A conservative count would reveal at least 2,500 extraordinary women jurists, narrators of Hadith, and poets throughout history.
That was then, but now we encounter hardly a single Islamic woman jurist. Women are all but absent from Islamic public and intellectual life. There are remarkable women activists in many Mosques and there are a few impressive writers, such as Zaynab al-Ghazali. But these are exceptions. One will rarely find a woman lecturing to a mixed audience about a gender-neutral topic such as "riba" (usury), for example. And while it is common to encounter professional Muslim women in every walk of life, it is very rare to find them on the boards of Islamic centers, or holding leadership positions.
There are several reasons for this alarming phenomenon. A particularly disturbing one is the derogatory attitude that seems to have infected many Muslim men. Very few are willing to be instructed or taught by women. Muslim men, in North America and elsewhere, seem to have developed a woman-phobia that consistently aspires to exclude women from conferences, meetings, gatherings, and even the Mosques.
May God bless Fatimah bint Qais, who tenaciously argued with Hazrat Umar and Hazrat Aisha over a legal point and refused to change her opinion. And there was Umm Yaqab, who on hearing Abdullah ibn Masud explain a legal point, then confidently told him, "I have read the entire Qur'an but have not found your explanation anywhere in it."
The fact is, that Islam neither limits women to the private sphere, nor does it give men supremacy over the public and private life. One notices that the Greek and Roman cultures that preceded Islamic civilization did not produce a single eminent woman philosopher or jurist. Likewise, until the 1700s, Europe failed to produce a single female social, political, or legal jurist. Islam did exactly the opposite in every respect, so much so that Hazart Umar bin al-Khitatab used to entrust Shaffa bint Abdullah as an inspector over the market in Medina. Moreover, Islamic history is replete with examples of female professors who tutored famous male jurists.
Yet the sad legacy of our time is that we have taken women back to the pre-Islamic era by excluding them from public exposure or involvement. A modern scholar, Muhammad al-Ghazali, once described this phenomenon as the "ascendency of Bedouin fiqh (jusrisprudence)." What he meant by this term is that in much of contemporary culture... the world revolves around men and everything is channeled to their service.
The sunna (traditions) of the Prophet reveals that he used to assist his wives in household duties. But most modern scholars have not had the probity to suggest that the practice of men lending a helping hand in the home is to be recommended or even required in certain circumstances. Most men are content to ignore this and selectively emphasize whatever in the sunna serves only their interests. It is well-known that women like Aisha, Umm Salamah, Laila bint Qasim, Asma bint Abu Bakr, Khaula bint Umm Darda, and many others, were trusted with preserving and teaching one fourth of our religion.
Isn't it time we again trusted women to contribute to our public and intellectual lives? May the Muslim community in North America lead the way in producing the first Muslim woman jurist in more than two centuries. It is certainly long overdue.
[Edited slightly from an article first published in the July/Aug 1991 issue of THE MINARET and reprinted in VOICES, vol. 1, no. 2, Dec/Jan 1992, by Professor Khalid Abou El Fadl. Dr. Abou El Fadl is a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he specializes in Islamic Law.]
The Impact of Marginalizing Women in the Islamic Movement
Author: Waheeda Carvello
At first glance this topic seems fairly simple, yet it is not so. For too long the inferior role of women in Muslim society has become so entrenched that their marginalization is not even recognized. Coming as I do from South Africa, I am reminded of the way that Blacks were marginalized under the apartheid system. It is ironic that, while Muslim men in South Africa were rightly outraged by the inferior status accorded to them under apartheid, they did not see, and many are still unable to see, the parallels between the marginalization of non-Whites under the apartheid of South Africa and the marginalization of women under the ‘apartheid’ (separation) imposed by Muslim men. The question that we must confront is whether Muslim men who profess to uphold Islamic values are willing to redress the indignity and humiliation that Muslim women continue to suffer.
The key question that one is prompted to ask, is where does all this come from? Is this the Islamic way? Is this the way our Prophet intended women to be treated? The problem is that much of what has been historically handed down to us, even from sources which many in this hall would consider unquestionable, is steeped in obvious male-dominated bias. Before I discuss the role of the Prophet’s wives, let me demonstrate that even our so-called "unquestionable sources", such as Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, are replete with false ahadith — and I want to emphasize "false" ahadith as opposed to "weak" ahadith. There is a fundamental principle regarding the authenticity of ahadith, which is accepted by all Muslims, that any hadith that conflicts with the Qur’an must be rejected. There are no "ifs" and "buts" regarding this principle. Unfortunately, when it comes to women, there are many ahadith that conflict either with other ahadith of the Prophet or with verses of the Qur’an.
We have a very sad situation: most Muslims say that they hold the Qur’an as the most important source for all Islamic issues, but when it comes to practice, it seems that "traditions" determine how we conduct our lives. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the treatment of women. And apparently it all stems from the perception that Eve, or Hawaa, who was supposedly created from the rib of Adam, was the cause of the downfall of man.
Ask most Muslims where they get this information from and they will readily tell you it is from the Qur’an. Now, if I were to pose the question how was Eve created, I am almost always told, even by those ‘ulama’ that we call the ‘imams’ of mosques, that she was created from Adam’s rib. But that is not what the Qur’an says. So where do Muslims get this information from? Surely they haven’t started to read the Bible? — for this is a Biblical view. In fact, they get it from ahadith. Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim have between them six different sayings on women’s creation that are demeaning and insulting to women. The question then is whether the Prophet could have made such statements, especially as they run contrary to what Allah says on the subject.
Instead of giving you all six ahadith, let me quote you one from each source:
From Sahih Bukhari: "Treat women nicely, for a women is created from a rib, and the most curved portion of the rib is its upper portion, so if you try to straighten it, it will break, but if you leave it as it is, it will remain crooked. So treat women nicely."
From Sahih Muslim: "A woman is like a rib. When you attempt to straighten it, you will break it. And if you leave her alone you will benefit by her, and crookedness will remain in her."
If we are going to talk about the Seerah and the Sunnah of the Prophet, let us be absolutely sure that we will not accept blind adherence to hadith sources, however "sahih" or "authentic" they may be labelled. If they conflict with the Qur’an, then they must be so completely rejected that no doubt is left as to their rejection. The ahadith which I have quoted are in clear violation of what Allah says in the Qur’an.
The first verse of Sûrah an-Nisa (‘the women’) leaves no doubt that Hawa was not created from Adam, Iet alone from his crooked rib. Allah says: "O mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord Who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multitude of men and women. Be careful of your duty to Allah in Whom you claim (your rights) of one another, and toward the wombs (that bare you). Lo! Allah hath been a watcher over you" ( 4:1).
In this conference about the Seerah of the Prophet (saw), I cannot overemphasize the need for very close examination of the Prophet’s own treatment of women. Muslim women have suffered much over the years because of false accounts of the "seerah" of the Prophet. Now we need to understand that to accept the texts of early historians uncritically is an insult to the pristine honor accorded to the wives and daughters of the Prophet. We must remember that truth is often camouflaged in the very source of information we use as reference. Often the information at our disposal is imbedded in the indiscriminate use of isolated traditions or of groups of traditions emanating from single biased sources or from well-defined socio-political and religious groups. Each seeks to establish that version of "history" that is best suited to its own aspirations and prejudices.
The contributions and dynamism of these revered mothers of Islam are almost always viewed through the skewed lenses of traditional conservatism, in brief complaisant descriptions or tales. They are often marginalized as weak, weeping women, constantly quarrelling and bickering amongst themselves for the love, affection and attention of the beloved Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (saw).
We need to remind ourselves that emotional and personality traits are among the things that make us human, men and women alike. Did Prophet Muhammad not weep? Did he not show irritation when a blind man approached him while he was talking to a pagan Quraish leader? Did he not doubt Hadhrat Ayesha (ra) when a malicious rumor was spread about her? Early in his prophethood, did he not become frightened and seek solace and comfort from Hadhrat Khadijah (ra)? Did he not become anxious? Did he not despair? Why is it that when a man displays these emotions and behaviour then it is viewed with sympathy, and in many instances as signs of strength and character building? But if women, let alone the revered mothers of Islam, show their "humanness", they are labelled as weak and flawed, to the extent that they are robbed of their significant contribution to the advent of Islam and to humanity.
The fact of the matter is that Muslims have become the mules of politics that engender nothing. A woman’s God- given status, character and honor becomes as much a symbol of political struggles as anything else.
All of us present here today believe in the Islamic movement and have gathered here to explore, understand and implement the lessons drawn from the studies of the Seerah of the Prophet Muhammad (saw). We must be aware, however, that our efforts will be in vain if we continue to cling to the rope of conservatism. Conservatism, though a mental attitude, has a social base and finds anchor in intellectually bankrupt and stagnant societies, even when these societies give a superficial impression of being progressive. We must bear in mind that in these societies conservatism provides an inner defense-mechanism for an externally perceived threat. As far as Muslim communities around the world are concerned, this externally perceived threat is nothing more than the aspirations and internal resurgence of Muslim women who wish to reclaim their rightful place as educators and community builders, thus helping to evolve their societies constructively towards an Islamic Revolution which will benefit the whole of humanity. We Muslim women today want to follow the example of the first Islamic movement lead by Prophet himself, in which the inclusive and active participation of women played a vital role in bringing about the desired change.
What was the attitude of Prophet Muhammad towards women? We know that he treated them with respect, love, kindness and commitment. All his wives were noble, strong, intelligent and assertive women. Each one contributed in a profound way, not only in molding and shaping the first Muslim society but also in shaping and enhancing the personality of Prophet Muhammad and his companions (may Allah bless them all).
Even though he was Divinely guided and inspired, they also contributed to his strength, and he would often seek their council and advice. His wives would argue and debate with him on many political and socio-economic issues. When Hadhrat Umar ibn-al Khattab found out that his daughter Hafsa, who was married to Prophet Muhammad, used to argue with him all day, he could not contain himself and decided to go and chastise his daughter. Hafsa was never at a loss for words and the Prophet welcomed this. He enjoyed the challenges presented to him by his wives. When he learnt of Umar’s intentions he did not allow Umar to stop his daughter. Umar then went to seek audience with Umm Salama, also a wife of the Prophet. Umm Salama was an intelligent and forthright woman. Prophet Muhammad held her in high esteem and used to consult her on many complicated issues regarding the governance of society. To Umar’s chauvinist remarks, she replied, "I wonder at you, Ibn Khattab. You interfere in everything. Will you now interfere between the Messenger of Allah and his wives?"
Let us now turn our attention on the first wife of the Prophet, Hadhrat Khadijah (ra). As we all know, she was a wealthy businesswoman, of noble character, and proposed to and married Prophet Muhammad. At the time of the marriage, the Prophet was twenty-five and Khadijah was forty years old. This marriage between a mature woman of understanding and a valiant, honorable young man bears testimony to the needs of a man who was chosen by Allah to change the destiny of humanity.
She was his anchor and model of encouragement, she was more than just a moral supporter, she was also a leader in the truest sense. Her ability to reason and comprehend surpassed that of the men of her time. Even when Prophet Muhammad was frightened by his first encounter with angel Jibril, she had genius enough to realize that something tremendous and awe-inspiring had happened to him. She was the first to recognize the Prophet of Allah. She became the first Muslim and a staunch supporter in the face of determined and distressing opposition. She was firm in her faith, energetic and enthusiastic, and never faltered in encouraging her husband to persevere in the face of adversity. Her support steadied Muhammad’s troubled spirit in the earliest days of his prophetic career.
The annals of history can no longer ignore the important and vital role this outstanding lady of Islam played in mobilizing the first Islamic movement. Her contribution to the economics of the movement was two- fold: firstly, the Prophet’s marriage to her brought him economic freedom and time for spiritual contemplation and the eventual preparation for prophethood. And secondly, she used her wealth to finance the missions and expeditions of the Prophet. She provided the financial and economic base, which is a crucial and essential pre-requisite for any political movement to succeed. Her entire wealth was spent in the way of Allah. This economic base was used to spread the message of her husband, for freeing slaves who had embraced Islam, and helping to feed and shelter the emerging community of Muslims. This is a very profound and significant contribution, and its outcome we all know. If wealthy Muslims around the world follow the example set by our revered mother of Islam, contemporary Islamic movements around the world would not only surpass the spirally usurping economic system of the west but would be able to challenge and crush this exploitative system. It is also worth remembering that Hadhrat Khadijah, may Allah be pleased with her, also inspired Hazrat Abu-Bakr to contribute his wealth.
The relationship between Hadhrat Khadijah and Prophet Muhammad was one of mutual love, respect, mercy and understanding. Prophet Muhammad never stopped loving her, and although he married several more wives in later years and loved them all, it is clear that Khadijah always had a special place in his heart. Once Ayesha (ra) asked him whether Khadijah had been the only wife worthy of his love. He replied, "she believed in me when no one else did: she accepted Islam when people rejected me: and she helped me and comforted me when there was no one else to lend me a helping hand." Could all this have been done by a ‘weak, dependant’ woman? Of course not.
The Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to Hadhrat Ayesha was also an exceptional one. Here we have a man nearing the end of his life and a woman still near the beginning of hers. Hadhrat Ayesha had a lively temperament and was quick to learn. She had a clear heart and an accurate memory. It is important, however, to dig deeper and to bring out the real significance of this union. The emphasis here is on education and the cultivation of the intellect, which every human is blessed with. Allah has blessed humanity with the ability to think and reason. Knowledge is a continuous process. The acquisition of knowledge is regarded as one of the most important acts of worship, which must be infused with love and action to achieve the desired outcome. We must remind ourselves that if knowledge is not related to and acquired through action, it cannot be transformed into power, and cannot be used for the reconstruction of society and environment. What we lack today is the application of knowledge. Most of us are educated — in some instances, very highly educated — but how well do we understand what we have learnt? And how many of us have the commitment and the strength to apply it? Let alone implement it? That is what made the marriage of Ayesha to the Prophet so exceptional.
Prophet Muhammad encouraged intellectual growth and debate. Although Hadhrat Ayesha was intelligent, she had a great deal to learn. The Prophet tutored Ayesha with love and understanding, and enhanced her potential. Through this interaction with the Prophet and the other wives she became very knowledgeable. Like any student, she would sometimes feel insecure regarding her progress and the Prophet would always help her and assist her to improve herself. Like Hadhrat Hafsa, she was never short of words and was not afraid to question or debate in order to find out the truth. When she got older she passed on the knowledge she had received from the Prophet, and long after his death she was a source of knowledge and wisdom for both women and men.
Ayesha accompanied the Prophet on many expeditions. She participated with total courage and commitment in the battles of Badr, Uhud and al-Khandaq (the ditch), and learned through these experiences. Through this kind of training, and as an active participant, she developed into a mature eloquent woman who could fully participate in the affairs of the first Islamic state, alhumdulillah. This is the sunnah that we should all be aspiring towards, not the sunnah which has been fabricated to suit the needs of our men’s nafs.
In conclusion, let me come back to what I said at the outset. The marginalization and dehumanization of women through the error and deviation of historical texts cannot be left unchallenged. Writing and debating about the problem, and confining it to academia, is not going to bring about the desired change. We need to start now. The resurgence has begun and the reformers and advocates of change should not only persevere with patience but should also have the right perception of the situation and a proper understanding of the various factors inhibiting change in order to initiate the proper course.
In his paper Processes of error, deviation, correction and convergence in Muslim political thought (1989), Dr Kalim Siddiqui marhoom wrote:
"History is a crucible. It is relentless and impartial in dealing with error and deviation. History is intolerant of all degrees of perversion of the truth, however well-meaning and sincere the human motive behind it. All kinds of religious traditions have fallen into the trap of exaggerated self-righteousness and absurd claims of having discovered the whole truth to the exclusion of all others."
Dr Kalim wrote this in the context of sectarianism and the false claims of some Islamic groups, current and past. But precisely the same can be said of the positions taken by many male ulama and male-dominated Islamic traditions vis-à-vis women. The error and deviation introduced into Muslim thought on the subject of the role and position of Muslim women need to be corrected for the sake of the Islamic movements currently struggling for truth and justice all over the world, as much as for the sake of Muslim women ourselves. Without the full support, participation and input of Muslim women, as demonstrated by the women of the earliest Islamic community and the first Islamic state, contemporary Islamic movements cannot hope to achieve the goals they have set themselves.
Waheeda Carvello teaches at the Al-Ghazali College in Pretoria, South Africa. This is the paper that she presented at the Seerah Conferences convened by the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) and Crescent International in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Karachi, Pakistan, in June 2000.
Source: http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/movement00/wom-move.htm
At first glance this topic seems fairly simple, yet it is not so. For too long the inferior role of women in Muslim society has become so entrenched that their marginalization is not even recognized. Coming as I do from South Africa, I am reminded of the way that Blacks were marginalized under the apartheid system. It is ironic that, while Muslim men in South Africa were rightly outraged by the inferior status accorded to them under apartheid, they did not see, and many are still unable to see, the parallels between the marginalization of non-Whites under the apartheid of South Africa and the marginalization of women under the ‘apartheid’ (separation) imposed by Muslim men. The question that we must confront is whether Muslim men who profess to uphold Islamic values are willing to redress the indignity and humiliation that Muslim women continue to suffer.
The key question that one is prompted to ask, is where does all this come from? Is this the Islamic way? Is this the way our Prophet intended women to be treated? The problem is that much of what has been historically handed down to us, even from sources which many in this hall would consider unquestionable, is steeped in obvious male-dominated bias. Before I discuss the role of the Prophet’s wives, let me demonstrate that even our so-called "unquestionable sources", such as Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, are replete with false ahadith — and I want to emphasize "false" ahadith as opposed to "weak" ahadith. There is a fundamental principle regarding the authenticity of ahadith, which is accepted by all Muslims, that any hadith that conflicts with the Qur’an must be rejected. There are no "ifs" and "buts" regarding this principle. Unfortunately, when it comes to women, there are many ahadith that conflict either with other ahadith of the Prophet or with verses of the Qur’an.
We have a very sad situation: most Muslims say that they hold the Qur’an as the most important source for all Islamic issues, but when it comes to practice, it seems that "traditions" determine how we conduct our lives. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the treatment of women. And apparently it all stems from the perception that Eve, or Hawaa, who was supposedly created from the rib of Adam, was the cause of the downfall of man.
Ask most Muslims where they get this information from and they will readily tell you it is from the Qur’an. Now, if I were to pose the question how was Eve created, I am almost always told, even by those ‘ulama’ that we call the ‘imams’ of mosques, that she was created from Adam’s rib. But that is not what the Qur’an says. So where do Muslims get this information from? Surely they haven’t started to read the Bible? — for this is a Biblical view. In fact, they get it from ahadith. Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim have between them six different sayings on women’s creation that are demeaning and insulting to women. The question then is whether the Prophet could have made such statements, especially as they run contrary to what Allah says on the subject.
Instead of giving you all six ahadith, let me quote you one from each source:
From Sahih Bukhari: "Treat women nicely, for a women is created from a rib, and the most curved portion of the rib is its upper portion, so if you try to straighten it, it will break, but if you leave it as it is, it will remain crooked. So treat women nicely."
From Sahih Muslim: "A woman is like a rib. When you attempt to straighten it, you will break it. And if you leave her alone you will benefit by her, and crookedness will remain in her."
If we are going to talk about the Seerah and the Sunnah of the Prophet, let us be absolutely sure that we will not accept blind adherence to hadith sources, however "sahih" or "authentic" they may be labelled. If they conflict with the Qur’an, then they must be so completely rejected that no doubt is left as to their rejection. The ahadith which I have quoted are in clear violation of what Allah says in the Qur’an.
The first verse of Sûrah an-Nisa (‘the women’) leaves no doubt that Hawa was not created from Adam, Iet alone from his crooked rib. Allah says: "O mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord Who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multitude of men and women. Be careful of your duty to Allah in Whom you claim (your rights) of one another, and toward the wombs (that bare you). Lo! Allah hath been a watcher over you" ( 4:1).
In this conference about the Seerah of the Prophet (saw), I cannot overemphasize the need for very close examination of the Prophet’s own treatment of women. Muslim women have suffered much over the years because of false accounts of the "seerah" of the Prophet. Now we need to understand that to accept the texts of early historians uncritically is an insult to the pristine honor accorded to the wives and daughters of the Prophet. We must remember that truth is often camouflaged in the very source of information we use as reference. Often the information at our disposal is imbedded in the indiscriminate use of isolated traditions or of groups of traditions emanating from single biased sources or from well-defined socio-political and religious groups. Each seeks to establish that version of "history" that is best suited to its own aspirations and prejudices.
The contributions and dynamism of these revered mothers of Islam are almost always viewed through the skewed lenses of traditional conservatism, in brief complaisant descriptions or tales. They are often marginalized as weak, weeping women, constantly quarrelling and bickering amongst themselves for the love, affection and attention of the beloved Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (saw).
We need to remind ourselves that emotional and personality traits are among the things that make us human, men and women alike. Did Prophet Muhammad not weep? Did he not show irritation when a blind man approached him while he was talking to a pagan Quraish leader? Did he not doubt Hadhrat Ayesha (ra) when a malicious rumor was spread about her? Early in his prophethood, did he not become frightened and seek solace and comfort from Hadhrat Khadijah (ra)? Did he not become anxious? Did he not despair? Why is it that when a man displays these emotions and behaviour then it is viewed with sympathy, and in many instances as signs of strength and character building? But if women, let alone the revered mothers of Islam, show their "humanness", they are labelled as weak and flawed, to the extent that they are robbed of their significant contribution to the advent of Islam and to humanity.
The fact of the matter is that Muslims have become the mules of politics that engender nothing. A woman’s God- given status, character and honor becomes as much a symbol of political struggles as anything else.
All of us present here today believe in the Islamic movement and have gathered here to explore, understand and implement the lessons drawn from the studies of the Seerah of the Prophet Muhammad (saw). We must be aware, however, that our efforts will be in vain if we continue to cling to the rope of conservatism. Conservatism, though a mental attitude, has a social base and finds anchor in intellectually bankrupt and stagnant societies, even when these societies give a superficial impression of being progressive. We must bear in mind that in these societies conservatism provides an inner defense-mechanism for an externally perceived threat. As far as Muslim communities around the world are concerned, this externally perceived threat is nothing more than the aspirations and internal resurgence of Muslim women who wish to reclaim their rightful place as educators and community builders, thus helping to evolve their societies constructively towards an Islamic Revolution which will benefit the whole of humanity. We Muslim women today want to follow the example of the first Islamic movement lead by Prophet himself, in which the inclusive and active participation of women played a vital role in bringing about the desired change.
What was the attitude of Prophet Muhammad towards women? We know that he treated them with respect, love, kindness and commitment. All his wives were noble, strong, intelligent and assertive women. Each one contributed in a profound way, not only in molding and shaping the first Muslim society but also in shaping and enhancing the personality of Prophet Muhammad and his companions (may Allah bless them all).
Even though he was Divinely guided and inspired, they also contributed to his strength, and he would often seek their council and advice. His wives would argue and debate with him on many political and socio-economic issues. When Hadhrat Umar ibn-al Khattab found out that his daughter Hafsa, who was married to Prophet Muhammad, used to argue with him all day, he could not contain himself and decided to go and chastise his daughter. Hafsa was never at a loss for words and the Prophet welcomed this. He enjoyed the challenges presented to him by his wives. When he learnt of Umar’s intentions he did not allow Umar to stop his daughter. Umar then went to seek audience with Umm Salama, also a wife of the Prophet. Umm Salama was an intelligent and forthright woman. Prophet Muhammad held her in high esteem and used to consult her on many complicated issues regarding the governance of society. To Umar’s chauvinist remarks, she replied, "I wonder at you, Ibn Khattab. You interfere in everything. Will you now interfere between the Messenger of Allah and his wives?"
Let us now turn our attention on the first wife of the Prophet, Hadhrat Khadijah (ra). As we all know, she was a wealthy businesswoman, of noble character, and proposed to and married Prophet Muhammad. At the time of the marriage, the Prophet was twenty-five and Khadijah was forty years old. This marriage between a mature woman of understanding and a valiant, honorable young man bears testimony to the needs of a man who was chosen by Allah to change the destiny of humanity.
She was his anchor and model of encouragement, she was more than just a moral supporter, she was also a leader in the truest sense. Her ability to reason and comprehend surpassed that of the men of her time. Even when Prophet Muhammad was frightened by his first encounter with angel Jibril, she had genius enough to realize that something tremendous and awe-inspiring had happened to him. She was the first to recognize the Prophet of Allah. She became the first Muslim and a staunch supporter in the face of determined and distressing opposition. She was firm in her faith, energetic and enthusiastic, and never faltered in encouraging her husband to persevere in the face of adversity. Her support steadied Muhammad’s troubled spirit in the earliest days of his prophetic career.
The annals of history can no longer ignore the important and vital role this outstanding lady of Islam played in mobilizing the first Islamic movement. Her contribution to the economics of the movement was two- fold: firstly, the Prophet’s marriage to her brought him economic freedom and time for spiritual contemplation and the eventual preparation for prophethood. And secondly, she used her wealth to finance the missions and expeditions of the Prophet. She provided the financial and economic base, which is a crucial and essential pre-requisite for any political movement to succeed. Her entire wealth was spent in the way of Allah. This economic base was used to spread the message of her husband, for freeing slaves who had embraced Islam, and helping to feed and shelter the emerging community of Muslims. This is a very profound and significant contribution, and its outcome we all know. If wealthy Muslims around the world follow the example set by our revered mother of Islam, contemporary Islamic movements around the world would not only surpass the spirally usurping economic system of the west but would be able to challenge and crush this exploitative system. It is also worth remembering that Hadhrat Khadijah, may Allah be pleased with her, also inspired Hazrat Abu-Bakr to contribute his wealth.
The relationship between Hadhrat Khadijah and Prophet Muhammad was one of mutual love, respect, mercy and understanding. Prophet Muhammad never stopped loving her, and although he married several more wives in later years and loved them all, it is clear that Khadijah always had a special place in his heart. Once Ayesha (ra) asked him whether Khadijah had been the only wife worthy of his love. He replied, "she believed in me when no one else did: she accepted Islam when people rejected me: and she helped me and comforted me when there was no one else to lend me a helping hand." Could all this have been done by a ‘weak, dependant’ woman? Of course not.
The Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to Hadhrat Ayesha was also an exceptional one. Here we have a man nearing the end of his life and a woman still near the beginning of hers. Hadhrat Ayesha had a lively temperament and was quick to learn. She had a clear heart and an accurate memory. It is important, however, to dig deeper and to bring out the real significance of this union. The emphasis here is on education and the cultivation of the intellect, which every human is blessed with. Allah has blessed humanity with the ability to think and reason. Knowledge is a continuous process. The acquisition of knowledge is regarded as one of the most important acts of worship, which must be infused with love and action to achieve the desired outcome. We must remind ourselves that if knowledge is not related to and acquired through action, it cannot be transformed into power, and cannot be used for the reconstruction of society and environment. What we lack today is the application of knowledge. Most of us are educated — in some instances, very highly educated — but how well do we understand what we have learnt? And how many of us have the commitment and the strength to apply it? Let alone implement it? That is what made the marriage of Ayesha to the Prophet so exceptional.
Prophet Muhammad encouraged intellectual growth and debate. Although Hadhrat Ayesha was intelligent, she had a great deal to learn. The Prophet tutored Ayesha with love and understanding, and enhanced her potential. Through this interaction with the Prophet and the other wives she became very knowledgeable. Like any student, she would sometimes feel insecure regarding her progress and the Prophet would always help her and assist her to improve herself. Like Hadhrat Hafsa, she was never short of words and was not afraid to question or debate in order to find out the truth. When she got older she passed on the knowledge she had received from the Prophet, and long after his death she was a source of knowledge and wisdom for both women and men.
Ayesha accompanied the Prophet on many expeditions. She participated with total courage and commitment in the battles of Badr, Uhud and al-Khandaq (the ditch), and learned through these experiences. Through this kind of training, and as an active participant, she developed into a mature eloquent woman who could fully participate in the affairs of the first Islamic state, alhumdulillah. This is the sunnah that we should all be aspiring towards, not the sunnah which has been fabricated to suit the needs of our men’s nafs.
In conclusion, let me come back to what I said at the outset. The marginalization and dehumanization of women through the error and deviation of historical texts cannot be left unchallenged. Writing and debating about the problem, and confining it to academia, is not going to bring about the desired change. We need to start now. The resurgence has begun and the reformers and advocates of change should not only persevere with patience but should also have the right perception of the situation and a proper understanding of the various factors inhibiting change in order to initiate the proper course.
In his paper Processes of error, deviation, correction and convergence in Muslim political thought (1989), Dr Kalim Siddiqui marhoom wrote:
"History is a crucible. It is relentless and impartial in dealing with error and deviation. History is intolerant of all degrees of perversion of the truth, however well-meaning and sincere the human motive behind it. All kinds of religious traditions have fallen into the trap of exaggerated self-righteousness and absurd claims of having discovered the whole truth to the exclusion of all others."
Dr Kalim wrote this in the context of sectarianism and the false claims of some Islamic groups, current and past. But precisely the same can be said of the positions taken by many male ulama and male-dominated Islamic traditions vis-à-vis women. The error and deviation introduced into Muslim thought on the subject of the role and position of Muslim women need to be corrected for the sake of the Islamic movements currently struggling for truth and justice all over the world, as much as for the sake of Muslim women ourselves. Without the full support, participation and input of Muslim women, as demonstrated by the women of the earliest Islamic community and the first Islamic state, contemporary Islamic movements cannot hope to achieve the goals they have set themselves.
Waheeda Carvello teaches at the Al-Ghazali College in Pretoria, South Africa. This is the paper that she presented at the Seerah Conferences convened by the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) and Crescent International in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Karachi, Pakistan, in June 2000.
Source: http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/movement00/wom-move.htm
Equality of Men and Women in all Three Levels of Islam
The Wisdom Behind the Islamic Laws Regarding Women
Shaykh `Abdul Rahman `Abdul Khaliq
Translated by Ali Al-Timimi
© IANA
My brothers and sisters everywhere! Islamic law - that Allah (Glorified and Exalted be He) sent down to His Messenger Muhammad - came to announce that women (exactly like men) are full human beings. Women (like men) are therefore required to follow the way appointed by Allah.
A woman (like a man) is therefore obligated with all three degrees of this religion: Islam (outward submission to Allah), Iman (inward faith in Allah), and Ihsan (perfection of worship of Allah).
It is thus required for every woman to testify that there is none deserving worship but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Messenger; to pray; to give charity; to fast; and to make a pilgrimage to Allah's House if she has the means.
It is likewise required for every woman to believe in Allah, His angels, His scriptures, His messengers, the Last Day, and to believe in Allah's decree (and that the good and evil consequences thereof are from Allah).
These are the fundamentals of Islam and Iman.
It is likewise required for every woman to worship Allah as if she sees Him. For although she cannot see Allah, she must believe that He sees whatever she does in secret and in public.
Women (exactly like men) have been commanded with these three levels of the religion (Islam, Iman, Ihsan).
Women are also obligated to enjoin good and forbid evil; to wage jihad by saying that which is truthful; and to adhere to all noble behavior, like: truthfulness, trustworthiness, courage, modesty, and self-respect.
Every Muslim woman is commanded to be steadfast in her religion and not to be negligent with her faith. It is impermissible for her - under any pressure or compulsion - to open her heart to accept the word of disbelief. Hence every Muslim woman falls under Allah's statement:
"Whose disbelieves in Allah, after he has believed - excepting him who has been compelled, and his heart is still at rest with the Faith - but whosoever's breast is expanded in unbelief, upon them shall rest anger from Allah, and there awaits them a mighty chastisement." (Qur'an 16:106)
Clearly when Islam charged women with all these duties and in all these obligations made her equal to men, the intent was to honor her and permit her to reach the highest degree of perfection of her being.
The duties that Allah has obligated humanity with are but a means to honor us. Prayer, as well as fasting, is an honor for the servant and a means to raise his rank. To adhere to Allah's straight path and the manners of Islam are, without doubt, a means to honor us and not to humiliate us as imagined by those who are ignorant of Allah and follow their desires.
Such people think and imagine that a human being who does not believe in Allah, does not uphold the trust of these duties, and does not perform what Allah has commanded him is of a higher standing than the believer who adheres to the obligations of Islam. Such an idea is ignorance and renders human beings on par with the animals.
Humans have been created to be tried by Allah and have been charged with fulfilling these duties to Allah (Glorified and Exalted be He) and His creatures. As for animals, while they have been created by Allah, they have not been charged with this trust.
Whoever considers that a human being who does not uphold what Allah has obligated as equal to those who fulfill what Allah has obligated is like those who consider humans and animals to be equal. For this reason,
Allah has said:
"Shall we treat that those who have surrendered (as Muslims) as We treat the guilty?" (Qur'an 68:35)
And He has said:
"We have crated for Hell many of the jinn and humanity; they have hearts, but understand not with them; they have eyes, but perceive not with them; and they have ears, but they hear not with them. These are like cattle; nay, rather they are further astray! Those - they are the heedless." (Qur'an 7:126)
The disbeliever in Allah is a guilty criminal, for he does not know whom He is to worship, i.e., his Creator, his Protector, his Lord, and He Who created this universe in which he lives. The disbeliever enjoys what Allah has blessed him with and yet forgets the One Who blessed and preferred him with such blessings. As for the believer, he is the honorable servant who knows His Lord and Creator, Allah, Whom he worships. He fulfills what Allah has obligated and travels upon the path that Allah has delineated for him.
Source:
http://www.islaam.com/challenges/equality_in_3_levels.htm
Shaykh `Abdul Rahman `Abdul Khaliq
Translated by Ali Al-Timimi
© IANA
My brothers and sisters everywhere! Islamic law - that Allah (Glorified and Exalted be He) sent down to His Messenger Muhammad - came to announce that women (exactly like men) are full human beings. Women (like men) are therefore required to follow the way appointed by Allah.
A woman (like a man) is therefore obligated with all three degrees of this religion: Islam (outward submission to Allah), Iman (inward faith in Allah), and Ihsan (perfection of worship of Allah).
It is thus required for every woman to testify that there is none deserving worship but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Messenger; to pray; to give charity; to fast; and to make a pilgrimage to Allah's House if she has the means.
It is likewise required for every woman to believe in Allah, His angels, His scriptures, His messengers, the Last Day, and to believe in Allah's decree (and that the good and evil consequences thereof are from Allah).
These are the fundamentals of Islam and Iman.
It is likewise required for every woman to worship Allah as if she sees Him. For although she cannot see Allah, she must believe that He sees whatever she does in secret and in public.
Women (exactly like men) have been commanded with these three levels of the religion (Islam, Iman, Ihsan).
Women are also obligated to enjoin good and forbid evil; to wage jihad by saying that which is truthful; and to adhere to all noble behavior, like: truthfulness, trustworthiness, courage, modesty, and self-respect.
Every Muslim woman is commanded to be steadfast in her religion and not to be negligent with her faith. It is impermissible for her - under any pressure or compulsion - to open her heart to accept the word of disbelief. Hence every Muslim woman falls under Allah's statement:
"Whose disbelieves in Allah, after he has believed - excepting him who has been compelled, and his heart is still at rest with the Faith - but whosoever's breast is expanded in unbelief, upon them shall rest anger from Allah, and there awaits them a mighty chastisement." (Qur'an 16:106)
Clearly when Islam charged women with all these duties and in all these obligations made her equal to men, the intent was to honor her and permit her to reach the highest degree of perfection of her being.
The duties that Allah has obligated humanity with are but a means to honor us. Prayer, as well as fasting, is an honor for the servant and a means to raise his rank. To adhere to Allah's straight path and the manners of Islam are, without doubt, a means to honor us and not to humiliate us as imagined by those who are ignorant of Allah and follow their desires.
Such people think and imagine that a human being who does not believe in Allah, does not uphold the trust of these duties, and does not perform what Allah has commanded him is of a higher standing than the believer who adheres to the obligations of Islam. Such an idea is ignorance and renders human beings on par with the animals.
Humans have been created to be tried by Allah and have been charged with fulfilling these duties to Allah (Glorified and Exalted be He) and His creatures. As for animals, while they have been created by Allah, they have not been charged with this trust.
Whoever considers that a human being who does not uphold what Allah has obligated as equal to those who fulfill what Allah has obligated is like those who consider humans and animals to be equal. For this reason,
Allah has said:
"Shall we treat that those who have surrendered (as Muslims) as We treat the guilty?" (Qur'an 68:35)
And He has said:
"We have crated for Hell many of the jinn and humanity; they have hearts, but understand not with them; they have eyes, but perceive not with them; and they have ears, but they hear not with them. These are like cattle; nay, rather they are further astray! Those - they are the heedless." (Qur'an 7:126)
The disbeliever in Allah is a guilty criminal, for he does not know whom He is to worship, i.e., his Creator, his Protector, his Lord, and He Who created this universe in which he lives. The disbeliever enjoys what Allah has blessed him with and yet forgets the One Who blessed and preferred him with such blessings. As for the believer, he is the honorable servant who knows His Lord and Creator, Allah, Whom he worships. He fulfills what Allah has obligated and travels upon the path that Allah has delineated for him.
Source:
http://www.islaam.com/challenges/equality_in_3_levels.htm
Gender in Islam
Author: Farhat Naz Rahman
Equality is the term, which is hard to define. There is a sense in which all human beings are equal, but in actual life, we find that no two human beings are really equal in all respects. Inequality leads to injustice and oppression only where artificial impediments, whether in the shape of laws and customs or traditions, are super-added to natural inequalities so as to prevent men and women from developing their native capacities to full. (1)
Equality does not mean identicality: it means equity. Islam presents the roles of men and women as complementary roles and not contradictory or conflicting roles; the roles of partners with a common set of goals and objectives and not roles that conflict with each other, with each of them having the objective of the civilizations and societies that for centuries refused to consider women as human beings, or to give them any rights, have now gone from one extreme to another. Islam has never had anything to do with such nonsense. When women had no rights in the world it declared:
"And women shall have rights, similar to the rights against them, according to what is equitable." (Al-Baqarah, 2:228)
That still remains Islam's command - today and forever. Similar rights, not same rights. Qualitative, not quantitative equality. Both men and women are equal in their humanity and in their dignity; in their accountability to perform their assigned tasks and be judged according to their performance.
However, their assigned tasks are not the same. Their Creator has given them different capabilities: the tasks are based on those capabilities. This distinction is not an error that needs to be corrected. It is the only basis for building a healthy and prosperous society. Islam liberates a woman from the modern tyranny of having to become a man in order to get a sense of self worth and achievement in striving for supremacy.
The egalitarian conception of gender inhering in the ethical vision of Islam existed in tension with the hierarchical relation between the sexes encoded into the marriage structure instituted by Islam. This egalitarianism is a consistent element of the ethical utterances of the Quran. Among the remarkable features of the Quran, particularly in comparison with the scriptural texts of other monotheistic traditions, is that women are explicitly addressed; one passage in which this occurs declares by the very structure of the utterances, as well as in overt statement, the absolute moral and spiritual equality of men and women. (2)
“For Muslim men and women,-for believing men and women, for devout men and women, for true [truthful] men and women, for men and women who are patient and constant, for men and women who humble themselves, for men and women who give in charity, for men and women who fast ( and deny themselves), for men and women who guard their chastity, and for men and women who engage much in God's praise,- for them has God prepared forgiveness and a great reward”. (Sûrah 33: 35) (3)
Women's position is determined not so much by the principles of Islam as by social practices. Any discrimination based on gender is a grave offense and against the teachings of the Qur'an. The Qur'an regards men and women as complementary to each other, one sex making up what the other lacks. Islam does not consider a woman a mere shadow or an extension of a man, always following him or obeying him. She has her full individual freedom and responsibility to the belief in the message of Allah and in practicing its obligations.
Islam like other major religions of the world, which developed in patriarchal cultures, has been used traditionally to deprive women of their God-created, God-given fundamental human rights. (4) Somewhere in the dust of history, our Ulema adopted the Christian theory that women are the source of (original and) all evil.
Quranic consideration of women on earth centres on her relationship to the group, i.e. as a member of a social system. However, it is also important to understand how Quran focuses on women as an individual because the Quran treats the individual, whether male or female, in exactly the same manner: that is, whatever the Quran says about the relationship between Allah and individual is not in gender terms. With regard to spirituality, there are no rights of women distinct from rights of man. (5)
A number of elements in Sufism strongly suggest that the Sufi ethos countered that of the dominant society with respect also to their gender arrangements and their view of women. From early on, its proponents counted women among the important contributors to their tradition and almost the elect spiritual leaders, honoring, for example, Rabi`a al `Adawiyya. Moreover, Sufi tales and legends incorporate elements that also suggest that they engaged with and rejected the values of the dominant society with regard to women. (6) The narratives about Rabi`a al `Adwiyya, for instance, exemplify distinctly counter-cultural elements with respect to ideas about gender. Short narratives depict Rabi`a surpassing her male colleagues in intellectual forthrightness and percipience as well as in spiritual powers. One relates how Hasan al-Basri approached Rabi`a, who was meditating with some companions on a bank. Throwing his carpets on the water, Hasan sat on it and called to Rabi`a to come and converse with him. Understanding that he wanted to impress people with his spiritual powers, Rabi`a threw her prayer carpet into the air and flew up to it; sitting there she said, "O Hasan, come up here where people will see us better." Hasan was silent, for it was beyond his power to fly. "O Hasan. " Rabi`a then said, " that which you did a fish can do…and that which I did a fly can do. The real work (for the saints of God) lies beyond both of these." (7) Another narrative tells how the Ka`aba (the house Allah) rose up and came forward to meet Rabi`a when she was making her pilgrimage to Mecca. She commented: "What have I to do with the house, it is the Lord of the house I need." Meanwhile an eminent fellow Sufi, Ibrahim ibn Adham, was taking many years over his pilgrimage to Mecca, piously stopping to perform ritual prayers many times along the way. Arriving in Mecca and seeing no Ka`aba, he thought his eyes were at fault until a voice informed him that the Ka`aba had gone forth to meet a woman. When Rabi`a and the Ka’aba arrived together, Rabi`a informed Ibrahim, who was consumed with jealousy that the Ka`aba had so honored her, that whereas he crossed the desert making ritual prayers, she came in inward prayer.
The tale thus shows a woman not only surpassing a man but also gently undercutting the formalism and literalness of orthodox religion and the trappings of piety. Another remark attributed to Rabi`a, made about another Sufi, Sufyan al Thawri, shows the same thing. "Sufyan would be a [good man]," she said, "if only he did not love traditions." (8)
Textual injunctions on gender equity and the prophetic model are sometimes disregarded by some if not most Muslims individually and collectively. Revision of practices (not divine injunctions) is needed. It is not the revelatory Qur'an and the Sunnah that need any editing or revision. What need to be reexamined are fallible human interpretations and practices. Diverse practices in Muslim countries often reflect cultural influences (local or foreign), more so than the letter or spirit of the Shariah. Fortunately, there is an emerging trend for the betterment of our understanding of gender equity, based on the Qur'an and Hadith, not on alien and imported un-Islamic or non-Islamic values and not on the basis of the existing oppressive and unjust status quo in many parts of the Muslim world. (9)
Theologically, Islam tends to assert the equality of the male and female principles, while in its practical social structures it establishes a distinction. To understand this paradox is to understand the essence of the Islamic philosophy of gender, which constructs roles from below, not from above. Women's functions vary widely in the Muslim world and in Muslim history. In peasant communities, women work in the fields; in the desert; while among the urban elites, womanhood is more frequently celebrated in the home. Recurrently, however, the public space is rigorously desexualized, and this is represented by the quasi-monastic garb of men and women, where frequently the color white is the color of the male, while black, significantly the sign of inferiority, of the Ka'ba and hence the celestial Layla, denotes femininity. In the private space of the home these signs are cast aside, and the home becomes as colourful as the public space is austere and polarized. Modernity, refusing to recognise gender as a sacred sign, and delighting in random erotic signaling, renders the public space 'domestic' by colouring it, and makes war on all remnants of gender separation, crudely construed as judgmental.
There are other aspects of the Shari’a that deserve mention as illustrations of our theme, not least those, which have been largely forgotten by Muslim societies. The Lawgiver sometimes designs the intersections between the two gender universes as rights of women, and sometimes as rights of men; and the former category is more frequently omitted from actualized Muslim communities. Frequently the jurists' exegesis of the texts is pluri-vocal. Domestic chores, for instance, appear as an aspect of interior sociality, but this is not identified with purely female space, since they are regarded by some madhhabs, including the Shafi'i, as the responsibility of the man rather than the wife. A'isha was asked, after the Blessed Prophet's death, what he used to do at home when he was not at prayer; and she replied: 'He served his family: he used to sweep the floor, and sew clothes.' (Bukhari, Adhan, 44.) On this basis, Shafi'i jurists defend the woman's right not to perform housework.' (1)0
In the Hanafi madhhab, by contrast, these acts are regarded as the wife's obligations. Another sufficient reminder of the difficulty of generalising about Islamic law, which remains a diverse body of rules and approaches. Islam's theology of gender thus contends with a maze, a web of connections, which demand familiarity with a diverse legal code, regional heterogeneity and with the metaphysical no less than with the physical.
This complexity should warn us against offering facile generalisations about Islam's attitude to women. Journalists, feminists and cultivated people generally in the West have harboured deeply negative verdicts here. Often these verdicts are arrived at through the observation of actual Muslim societies; and it would be both futile and immoral to suggest that the modern Islamic world is always to be admired for its treatment of women. This imbalance will continue unless actualized religion learns to reincorporate the dimension of ihsân, which valorizes the feminine principle, and also obstructs and ultimately annihilates the ego, which underpins gender chauvinism. We need to distinguish, as many Muslim women thinkers are doing, between the expectations of the religion's ethos (as legible in scripture, classical exegesis, and spirituality), and the actual asymmetric structures of post-classical Muslim societies, which, like Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Chinese cultures, contain much that is in real need of reform.
Muslim women have for long periods of Islam's history left their homes to become scholars. A hundred years ago the orientalist Ignaz Goldziher showed that perhaps fifteen percent of medieval hadith scholars were women, teaching in the mosques and universally admired for their integrity. Colleges such as the Saqlatuniya Madrasa in Cairo were funded and staffed entirely by women.
Male and female are aspects of duality, whereas God is unique. Nothing else resembles Him. He has no counterpart. So why is the male pronoun used to refer to Him? First of all, Arabic has no gender-neutral pronoun. Everything is either ‘he’ or ‘she,’ including inanimate objects. Even though English has the pronoun ‘it,’ to use ‘it’ to refer to God has a drawback, because ‘it’ is basically used for things and creatures that can’t think. Likewise, to refer to God as ‘she’ has certain connotations of weakness in a human context. Like it or not, men have dominated public life and human societies throughout history. Therefore, the Qur'an uses ‘He’ to refer to Allah, while making it clear that God transcends all dualistic traits. Descriptions of Allah abound in the Qur'an or the Sunnah, but none of them gives the slightest inkling that He is masculine or feminine.
When we turn to the Qur'an, we find an image of Godhead apophatically stripped of metaphor. God is simply Allah, the God; never Father. The divine is referred to by the masculine pronoun: Allah is He (huwa); but the grammarians and exegetes concur that this is not even allegoric: Arabic has no neuter, and the use of the masculine is normal in Arabic for genderless nouns. No male preponderance is implied, any more than femininity is implied by the grammatically female gender of neuter plurals. (11)
The modern Jordanian theologian Hasan al-Saqqaf emphasises the point that Muslim theology has consistently made down the ages: God is not gendered, really or metaphorically. The Quran continues Biblical assumptions on many levels, but here there is a striking discontinuity. The imaging of God has been shifted into a new and bipolar register, that of the Ninety-Nine Names. Muslim women who have reflected on the gender issue have seized, I think with good reason, on this striking point. For instance, one Muslim woman writer, Sartaz Aziz, writes:
“I am deeply grateful that my first ideas of God were formed by Islam because I was able to think of the Highest Power as one completely without sex or race, and thus completely unpatriarchal . . . We begin with the idea of a deity who is completely above sexual identity, and thus completely outside the value system created by patriarchy”. (12)
In fact, by far the most conspicuous of the Divine Names in the Koran is al-Rahman, the All Compassionate. And the explicitly feminine resonance of this name were remarked upon by the Prophet (s.w.s.) himself, who taught that rahma, loving compassion, is an attribute derived from the word rahm, meaning a womb. (Bukhari, Adab 13)
Further confirmation for this is supplied in a famous hadith:
'On the day that He created the heavens and the earth, God created a hundred rahmas, each of which is as great as the space which lies between heaven and earth. And He sent one rahma down to earth, by which a mother has rahma for her child.' (Muslim, Tawba, 21) Drawing on this explicit identification of rahma with the 'maternal' aspect of the phenomenal divine, the developed tradition of Sufism habitually identifies God's entire creative aspect as 'feminine', and as merciful. (13)
In her book “The Tao Of Islam” the Japanese scholar Sachiko Murata has drawn parallels with the attributes of God (proverbial 99 names of Allah) in the concept of Yin and Yang whereby the names of Majesty can be considered Yang/Masculine/Jalal as for example, The Avenger, The Destroyer, The Reckoner. Examples of Yin/Feminine/Jamal names are the Great Bestower, The Most Indulgent, The Beautiful, The Source of Peace. The vast majority of what are called “The Most Beautiful Names of God” (Al-Asma al Husna) – the proverbial 99 names of God – mostly fall into these categories.
In this context one can note the significance of the name, ‘Al-Rahman’ which means, The Gracious-Compassionate One, The All-Merciful. At a simple statistical level it is the most often repeated attribute in the Quran. Apart from its overwhelming presence in the text, every chapter, except one, begins with this name accompanied by its variant Al-Rahim. Etymologically they are inextricably tied to the roots of the word for ‘Womb’ in Arabic, making it a Yin/Feminine attribute par excellence. (14)
Fortunately, there is an emerging trend for the betterment of our understanding of gender equity, based on the Qur'an and Hadith, not on alien and imported un-Islamic or non-Islamic values and not on the basis of the existing oppressive and unjust status quo in many parts of the Muslim world. It is not the revelatory Qur'an and the Sunnah that need any editing or revision. What needs to be reexamined are fallible human interpretations and practices. (15)
The issues related to women generally cover four areas:
(a) Status of women,
(b) role of women,
(c) participation and other rights of women, and
(d) dress and conduct of women.
Our approach is most commonly apologetic (defending or explaining the virtues of Islam, without recognizing and solving the problems, whenever appropriate or warranted). An example of such a well-articulated, apologetic approach:
"What then is all this uproar by the Muslim women of today about? Is there any right or facility that Islam has not already given her so that she should still feel constrained to launch a campaign to win them through means such as suffrage and representation in parliament? Let us see:
She demands an equal human status. But Islam has already given this to her in theory as well as in practice before law.
She wants economic independence and the right to participate in social life directly. Well, Islam was the first religion that gave her this right.
She wants the right to education? Islam not only recognizes it but makes the acquisition of it obligatory on her as well.
Does she want the right not to be given in marriage without her permission? Islam has given her this right as well as the right to arrange her own marriage.
Does she demand that she should be treated kindly and fairly while performing her functions within the house, and that she should have the right to ask for a separation from her husband if he should fail to treat her in a just and fair manner? Islam does give her all these rights and makes it incumbent upon men to safeguard them.
Also does she want the right to go and work outside? Islam recognizes this right of her too. (16)
One may notice from the above apologetic statement, there is a valid point made about what Islam says and suggests, but hardly anything about the contemporary problems in the society and the kind of concerns various segments of the society have in regard to gender issues. As we defend the message of Islam, we tend to gloss over the harsh realities of the gap that exists between the Qur'anic and Prophetic vision on one hand, and the existing conditions of the Ummah, on the other. We enthusiastically proclaim that Islam is the only Deen (way of life; religion) that has made seeking knowledge incumbent upon all Muslims, men and women. Yet, illiteracy is a wide-spread problem of the Ummah, with the rate of illiteracy being disproportionately higher among the Muslim women. Why? An examination of these issues is critical if we want to build a better Islamic future for ourselves in this world. Currently, rather probably as always, we have polarities in our thoughts, attitudes and conducts.
Once an objective and fair assessment of Muslim practices is made, it should be compared with the normative teachings of Islam. There are enough indications to show that a gap does exist between the ideal and the real. Given the existence of such a gap, a wide gap at times, it follows that Muslim reformers and other international bodies and movements share at least one thing in common: an awareness of the need to close or at least narrow that gap. The problem arises, however, as to the most effective frame of reference and to the particulars of implementation.
International bodies and women's rights organizations tend to consider documents and resolutions passed in conferences as the ultimate basis and standard expected of all diverse peoples, cultures and religions. Committed Muslims, however, both men and women, believe in the ultimate supremacy of what they accept as God's divine revelation (the Qur'an and authentic hadith). To tell Muslims that one's religious convictions should be subservient to "superior" man-made (or woman-made) standards or to secular humanism is neither acceptable nor practical. Even if pressures, economic and otherwise, are used to bring about compliance with such resolutions or documents, the resulting changes are not likely to be deep-rooting and lasting. For Muslims, divine injunctions and guidance are not subject to a "voting" procedure or to a human election, editing or whimsical modifications. They constitute, rather, a complete way of living within Islam’s spiritual, moral, social, political and legal parameters. Imposed cultural imperialism is not the solution.
The Qur'an strongly guarantees all fundamental human rights, without reserving them to men alone. These rights are so deeply rooted in our humanness that their denial or violation is tantamount to a negation or degradation of that which makes us human. These rights came into existence with us, so that we might actualize our human potential. These rights not only provide us with the opportunity to develop all of our inner resources, but they also hold before us a vision of what God would like us to be, what God deems to be worth striving for. The renunciation of a God-given right would be no more virtuous than the refusal to utilize a God-given talent.
The first and most basic right emphasized by the Qur'an is the right to be regarded in a way that reflects the sanctity and absolute value of each human life. Each person has the right not only to life but also to respect, not by virtue of being a man or a woman, but by virtue of being a human being. "Verily," states the Qur'an, "we have honored every human being" [Sûrah 17:A1-Isra': 70]. Human beings are deemed worthy of esteem because, of all creation, they alone chose to accept the "trust" of freedom of the will (Sûrah 33:Al-Ahzab: 72). Human beings can exercise freedom of the will because they possess the rational faculty, which is what distinguishes them from all other creatures (Sûrah 2:Al Baqarah: 30-34). Although human beings can become "the lowest of the low," the Qur'an declares that they have been made "in the best of moulds" (Sûrah 95:At-Tin: 4-6), having the ability to think, to have knowledge of right and wrong, to do the good and to avoid the evil. Thus, on account of the promise which is contained in being human, namely, the potential to be God's vicegerent on earth, the humanness o fall human beings is to be respected and considered an end in itself.
Flowing from this primary right is the right to be treated with justice and equity. The Qur'an puts great emphasis on the right to seek justice and the duty to do justice. Justice encompasses both the concept that all are equal and recognition of the need to help equalize those suffering from a deficiency or loss.
Yet justice is not absolute equality of treatment, since human beings are not equal as far as their human potential or their human situation is concerned. While each person's humanness commands respect, the Qur'an also establishes the right to recognition of individual merit. Merit depends not on gender or any other characteristic, but only on righteousness. Righteousness consists of "just belief' plus "just action," including faith, prayer, wealth- sharing, equitable and compassionate behavior, and patience in the face of hardship or difficulty.
Of importance to women in the Muslim world today is the Qur'anic idea that justice takes into account the unequal conditions of different groups of people. This idea stems from the Quranic ideal of community, or "ummah," a word deriving from the root "umm," meaning mother. Like a good mother with her children, the good community cares about the well-being of all its members, offering particular support to the downtrodden, oppressed, and "weak" classes. This includes women, slaves, orphans, the poor and infirm, and minorities.
As discussed earlier, another fundamental right is the right to be free of traditionalism and authoritarianism. Instrumental here is the right to seek knowledge, which the Qur'an emphasizes perhaps more than any other right. Acquiring knowledge is a prerequisite for evaluating the conditions of life and working toward the creation of a just world. Denied knowledge, Muslim women are denied justice.
Additionally, with great implications for the status of Muslim women, human beings possess the right to work, to earn, and to own property. This right is not the monopoly of men. In Islam, everything belongs to God, not to any person, and so every human being has the right to a means of living. Given the Qur'an's recognition of women as persons in their own right and not as adjuncts to men, the right to earn a living is of great importance to women, and the Qur'an entitles both women and men to the fruits of their labors.
Human beings also have the right to develop their aesthetic sensibilities and the right to survive but to thrive, to enjoy "the good life." This requires self-actualization or development, which is not possible without social justice. Not only an end in themselves, women's rights are a basic component of social justice and a fundamental aspect of creating a just society, in which all people can actualize their God-given potential.
It is often said that rights entail responsibility, meaning the responsibility not to use rights to justify destructive behavior. Rights also entail another kind of responsibility: the duty not to neglect them. Rights given to us by God ought to be exercised, since everything that God does is for "a just purpose," as pointed out by a number of Qur'anic verses.
In short, as beings in a covenantal relationship with God, we must strive to secure and guard the rights that God has given us and which, therefore, cannot be revoked by any temporal authority. To me, being a Muslim means renewing the cry of the modernists, "Back to the Qur'an and forward with ijtihâd." In the same vein, it means acting on these words of Iqbal: "The teaching of the Qur'an that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems." These are useful guidelines today for the liberation of all Muslims, especially women, from traditional authoritarianism.
The Hadith: Confusion and Distortion:
Muslims often confuse Hadith (what the Prophet did or said) with the Quran. But Hadith was not written down until well over a century after Mohammad's death. And, in spite of the precautions taken by Al-Bukhari or al-'Asqalani, many Hadith become part of Muslim folklore, and have been invested with meaning and consequence totally absent from the context in which they may or may not have occurred. Human memory is imperfect at best. And yet nobody dares question the plausibility of some of the Companions remembering verbatim the exact words spoken by Mohammad years after the event. Or that those same words, especially when concerning such a hot topic as sexual equality, can be passed down over a further four or five generations, without a single deviation of stress, punctuation or grammar, somehow exempt from all bias, conscious or unconscious, in the selection, omission and interpretation of such texts! This is surely to endow human beings with supra-human qualities?
In The Veil and the Male Elite, the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi was nonplused and angered when a schoolteacher in Rabat puts her down, quoting a Hadith to the effect that Mohammad said Those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity. Like so many Muslims, Mernissi realized she did not know the texts well enough to be able to refute the schoolteacher then and there. She decided to return to the original texts to find out why and in what context Mohammad could have said such a thing. And in the process discovered how Muslim historians had selectively written women out of early Islamic history. Mernissi found the Hadith in Al-Bukhari's collection Al-Salih (The Authentic), collected three hundred years after Mohammad's death. She next consulted al-Asqalani's Fath al-bari, a complete analysis of each Hadith, how it was passed down, who corroborated the saying and their reliability. This particular Hadith was in fact attributed to Abu Bakra, an ex-slave and Companion, who claims to have heard Mohammad utter these words when Mohammad was informed that the rival Sassanids had chosen a woman to lead them in battle against the Muslims. Abu-Bakra conveniently remembered this quotation twenty five years after the event, just after the Battle of the Camel, in which A'isha commanded an army in battle against the fourth caliph Ali, her own brother-in-law, whom she felt was betraying the Muslim cause. Abu Bakra was a trimmer. After A'isha's defeat he could have been executed, dismissed, banished by the victor, because he had not come out against A'isha and for Ali. Abu Bakra told Ali that he had reminded A'isha of this Hadith of her late husband, to warn her to surrender before the decisive battle. Abu Bakra's opportunistic memory should have been further discounted because he had once been flogged for bearing false witness in an adultery case. This should have been sufficient reason twice-over for Al-Bukhari to have rejected Abu Bakra as a reliable source. So how and why did this Hadith, and other examples cited by Mernissi, become accepted as authentic, and therefore binding on women? Mernissi and others argue that Islam came of age and was written down for future generations at a most unfortunate time, when matrilineal society was being replaced throughout the entire Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean worlds by patriarchal values and institutions. These scholars argue that the compilers of texts, whether consciously or unconsciously, selected texts that made sense for the times they lived in, that reflected prevailing cultural values. And in this way, much of the egalitarian ethos inherent in the Quran was downplayed or subordinated to partial and partisan Hadith.
If history belongs to the victors, then much of Islamic history belongs to men, to the obvious detriment of women. And the rapid geographic spread of Islam on the back of military conquest also turns out to be double-edged. Islam conquers, but it also absorbs, and is thereby transformed. The message of the Quran, often elliptical and allegorical, is heard and interpreted one way in Arabia, but in a much more restrictive way in Mesopotamia or Persia, more conservative societies. Islamic armies rely on local administrators to implement their rule and ideas. The genius of Islam - why it spreads so rapidly - is precisely because of its plasticity, its ability to adapt and take on the color and temperament of local cultures. Such a supple, accommodating faith literally sweeps North Africa and south Asia like proverbial wildfire.
But accommodation is a two-way process. Many of these new Islamic societies are a lot less egalitarian in their attitudes towards women. It is no accident that many of the restrictive institutions and attitudes in the West now popularly associate with Islam - concubines and harems, purdah and Mut'ah (temporary marriage, permitted in Shi'a and Persian culture) - come from cultures outside Arabia. Arab attitudes, in turn, became more restrictive as Arab Muslims began to adopt customs from recently conquered and converted Muslims.
Doubts and disagreements, which existed under Abu Bakr and Uthman, two of the first Four Caliphs, are glossed over and eventually forgotten.
Similarly, important differences within the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence or Shariah - regarding the right of a woman to initiate divorce, remarry or force a husband to sign a marriage contract forbidding polygamy - are progressively downplayed to the point where few if any Muslims are probably still aware that they existed. Egalitarianism, dissent, a general acceptance that the Quran only sets down principles - should not be taken literally. Indeed, they can and should be interpreted by each successive generation to fit circumstance and culture. But they often seem to have been progressively forgotten in favor of a traditional, andocentric Islam, based as much on self-interest as on myth, and on a partial and biased reading of what, nevertheless, remains potentially a radical document and tradition, precisely because of its egalitarian ethos. The same process of restrictive interpretation, of intellectual sclerosis, is sadly evident in much of the current debate about modernity, based once again on both a partial and partisan understanding of Islam's intellectual history, and a denial of much of its own past.
References:
1 M. Mazharuddin Siddiqi; ‘Women in Islam’
2 Leila Ahmed; ‘Women and Gender in Islam’
3 Al Quran Sûrah 33: 35
4 From Dr Riffat Hassan's open letter to General Perwaiz Musharraf written in 2001.
5 Amina Wadud-Muhsin; ‘Quran and Woman’ Kuala Lumpur 1992
6 Leila Ahmed; ‘Women and Gender in Islam’ Yale University Press 1992
7 Margaret Smith; ‘Rabi`a the Mystic and her Fellow-saints in Islam’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928) 36
8 Ibid., 9, 16.
9 Badawi, J.1997. ‘Gender Equity in Islam’. WAMY Studies on Islam.
10 Abdal Hakim Murad; ‘Islam, Iriguaray, and the Retrieval of Gender’ (April 1999)
11 ibid
12 ibid
13 ibid
14 ‘Perspective on Islam: Cultural Complications’ by Dr Durre S. Ahmed, A paper presented at Symposium on “Women and Religion, Debates on Search” held on March 1996at Chinag Mai, Thailand by Henrich Boll Foundation.
15 Badawi, J.1997. ‘Gender Equity in Islam’. WAMY Studies on Islam.
16 Muhammad Qutb; ‘Islam the Misunderstood Religion’, p. 124, IIFSO edition
About the author:
Farhat Naz Rahman BA; LLB resides in Karachi, Pakistan. Farhat is a research scholar in Islamic Learning, M.A. in Islamic Studies and a candidate for PhD in the same subject. Her Topic of Research is "Women and the social laws of the Qur'an". She is also an activist and a freelance journalist and has presented papers on women's issues at several international forums.
rahmanfarhat@hotmail.com
Equality is the term, which is hard to define. There is a sense in which all human beings are equal, but in actual life, we find that no two human beings are really equal in all respects. Inequality leads to injustice and oppression only where artificial impediments, whether in the shape of laws and customs or traditions, are super-added to natural inequalities so as to prevent men and women from developing their native capacities to full. (1)
Equality does not mean identicality: it means equity. Islam presents the roles of men and women as complementary roles and not contradictory or conflicting roles; the roles of partners with a common set of goals and objectives and not roles that conflict with each other, with each of them having the objective of the civilizations and societies that for centuries refused to consider women as human beings, or to give them any rights, have now gone from one extreme to another. Islam has never had anything to do with such nonsense. When women had no rights in the world it declared:
"And women shall have rights, similar to the rights against them, according to what is equitable." (Al-Baqarah, 2:228)
That still remains Islam's command - today and forever. Similar rights, not same rights. Qualitative, not quantitative equality. Both men and women are equal in their humanity and in their dignity; in their accountability to perform their assigned tasks and be judged according to their performance.
However, their assigned tasks are not the same. Their Creator has given them different capabilities: the tasks are based on those capabilities. This distinction is not an error that needs to be corrected. It is the only basis for building a healthy and prosperous society. Islam liberates a woman from the modern tyranny of having to become a man in order to get a sense of self worth and achievement in striving for supremacy.
The egalitarian conception of gender inhering in the ethical vision of Islam existed in tension with the hierarchical relation between the sexes encoded into the marriage structure instituted by Islam. This egalitarianism is a consistent element of the ethical utterances of the Quran. Among the remarkable features of the Quran, particularly in comparison with the scriptural texts of other monotheistic traditions, is that women are explicitly addressed; one passage in which this occurs declares by the very structure of the utterances, as well as in overt statement, the absolute moral and spiritual equality of men and women. (2)
“For Muslim men and women,-for believing men and women, for devout men and women, for true [truthful] men and women, for men and women who are patient and constant, for men and women who humble themselves, for men and women who give in charity, for men and women who fast ( and deny themselves), for men and women who guard their chastity, and for men and women who engage much in God's praise,- for them has God prepared forgiveness and a great reward”. (Sûrah 33: 35) (3)
Women's position is determined not so much by the principles of Islam as by social practices. Any discrimination based on gender is a grave offense and against the teachings of the Qur'an. The Qur'an regards men and women as complementary to each other, one sex making up what the other lacks. Islam does not consider a woman a mere shadow or an extension of a man, always following him or obeying him. She has her full individual freedom and responsibility to the belief in the message of Allah and in practicing its obligations.
Islam like other major religions of the world, which developed in patriarchal cultures, has been used traditionally to deprive women of their God-created, God-given fundamental human rights. (4) Somewhere in the dust of history, our Ulema adopted the Christian theory that women are the source of (original and) all evil.
Quranic consideration of women on earth centres on her relationship to the group, i.e. as a member of a social system. However, it is also important to understand how Quran focuses on women as an individual because the Quran treats the individual, whether male or female, in exactly the same manner: that is, whatever the Quran says about the relationship between Allah and individual is not in gender terms. With regard to spirituality, there are no rights of women distinct from rights of man. (5)
A number of elements in Sufism strongly suggest that the Sufi ethos countered that of the dominant society with respect also to their gender arrangements and their view of women. From early on, its proponents counted women among the important contributors to their tradition and almost the elect spiritual leaders, honoring, for example, Rabi`a al `Adawiyya. Moreover, Sufi tales and legends incorporate elements that also suggest that they engaged with and rejected the values of the dominant society with regard to women. (6) The narratives about Rabi`a al `Adwiyya, for instance, exemplify distinctly counter-cultural elements with respect to ideas about gender. Short narratives depict Rabi`a surpassing her male colleagues in intellectual forthrightness and percipience as well as in spiritual powers. One relates how Hasan al-Basri approached Rabi`a, who was meditating with some companions on a bank. Throwing his carpets on the water, Hasan sat on it and called to Rabi`a to come and converse with him. Understanding that he wanted to impress people with his spiritual powers, Rabi`a threw her prayer carpet into the air and flew up to it; sitting there she said, "O Hasan, come up here where people will see us better." Hasan was silent, for it was beyond his power to fly. "O Hasan. " Rabi`a then said, " that which you did a fish can do…and that which I did a fly can do. The real work (for the saints of God) lies beyond both of these." (7) Another narrative tells how the Ka`aba (the house Allah) rose up and came forward to meet Rabi`a when she was making her pilgrimage to Mecca. She commented: "What have I to do with the house, it is the Lord of the house I need." Meanwhile an eminent fellow Sufi, Ibrahim ibn Adham, was taking many years over his pilgrimage to Mecca, piously stopping to perform ritual prayers many times along the way. Arriving in Mecca and seeing no Ka`aba, he thought his eyes were at fault until a voice informed him that the Ka`aba had gone forth to meet a woman. When Rabi`a and the Ka’aba arrived together, Rabi`a informed Ibrahim, who was consumed with jealousy that the Ka`aba had so honored her, that whereas he crossed the desert making ritual prayers, she came in inward prayer.
The tale thus shows a woman not only surpassing a man but also gently undercutting the formalism and literalness of orthodox religion and the trappings of piety. Another remark attributed to Rabi`a, made about another Sufi, Sufyan al Thawri, shows the same thing. "Sufyan would be a [good man]," she said, "if only he did not love traditions." (8)
Textual injunctions on gender equity and the prophetic model are sometimes disregarded by some if not most Muslims individually and collectively. Revision of practices (not divine injunctions) is needed. It is not the revelatory Qur'an and the Sunnah that need any editing or revision. What need to be reexamined are fallible human interpretations and practices. Diverse practices in Muslim countries often reflect cultural influences (local or foreign), more so than the letter or spirit of the Shariah. Fortunately, there is an emerging trend for the betterment of our understanding of gender equity, based on the Qur'an and Hadith, not on alien and imported un-Islamic or non-Islamic values and not on the basis of the existing oppressive and unjust status quo in many parts of the Muslim world. (9)
Theologically, Islam tends to assert the equality of the male and female principles, while in its practical social structures it establishes a distinction. To understand this paradox is to understand the essence of the Islamic philosophy of gender, which constructs roles from below, not from above. Women's functions vary widely in the Muslim world and in Muslim history. In peasant communities, women work in the fields; in the desert; while among the urban elites, womanhood is more frequently celebrated in the home. Recurrently, however, the public space is rigorously desexualized, and this is represented by the quasi-monastic garb of men and women, where frequently the color white is the color of the male, while black, significantly the sign of inferiority, of the Ka'ba and hence the celestial Layla, denotes femininity. In the private space of the home these signs are cast aside, and the home becomes as colourful as the public space is austere and polarized. Modernity, refusing to recognise gender as a sacred sign, and delighting in random erotic signaling, renders the public space 'domestic' by colouring it, and makes war on all remnants of gender separation, crudely construed as judgmental.
There are other aspects of the Shari’a that deserve mention as illustrations of our theme, not least those, which have been largely forgotten by Muslim societies. The Lawgiver sometimes designs the intersections between the two gender universes as rights of women, and sometimes as rights of men; and the former category is more frequently omitted from actualized Muslim communities. Frequently the jurists' exegesis of the texts is pluri-vocal. Domestic chores, for instance, appear as an aspect of interior sociality, but this is not identified with purely female space, since they are regarded by some madhhabs, including the Shafi'i, as the responsibility of the man rather than the wife. A'isha was asked, after the Blessed Prophet's death, what he used to do at home when he was not at prayer; and she replied: 'He served his family: he used to sweep the floor, and sew clothes.' (Bukhari, Adhan, 44.) On this basis, Shafi'i jurists defend the woman's right not to perform housework.' (1)0
In the Hanafi madhhab, by contrast, these acts are regarded as the wife's obligations. Another sufficient reminder of the difficulty of generalising about Islamic law, which remains a diverse body of rules and approaches. Islam's theology of gender thus contends with a maze, a web of connections, which demand familiarity with a diverse legal code, regional heterogeneity and with the metaphysical no less than with the physical.
This complexity should warn us against offering facile generalisations about Islam's attitude to women. Journalists, feminists and cultivated people generally in the West have harboured deeply negative verdicts here. Often these verdicts are arrived at through the observation of actual Muslim societies; and it would be both futile and immoral to suggest that the modern Islamic world is always to be admired for its treatment of women. This imbalance will continue unless actualized religion learns to reincorporate the dimension of ihsân, which valorizes the feminine principle, and also obstructs and ultimately annihilates the ego, which underpins gender chauvinism. We need to distinguish, as many Muslim women thinkers are doing, between the expectations of the religion's ethos (as legible in scripture, classical exegesis, and spirituality), and the actual asymmetric structures of post-classical Muslim societies, which, like Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Chinese cultures, contain much that is in real need of reform.
Muslim women have for long periods of Islam's history left their homes to become scholars. A hundred years ago the orientalist Ignaz Goldziher showed that perhaps fifteen percent of medieval hadith scholars were women, teaching in the mosques and universally admired for their integrity. Colleges such as the Saqlatuniya Madrasa in Cairo were funded and staffed entirely by women.
Male and female are aspects of duality, whereas God is unique. Nothing else resembles Him. He has no counterpart. So why is the male pronoun used to refer to Him? First of all, Arabic has no gender-neutral pronoun. Everything is either ‘he’ or ‘she,’ including inanimate objects. Even though English has the pronoun ‘it,’ to use ‘it’ to refer to God has a drawback, because ‘it’ is basically used for things and creatures that can’t think. Likewise, to refer to God as ‘she’ has certain connotations of weakness in a human context. Like it or not, men have dominated public life and human societies throughout history. Therefore, the Qur'an uses ‘He’ to refer to Allah, while making it clear that God transcends all dualistic traits. Descriptions of Allah abound in the Qur'an or the Sunnah, but none of them gives the slightest inkling that He is masculine or feminine.
When we turn to the Qur'an, we find an image of Godhead apophatically stripped of metaphor. God is simply Allah, the God; never Father. The divine is referred to by the masculine pronoun: Allah is He (huwa); but the grammarians and exegetes concur that this is not even allegoric: Arabic has no neuter, and the use of the masculine is normal in Arabic for genderless nouns. No male preponderance is implied, any more than femininity is implied by the grammatically female gender of neuter plurals. (11)
The modern Jordanian theologian Hasan al-Saqqaf emphasises the point that Muslim theology has consistently made down the ages: God is not gendered, really or metaphorically. The Quran continues Biblical assumptions on many levels, but here there is a striking discontinuity. The imaging of God has been shifted into a new and bipolar register, that of the Ninety-Nine Names. Muslim women who have reflected on the gender issue have seized, I think with good reason, on this striking point. For instance, one Muslim woman writer, Sartaz Aziz, writes:
“I am deeply grateful that my first ideas of God were formed by Islam because I was able to think of the Highest Power as one completely without sex or race, and thus completely unpatriarchal . . . We begin with the idea of a deity who is completely above sexual identity, and thus completely outside the value system created by patriarchy”. (12)
In fact, by far the most conspicuous of the Divine Names in the Koran is al-Rahman, the All Compassionate. And the explicitly feminine resonance of this name were remarked upon by the Prophet (s.w.s.) himself, who taught that rahma, loving compassion, is an attribute derived from the word rahm, meaning a womb. (Bukhari, Adab 13)
Further confirmation for this is supplied in a famous hadith:
'On the day that He created the heavens and the earth, God created a hundred rahmas, each of which is as great as the space which lies between heaven and earth. And He sent one rahma down to earth, by which a mother has rahma for her child.' (Muslim, Tawba, 21) Drawing on this explicit identification of rahma with the 'maternal' aspect of the phenomenal divine, the developed tradition of Sufism habitually identifies God's entire creative aspect as 'feminine', and as merciful. (13)
In her book “The Tao Of Islam” the Japanese scholar Sachiko Murata has drawn parallels with the attributes of God (proverbial 99 names of Allah) in the concept of Yin and Yang whereby the names of Majesty can be considered Yang/Masculine/Jalal as for example, The Avenger, The Destroyer, The Reckoner. Examples of Yin/Feminine/Jamal names are the Great Bestower, The Most Indulgent, The Beautiful, The Source of Peace. The vast majority of what are called “The Most Beautiful Names of God” (Al-Asma al Husna) – the proverbial 99 names of God – mostly fall into these categories.
In this context one can note the significance of the name, ‘Al-Rahman’ which means, The Gracious-Compassionate One, The All-Merciful. At a simple statistical level it is the most often repeated attribute in the Quran. Apart from its overwhelming presence in the text, every chapter, except one, begins with this name accompanied by its variant Al-Rahim. Etymologically they are inextricably tied to the roots of the word for ‘Womb’ in Arabic, making it a Yin/Feminine attribute par excellence. (14)
Fortunately, there is an emerging trend for the betterment of our understanding of gender equity, based on the Qur'an and Hadith, not on alien and imported un-Islamic or non-Islamic values and not on the basis of the existing oppressive and unjust status quo in many parts of the Muslim world. It is not the revelatory Qur'an and the Sunnah that need any editing or revision. What needs to be reexamined are fallible human interpretations and practices. (15)
The issues related to women generally cover four areas:
(a) Status of women,
(b) role of women,
(c) participation and other rights of women, and
(d) dress and conduct of women.
Our approach is most commonly apologetic (defending or explaining the virtues of Islam, without recognizing and solving the problems, whenever appropriate or warranted). An example of such a well-articulated, apologetic approach:
"What then is all this uproar by the Muslim women of today about? Is there any right or facility that Islam has not already given her so that she should still feel constrained to launch a campaign to win them through means such as suffrage and representation in parliament? Let us see:
She demands an equal human status. But Islam has already given this to her in theory as well as in practice before law.
She wants economic independence and the right to participate in social life directly. Well, Islam was the first religion that gave her this right.
She wants the right to education? Islam not only recognizes it but makes the acquisition of it obligatory on her as well.
Does she want the right not to be given in marriage without her permission? Islam has given her this right as well as the right to arrange her own marriage.
Does she demand that she should be treated kindly and fairly while performing her functions within the house, and that she should have the right to ask for a separation from her husband if he should fail to treat her in a just and fair manner? Islam does give her all these rights and makes it incumbent upon men to safeguard them.
Also does she want the right to go and work outside? Islam recognizes this right of her too. (16)
One may notice from the above apologetic statement, there is a valid point made about what Islam says and suggests, but hardly anything about the contemporary problems in the society and the kind of concerns various segments of the society have in regard to gender issues. As we defend the message of Islam, we tend to gloss over the harsh realities of the gap that exists between the Qur'anic and Prophetic vision on one hand, and the existing conditions of the Ummah, on the other. We enthusiastically proclaim that Islam is the only Deen (way of life; religion) that has made seeking knowledge incumbent upon all Muslims, men and women. Yet, illiteracy is a wide-spread problem of the Ummah, with the rate of illiteracy being disproportionately higher among the Muslim women. Why? An examination of these issues is critical if we want to build a better Islamic future for ourselves in this world. Currently, rather probably as always, we have polarities in our thoughts, attitudes and conducts.
Once an objective and fair assessment of Muslim practices is made, it should be compared with the normative teachings of Islam. There are enough indications to show that a gap does exist between the ideal and the real. Given the existence of such a gap, a wide gap at times, it follows that Muslim reformers and other international bodies and movements share at least one thing in common: an awareness of the need to close or at least narrow that gap. The problem arises, however, as to the most effective frame of reference and to the particulars of implementation.
International bodies and women's rights organizations tend to consider documents and resolutions passed in conferences as the ultimate basis and standard expected of all diverse peoples, cultures and religions. Committed Muslims, however, both men and women, believe in the ultimate supremacy of what they accept as God's divine revelation (the Qur'an and authentic hadith). To tell Muslims that one's religious convictions should be subservient to "superior" man-made (or woman-made) standards or to secular humanism is neither acceptable nor practical. Even if pressures, economic and otherwise, are used to bring about compliance with such resolutions or documents, the resulting changes are not likely to be deep-rooting and lasting. For Muslims, divine injunctions and guidance are not subject to a "voting" procedure or to a human election, editing or whimsical modifications. They constitute, rather, a complete way of living within Islam’s spiritual, moral, social, political and legal parameters. Imposed cultural imperialism is not the solution.
The Qur'an strongly guarantees all fundamental human rights, without reserving them to men alone. These rights are so deeply rooted in our humanness that their denial or violation is tantamount to a negation or degradation of that which makes us human. These rights came into existence with us, so that we might actualize our human potential. These rights not only provide us with the opportunity to develop all of our inner resources, but they also hold before us a vision of what God would like us to be, what God deems to be worth striving for. The renunciation of a God-given right would be no more virtuous than the refusal to utilize a God-given talent.
The first and most basic right emphasized by the Qur'an is the right to be regarded in a way that reflects the sanctity and absolute value of each human life. Each person has the right not only to life but also to respect, not by virtue of being a man or a woman, but by virtue of being a human being. "Verily," states the Qur'an, "we have honored every human being" [Sûrah 17:A1-Isra': 70]. Human beings are deemed worthy of esteem because, of all creation, they alone chose to accept the "trust" of freedom of the will (Sûrah 33:Al-Ahzab: 72). Human beings can exercise freedom of the will because they possess the rational faculty, which is what distinguishes them from all other creatures (Sûrah 2:Al Baqarah: 30-34). Although human beings can become "the lowest of the low," the Qur'an declares that they have been made "in the best of moulds" (Sûrah 95:At-Tin: 4-6), having the ability to think, to have knowledge of right and wrong, to do the good and to avoid the evil. Thus, on account of the promise which is contained in being human, namely, the potential to be God's vicegerent on earth, the humanness o fall human beings is to be respected and considered an end in itself.
Flowing from this primary right is the right to be treated with justice and equity. The Qur'an puts great emphasis on the right to seek justice and the duty to do justice. Justice encompasses both the concept that all are equal and recognition of the need to help equalize those suffering from a deficiency or loss.
Yet justice is not absolute equality of treatment, since human beings are not equal as far as their human potential or their human situation is concerned. While each person's humanness commands respect, the Qur'an also establishes the right to recognition of individual merit. Merit depends not on gender or any other characteristic, but only on righteousness. Righteousness consists of "just belief' plus "just action," including faith, prayer, wealth- sharing, equitable and compassionate behavior, and patience in the face of hardship or difficulty.
Of importance to women in the Muslim world today is the Qur'anic idea that justice takes into account the unequal conditions of different groups of people. This idea stems from the Quranic ideal of community, or "ummah," a word deriving from the root "umm," meaning mother. Like a good mother with her children, the good community cares about the well-being of all its members, offering particular support to the downtrodden, oppressed, and "weak" classes. This includes women, slaves, orphans, the poor and infirm, and minorities.
As discussed earlier, another fundamental right is the right to be free of traditionalism and authoritarianism. Instrumental here is the right to seek knowledge, which the Qur'an emphasizes perhaps more than any other right. Acquiring knowledge is a prerequisite for evaluating the conditions of life and working toward the creation of a just world. Denied knowledge, Muslim women are denied justice.
Additionally, with great implications for the status of Muslim women, human beings possess the right to work, to earn, and to own property. This right is not the monopoly of men. In Islam, everything belongs to God, not to any person, and so every human being has the right to a means of living. Given the Qur'an's recognition of women as persons in their own right and not as adjuncts to men, the right to earn a living is of great importance to women, and the Qur'an entitles both women and men to the fruits of their labors.
Human beings also have the right to develop their aesthetic sensibilities and the right to survive but to thrive, to enjoy "the good life." This requires self-actualization or development, which is not possible without social justice. Not only an end in themselves, women's rights are a basic component of social justice and a fundamental aspect of creating a just society, in which all people can actualize their God-given potential.
It is often said that rights entail responsibility, meaning the responsibility not to use rights to justify destructive behavior. Rights also entail another kind of responsibility: the duty not to neglect them. Rights given to us by God ought to be exercised, since everything that God does is for "a just purpose," as pointed out by a number of Qur'anic verses.
In short, as beings in a covenantal relationship with God, we must strive to secure and guard the rights that God has given us and which, therefore, cannot be revoked by any temporal authority. To me, being a Muslim means renewing the cry of the modernists, "Back to the Qur'an and forward with ijtihâd." In the same vein, it means acting on these words of Iqbal: "The teaching of the Qur'an that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems." These are useful guidelines today for the liberation of all Muslims, especially women, from traditional authoritarianism.
The Hadith: Confusion and Distortion:
Muslims often confuse Hadith (what the Prophet did or said) with the Quran. But Hadith was not written down until well over a century after Mohammad's death. And, in spite of the precautions taken by Al-Bukhari or al-'Asqalani, many Hadith become part of Muslim folklore, and have been invested with meaning and consequence totally absent from the context in which they may or may not have occurred. Human memory is imperfect at best. And yet nobody dares question the plausibility of some of the Companions remembering verbatim the exact words spoken by Mohammad years after the event. Or that those same words, especially when concerning such a hot topic as sexual equality, can be passed down over a further four or five generations, without a single deviation of stress, punctuation or grammar, somehow exempt from all bias, conscious or unconscious, in the selection, omission and interpretation of such texts! This is surely to endow human beings with supra-human qualities?
In The Veil and the Male Elite, the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi was nonplused and angered when a schoolteacher in Rabat puts her down, quoting a Hadith to the effect that Mohammad said Those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity. Like so many Muslims, Mernissi realized she did not know the texts well enough to be able to refute the schoolteacher then and there. She decided to return to the original texts to find out why and in what context Mohammad could have said such a thing. And in the process discovered how Muslim historians had selectively written women out of early Islamic history. Mernissi found the Hadith in Al-Bukhari's collection Al-Salih (The Authentic), collected three hundred years after Mohammad's death. She next consulted al-Asqalani's Fath al-bari, a complete analysis of each Hadith, how it was passed down, who corroborated the saying and their reliability. This particular Hadith was in fact attributed to Abu Bakra, an ex-slave and Companion, who claims to have heard Mohammad utter these words when Mohammad was informed that the rival Sassanids had chosen a woman to lead them in battle against the Muslims. Abu-Bakra conveniently remembered this quotation twenty five years after the event, just after the Battle of the Camel, in which A'isha commanded an army in battle against the fourth caliph Ali, her own brother-in-law, whom she felt was betraying the Muslim cause. Abu Bakra was a trimmer. After A'isha's defeat he could have been executed, dismissed, banished by the victor, because he had not come out against A'isha and for Ali. Abu Bakra told Ali that he had reminded A'isha of this Hadith of her late husband, to warn her to surrender before the decisive battle. Abu Bakra's opportunistic memory should have been further discounted because he had once been flogged for bearing false witness in an adultery case. This should have been sufficient reason twice-over for Al-Bukhari to have rejected Abu Bakra as a reliable source. So how and why did this Hadith, and other examples cited by Mernissi, become accepted as authentic, and therefore binding on women? Mernissi and others argue that Islam came of age and was written down for future generations at a most unfortunate time, when matrilineal society was being replaced throughout the entire Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean worlds by patriarchal values and institutions. These scholars argue that the compilers of texts, whether consciously or unconsciously, selected texts that made sense for the times they lived in, that reflected prevailing cultural values. And in this way, much of the egalitarian ethos inherent in the Quran was downplayed or subordinated to partial and partisan Hadith.
If history belongs to the victors, then much of Islamic history belongs to men, to the obvious detriment of women. And the rapid geographic spread of Islam on the back of military conquest also turns out to be double-edged. Islam conquers, but it also absorbs, and is thereby transformed. The message of the Quran, often elliptical and allegorical, is heard and interpreted one way in Arabia, but in a much more restrictive way in Mesopotamia or Persia, more conservative societies. Islamic armies rely on local administrators to implement their rule and ideas. The genius of Islam - why it spreads so rapidly - is precisely because of its plasticity, its ability to adapt and take on the color and temperament of local cultures. Such a supple, accommodating faith literally sweeps North Africa and south Asia like proverbial wildfire.
But accommodation is a two-way process. Many of these new Islamic societies are a lot less egalitarian in their attitudes towards women. It is no accident that many of the restrictive institutions and attitudes in the West now popularly associate with Islam - concubines and harems, purdah and Mut'ah (temporary marriage, permitted in Shi'a and Persian culture) - come from cultures outside Arabia. Arab attitudes, in turn, became more restrictive as Arab Muslims began to adopt customs from recently conquered and converted Muslims.
Doubts and disagreements, which existed under Abu Bakr and Uthman, two of the first Four Caliphs, are glossed over and eventually forgotten.
Similarly, important differences within the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence or Shariah - regarding the right of a woman to initiate divorce, remarry or force a husband to sign a marriage contract forbidding polygamy - are progressively downplayed to the point where few if any Muslims are probably still aware that they existed. Egalitarianism, dissent, a general acceptance that the Quran only sets down principles - should not be taken literally. Indeed, they can and should be interpreted by each successive generation to fit circumstance and culture. But they often seem to have been progressively forgotten in favor of a traditional, andocentric Islam, based as much on self-interest as on myth, and on a partial and biased reading of what, nevertheless, remains potentially a radical document and tradition, precisely because of its egalitarian ethos. The same process of restrictive interpretation, of intellectual sclerosis, is sadly evident in much of the current debate about modernity, based once again on both a partial and partisan understanding of Islam's intellectual history, and a denial of much of its own past.
References:
1 M. Mazharuddin Siddiqi; ‘Women in Islam’
2 Leila Ahmed; ‘Women and Gender in Islam’
3 Al Quran Sûrah 33: 35
4 From Dr Riffat Hassan's open letter to General Perwaiz Musharraf written in 2001.
5 Amina Wadud-Muhsin; ‘Quran and Woman’ Kuala Lumpur 1992
6 Leila Ahmed; ‘Women and Gender in Islam’ Yale University Press 1992
7 Margaret Smith; ‘Rabi`a the Mystic and her Fellow-saints in Islam’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928) 36
8 Ibid., 9, 16.
9 Badawi, J.1997. ‘Gender Equity in Islam’. WAMY Studies on Islam.
10 Abdal Hakim Murad; ‘Islam, Iriguaray, and the Retrieval of Gender’ (April 1999)
11 ibid
12 ibid
13 ibid
14 ‘Perspective on Islam: Cultural Complications’ by Dr Durre S. Ahmed, A paper presented at Symposium on “Women and Religion, Debates on Search” held on March 1996at Chinag Mai, Thailand by Henrich Boll Foundation.
15 Badawi, J.1997. ‘Gender Equity in Islam’. WAMY Studies on Islam.
16 Muhammad Qutb; ‘Islam the Misunderstood Religion’, p. 124, IIFSO edition
About the author:
Farhat Naz Rahman BA; LLB resides in Karachi, Pakistan. Farhat is a research scholar in Islamic Learning, M.A. in Islamic Studies and a candidate for PhD in the same subject. Her Topic of Research is "Women and the social laws of the Qur'an". She is also an activist and a freelance journalist and has presented papers on women's issues at several international forums.
rahmanfarhat@hotmail.com
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