Women in Islam?

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Muslims base their views of women on the Qur'an, the holy scripture of Islam. Although the Qur'an views men and women as equal before God, in practise, restrictions are placed on girls and women in many Muslim countries, regarding their civil rights, education, dress code, professional lives, marriage, divorce, and legal status.

Theologically, there are many differences in legislation regarding women. The earlier schools tend to be more conservative, while modern schools have varied from modern liberal movements to Wahhabism and Salafism, both of which are much more traditional.

Right to work

Islam does not prohibit women from working, but emphasizes the importance of caring for house and family for both parents. In all Muslim nations women are allowed to have jobs, but in some, their husbands or fathers are able to place restrictions on this.

Marriage and divorce

Main article: Islamic view of marriage

Islam does not require or forbid dowry or brideprice. These customs are frequently practised in various Muslim countries, but they are considered local custom, not Islamic law.

Islam does require that a husband make a gift, or settle money upon the bride. This is called mahr or meher. The gift can be intangible or negligible, or it can be a valuable gift of real property or investments. The mahr may also be divided into portions, one to be given the bride at marriage, the other to be given the wife if she is widowed or divorced. The mahr can be a woman's protection against arbitrary divorce and poverty.

The details of the mahr should be specified in the marriage contract. The marriage contract can also specify where the couple will live, whether or not the first wife will allow the husband to take a second wife without her consent, whether or not the wife has the right to initiate divorce, and other such matters. The marriage contract somewhat resembles the marriage settlements negotiated for upper-class Western brides, but can extend to non-financial matters usually ignored by marriage settlements or pre-nuptial agreements.

In practice, many Islamic marriages are contracted without a written contract, or using a "fill in the blanks" form supplied by the officiant. In such cases, custom and/or rulings by the courts based on law governs the treatment of a divorcee or widow, and is often, in the opinion of Islamic feminists, unfair or unkind. Islamic feminists have been active in informing Muslim women of their rights under Islamic law (sharia) and encouraging them to negotiate favorable contracts before marriage.

In theory, Islamic law allows men to state divorce by saying "I divorce you" (talaq) once, twice, and at the most three times, with or without a few people as witnesses. Unless otherwise specified in the marriage contract, women must seek divorce through court proceedings, and convince male Islamic representatives to give her a divorce. In practice divorce can be quite involved; there may be separate state proceedings to follow as well; this is the case in most of the Muslim world today. Usually, the divorced wife keeps her mahr, both the original gift and any supplementary property specified in the marriage contract. She is also given child support until the age of weaning, at which point the child may be returned to its father if so agreed by the couple or ordered by the court.

Women were guaranteed certain rights of divorce and inheritance in Islam at an early stage, although the extent to which these rights have been exercisable in practice has differed significantly from nation to nation, and from time period to time period.

A Muslim may not marry or remain married to an unbeliever of either sex (2:221, 60:10). A Muslim man may marry a woman of the People of the Book (5:5); traditionally, however, Islamic law forbids a Muslim woman from marrying a non-Muslim man. If the man chooses to convert to Islam marriage then would be allowed.

Women as clergy and religious scholars

Main article: Women as imams

Women are allowed to be religious scholars; however, in practice this practice has fallen into disuse in most places, although in medieval times there were colleges devoted exclusively to women.

As national leaders

There is a disputed Sunni Hadith reported by Bukhari (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 59, Number 709) which report Muhammed stating that a people with a female ruler will never be successful. Many traditional Muslim societies have been unwilling to allow women to rule for this reason^{Citation needed}.

Some interpretations of Islamic law hold that women should not lead men, and thus are forbidden from working in the government. This has been a widespread view in many Muslim nations in the last century, despite the example of Muhammad's wife Aisha, who both took part in politics and was a major authority on hadith.

Historically, a very small number of Muslim-led governments have been headed by women. Examples include the short-lived third major independent Muslim ruler of the Sultanate of Delhi (India), Razia Sultan, and the longer lasting Mamluk queen Shajarat ad-Durr in Egypt.

Today, in more democratic Muslim nations, women have led governments as often or more often than in Western countries. For example, Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, and Bangladesh have had female heads of government or state (e.g. Benazir Bhutto, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Tansu Ciller and Khaleda Zia respectively), although all except Ciller were the daughters or widows of powerful men. Muslim women also hold important positions in governments or in corporations.

Ability to vote

Until recently most Muslim nations (and indeed most nations) were non-democratic. Today a minority of Islamists view democracy as against Islam. This view is espoused by groups such as Al-Muhajiroun, whereas more mainstream Muslims disagree, and believe it to be an evolution of the Islamic concept of Shura.

Many Muslim nations today allow their citizens to have some level of voting and control over their local government; with a few exceptions in Arabia — Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; and Lebanon which requires proof of education for women to vote — all such nations allow women to vote.

In 2005 Kuwait passed a ruling that will allow women to vote in 2007.

Dress codes

The Qur'an also places a dress code upon its followers. For women, as for men, it emphasizes modesty. Allah says in the Qur'an, "And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and guard their private parts and not to display their adornment (interpreted as the hair and body-shape) except that which ordinarily appears thereof (interpreted as the face and hands) and to draw their headcovers over their chests and not to display their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands fathers, their sons, . . . ." (24:31).

All those in whose presence a woman is not obliged to practice the dress code are known to be her mahrams. Men have a dress code which is more relaxed: the loins must be covered from knee to waist. The rationale given for these rules is that men and women are not to be viewed as sexual objects.

Turkey and Tunisia, though predominantly Muslim, have laws against these dress codes in schools and work places. After Ataturk's declaration of the Republic in 1923, a European dress code was encouraged. It is against the law to attend class or parliament with a head scarf in Turkey.

In practice, society dictates what women are allowed to wear in many culturally Islamic countries. Infringement of these rules in some Muslim nations may result in beatings. Some view Islamic women as being oppressed by the men in their communities because of the required dress codes. However, in more moderate nations, where these dress codes are not obligatory, there are still many Muslim women who practice it, where most of them choose to follow it because they believe it is the will of Allah. One of the garments women are required to wear is the hijab (of which the headscarf is one component). The word hijab is derived from the Arabic word hajaba which means 'to hide from sight or view', 'to conceal'. Hijab means to cover the head as well as the body.

Domestic violence

According to most interpretations of Sharia (Islamic law), authorization for the husband to physically beat disobedient wives is provided only under certain conditions. First, admonishment is verbal and secondly a period of refraining from intimate relations. Finally, if the husband finds the situation very serious, he may hit her:

"Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear nushûz, admonish them, and (then) leave them alone in the sleeping-places and (last) idribûhunna'(beat); then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great." (Qur'an 4:34 English translation: MH Shakir)

Here the Qur'an prescribes the steps to be taken in the event of "nushûz". Concerning the meaning of "nushûz", Dr. Ahmad Shafaat writes:

The literal meaning of the word is "rebellion". But rebellion against whom and in what sense? We should certainly not think of this in terms the rebellion of the ruled against a ruler in a sultanate or dictatorship and conclude that it consists of the wife disobeying some of the husband's commands. This is because the same word nushuz is used in case of a husband in verse 128 of the same surah 4, where it is said: "If a woman fears nushuz on her husband's partw/." So nushuz is something that can be feared by the husband on the wife's part or by the wife on her husband's part. It cannot therefore be understood in terms of the ruler-ruled relationship. To correctly understand the meaning of the word, it must be noted that both in the verse under consideration and in verse 128 the reference to nushuz is followed by a reference to the break-up of the marriage (see vv. 35, 130). If this context is kept in mind, then it becomes evident that nushuz means the type of behavior on the part of the husband or the wife which is so disturbing for the other that their living together becomes difficult. w/.In short, nushuz is a behavior on the part of one marriage partner which comes out of ill-will and seriously disturbs the other partner. 1

Thus, in the case of "nushûz", the Qur'an prescribes three steps. First, the husband is to admonish the wife and reason with her as to why her actions are damaging the family. Secondly, when discussion between the two fails, they are requested to start avoiding each other and remain seperate. Lastly, the Qur'an prescribes "idribûhunna" as the final step. The word idribûhunna (from the root daraba ضرب) has been used for a wide variety of meanings in the Qur'an, although its commonest meaning in Arabic has been rendered as "beat", "hit", "scourge", or "strike". Besides this verse, other meanings for daraba used in the Qur'an (though not with a human direct object) include 'to travel', 'to make a simile', 'to cover', 'to separate', and 'to go abroad', among others. For this reason — particularly in recent years (e.g. Ahmed Ali) — some consider "hit" to be a misinterpretation, and believe it should be translated as "admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and separate from them." Certain modern translations of the Qur'an in the English language accept the commoner translation of "beat", but tone down the wording with bracketed additions.

Abul 'Ala Maududi makes the following comment in his Tafheem Al-Qur'an:

So far as the actual application of these measures is concerned, there should, naturally, be some correspondence between the fault and the punishment that is administered. Moreover, it is obvious that wherever a light touch can prove effective one should not resort to sterner measures. w/.And even in cases where it is necessary, the Prophet (peace be upon him) directed men not to hit across the face, nor to beat severely nor to use anything that might leave marks on the body. (See Ibn Majah, 'Nikah', 3-Ed.)

The medieval jurist ash-Shafi'i, founder of one of the main schools of fiqh, commented on this verse that "hitting is permitted, but not hitting is preferable." Likewise, Ibn Kathir Ad-Damishqee records in his monumental Tafsir Al-Qur'an Al-Azim:

"Ibn `Abbas and several others said that the Ayah refers to a beating that is not violent. Al-Hasan Al-Basri said that it means, a beating that is not severe."

Muhammad Asad notes the following in his translation of the Qur'an, The Message of the Qur'an:

With all this, he stipulated in his sermon on the occasion of the Farewell Pilgrimage, shortly before his death, that beating should be resorted to only if the wife "has become guilty, in an obvious manner, of immoral conduct", and that it should be done "in such a way as not to cause pain (ghayr mubarrih)"; authentic traditions to this effect are found in Muslim, Tirmidhi, Abu Da'ud, Nasa'i and Ibn Majah. On the basis of these traditions, all the authorities stress that this "beating", if resorted to at all, should be more or less symbolic – "with a toothbrush, or some such thing" (Tabari, quoting the views of scholars of the earliest times), or even "with a folded handkerchief" (Razi); and some of the greatest Muslim scholars (e.g., Ash-Shafi'i) are of the opinion that it is just barely permissible, and should preferably be avoided: and they justify this opinion by the Prophet's personal feelings with regard to this problem.

And Dr. Ahmad Shafaat points out the following:

The wife has no religious obligation to take the beating. She can ask for and get divorce any time. The suggestion applies only in the case when the husband is seriously disturbed by a prolonged nasty behavior on the part of the wife but neither he nor the wife is as yet seriously thinking of breaking upw/. If the husband beats a wife without respecting the limits set down by the Qur'an and Hadith, then she can take him to court and if ruled in favor has the right to apply the law of retaliation and beat the husband as he beat her.

Several Hadith urge strongly against beating one's wife, such as: "How does anyone of you beat his wife as he beats the stallion camel and then embrace (sleep with) her? (Al-Bukhari, English Translation, vol. 8, Hadith 68, pp. 42-43), "I went to the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) and asked him: What do you say (command) about our wives? He replied: Give them food what you have for yourself, and clothe them by which you clothe yourself, and do not beat them, and do not revile them. (Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 11, Marriage (Kitab Al-Nikah), Number 2139)". He also said, "Never beat God's handmaidens". (Abu Da'ud, Nasa'i, Ibn Majah, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Hibban and Hakim, on the authority of Iyas ibn `Abd Allah; Ibn Hibban, on the authority of `Abd Allah ibn `Abbas; and Bayhaqi, on the authority of Umm Kulthum). However, some suggest that these Hadith were later abrogated, noting that in the Farewell Pilgrimage, he said:

Fear Allah concerning women! Verily you have taken them on the security of Allah, and intercourse with them has been made lawful unto you by words of Allah. You too have right over them, and that they should not allow anyone to sit on your bed whom you do not like. But if they do that, you can chastise them but not severely. Their rights upon you are that you should provide them with food and clothing in a fitting manner. (Narrated in Sahih Muslim, on the authority of Jabir.) 2

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the European Council for Fatwa and ReSearch with Google, says that:

"If the husband senses that feelings of disobedience and rebelliousness are rising against him in his wife, he should try his best to rectify her attitude by kind words, gentle persuasion, and reasoning with her. If this is not helpful, he should sleep apart from her, trying to awaken her agreeable feminine nature so that serenity may be restored, and she may respond to him in a harmonious fashion. If this approach fails, it is permissible for him to beat her lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive parts. In no case should he resort to using a stick or any other instrument that might cause pain and injury. Rather, this 'beating' should be of the kind the Prophet (peace be on him) once mentioned to a disobedient maid-servant, when he said 'If it were not for the fear of retaliation on the Day of Resurrection, I would have beaten you with this miswak (tooth-cleaning twig)' as reported by Ibn Majah, by Ibn Hibban in his Sahih, and by Ibn Sa`d in his Tabaqat.3.4

The head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, although it seems that he, like many clerics, was resorting to hadith to prohibit or discourage domestic violence, failed to mention the ayat (verse)immediatley following the one allowing domestic violence which calls for arbitration if domestic violence, the threat of thereof, or any other cause might cause a breach between the couple and the wife can invoke arbitration: "w/.if you fear nushûz (ill conduct), admonish them, and (then) leave them alone in the sleeping-places and (last) idribûhunna'(beat them); then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great." (Qur'an 4:35) Sura An-Nisa:35 "And if you fear a breach between them twain (the man and his wife), appoint (two) arbitrators, one from his family and the other from her’s; if they both wish for peace, Allah will cause their reconciliation. Indeed Allah is Ever All-Knower,
Well-Acquainted with all things." (Qur'an 4:35) Sura An-Nisa:35

The relevance of this verse is debatable because nowhere does it suggest a prohibtion on wife-beating.

Honor killings

Due to the prevalance of honor killings in some Islamic societies, "Honor killings" are often identified with Muslims, with some writers asserting that they are part of Islamic teaching. Honor killings are a cultural practice which is neither exclusive to, nor universal within, the Islamic world. Such killings take place within a few Muslim communities around the Merranean as well as in Brazil, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Punjab in India (see http://www.dfn.org/articles/currentevents/asia/HonorKillings.html), and non-Muslim parts of West Africa. On the other hand, the practice is unknown in Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic country.

The stated reason for honor killings is the belief that the woman had caused the clan or family to lose honor by her alleged sexual activity and therefore deserved to be killed. Islamic teaching holds that life is given by Allah and should not be taken lightly, but it allows severe punishment, up to and including capital punishment, for certain kinds of crime; these include, in strict interpretations, all extramarital sexual relations (zina') by both men and women — though only married adulterers may be punished with death. The interpretation and application of these laws relating to marriage and chastity has varied in different eras and places. See Islamic view of marriage

Women as prisoners of war or as slaves

The term "what your right hands possess", Ma malakat aymanukum, occurs 14 times in the Qur'an. It is most often used with reference to women, but may be applied to both sexes. The term usually refers to prisoners of war, or may more broadly refer to slaves in general, according to the usual tafsirs (eg Ibn Kathir.)

See the main article on Ma malakat aymanukum.

The effect of Islamism

The nebulous revivalist movement termed Islamism is one of the most dynamic movements within Islam in the 20th and 21st centuries. Islamists tend to minimize the role of women in some aspects of civil life, although in the longest-standing Islamist state - Iran - women legislators are included in the Majlis, and women comprise 60% of university students.5

Taliban

In Talibanontrolled Afghanistan, only the Taliban's version of Islam was permitted. The Taliban prevented women from working, and they sharply restricted the education of girls. Women were also denied hospital treatment to prevent their exposure to male hospital staffers and doctors.

Taliban religion minister, Al-Haj Maulwi Qalamuddin, told the New York Times that "To a country on fire, the world wants to give a match. Why is there such concern about women? Bread costs too much. There is no work. Even boys are not going to school. And yet all I hear about are women. Where was the world when men here were violating any woman they wanted?"

Although the Taliban claimed that the education of girls in rural Afghanistan was increasing, a UNESCO report stated that there was "a whopping 65 per cent drop in their enrollment. In schools run by the Directorate of Education, only 1 per cent of the pupils are girls. The percentage of female teachers, too, has slid from 59.2 per cent in 1990 to 13.5 per cent in 1999." To almost all Muslims in the world, Taliban regime was considered no more a sect and was not recognized by most Muslim nations. Most Muslims beleive that Taliban damaged the true Islamic faith image with their ultra-strict acts that are nowhere to be found in true Islamic teachings.

The effect of feminism on Islam

Main article: Islamic feminism

All the mainstream denominations of Islam allow Muslim women to be recognized as religious scholars (at least in theory), but not to lead mixed prayers, ie be imams, or deliver Friday khutbas. In practice, despite Aisha's example, few if any female religious scholars exist. This state of affairs is considered unsatisfactory by liberal movements within Islam (among others), which have attempted to bring about feminist reforms.

See also

• Islam
• Women as imams
• Islamic feminism

References

1. Women Leads Muslims in Prayers Daily News (New York) March 19,2005 Jordan Lite, p.8
2. Woman leads N.Y. Muslims in prayer Lisa Anderson, Chicago Tribune, Posted March 19 2005
3. The Camera and the Burqa, a review of films on women in Afghanistan, by Martin Kramer
4. Tafseer of Surah an-Nisa, Ayah 34 Dr. Ahmad Shafaat, Islamic Perspectives. August 10, 2005

External links

• IslamicFeminism.org
• Muslim Wakeup!
• The First Muslim Woman on Record to Lead a Public Mixed-Gender Jum'ah Prayer
• A Statement from the Organizers of the March 18th Woman-led Jum’ah Prayer - MWA!
• Gaza women join Hamas fighters by Khaled Abu Toameh, published in the Jerusalem Post August 21, 2005

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