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issue of Muslim women’s freedom is a much debated subject today. The
traditional ulema and the modern educated Muslim intelligentsia appear to
be completely at loggerheads on the issue. The former insist that women
must be controlled as much as possible in order to protect Muslim society
from immorality and sexual licentiousness and that they must remain
confined to their homes. They believe that women must play no social roles
outside the domestic sphere whatsoever. If women are permitted to do so,
they argue, it would open the floodgates of chaos and lead to a breakdown
of society. On the other hand, the modern educated Muslim intelligentsia
are in favour of expanding women’s roles outside the narrow domestic
sphere and many of them go so far as to consider the hijab or modest dress
for women as a symbol of oppression.
The female personality, it must be admitted, is extremely
sensitive. On women the character of a society depends as much as it does
on men. It must also be admitted that the attitude of Muslim religious
circles towards women and women’s issues is influenced less by Islam and
Shariah norms than by other factors, among these being a marked reaction
to the perceived widespread immorality in the West as a result of the free
intermingling of sexes in western societies.
While in the West women have made important gains in
several respects, it cannot be denied that in the name of women’s
liberation and freedom they have been turned into sexual beings and
commodities. This unfortunate phenomenon has led to a reaction among the
ulema, leading them to insist on the control of women and on confining
them to the domestic sphere as a defence mechanism for fear of Muslim
society also falling prey to the same social ills that today plague the
West. This stance may have had some temporary benefits but it has caused a
tragic loss to the Muslim community by denying half its population –
Muslim women – the opportunity to develop and put to proper use their
talents, skills and capacities.
It is not just the traditional ulema who, because of their
excessively defensive and cautious approach to women’s social roles, have
caused such damage to Muslim women and to the wider Muslim society. Even
the supposedly ‘enlightened’ and more ‘modern’ Islamist scholar, Maulana
Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, shared similar views. In fact, in his widely read
book Purdah, Maududi comes across as even more stern and extreme in
his opposition to women’s freedom than the traditional ulema. For
instance, the putative founders of the four major schools of Sunni Muslim
jurisprudence and their followers all allowed for Muslim women to keep
their faces unveiled while Maududi stiffly opposed this, along with
several modern ulema, claiming that a woman’s face was the centre of her
beauty and hence a principal source of fitna, or strife. It is
striking to note that the classical ulema did not consider this argument
worthy of attention.
However, going against their opinion, the influential 20th
century Deobandi scholar Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi even went to the extent
of insisting that a woman’s name must never be mentioned in a newspaper.
An ideal woman, according to him, is one who hides in her own home and is
so unknown outside that her neighbours are not even aware of her
existence. He allowed for girls to acquire only basic literacy skills but
not to advance beyond that. Thanvi’s contemporary and virulent opponent,
Ahmed Raza Khan, the leading figure of the Barelvi sect, was even more
dismissive of women, going so far as to demean them. So opposed to women’s
rights were some of these ulema of relatively recent times, who are still
immensely popular among their followers today, that they upheld and
propagated a completely baseless and utterly laughable theory that women’s
voices were also to be ‘veiled’. It can be confidently said that their
approach towards women and their rights and roles was in marked contrast
to that of the early ulema, who were clearly more accommodative and
accepting of women and their social roles.
How this strong misogynistic streak and extreme
defensiveness and sensitivity with regard to women emerged among the ulema
is a subject that requires close and detailed historical scrutiny. The
origins of this lie far back in history, in the medieval period when, in
the wake of the Tatar invasions and devastation of Muslim lands, chaos
reigned supreme. It was perhaps but natural that a marked defensiveness
and insularity emerged at this time in order to consolidate Muslim society
which had suffered such widespread destruction and bloodshed.
This was reflected in increasing restrictions on women,
which were absent in the early Islamic period, including at the time of
the prophet. It was at this time that questions such as the permissibility
or otherwise of women learning to read were hotly debated. The renowned
medieval Hanafi scholar Mullah Ali Qari went so far as to issue a fatwa
declaring it impermissible for women to learn to write and even wrote an
entire book on the subject to justify his point although there had been
notable literate women in the early Islamic period, many of whom were in
fact the teachers of renowned male ulema. For over 600 years the ulema
continued to inconclusively debate whether women were permitted to read
and write and it was only in the late 19th century that a fatwa was
issued, by the noted Indian scholar Maulana Abdul Haye Firangi Mahali,
abrogating the fatwa of Mullah Ali Qari.
Islam, it must be stressed, does not support the sort of
emancipation of women as is current in the West but nor does it stand for
the sort of extreme restrictions on women, tantamount to imprisonment,
that many traditionalist Islamic scholars advocate. The Islamic position
is somewhere in between these two extremes. It stands for freedom of women
at the social level within certain limits and with certain conditions. If
the issue is looked at from the perspective of the Koran and the practice
of the prophet and the early Muslims, it would be evident that Islam does
not place any restriction on the physical movement of women. It also
outlines women’s social roles in considerable detail, roles that early
Muslim women played, not being bound within the four walls of their homes.
A good illustration of this is the appointment of a woman,
Shifa Bint Abdullah Al-Adawiya, by Umar, the second caliph of the Sunnis,
as the superintendent of the market of Medina, the then capital of the
Islamic caliphate. Today’s traditional ulema might regard the marketplace
as the most potent site of fitna or chaos but yet this woman was
appointed to oversee Medina’s commercial hub.
At the time of the prophet women were free to pray in
mosques and even offered their services on the battlefield. They would
listen to the sermons of the prophet in the presence of men, without any
restriction, and would ask the prophet questions. Umm-e Haram, a woman
companion of the prophet, requested him to pray for her so that she might
be able to participate in jihad in the path of god. During the caliphate
of Uthman, the third Sunni caliph, she sailed to Cyprus where she
participated in a battle.
Asma, daughter of Abu Bakr, father-in-law of the prophet
and the first Sunni caliph, helped her husband Zubair Bin Al-Awaam in his
work outside their home and would even massage his horses and travel a
long distance to get grains for them to eat, which she would carry on her
head. The case of the Caliph Umar being corrected by a woman while
delivering a sermon, making him admit his error, is well known.
From these instances it is clear that in this period of
Muslim history women’s minds and voices were not ‘veiled’. Nor was there
any discussion on keeping men and women rigidly separate from each other.
The books of Hadith are replete with narrations that clearly indicate that
at this time men and women saw each other’s faces, spoke to each other,
engaged in transactions with each other and assisted each other in
different activities. The wives of the prophet, known as the ‘mothers of
the believers’ (ummhat al-muminin), were specially required, as the
Koran indicates, to observe purdah but this did not stop male companions
of the prophet from appearing before them and learning from them. The
youngest of the prophet’s wives, Ayesha, had many male disciples to whom
she related numerous narrations of and about the prophet.
Besides these examples from early Muslim history, one can
cite references in the Koran to prove the point that certain forms of
interaction between men and women is indeed permissible in Islam, in
contrast to what many traditionalist ulema might argue, Thus, for
instance, the Koran talks about the meeting between the prophet Solomon
and Bilqis, queen of Sheba, and their conversation; the meeting between
Zachariah and Mary, mother of Jesus; and the meeting and discussion
between the daughter of Shoeb and Moses and of the former taking the help
of the latter to provide water to her animals. Since the Koran exhorts
Muslims to emulate the practice of the previous prophets, it is obvious
that these forms of interaction between men and women are also permitted
to Muslims.
The Koran states: “The believers, men and women, are
protectors, one of another: they enjoin what is just and forbid what is
evil” (9:71). The Koran considers it the responsibility of both men and
women to perform various social roles, the performance of which is not
possible without their common participation and mutual assistance. Given
this, the extreme hesitation or reluctance of some Islamic scholars to
allow Muslim women to play these legitimate roles has, to a large extent,
to do with local cultural mores rather than with the teachings of Islam or
the practice of the prophet and the early Muslims.
It is a fact that misogyny has been in existence for
centuries and traces of it remained in societies that later became Muslim
even after accepting Islam. At the same time, it is also undeniable that
for the first time Islam sought to provide women with their legitimate
rights and to provide them an elevated status in society. The prophet and
his companions strove to combat deep-rooted prejudices against women, not
just on the ideological plane but also in practical terms. However, after
the early Islamic period, when Muslim society entered a phase of decline,
women’s status suffered a major setback. Just as Islamic justice demanded
that slavery be abolished but yet slavery still remained, so too while
Islam sought to emancipate women, anti-women prejudice could not be fully
rooted out from Muslim society.
To buttress this prejudice, many narrations were concocted
and were falsely attributed to the prophet and to his companions that
projected women in an extremely derogatory fashion. One such false
narration which, lamentably, is still often quoted in traditionalist ulema
circles, exhorts: “Take the advice of women but do the precise opposite of
what they advise.” Another such tradition declares: “To obey a woman is a
matter of shame.” A third such fabricated narration declares: “Men were
destroyed when they obeyed women.” Yet another such concocted narration
claims: “If women did not exist, the right of God to be worshipped would
have been performed in a better way.” Likewise, the following statement
was falsely attributed to the Imam Ali: “Woman is wholly bad.”
In the light of all this, it is incumbent on Islamic
scholars to review their position on and understanding of women and
critique and challenge the deep-rooted misogyny that is, unfortunately and
wrongly, seen as inseparable from Islam. It is imperative that our
traditionalist scholars no longer stand in the way of Muslim women being
able to access the rights granted to them by Islam and which they enjoyed
at the time of the prophet.