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Myths About Islam
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John Henry
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Oct 20, 2006 08:10 PDT
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10 Myths About Islam
- Myth #9
4th Edition
By Timothy W. Dunkin
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(c) 2001-2006, All Rights
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Myth #9
Women are Respected and Equal in Islam
When Americans and other Westerners think of Islam and the Middle East,
perhaps one of the first images that comes to mind is that of Muslim
women, swaddled in thick robes, their faces covered. Islam is generally
associated with disrespect for the rights, and even the personhood, of
women. While women in the Western world, and indeed in many non-Western
areas such as India, Japan, Korea, and others, have seen their lot in
life improved and their rights as human beings recognised, this sort of
liberalisation is not usually associated with the Muslim world. Is this a
fair association? Is there any basis for saying that Islam degrades
women, that this disrespect is not just an aberration, but is ingrained
within the Muslim religion? The answer to these questions, as ought to be
seen by any clear-minded observer, is YES.
Muslim Women in the West - The
Whitewash
Muslim women in the United States and other Western nations often will
allow themselves to be used to whitewash Islam's image as it is presented
to the public at-large. Typically, these women, living in the United
States and other Western nations, operate under the banner of
"reaffirming" the rights which women have
"traditionally" enjoyed in Islam. Much is made of the
affirmation the right for women to own property and receive inheritance,
primarily. Indeed, in the light of the way in which women were treated in
pre-Islamic Arabia, the granting of the right to own property and to
inherit from a dead relative is a step forward, considering women
were denied even these in the pre-Islamic tribal system.
However, it should be noted that the Muslim women who seek to promote
Islam as a tolerant and progressive force for women’s rights often draw
less than honest conclusions from the simple Quranic affirmation of
property rights. Usually they attempt to draw their readers into jumping
from this technically correct statement about women's rights in
Islam to a false association of Islam with Western-style affirmations of
the personhood and legal rights of women. On a number of occasions, I
have seen or heard Muslim women who will say that they are Muslim, and
that they have the same rights and respect as a man, that Islam respects
them and allows them the same freedom as men have. Of course, what needs
to be tacitly understood is that these women are saying this while they
are in the United States, or some other Western nation like Canada or
Great Britain. Of course their rights are respected and they are not
oppressed! They are living in a society where the sort of behaviour which
many Muslim men display towards women in Muslim countries is not
generally tolerated. In the West, both law and popular opinion greatly
discourage activities such as wife-beating and marriage to underage
girls. Society would frown upon a man who made his wife wear a veil and
stay inside the house unless he was with her. It would be neither
understood nor accepted that women should have an inferior legal and
moral status than men, as is held by a plain reading of the Qur'an and
the ahadith. In this nation, Islam has no choice but to respect the
rights and dignity of women, lest it raise the ire of the general
populace. However, one wonders what these Muslim women would say or think
if they tried to take the same attitude in, say, Pakistan or Iran or
Egypt. Clearly, the apologism which is made by Muslim women for Islam on
the basis of some supposedly "enlightened" view of women's
rights is nothing more than a cloak woven to try and cover the ugly truth
about Islam's attitudes toward women.
This has not, of course, impeded the proliferation of websites,
pamphlets, and other venues purporting to show that women are equal with
men in Islam, and that Islam elevates the fairer sex. Designed to appeal
to the Western mind which operates under the paradigm of equal rights for
all, these forums seek to redefine terms commonly used by Western
thinkers, and often resort to blatant misrepresentation so as to present
a grossly one-sided and decontextualised view of Islam's attitudes toward
women. "Islam supports women's rights", it is said, but the
"rights" which are supported are the basic ideas presented in
the body of Islamic scripture and jurisprudence, such as freedom to
divorce, freedom for a virgin or widow to choose her spouse, and the
freedom to own property. There are, of course, other loopholes in the
body of Islamic law which allow for the practical deprivation of these
granted privileges, often amounting simply to a contradicting passage in
the Qur'an or in a hadith. Further, many Muslim apologists will
themselves use out-of-context statements in the Qur'an or the ahadith to
justify their claims (something which they often accuse their opponents
of doing, even when the detractors are doing nothing more than repeating
longstanding Islamic legal tradition). An example is the hadith which
says "The search for knowledge is a duty of every Muslim, male and
female." This is quoted to "prove" that women have every
right to get any sort of education, just like a man. Of course, the
context of this passage is that the knowledge is religious, that every
Muslim has the obligation to learn Allah's law, not some secular or
technical education. This example, as well as the whole attempt by Muslim
apologists to sugar-coat Islam's treatment of women, is another example
of the taqiyya, the lying for the advancement of Islam which was
mentioned above. It is a grave misunderstanding to believe that
"women's rights" in an Islamic context would mean anything
similar to how Westerners perceive the term, which would generally
include the rights to a secular education, to hold any job, to hold and
use property apart from her husband's direction, the right to custody of
children, etc. On the contrary, these would be explicitly denied to a
woman in any Islamic system which institutes the traditional Islamic
shari'a rooted in the Qur'an and the ahadith.
Often, Christians will be confronted by Muslim polemicists who preach
that Islam upholds the rights of women, and who will simultaneous charge
that the Bible degrades women. Muslims often point to the position of
women in the Bible, which does not allow for women pastors or allow women
to exercise spiritual authority over men. Of course, the polemicists
conveniently ignore passages such as Galatians 3:28 which affirm the
spiritual equality of women with men before God. Muslims generally fail
to comprehend the Biblical teaching of spiritual equality combined with
positional subordination (which causes them likewise to misapprehend the
doctrine of the deity of Christ, as well). Men and women are spiritually
equal, both can receive the same salvation and the same eternal life
through the Lord Jesus Christ. However, in the earthly realm, God has
also established men as the temporal spiritual authority in the family
and the churches. This does not, however, mean that men are spiritually
superior to women, anymore than a general in the Army is more of a
citizen of the United States than a colonel. Both are equal citizens, yet
one is placed in a higher rank of authority. Indeed, the Bible teaches
this concept in I Corinthians 11, where the relationship between men and
women is paralleled with the relationship between God and Christ. God and
Christ are the same in essence, yet Christ, as the second person of the
Trinity, was positionally subordinate to the Father. In the same manner,
men and women are of the same essence and spiritual value, but women are
positionally subordinate to men (a subordination which will end in the
eternal state when it is no longer needed). Of course, for the Muslim to
engage in this attack is hypocritical, given the quite obvious inequality
which is institutionalised in the Islamic religion. Yet, the attack is
often made in an attempt to divert potential Western converts away from
Islam's own misogyny and towards a manufactured quibble with the Bible.
Indeed, it is also common for Muslim apologists to play the gender card
by presenting lists of women from the Bible who are depicted as
unsavoury, licentious, and of generally bad charactre (women such as
Jezebel, Herodias' daughter, etc.). The aim is to be able to point to
these and say, "See? The Bible is anti-woman!" In addition to
simply being a ridiculous argument, it is also easily refutable. One can
simply provide a list of women (much longer, as it turns out) in the
Bible who are presented in a positive light (Ruth, the widow of
Zarephath, Abigail, Mary, etc.), and perhaps also a list of MEN who are
depicted in a bad light (Nabal, Saul, Ahab, Judas, etc.). If the Bible is
as chauvinistic a document as these apologists claim, then why would so
many men be depicted in a poor light? Of course, the real point should be
understood that the Bible merely depicts people as they are: sinners,
some who are saved and live by faith, and some who remain lost and
rebellious to their dying day.
A Woman's Legal Status in
Islam
In light of Islam's own revered writings, the Qur'an and the ahadith, we
see a far different picture painted from that which is presented to the
West. In orthodox Islamic nations, in which the shari'a law has
been established, the treatment of women generally ranges from
heartbreaking to downright abominable. Even in nations where
shari'a has not been formally established, the theological
fundamentalism of the Islam which is almost universally held, as
discussed previously, results in social and de facto political forces
which militate against the exercise of anything even approximating
Western-style rights by women. Often these are codified into the legal
structure of the nation, even though no formal shari‘a has
been established.
In Islam as found in the Qur'an, the woman is inferior to the man in
matters of law and justice. For instance, it is stipulated that a woman
is to receive only half the inheritance that her brothers receive when
their parents pass away,
"Allah thus directs you as regards your children's inheritance:
to the male, a portion equal to that of two females: if only daughters,
two or more, their share is two-thirds of the inheritance; if only one,
her share is a half." (Surah 4:11)
In this way, a woman is deprived of an equal share of inheritance
solely because she is female, and if women are the only inheritors, they
don't even receive the full inheritance! This sort of uneven distribution
is elsewhere supported in the Qur'an,
"Allah directs thus about those who leave no descendants or
ascendants as heirs. If it is a man that dies, leaving a sister but no
child, she shall have half the inheritance: If such a deceased was a
woman, who left no child, her brother takes her inheritance: If there are
two sisters, they shall have two-thirds of the inheritance between them:
if there are brothers and sisters, they share, the male having twice the
share of the female." (Surah 4:176)
This apportionment system of giving women half the amount which a
man receives is also supported by Mohammed in the ahadith
1. Hence, though the Quranic right of a woman to
her inheritance is affirmed, it still establishes a systematically
unequal legal position for the woman.
Likewise, a woman is reckoned in Islamic jurisprudence to be worth half a
man by means of testimony in a court of law. Specifically, a woman's
testimony only counts for half that of a man's, thus two women are needed
to counter the claims of a man.
"The Prophet said, 'Isn't the witness of a woman equal to half
of that for a man?' The women said, 'Yes.' He said, 'This is because of
the deficiency of a woman's mind.' " 2
Not only is a woman's word not as good as that of a man's, but
neither is her mind! Because of this acceptance of the notion that women
are not as intelligent as men, women are accorded an inferior standing in
Islamic justice. Logically, this would bear out to the disadvantage of
women in pressing their rights and defending themselves or seeking
redress for wrongs done to them. If a woman were raped and the deed was
done secretly, she would have absolutely no redress against her
assailant, unless he confessed out of guilt or fear, because his word
would count for twice as much as hers and overrule her.
Women and men are also treated differently for breaking the same laws. An
example of this comes from the Quranic commands against homosexuality.
The punishment for women is,
"If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence
of four reliable witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they
testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah
ordain for them some other way." (Surah 4:15)
For men, on the other hand,
"If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both.
If they repent and amend, leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-returning,
Most Merciful." (Surah 4:16)
While women are confined in house arrest until death, with no
evidence of forgiveness being available, men are set free with no
punishment if they disavow their sin. The passage 4:15 provides a
possible caveat in its statement “...or Allah ordain for them some other
way.“ If Allah rescinds the punishment, they may go free. Of course, the
will of Allah is generally understood to be interpreted and dispensed to
the Muslim community via its mullahs and imams, so the women are still
essentially at the mercy of the interpretive temperament of these men.
This sort of one-sided, unfair treatment of women is acknowledged by
scholars who are intimately familiar with Islam,
"The statement that 'men are the guardians of women' in verse 38
of Sura 4 postulates inequality of men and women in civil rights. The
words are followed by two brief explanations of men's superiority over
women 3.....In Islamic law, male heirs get more
than female heirs, and men's evidence is more reliable than women's; to
be exact, a man's inheritance share is twice a woman's share, and his
evidence carries twice the weight of hers in court...The right to divorce
belongs to the husband but not to wives.
4"
In most Middle Eastern Muslim countries that make a pretence at some
sort of representative government, women are still denied the right to
vote. Rights to property and asset ownership by women, technically
existing as we have seen, are in practice non-existent as women in many
Muslim countries are not free to even leave the house without their
husbands' permission, much less transact business and manage property of
their own accord. Because of the debilitating strictures placed upon a
woman’s freedom of movement and communication with others (especially
men) outside of her kinship unit, she is usually not even able to
exercise these Qur’an-given rights, and must consign her property and
rights to her husband for him to exercise on her behalf. The few Muslim
countries where women have been allowed to participate in the political
process have almost invariably had problems with Islamic hard-liners who
destabilise and overthrow governments. An example is Pakistan, which at
one time had a female Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. However, radical
Islamist agitation brought the fragile democratic government down, and it
was replaced with a military dictatorship, currently headed by Pervez
Musharraf. Pakistan is now openly one of the main hotbeds of radical
Islamic jihadi activity, with its thousands of madrassas, or Islamic
schools, churning out tens of thousands of hard-line students. The
extension of rights to women is not necessarily the direct or sole cause
of Islamist dissatisfaction, but is instead viewed to be a symptom of the
greater evil of Western liberal democracy, which the Islamists
strenuously oppose.
When Islamic parties or revolutionary groups which seek to establish
orthodox Islam as the deen of a nation manage to come to power, the
rights of women are completely curtailed. There is perhaps no better
example of this than Afghanistan. Before the Soviet invasion of this
nation, Afghanistan was a relatively open and tolerant society, one in
which women had a good deal of participation, could receive the same
education as men, and could even become doctors or other types of
professionals. All this changed with the Soviet invasion, and the
subsequent American support for Afghan opposition groups such as the
Mujahadeen. These opposition groups, more often than not, were
militantly orthodox in their approach to Islam. While the United States
supported many of these groups because of their shared enemy, the Soviet
Union, once this threat had ended, it was left primarily to these many
militantly Islamic groups to pick up the pieces (now with the money and
arms previously supplied by the United States). This they did over the
next decade, with the process of Islamisation eventually culminating in
the Taliban regime, complete with its religious police who would savagely
beat women in the streets for grave offences such as laughing in public.
Even with the timely demise of the Taliban regime at the hands of
American forces, the rights of women in Afghanistan, briefly restored,
are fast on their way to becoming non-existent again, as the various
other militantly Islamic (but less anti-American) factions prepare the
new constitution for that land, one which is being explicitly billed as
having an Islamic shari’a foundation.
A Woman's Social Status in Islam
Part and parcel with the political inferiority of women in Islamic
society is the subjugation of women in the social realm. Women are in
many cases considered to be the property of men, and this dates back to
the conditions found in pre-Islamic Arabia. As Dashti notes,
"In pre-Islamic Arabic society, the women did not have the
status of independent persons, but were considered to be possessions of
the men. All sorts of inhumane treatment of the women were permissible
and customary." 5
This bears out explicitly in the Qur'an,
"Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of
them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property for the
support of women. So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that
which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion,
admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if
they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High,
Exalted, Great." (Surah 4:34, Pickthal translation)
According to the Qur'an, men are to literally rule over women, both
because of a supposed natural superiority and because men spend their
resources supporting women. This passage really makes a woman into
property which belongs to a man, and which exists for his use, since he
has to pay upkeep. Likewise, the word "scourge" is translated
from an Arabic root drb meaning “to hit, strike, or beat”. This
word can also be used to describe a bullet striking its target, as in the
phrase, “draboo b-r-rasaas w-gitloo”, which means, “they shot him
with bullets and killed him.”
The Muslim practice of polygamy virtually turns women into a commodity to
be bought and sold. Many Westerners have the impression that the
"four-wives" rule follows basically the same rule and respect
for marriage that the West understands, only quadrupled. This is not the
case, however. In Islam, while the woman cannot divorce her husband
without being considered an unbeliever and destined for hell, a man can
divorce his wife on any pretext (or none at all),
"And if ye wish to exchange one wife for another and ye have
given unto one of them a sum of money (however great), take nothing from
it. Would ye take it by the way of calumny and open wrong?" (Surah
4:20, Pickthal translation)
What this is saying is that it's alright for a Muslim man to dismiss
one of his wives and replace her with another as long as he takes nothing
from the dowry which he originally gave to obtain her as his wife.
Essentially, this turns his former wife into nothing more than a
glorified prostitute, and quite obviously can lead to the abuse of the
system. This is shown in the life of Hassan, a grandson of Mohammed.
Hassan, over the course of his life, had over seventy wives, yet never
exceeded the four-wife limit at any one time. He would marry a woman
during the day, enjoy her company for one or a few nights, and then
divorce her so that he could marry another, all within the bounds of
Islamic law 6.
Women were also considered by Mohammed to be deficient in religion. He is
recorded as saying,
"I have not seen any one more deficient in intelligence and
religion than you women." 7
According to the reputed founder of Islam, over half the population
is deficient in intelligence and unable to be as religious active or
useful as the other! This is borne out in that the Islamic traditions
taught that Mohammed also forbade women from giving themselves to extra
prayer or fasting without the express permission of their husbands, as
this might prevent them from being as sexually useful to their husbands
as they could be 8. Mohammed also taught both
that a majority of women would go to hell 9, and
that the majority of people in hell were women, as he claimed to have
seen in a vision 10. The early Muslim attitudes
expressed through the biographical details attributed to Mohammed clearly
show a very disrespectful, chauvinistic attitude toward women which has,
to varying degrees, filtered down into modern Islam as seen and is widely
supported in many Muslim nations.
In proper Islam, women are completely in the power of their husbands. Men
are free to beat their wives (as per Surah 4:34), provided they don't
break any of her bones! 11 Far from being the
vile activity it is viewed as in the West, wife-beating is a perfectly
acceptable practice, according to the teachings of Islam's legal
writings,
"On the Day of Judgement, a husband shall not be questioned for
beating his wife." 12
This bore true also in the earthly realm, with Mohammed commanding,
"No man shall be questioned for beating his wife."
13 In many Muslim nations, women are subjected
to the laws of purdah, or seclusion, which refers not only to the
practice of facial veiling and body coverings, but also to the seclusion
of women from all public life, as much as is possible in a given
situation. A woman must be veiled even in the presence of her male
in-laws 14. A woman is not allowed, by Islamic
law, to undertake a journey longer than three days unless accompanied by
a male relative, and cannot even spend money without her husband's
permission 15. A woman's body is the possession
of her husband, even to the extent that her breast milk is his literal
possession 16. It is even recorded that Mohammed
stated that if it were proper for any person to be decreed to prostrate
themselves in reverence to any other than Allah, that it would be a wife
to her husband 17. In many Muslim countries,
women cannot leave the house without written permission from their
husbands, and cannot drive automobiles.
"Honour" Killing
Another disturbing aspect of traditional Muslim treatment of women is the
phenomenon known as “honour killing.” This behaviour, which has
absolutely nothing “honourable” about it, involves the murder of women by
their male relatives for some perceived slight against the honour of the
family unit. Primarily these slights are sexual in nature, ranging from
something as serious as fornication to something as relatively innocuous
as flirting with a man outside the family. A wife requesting a divorce is
cited as another common motivation for honour killings, and they often
occur simply because a girl refused to marry a partner chosen by
pre-arrangement. There have even been instances where Muslim women have
been killed because they had been raped, a crime which Islamic law often
considers to be the fault of the woman, not the rapist. This despicable
practice has spread to the West, brought along by the Muslim immigrants
who have been settling primarily in Western Europe. Great Britain has
seen a rise in this crime. For instance, on 12 October 2002, a 48 year
old Kurdish man, an exile from Iraq, savagely murdered his 16 year old
daughter after receiving an anonymous letter telling him that she had
been sleeping with her boyfriend18. She had
brought shame upon the family, at least according to an anonymous note,
and for this he repeatedly stabbed her back and chest, finally burying
the blade of his knife so savagely into her throat that the metal tip
snapped off after hitting bone. The BBC at the time also reported that
the girl had left a note to her father detailing her intention of running
away with her boyfriend, and the reason given was his previous propensity
for punching and kicking her. Indeed, police reports noted that she had
been beaten for months before her murder took place.
The same article also details other honour killings in Britain. In March
2002, a Muslim woman was kidnapped, strangled with parcel tape, and set
on fire after filing for divorce from her husband. A Muslim man stabbed
his daughter to death, over 20 strokes, because he caught her at home
with a boyfriend in February 2002. In September 2002, a Muslim man went
to the home of his estranged wife and hacked her and their two small
children to death with a machete. Unfortunately, this sort of butchery is
becoming more common in the West among the resident Muslim immigrant
populations. Honour killings have also been reported in Italy, Sweden,
Brazil, and Ecuador.
The impetus for this behaviour is not an aberration from the treatment of
women in Muslim populations, but instead is firmly ground in the
societal, and even legal, sanction of many Muslim nations. Honour killing
is common across the Muslim world, more common than many would like to
admit. Indeed, the United Nations Population Fund estimates that around
5,000 women are murdered each year through honour killings. The reason
for this crime is the deep grounding in Arab culture of the communal
sense of honour and shame. If one acts shamefully, then the shame is not
just borne by the individual, but by the whole family group, often
concomitant with social shunning by other members of the community. This
then combines with the Islamic tendency to downgrade the personhood of
women, and gives a heartbreaking cocktail of worldly religious fanaticism
and the scapegoating of women. This bears out in the case, more typical
than we would like to believe, of Rofayda Qaoud, a 17 year old
Palestinian girl who was raped by her two brothers. She was taken into
custody by the Palestinian police, and then returned to her family after
she had given birth. Her mother demanded that she commit suicide. The
girl refused, and her mother came into her room one night and wrapped a
plastic bag around her head, slit her wrists with a razor, and then beat
her on the head with a wooden stick, killing
her19. The mother specifically stated that
upholding the family honour was the reason she murdered her daughter.
Honour killing is abetted by the fact that the need to maintain honour is
a mitigating circumstance under the legal systems of many Muslim
countries. The Palestinian mother who murdered her daughter could have
received a maximum sentence of five years in prison, specifically because
the honour factor was introduced and accepted as mitigating, even though
the penalty for premeditated murder under Palestinian law is capital
punishment. Many countries legally accept honour as a mitigating factor,
including Jordan, Morocco, and Syria. In a speech on this subject, Azam
Kamguian listed the articles in various Muslim countries which sanction
honour killings by lowering or abolishing the punishment for murder if
the murder was committed to maintain “honour”: Article 562 in Lebanon
(abolished in February 1999), Article 340 in Jordan, Article 548 in
Syria, Article 153 in Kuwait, Article 237 in Egypt, Article 309 in Iraq,
Article 334 in the United Arab Emirate, Article 70 in Bahrain, Article
179 in Iran before 1979, Articles 418-424 in Morocco, and Article 252 in
Oman20. He also notes that Saudi Arabia, Iran,
Sudan, Pakistan and Qatar also apply a strict, traditional interpretation
of shari’a in which honour killing is tacitly acknowledged. Indeed, a
bill was recently introduced in the Jordanian parliament which would have
increased penalties against those who commit honour killings. The bill
was soundly defeated on the principle that it contradicted Islamic
teaching and traditions, according to a Jordanian parliamentarian
interviewed in the Associated Press story of 4 August, 2003. The
placement of the burden of guilt for familial shame stemming from
misbehaviour, even that of male members of the family, onto women is an
injustice which stems from Islamic misogyny codified by centuries of
tradition and orthodox interpretation of the Qur’an and the ahadith.
Women as Objects of Carnality
A study of the sayings of Mohammed as found in the Qur'an and the ahadith
shows that the founder of Islam did not view women as persons deserving
respect, but rather as objects to be used to fulfill the sensual lust of
men. This attitude is perhaps most clearly illustrated when Mohammed
said, "A woman is like a private part. When she goes out the devil
casts a glance at her 21." In his view,
women were little more than the portions of anatomy required to gratify
his desires. The "holy" writings of Islam are full of passages
demanding that women submit to and fulfill the carnal desires of their
husbands at any time, and a premium is placed upon women who
"serve" this capacity especially well. The ahadith state that
if a man desires sexual intercourse with his woman, that she must respond
immediately, even if she is engaged in baking bread at the communal oven
22. If a woman is riding a camel, and her
husband demands intercourse, she must submit, and this is even said to be
her duty before Allah, that fulfilling of her husband's desire
23. If a woman refuses to come to bed with her
husband, Islam teaches that she is cursed by the very angels of Allah
24. A woman is also shamed and coerced into
sexual submission to her husband's wishes by the threat of competition
from the 72 houris (virgins) which Islam teaches a man receives for his
enjoyment in Paradise,
"When a wife vexes her husband, then houris of paradise utter
curses on her saying, 'may Allah destroy you because he is with you only
for a short time; he will shortly leave you to come to us.'"
25.
Islam teaches a similarly low view of the blessed institution of
marriage, reducing if from the God-ordained status of lifelong, total
partnership to a mere vehicle by which a man's carnal lusts can be
"legally" fulfilled. In the Qur'an, a woman is likened to a
field which a man must work and cultivate so that it bears him much
fruit. "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate). So go to your
tilth as ye will..." (Surah 2:223) This attitude is reiterated in
the ahadith, "The most equitable of the conditions of marriage is
that you should fulfill that dowry with which you have made private parts
lawful." 26 Here we see that marriage is
considered a way to make sexual intercourse legal, i.e. not fornication.
Satisfaction of a man's desires, sexual and otherwise, is even made a
means of entry for a woman in heaven! "Any female who dies while her
husband was pleased with her will enter Paradise."
27
To further humiliate, subjugate, and disgrace womanhood, the practice of
female genital mutilation (sometimes called by the misnomer "female
circumcision") is carried out in many Muslim nations, particularly
those in Africa. This process removes from a woman the ability to receive
any physical enjoyment from the conjugal act, and makes intercourse a
painful duty. As a result, it makes it difficult or impossible for a
woman to cleave to her husband through desire for him, as was given in
her nature to Eve and her daughters. This makes her less likely to form
the psychologically intimate bond to him that would normally make her
more difficult for him to send away when he divorces her. Hence it seems
in reality to be just another means of removing obstacles to the
fulfillment of the lusts of lecherous men.
Far from respecting the rights and personhood of women, Islam as it is
properly understood from the Qur'an and other sacred Islamic texts
degrades the fairer sex. As taught from these texts, women are little
more than joy units for men's pleasure, not accorded the rights or legal
protections which men enjoy, and destined by sharia and purdah to
lives of virtual imprisonment and subjugation.
Again, does all of this mean that every Muslim man beats his wife,
"loves" her only for the pleasure she can bring him, and wants
to force his wife to remain secluded from the world at large? No, of
course not. Nor does it mean that Muslim women everywhere suffer from the
horrid conditions which theocratic Islamic states impose upon them. Many
Muslim women, particularly in the West but even in some of the more
secular Muslim nations such as Turkey and Indonesia, do enjoy varying
degrees of personal liberty and political freedom. The point is, however,
that strict, orthodox Islam holds to the teachings illustrated above, and
this makes the resurgence of militant, orthodox Islam in both the Middle
East and Western nations a danger to the rights of and respect for women.
End Notes
(1) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 4, no. 10
(2) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 3, no. 826
(3) - Ali Dashti, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of
Mohammed, pp. 113.
(4) - Ali Dashti, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of
Mohammed, pp. 114.
(5) - Ali Dashti, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of
Mohammed, pp. 113.
(6) - A. Shaikh, Islam: Sex and Violence, Chapter 2
(7) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 2, p. 541
(8) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 300
(9) - Sahih Muslim, vol. 1, p. 1431
(10) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, p. 28 (see also 1:301, 2:161, and
7:124 of the same collection)
(11) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 439
(12) - Mishkat, Vol. 2, p. 105
(13) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, p. 215
(14) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 432
(15) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 265
(16) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, p. 27
(17) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 428
(18) - “For families that fear dishonour, there is only one
remedy....murder”, The Observer (UK), filed by A. Asthana and U.
Mistry, 5 Oct. 2003
(19) - “Mother kills raped daughter to restore ’honor’”, Knight-Ridder
Newspapers, filed by S.S. Nelson, 17 Nov. 2003
(20) - A. Kamguian, “The Lethal Combination of Tribalism, Islam, and
Cultural Relativism”, from a speech made at a conference on honour
killing and violence against women, 17-19 Jan., 2003 in Stockholm,
Sweden
(21) - Al-Hadis, trans. Al-Haj Maulana Fazlul Karim, vol. 2, p. 692,
from Mishkat al-Masabih, by Waliuddin Abu Abdullah Mahmud
Tabrizi
(22) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 428
(23) - Ibn-e-Majah, Vol. 1, p. 520
(24) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 7, p. 93
(25) - Ibn-e-Majah, Vol. 1, p 560
(26) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 2, p. 657
(27) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, p. 211
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