Islam
and the Position of Women
By:
Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari
The West's vociferous partisans
of Women's Lib. have no idea of the revolutionary leap forward in women's position which
Islam brought about. In the days of Islam's first appearance the position of women was
that of chattels of the men - little above the domesticated animals. Yet the West, for all
their vaunted freedom, have added nothing to what Islam gave to women, except liberty for
increased corruption and licentiousness. Islam prohibits debauchery, laxity, vulgarity,
debasement and demoralisation. Is that to hinder women's upward advance?
Islam regards both man and woman
as created by God to rise to the full stature of the perfect human. This is in stern
contrast with those versions of the Heavenly Book which Jews and Christians have tampered
with and published as reading: "Amongst every thousand men appears one beloved of
God: but amongst all the women in the world there is not to be found one who is included
in God's grace and favour." (My quotation is from page 519 of "Islamic and Arab
Civilisation", an authoritative work to which due respect must be paid.)
Islam proclaims that in God's
eyes there is no difference between man and woman. Each is a precious soul. In His eyes
all that makes people stand out from one another is their excelling in virtue, piety
reverence, spiritual and ethical qualities. It is open to both men and women to achieve
that type of excellence. At Doomsday each soul will be judged, regardless of sex,
according to the fruits of their actions, by the above criteria. As it is written in Sura
XXVII: Nahl -"Bee". "Whosoever hath faith and performs decorous
actions, man or woman, I decree as their destiny a life that will be satisfied and will
win that soul a reward better than the good deeds they have done." Compare Sura
XXVIII: Qasas-"The Narration" (verse 84): "To whosoever does good,
the reward is better than the deed."
Islam regards men and women as
complementary to each other. As it is written in Sura III: Aali-Imran
-"Imran's Family" (verse 195): "Their Lord hath accepted their prayer and
answered: 'Never will I suffer the work of any one of you, male or female, to be lost. Ye
are complementary to each other'."
Many women possess such personal
excellences and intelligence that they attain great heights of true humanity and
happiness. Many men, alas, fall to the lowest depths because they flout reason and abandon
themselves to their passions.
It is related that on one
occasion the Second Caliph, Omar, said from the pulpit in the presence of a large crowd:
"I will fine any man who gives his bride 500 darhams or more as dowry. He shall be
made to give the same amount as that by which his dowry exceeds the Mahr-as-Sunna
(traditional dowry) to the public treasury." At this a woman who was at the foot of
the pulpit cried out in a loud voice her objection to Omar's statement saying: "Your
proclamation contradicts God's law. for does not the Sura IV: Nisa'a -'The Women',
say (verse 20): 'But if you decide to take one wife in place of another, even if you have
given the wife you put away a talent of gold as her marriage portion, take not the least
bit of it back.'? How can you, then, in contradiction of the Divine Law which has stated
that it is permissible to give more than the legal minimum marriage portion, make your
proclamation?" Omar could not deny the impeachment and withdrew his proposition
saying: "It was a man who erred and a woman who uttered the truth."
Contrast with this the tragic
depression of women in pre-Islamic Arabia. What a height of dignity has been conferred by
Islam on the female sex to enable one of them to lift up her voice in public rebuke to a
Caliph and cause him to reverse his own public utterance! Islam took from men the right to
own women. It instituted equality of human souls, with due regard to differences of male
and female constitutions.
In the 19th century religious
leaders of France, after long discussions, decided: "woman is a human being, but made
to serve man." It was not until recent years that women in European lands had any
rights to own property. In England it was not till about AD 1850 that women were counted
in the national population census. It was in 1882 that a British law, unprecedented in the
country's history, for the first time granted women the right to decide how their own
earnings should be spent, instead of handing them over direct to their husbands
immediately. Until then, even the clothes on their back had been their husband's property.
Henry VIII had in his day even forbidden women to study the Bible when the first English
translations began to appear.
Fourteen centuries ago Islam had
decreed women's total financial independence, their right to own and dispose of property
without the surveillance or control of any man, to conduct business, trade and all the
transactions concerning their profit and loss, including the execution of deeds of gift,
without having to check with anyone. As it is written in the Sura IV Nisa'a-"The
Women" verse 33: "In no wise covet gifts bestowed by God seemingly more freely
on some than on others. Whatsoever a man earns is his own. Whatsoever a woman earns is her
own. Pray to God for the bounty of His Providence for He knows all things."
Besides property rights Islam
bestowed dignity, liberty and freedom on women. This is not least true in the matter of
marriage. Marriage is the most important and sensitive step in a woman's life. Islam did
everything to secure her in it, and to enable her to consider the financial as well as all
the other matters concerning the situation before she accepted him in wedlock.
Thus the rights and privileges
which European women extorted after bringing forceful pressure to bear on the societies in
which they lived, and only recently achieved, Islam bestowed upon all women voluntarily
without any form of revolt or pressure many centuries back. Indeed there is no moment of a
woman's life, and no problem she is likely to face, for which Islam has not made
beneficent and wise provision.
It is true that today far too
many women are condemned in the East to an unsatisfactory way of life. But this is not due
to Islam's regulations. It is due to the neglect of religious precept in political, social
and financial institutions.
Poverty is one important reason
for the bad conditions under which Eastern women have to live. A few are too rich; but the
majority far too poor, victims of hunger and wretchedness. The resultant weakness has
deprived people of the strength to rise up and insist on a change in their environment,
for the sake of their families and children. Nor have the women the power in such a
situation to make use of their legal rights and to take the men to court for the violence
and tyranny of their behaviour. Women fear the difficulties of having to live without a
male companion in a man's world.
The same economic needs cause a
diminution in morals and in human affections. Violence and injustice replace moral values.
Although Islamic lands are
amongst the worst sufferers from these modern disasters, it is not Islam itself but the
deliberate neglect and abandonment of Islamic principles by Muslims and their leaders
which has brought these tragedies upon us. For Islam is the very acme of the counterforces
to poverty and injustice, and insists that wealth must be fairly divided amongst people of
all classes, declaring that it is wrong for people to have to live under the torture of
indigence and its pressure on hearts and souls, not least those of women and children.
Have we not men wise and just
enough to eradicate these wrongs? To cure the bitterness which they produce? To re-enact
sound Islamic measures? To restore respect for the dictates of piety and reverence for God
and men? Should not that same Islam which once rescued woman from degrading depression,
now raise her again by instituting a new society?
What is the situation in the
West? Women have fallen victims to the bestial passions to which men have abandoned
themselves under the influence of subversive propaganda of all kinds, in which the
massmedia, particularly cinema and TV, and the advertisements that disgrace the hoardings
of our great cities, play so tragically fateful a part.
Nowadays a woman's good
reputation and dignity does not come, as it used to, from her possession of moral
excellences, education and knowledge. Too often women of piety and learning are left in
obscurity. Respect, reputation go too much with the name of " artiste" which
some women arrogate to themselves. They perform no useful function in society. They do not
help the men forward. The name "artiste" seems to cover a multitude of sins of
incontinence and debauchery, which are the very opposite of that virtue and chastity in
which the honour of women once resided. How many earn a shameful living as
"models"?
An American sociologist writes
that the modern stripteaser can earn a million dollars a year: a fellow who is able to
knock out another man with one blow of his fist gets half a million: a man who has spent a
lifetime in the service of his fellows, in his white hairs finds hardly enough to live on.
Professor Albert Connolly writes:
"In 1919 England's women fought for the right to be elected to Parliament, and in
their battle went to prison and suffered physically in fearless vindication of their sex.
What use are their grandchildren making of the privileges gained for them by these
courageous women pioneers? And what would their grandmothers think of them? Maybe they are
actually turning in their graves at seeing the liberties they fought for perverted to
shameless licence. This last half century has taught us that the liberation of women is
not enough. Besides all their other sacrifices for their cause, women seem also to have
connived at the sacrifice of the respect and the ancient realities, the moral dignity and
the devotion to mankind's uplift which in former days brought honour to the name of
'woman' and 'mother'." (Quoted from "The Enlightened Thinkers' Magazine",
No. 829).
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