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| The Rights of Muslim Women
and the Need to Resist the Survival of Pre-Islamic Customs Anisa Abd el Fattah The question of the rights and role of Muslim women has been raised again by a controversy in Kuwait, over whether or not women should be permitted to vote. Anisa Abd el Fattah discusses this question and the problems posed by the persistence of pre-Islamic customs regarding women. The controversy surrounding Kuwaiti
women’s struggle to obtain the right to vote yet again raises serious
questions for Muslims everywhere. The question of the fundamental rights
of Muslim women being raised by the women of Kuwait lies at the very
foundation of our social, religious and economic progress and development
as Muslim peoples. The resistance of those who oppose the right of Muslim
women to vote generally appears to be rooted in negative and non-Islamic
images and stereotypes of women prevalent in the Muslim world. These ideas
shape the experiences and destinies of women in a most negative fashion,
while simultaneously obstructing the growth and development of the Muslim
world by almost completely confining the contributions of Muslim women in
their societies to childbearing and looking after their families. Women
have numerous abilities and attributes that can be used by Muslim society;
during times of crisis a Muslim woman who has expertise in a certain area
may be required to set aside familial duties and to serve the community by
the provision of other necessary services. We must also bear in mind that
some women will never bear children, and that others may never marry.
Moreover familial relationships should not be dictated by governments or
groups, but should be decided by families and couples in consultation with
one another, while also considering the needs of society. Muslims must be made aware of, and be on
guard against, negative stereotypes of women and their effects on our
communities. We must approach this issue objectively and without
prejudice, recognizing that the same ignorance that has resulted in the
repression and oppression of Muslim women, and the denial of women’s
rights in the Muslim world, is being imported into Western Muslim society
through the proliferation of so-called Islamic publications that degrade
women. Some men and women, who claim to be scholars, frequent mosques and
study-circles, where they spread vicious and false hadith that degrade
women. Some even encourage the physical and psychological abuse of women.
These false and non-Islamic teachings and the culture they promote
threaten the rights of all Muslims, men and women. We are obligated by
Islam to fight these negative ideas as they seek to penetrate the Islamic
discourse in America. For the most part Muslim Americans are committed to
the continuation of the movement of the prophet Muhammad (saw); who
struggled to remove the shackles of ignorance, tradition, self-worship and
self-aggrandizement that had corrupted pre-Islamic Arab society, and that
continue to threaten our modern societies and communities. Western Muslims
must now consider this important question of Muslim women’s rights, and
develop responses that reflect the sound principles of justice and equity
in society that comprise Islam. The Impact of Western Women’s
Movements The women’s suffrage movement was the
first women’s movement in America. Because of this movement American
society was forced to ask itself upon what grounds it denied women the
right to political participation and expression through the ballot-box.
Unlike the Muslim women’s debate, American women’s suffrage was
debated in a secular society, where God was recognized in principle, yet
issues of state were regarded as outside this domain; so the issue wrongly
became an issue of constitutional interpretations and definitions of civil
rights, rather than an ethical issue of justice and the inalienable rights
of human beings (men and women alike). Muslims on the other hand must
answer this question within the light of the Qur’an and Sunnah, which
will not yield to the desires of men, nor to tricky language and political
ploys. The history of Islam is clear on this issue: Allah’s Messenger
(saw) recognized the common rights of men and women, at the same time
acknowledging and allowing for their differences. The Qur’an recognizes
the common qualities and rights of men and women in respect to social
status, defining the best of us as the most righteous, and assuring us
that Allah does not distinguish between man and woman with respect to the
value and acceptability of our deeds. Women’s rights to education, to
work or to vote never found their way onto the regrettably ever-growing
lists of Islamic prohibitions, as they were not prohibited and no man can
prohibit what Allah Ta’ala has allowed; also, what is not prohibited by
Allah or His Prophet (saw) is permissible. "It is not fitting for a believer, man
or woman, when a matter is decided by Allah and His prophet, to have any
option about their decision: if any one disobeys Allah and His prophet, he
is indeed on a clearly wrong path" (al-Qur’an 33:36). What is commonly paraded in the Muslim
world as "Islam" is sometimes only the pre-Islamic ignorance and
culture that enabled men to justify the burying of girls alive. The
Qur’an not only prohibits the action of physically burying them alive,
but also dispels the myths that demonize and vilify the female gender so
that burying girls alive seems a reasonable thing to do. The people of
Arabia buried them because they believed that women are promiscuous and
that this promiscuity would bring shame to the family. This practice was
prohibited during the lifetime of the Prophet (saw), yet killing women was
later resumed by the Arabs as "honor killing." Today in
"honor killings", physical abuse and psychological torture we
also see other forms of "killing" women in more subtle,
culturally accepted and ‘legal’ ways. The objective in every case is
to prevent society from being affected by the feminine qualities of
womanhood, cast as evil by Arabs in much the same way and perhaps for the
same reasons as the Christians and Jews blamed women for the sin of Adam,
thereby condemning us to a history of shame and humiliation as punishment
for the sin that Allah ta’ala forgave. The Qur’an informs us that both
Adam and his companion disobeyed Allah, and that both shared the penalty
and the mercy of Allah, through which they both found forgiveness. Despite
this, Arab societies and many that have been "Arabicized" have
perpetuated the ignorance and woman-hatred of pre-Islamic Arabia by
various means, including the denial of women’s right to share in the
establishment and development of Islamic society. Other ways have included
denying women equivalent opportunities in education, unbiased
opportunities in the workplace, and reasonable and religiously permissible
access to other human beings and other resources. Perhaps the most negative of all women’s
movements was the Women’s Supremacy movement of the West, or the
infamous "feminist" movement that was mounted by elitist
American women who sought more than equality. Instead they sought
supremacy above men and revenge against men for what they felt were the
numerous injustices inflicted by men upon women throughout history. To
accomplish their objectives they constructed absurd theories, such as the
theory that the only differences between men and women are anatomical.
Freedom for women was taken to mean freedom to have sexual relations
without consequences. Women’s sexuality became a primary focus
of the movement, and liberation language was soon expanded to include
women’s liberation from ethics and morality, and from any institution,
including religion and tradition, that recommended either. This movement
began as a social movement and quickly evolved first into a political
movement and then into an economic movement. It was co-opted as such by
the United Nations, which recognized that the human byproduct of the
feminist movement would be an entity that was neither properly male nor
properly female, and had no attachment to tradition, religion or the other
so-called "barriers" to women’s "economic
advancement," that dictated specific social roles for women. The
promotion of lesbianism, homosexuality and definitions of family that
destroyed blood-lineage, such as same-sex ‘marriages’, were also
adopted as feminist ideology after the United Nation’s Nairobi
Conference, where the Forward Looking Strategies were first introduced to
a naive and unsuspecting world. The United Nation’s primary interest in
the advancement of women was the exploitation of women as human resources,
primarily as cheap labor for transnational corporations who would be
increasingly establishing their operations in the ‘underdeveloped
world’, hoping to cut costs and increase profits. This attempt to
exploit women through the United Nations initiative for the so-called
advancement of women was simplified by the rhetoric of feminism, which
promised women independence, wealth and power as a result of their
liberation from the inconveniences of womanhood; the United Nations became
the guarantor of these false promises. Perhaps opposition to Muslim women’s
right to vote emanates partly from fear that Muslim women’s suffrage
will also become a Western-style feminist movement that will take
objectives and ideology from its Western predecessor. While this fear is
understandable, it is not reasonable: a woman’s right to vote cannot
fairly be premised upon a woman’s promise to vote or not vote a certain
way, or a pre-articulation of women’s political views and objectives,
because a man’s right to vote is not. Islam and Women’s Participation in
Politics In a Muslim society, where the basic tenets
of the faith have already been accepted as the supreme law, it should not
be feared that women would seek to violate the precepts and laws of Islam,
any more than it should be suspected that men might do so. Muslims’ fear of women in this regard is
further evidence of our negative perceptions of women as ignorant and
easily swayed, promiscuous, pleasure-oriented and self-seeking. It ignores
the reality that Muslim women can be (and in many instances are) as
knowledgeable and pious as men who are educated in Islam, and as
submissive to the law. Muslim women, like Muslim men, can be trusted to
uphold Islamic law and tradition. Denying Muslim women political
participation will ultimately result in the further erosion of various
freedoms, and the right of political participation for both men and women
in the Muslim world. It will enable the "culture" of the masses
to dictate the objectives of Muslim government and the rights of the
people by opinion rather than Islamic law, and will reduce Islam in Muslim
society from an authoritative resource to a relic of the past. A Muslim woman’s right to vote must not
be denied because of fear, or assumptions that women are more given to
error or sin than men. Neither Allah nor His Prophet (saw) ever took such
a position, and men should not attempt to ignore the rights of women under
the pretence of protecting Islam or Muslim society from women. Allah
ta’ala demands in the Qur’an and through the Sunnah of His Messenger
(saw) that mankind abide by His law, and pursue justice at any cost, even
when justice is against our own desires. During the lifetime of Rasool-Allah (saw)
Muslim women fought in wars, took care of families and worked alongside
men in the development of the new Muslim society. After his death, the
khulafa (ra) consulted prominent female companions on matters of state.
Many of the great Islamic scholars of the past were women who trained many
of our revered scholars, such as al-Shafi’i and Ibn Taymiyyah. Muslim women do not participate equitably
in state- and civilization-building in the Muslim world, and as a result
the Muslim world is mired in intellectual stagnation, poverty and
illiteracy. The pattern of Allah’s creation is that men and women should
be companions and partners in the struggle to establish Islamic society
through procreation and the perpetuation of Islamic cultures. Allah
commands that we stick to this balanced pattern in our individual and
collective pursuits as a matter of obligation, and not choice, since the
Qur’an declares that we have no choice in matters that have been decided
by Him or His Rasul (saw). Our covenant with Allah is that we will obey
Him, and in return Allah has promised to turn mercifully to us: "We did indeed offer the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof: but man undertook it; he was indeed unjust and foolish. So Allah has to punish the hypocrites, men and women, and the unbelievers, men and women, and Allah turns to the believers, men and women: for Allah is oft Forgiving, Most Merciful." (Al-Qur’an 33:72-3.).
About the Author: With permission from the author: Source: http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/features01/wom-customs.htm |