Islam Greatest Shame: Women
Islam’s Shame
Lifting the veil of tears
by Ibn Warraq
Islam is deeply anti-woman. Islam is the fundamental cause of the
repression of Muslim women and remains the major obstacle to the
evolution of their position.(1) Islam has always considered women
as creatures inferior in every way: physically, intellectually,
and morally. This negative vision is divinely sanctioned in the
Koran, corroborated by the hadiths, and perpetuated by the
commentaries of the theologians, the custodians of Muslim dogma
and ignorance.
Far better for these intellectuals to abandon the religious
argument, to reject these sacred texts, and have recourse to
reason alone. They should turn instead to human rights. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted on December 10,
1948, by the General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris and
ratified by most Muslim countries) at no point has recourse to a
religious argument. These rights are based on natural rights,
which any adult human being capable of choice has. They are rights
that human beings have simply because they are human beings. Human
reason or rationality is the ultimate arbiter of rights—human
rights, the rights of women.
Unfortunately, in practice, in Muslim countries one cannot simply
leave the theologians with their narrow, bigoted world view to
themselves. One cannot ignore the ulama, those learned doctors of
Muslim law who by their fatwas or decisions in questions touching
private or public matters of importance regulate the life of the
Muslim community. They still exercise considerable powers of
approving or forbidding certain actions. Why the continuing
influence of the mullas?
The Koran remains for all Muslims, not just
"fundamentalists," the uncreated word of God Himself. It
is valid for all times and places; its ideas are absolutely true
and beyond all criticism. To question it is to question the very
word of God, and hence blasphemous. A Muslim’s duty is to
believe it and obey its divine commands.
Several other factors contribute to the continuing influence of
the ulama. Any religion that requires total obedience without
thought is not likely to produce people capable of critical
thought, people capable of free and independent thought. Such a
situation is favorable to the development of a powerful
"clergy" and is clearly responsible for the
intellectual, cultural, and economic stagnation of several
centuries. Illiteracy remains high in Muslim countries.
Historically, as there never was any separation of state and
religion, any criticism of one was seen as a criticism of the
other. Inevitably, when many Muslim countries won independence
after the Second World War, Islam was unfortunately linked with
nationalism, which meant that any criticism of Islam was seen as a
betrayal of the newly independent country—an unpatriotic act, an
encouragement to colonialism and imperialism. No Muslim country
has developed a stable democracy; Muslims are being subjected to
every kind of repression possible. Under these conditions healthy
criticism of society is not possible, because critical thought and
liberty go together.
The above factors explain why Islam in general and the position of
women in particular are never criticized, discussed, or subjected
to deep scientific or skeptical analysis. All innovations are
discouraged in Islam—every problem is seen as a religious
problem rather than a social or economic one.
Profoundly Anti-Woman
Islam took the legend of Adam and Eve (2) from the Old Testament
and adapted it in its own fashion. The creation of mankind from
one person is mentioned in the following suras:
4.1. O Mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord who created
you from a single soul and from it created its mate and from them
twain hath spread abroad a multiple of men and women.
39.6. He created you from one being, then from that (being) He
made its mate.
7.189. He it is who did create you from a single soul and
therefrom did make his mate that he might take rest in her.
From these slender sources Muslim theologians have concluded that
man was the original creation—womankind was created secondarily
for the pleasure and repose of man. The legend was further
developed to reinforce the supposed inferiority of women. Finally,
the legend was given a sacred character so that to criticize it
was to criticize the very words of God, which were immutable and
absolute. Here is how Muhammad describes women in general:
"Be friendly to women for womankind was created from a rib,
but the bent part of the rib, high up, if you try to straighten it
you will break it; if you do nothing, she will continue to be
bent."
God punishes Adam and Eve for disobeying his orders. But there is
nothing in the verses to show that it was Eve (as in the Old
Testament) who led Adam astray. And yet Muslim exegetists and
jurists have created the myth of Eve the temptress that has since
become an integral part of Muslim tradition. Muhammad himself is
reputed to have said: "If it had not been for Eve, no woman
would have been unfaithful to her husband."
The Islamic tradition also attributes guile and deceit to women
and draws its support from the Koran. Modern Muslim commentators
interpret certain verses to show that guile, deceit, and treachery
are intrinsic to a woman’s nature. Not only is she unwilling to
change, she is by nature incapable of changing—she has no
choice.(3) In attacking the female deities of the polytheists, the
Koran takes the opportunity to malign the female sex further.
4.1 17. They invoke in His stead only females; they pray to none
else than Satan, a rebel.
53.21-22. Are yours the males and His the females
That indeed were an unfair division!
53.27. Lo! it is those who disbelieve in the Hereafter who name
the angels with the names of females.
Other verses from the Koran also seem of a misogynist tendency.
2.228. Women who are divorced shall wait, keeping themselves
apart, three (monthly) courses. And it is not lawful for them that
they should conceal that which Allah hath created in their wombs
if they are believers in Allah and the Last Day. And their
husbands would do better to take them back in that case if they
desire a reconciliation. And they (women) have rights similar to
those (of men) over them in kindness, and men are a degree above
them. Allah is Mighty, Wise.
2.282. But if he who oweth the debt is of low understanding, or
weak or unable himself to dictate, then let the guardian of his
interests dictate in (terms of) equity. And call to witness, from
among your men, two witnesses. And if two men be not (at hand)
then a man and two women, of such as ye approve as witnesses, so
that I f the one erreth (through forgetfulness) the other will
remember.
4.11. Allah chargeth you concerning (the provision for) your
children: to the male the equivalent of the portion of two
females.
4.34. 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 (beat) them. Then if they obey you,
seek not a way against them Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.
Equally, in numerous hadiths on which are based the Islamic laws,
we learn of the woman’s role—to stay at home, to be at the
beck and call of man to obey him (which is a religious duty), and
to assure man a tranquil existence. Here are some examples of
these traditions:
1. The woman who dies and with whom the husband is satisfied will
go to paradise.
2. A wife should never refuse herself to her husband even if it is
on the saddle of a camel.
3. Hellfire appeared to me in a dream and I noticed that it was
above all peopled with women who had been ungrateful. "Was it
toward God that they were ungrateful?" They had not shown any
gratitude toward their husbands for all they had received from
them. Even when all your life you have showered a woman with your
largesse she will still find something petty to reproach you with
one day, saying, "You have never done anything for me."
4. If anything presages a bad omen it is: a house, a woman, a
horse.
5. Never will a people know success if they confide their affairs
to a woman.
It will be appropriate to include two quotes from the famous and
much revered philosopher al-Ghazali (1058-1111), whom Professor
Montgomery Watt describes as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad.
In his "The Revival Of The Religious Sciences," Ghazali
defines the woman’s role (4):
She should stay at home and get on with her spinning, she should
not go out often, she must not be well-informed, nor must she be
communicative with her neighbours and only visit them when
absolutely necessary; she should take care of her husband and
respect him in his presence and his absence and seek to satisfy
him in everything; she must not cheat on him nor extort money from
him; she must not leave her house without his permission and if
given his permission she must leave surreptitiously. She should
put on old clothes and take deserted streets and alleys, avoid
markets, and make sure that a stranger does not hear her voice or
recognize her; she must not speak to a friend of her husband even
in need. . . . Her sole worry should be her virtue, her home as
well as her prayers and her fast. If a friend of her husband calls
when the latter is absent she must not open the door nor reply to
him in order to safeguard her and her husband’s honour. She
should accept what her husband gives her as sufficient sexual
needs at any moment. . . . She should be clean and ready to
satisfy her husband’s sexual needs at any moment.
Such are some of the sayings from the putative golden age of
Islamic feminism. It was claimed that it was the abandonment of
the original teachings of Islam that had led to the present
decadence and backwardness of Muslim societies. But there never
was an Islamic utopia. To talk of a golden age is only to conform
and perpetuate the influence of the clergy, the mullas, and their
hateful creed that denies humanity to half the inhabitants of this
globe, and further retards all serious attempts to liberate Muslim
women.
What Rights?
The inequality between men and women (5) in matters of giving
testimony or evidence or being a witness is enshrined in the
Koran: sura 2.282 (quoted above).
How do Muslim apologists justify the above text? Muslim men and
women writers point to the putative psychological differences that
exist between men and women. The Koran (and hence God) in its
sublime wisdom knew that women are sensitive, emotional,
sentimental, easily moved, and influenced by their biological
rhythm, lacking judgment. But above all they have a shaky memory.
In other words, women are psychologically inferior. Such are the
dubious arguments used by Muslim intellectuals—male and,
astonishingly enough, female intellectuals like Ahmad Jamal, Ms.
Zahya Kaddoura, Ms. Ghada al-Kharsa, and Ms. Madiha Khamis. As
Ghassan Ascha points out, the absurdity of their arguments are
obvious.
By taking the testimony of two beings whose reasoning faculties
are faulty we do not obtain the testimony of one complete person
with a perfectly functioning rational faculty—such is Islamic
arithmetic! By this logic, if the testimony of two women is worth
that of one man, then the testimony of four women must be worth
that of two men, in which case we can dispense with the testimony
of the men. But no! In Islam the rule is not to accept the
testimony of women alone in matters to which men theoretically
have access. It is said that the Prophet did not accept the
testimony of women in matters of marriage, divorce, and hudud.
Hudud are the punishments set down by Muhammad in the Koran and
the hadith for (I) adultery—stoning to death; (II)
fornication—a hundred stripes; (III) false accusation of
adultery against a married person—eighty stripes; (IV)
apostasy—death; (V) drinking wine—eighty stripes; (VI)
theft—the cutting off of the right hand; (VII) simple robbery on
the highway—the loss of hands and feet; (VIII) robbery with
murder—death, either by the sword or by crucifixion.
On adultery the Koran 24.4 says: "Those that defame
honourable women and cannot produce four witnesses shall be given
eighty lashes." Of course, Muslim jurists will only accept
four male witnesses. These witnesses must declare that they have
"seen the parties in the very act of carnal conjunction. Once
an accusation of fornication and adultery has been made, the
accuser himself or herself risks punishment if he or she does not
furnish the necessary legal proofs. Witnesses are in the same
situation. If a man were to break into a woman’s dormitory and
rape half a dozen women, he would risk nothing since there would
be no male witnesses. Indeed the victim of a rape would hesitate
before going in front of the law, since she would risk being
condemned herself and have little chance of obtaining justice.
"If the woman’s words were sufficient in such cases,"
explains Judge Zharoor ul Haq of Pakistan, "then no man would
be safe." This iniquitous situation is truly revolting and
yet for Muslim law it is a way of avoiding social scandal
concerning the all-important sexual taboo. Women found guilty of
fornication were literally immured, at first; as the Koran 4.15
says: "Shut them up within their houses till death release
them, or God make some way for them." However this was later
canceled and stoning substituted for adultery and one hundred
lashes for fornication. When a man is to be stoned to death, he is
taken to some barren place, where he is stoned first by the
witnesses, then the judge, and then the public. When a woman is
stoned, a hole to receive her is dug as deep as her waist—the
Prophet himself seems to have ordered such procedure. It is lawful
for a man to kill his wife and her lover if he catches them in the
very act.
In the case where a man suspects his wife of adultery or denies
the legitimacy of the offspring, his testimony is worth that of
four men. Sura 24.6: "If a man accuses his wife but has no
witnesses except himself, he shall swear four times by God that
his charge is true, calling down upon himself the curse of God if
he is lying. But if his wife swears four times by God that his
charge is false and calls down His curse upon herself if it be
true, she shall receive no punishment." Appearances to the
contrary, this is not an example of Koranic justice or equality
between the sexes. The woman indeed escapes being stoned to death
but she remains rejected and loses her right to the dowry and her
right to maintenance, whatever the outcome of the trial. A woman
does not have the right to charge her husband in a similar manner.
Finally, for a Muslim marriage to be valid there must be a
multiplicity of witnesses. For Muslim jurists, two men form a
multiplicity but not two or three or a thousand women.
In questions of heritage, the Koran tells us that male children
should inherit twice the portion of female children:
4.11-12. A male shall inherit twice as much as a female. If there
be more than two girls, they shall have two-thirds of the
inheritance, but if there be one only, she shall inherit the half.
Parents shall inherit a sixth each, if the deceased have a child;
but if he leave no child and his parents be his heirs, his mother
shall have a third. If he have brothers, his mother shall have a
sixth after payment of any legacy he may have bequeathed or any
debt he may have owed.
To justify this inequality, Muslim authors lean heavily on the
fact that a woman receives a dowry and has the right to
maintenance from her husband. It is also true that according to
Muslim law the mother is not at all obliged to provide for her
children, and if she does spend money on her children, it is, to
quote Bousquet, "recoverable by her from her husband if he is
returned to a better fortune as in the case of any other
charitable person. Therefore there is no point in the husband and
wife sharing in the taking charge of the household; this weighs
upon the husband alone. There is no longer any financial interest
between them." (6)
This latter point referred to by Bousquet simply emphasizes the
negative aspects of a Muslim marriage—that is to say, the total
absence of any idea of "association" between
"couples" as in Christianity. As to dowry, it is, of
course, simply a reconfirmation of the man’s claims over the
woman in matters of sex and divorce. Furthermore, in reality the
woman does not get to use the dowry for herself. The custom is
either to use the dowry to furnish the house of the newly married
couple or for the wife to offer it to her father. According to the
Malekites, the woman can be obliged by law to use the dowry to
furnish the house. Muslim law also gives the guardian the right to
cancel a marriage—even that of a woman of legal age—if he
thinks the dowry is not sufficient. Thus the dowry, instead of
being a sign of her independence, turns out once more to be a
symbol of her servitude.
The woman has the right to maintenance but this simply emphasizes
her total dependence on her husband, with all its attendant sense
of insecurity. According to Muslim jurists, the husband is not
obliged under Islamic law to pay for her medical expenses in case
of illness. Financial independence of the woman would of course be
the first step in the liberation of Muslim women and thus it is
not surprising that it is seen as a threat to male dominance.
Muslim women are now obliged to take equal responsibility for
looking after their parents. Article 158 of Syrian law states
"The child—male or female—having the necessary means is
obliged to take responsibility for his or her poor parents."
The birth of a girl is still seen as a catastrophe in Islamic
societies. The system of inheritance just adds to her misery and
her dependence on the man. If she is an only child she receives
only half the legacy of her father; the other half goes to the
male members of the father’s family. If there are two or more
daughters, they inherit two-thirds. This pushes fathers and
mothers to prefer male children to female so that they can leave
the entirety of their effects or possessions to their own
descendants. "Yet when a new-born girl is announced to one of
them his countenance darkens and he is filled with gloom" (sura
43.15). The situation is even worse when a woman loses her
husband—she only receives a quarter of the legacy. If the
deceased leaves more than one wife, all the wives are still
obliged to share among themselves a quarter or one-eighth of the
legacy.
Muslim jurists (7) are unanimous in their view that men are
superior to women in virtue of their reasoning abilities, their
knowledge, and their supervisory powers. And since it is the man
who assumes financial responsibility for the family, it is argued,
it is natural that he should have total power over the woman.
These same jurists, of course, totally neglect changing social
conditions where a woman may contribute her salary to the upkeep
of her family—power over women remains a divine command and
"natural" or "in the nature of things." Muslim
thinkers continue to confine Muslim women to the house—to leave
the house is against the will of God and against the principles of
Islam. Confined to their houses, women are then reproached for not
having any experience of the outside world!
According to theologians (8), the husband has the right to
administer corporal punishment to his wife if she
1. Refuses to make herself beautiful for him;
2. Refuses to meet his sexual demands;
3. Leaves the house without permission or without any legitimate
reason recognized by law; or
4. Neglects her religious duties.
A hadith attributes the following saying to the Prophet:
"Hang up your whip where your wife can see it." There
are a number of other hadiths that contradict this one. In those,
Muhammad explicitly forbids men to beat their wives—in which
case the Prophet himself is contradicting what the Koran,
enshrining divine law, permits.
Case Histories: The Women of Pakistan
In Pakistan in 1977, General Zia al-Haq took over in a military
coup declaring that the process of Islamization was not going fast
enough. The mullas had finally got someone who was prepared to
listen to them.
Zia imposed martial law, total press censorship, and began
creating a theocratic state, believing that Pakistan ought to have
"the spirit of Islam." He banned women from athletic
contests and even enforced the Muslim fast during the month of
Ramadan at gunpoint. He openly admitted that there was a
contradiction between Islam and democracy. Zia introduced Islamic
laws that discriminated against women. The most notorious of these
laws were the Zina and Hudud Ordinances that called for the
Islamic punishments of the amputation of hands for stealing and
stoning to death for married people found guilty of illicit sex.
The term zina included adultery, fornication, and rape, and even
prostitution. Fornication was punished with a maximum of a hundred
lashes administered in public and ten years’ imprisonment.
In practice, these laws protect rapists, for a woman who has been
raped often finds herself charged with adultery or fornication. To
prove zina, four Muslim adult males of good repute must be present
to testify that sexual penetration has taken place. Furthermore,
in keeping with good Islamic practice, these laws value the
testimony of men over women. The combined effect of these laws is
that it is impossible for a woman to bring a successful charge of
rape against a man; instead, she herself, the victim, finds
herself charged with illicit sexual intercourse, while the rapist
goes free. If the rape results in a pregnancy, this is
automatically taken as an admission that adultery or fornication
has taken place with the woman’s consent rather than that rape
has occurred.
Here are some sample cases.(9)
In a town in the northern province of Punjab, a woman and her two
daughters were stripped naked, beaten, and gangraped in public,
but the police declined to pursue the case.
A thirteen-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped by a "family
friend." When her father brought a case against the rapist,
it was the girl who was put in prison and charged with zina,
illegal sexual intercourse. The father managed to secure the
child’s release by bribing the police. The traumatized child was
then severely beaten for disgracing the family honor.
A fifty-year-old widow, Ahmedi Begum (10), decided to let some
rooms in her house in the city of Lahore to two young veiled
women. As she was about to show them the rooms, the police burst
into the courtyard of the house and arrested the two girls and
Ahmedi Begum’s nephew, who had simply been standing there. Later
that afternoon, Ahmedi Begum went to the police station with her
son-in-law to inquire about her nephew and the two girls. The
police told Ahmedi they were arresting her too. They confiscated
her jewelry and pushed her into another room. While she was
waiting, the police officers shoved the two girls, naked and
bleeding, into the room and then proceeded to rape them again in
front of the widow. When Ahmedi covered her eyes, the police
forced her to watch by pulling her arms to her sides. After
suffering various sexual humiliations, Ahmedi herself was stripped
and raped by one officer after another. They dragged her outside
where she was again beaten. One of the officers forced a
policeman’s truncheon, covered with chili paste, into her
rectum, rupturing it. Ahmedi screamed in horrible agony and
fainted, only to wake up in prison, charged with zina. Her case
was taken up by a human rights lawyer. She was released on bail
after three months in prison, but was not acquitted until three
years later. In the meantime, her son-in-law divorced her daughter
because of his shame.
Was this an isolated case? Unfortunately no. The Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan said in its annual report that one woman is
raped every three hours in Pakistan and one in two rape victims is
a juvenile. According to Women’s Action Forum, a woman’s
rights organization, 72% of all women in police custody in
Pakistan are physically and sexually abused. Furthermore, 75% of
all women in jail are there under charges of zina. Many of these
women remain in jail awaiting trial for years.
In other words, the charge of zina is casually applied by any man
who wants to get rid of his wife, who is immediately arrested, and
kept waiting in prison, sometimes for years. Before the
introduction of these laws the total number of women in prison was
70; the present number is more than 3,000. Most of these women
have been charged under the Zina or Hudud Ordinances.(11)
The Western press naively believed that the election of Benazir
Bhutto as Pakistan’s prime minister in November 1988 would
revolutionize women’s role not just in Pakistan, but in the
entire Islamic world. Under Islamic law of course, women cannot be
head of an Islamic state, and Pakistan had become an Islamic
republic under the new constitution of 1956. Thus, Benazir Bhutto
had defied the mullas and won. But her government lasted a bare 20
months, during which period Nawaz Sharif, who was the prime
minister briefly in the early 1990s, is said to have encouraged
the mullas in their opposition to having a woman as the head of an
Islamic state. Benazir Bhutto’s government was dismissed on
charges of corruption, and her husband imprisoned in 1990.
The lot of the Muslim woman was harsh before Benazir’s election,
and nothing has changed. She has pandered to the religious lobby,
the mullas, the very people who insist that a woman cannot hold
power in an Islamic state, and has repeatedly postponed any
positive action on the position of women.
Pakistan shows the same grim picture. Pakistan is one of only four
countries in the world where female life expectancy (51 years) is
lower than the male (52 years); the average female life expectancy
for all poor countries is 61 years. A large number of Pakistani
women die in pregnancy or childbirth, six for every 1,000 live
births. Despite the fact that contraception has never been banned
by orthodox Islam, under Zia the Islamic Ideology Council of
Pakistan declared family planning to be un-Islamic. Various mullas
condemned family planning as a Western conspiracy to emasculate
Islam. As a result, the average fertility rate per woman in
Pakistan is 6.9. Pakistan is also among the world’s bottom ten
countries for female attendance at primary schools. Some people
put female literacy in the rural areas as low as 2% (Economist,
March 5, 1994). As the Economist put it, "Some of the blame
for all this lies with the attempt of the late President Zia ul
Haq to create an Islamic republic. . . . Zia turned the clock
back. A 1984 law of his, for instance, gives a woman’s legal
evidence half the weight of a man’s" (Economist, January
13, 1990).
Indeed a large part of the blame lies with the attitudes
inculcated by Islam, which has always seen woman as inferior to
man. The birth of a baby girl is the occasion for mourning.
Hundreds of baby girls are abandoned every year in the gutters and
dust bins and on the pavements. An organization working in Karachi
to save these children has calculated that more than five hundred
children are abandoned a year in Karachi alone, and that 99% of
them are girls.(12)
Little did Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, realize how literally
true his words were when he said in a 1944 speech (13): "No
nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side
by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime
against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls
of the houses as prisoners."
But we do not need to leave with a completely pessimistic picture.
Pakistani women have shown themselves to be very courageous, and
more and more are fighting for their rights with the help of
equally brave organizations such as Women’s Action Forum (WAF)
and War Against Rape. WAF was formed in 1981 as women came onto
the streets to protest against the Hudud Ordinances, and to
demonstrate their solidarity with a couple who had recently been
sentenced to death by stoning for fornication. In 1983, women
organized the first demonstrations against martial law. FI
Excerpted from Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq (Prometheus
Books, 1995).
Notes:
Ghassan Ascha, Du Statut Inferieur de la Femme in Islam (Paris:
1989) p. 11.
Ibid., pp. 23f.
Ibid., pp. 29f.
Ibid., p. 41.
Ascha, op. cit., pp. 63f.
G. H. Bousquet, L'Ethique sexuelle de L'Islam (Paris: 1966) vol.
1, p. 120.
Ascha, op. cit. p. 89.
Ibid., pp. 108.
Kurt Schork, "Pakistan's Women in Despair," Guardian
Weekly, September 23, 1990.
Jan Goodwin, Price of Honor (Boston: 1994) p. 49-50.
Schork, op. cit.
Goodwin, op. cit., p. 64.
R. Ahmed, ed., Sayings of Quaid-I-Azam (Jinnah) (Karachi: 1986) p.
98.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return to Women's Rights
Return to ISIS Homepage
If you enjoyed this article, please visit: http://www.hinduunity.org
|
|
