WOMEN IN MUSLIM SOCIETY
There are furthermore, many traditions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) which warn menfolk against meting out an ill-treatment to women, beating or detaining them. The Prophet said, "None of you will flog his wife like a donkey and later towards the end of the day have intercourse with her". (Bukhari). He once warned: "A large number of women have come to the Muhammads complaining about their husbands. Those husbands are not the best amongst you". (Riad Us-Saliheen). The Prophet's traditions encourage the Muslim to care for the good upbringing and education of women, and for their well-being in general: "The best of you is one who is best towards his family and I am best towards the family". (At-Tirmithy. "None but a noble man treats women in an honourable manner. And none but an ignoble treats women disgracefully". (At-Tirmithy). Weak commitment to religion tends to cultivate unjust and hostile treatment of women. For unlike man, a woman is created and brought up gentle and delicate. Performance of her natural functions keeps her away from the toughening experience of everyday public life. Man, uncultured by religion, tends to oppress her as is common in many a human society. Men normally purposefully keep women weak, and the jealousy which they entertain in respect of women induces them to multiply the means for restraining and monopolising them. They like to dominate the property and life of the female with a view to assert their vanity and arrogance.
Male jealousy is but one aspect of masculine capricious tendencies which only godly men are immune from and which inculcated the myth that women, by nature, suffer from excessive incapacity. Men use that fantasy as an excuse to ban women from active participation in the broad spectrum of human life and to deprive them of experience and training - thereby devitalizing and debilitating them in fact. and finding reason for further ill-treatment and prejudice. These male tendencies and the appending customs and ways are manifest in many societies where male arbitrariness runs amok with no religious or human limitation.
Many latterly juristic rules and stratagems have been adopted to qualify the Sharia to suit cherished customs and traditions. For instance, with a view to do this, express provisions of the Sharia are sometimes compared and contrasted, not to give relative effect to all, but to claim the abrogation of provisions purporting to extend rights, immunities or liberties to women; or to restrict their general scope almost to a vanishing point. Another tricky approach is to read liberally and broaden the scope of rules granting authority to men, while reading literally and strictly those imposing limitations on women. This discriminatory attitude of interpretation is very widespread. Yet another aspect of this tendentious jurisprudence is to generalise the provisions of the Quran and the Sunna that were meant to apply exclusively to the Prophet or his wives due to their unique position.
In the domain of public life she is not allowed to make any original contribution to the promotion of the religious quality of life. Whenever she was allowed to work towards the material development of life that was likely to be in a context of exploitation or as mundane work with little spiritual satisfaction or significance.
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The greatest injustice visited upon women, is their segregation and isolation from the general society. Sometimes the slightest aspect of her public appearance would be considered a form of obscene exhibitionism. Even her voice was bracketed in the same category. Her mere presence at a place where men are also present was considered shameful promiscuity. She was confined to her home in a manner prescribed in Islam only as a penal sanction for an act of adultery. She was so isolated on the pretext that she might devote herself exclusively to the care of her children and the service of her husband. But how could she qualify for attending to domestic family affairs or to the rearing of children in a satisfactory manner without being herself versed through education or experience, in the moral and functional culture of the wider society?
There are furthermore, many traditions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) which warn menfolk against meting out an ill-treatment to women, beating or detaining them. The Prophet said, "None of you will flog his wife like a donkey and later towards the end of the day have intercourse with her". (Bukhari). He once warned: "A large number of women have come to the Muhammads complaining about their husbands. Those husbands are not the best amongst you". (Riad Us-Saliheen). The Prophet's traditions encourage the Muslim to care for the good upbringing and education of women, and for their well-being in general: "The best of you is one who is best towards his family and I am best towards the family". (At-Tirmithy. "None but a noble man treats women in an honourable manner. And none but an ignoble treats women disgracefully". (At-Tirmithy).
Weak commitment to religion tends to cultivate unjust and hostile treatment of women. For unlike man, a woman is created and brought up gentle and delicate. Performance of her natural functions keeps her away from the toughening experience of everyday public life. Man, uncultured by religion, tends to oppress her as is common in many a human society. Men normally purposefully keep women weak, and the jealousy which they entertain in respect of women induces them to multiply the means for restraining and monopolising them. They like to dominate the property and life of the female with a view to assert their vanity and arrogance.
The traditional Muslim Society, which is over-impressed by its historical decline, had developed a general preference for circumspection and cautiousness over the demands of positive pursuits. It has become unduly conservative for fear that freedom of thought would lead astray and divide the community; and that freedom of women would degenerate into licentious promiscuity - so much that the basic religious rights and duties of women have been forsaken and the fundamentals of equality and fairness in the structure of Muslim Society, as enshrined in the Sharia, have been completely overlooked.
The thought and practice of Muslims have come lately to misrepresent most of the doctrinal and normative teachings of Islam on female affairs. The female is hardly ever religiously addressed except through the mediation of the male and as an addendum to him. In the fallen society of Muslims, women have little freedom to marry the person she likes, or to separate from a husband she loathes. Nor is she, as wife, entitled to full consultation and gracious companionship by her husband. In many cases she hardly enjoys an equal opportunity to earn and own property, or the full capacity to manage her property or to dispose thereof. All sorts of subterfuges are employed to deny her inheritance. Her role in private life has been reduced to that of a housewife chosen not for her personal merit, for she was denied the education or the opportunity to acquire merit, but for the merit of her menfolk. |
