Women’s Liberation Through Islam

This article covers Women’s Liberation and Islam.

Today people think that women are liberated in the West and that the women’s liberation movement began in the 20th century. Actually, the women’s liberation movement was not begun by women but was revealed by God to a man in the seventh century by the name of Muhammad (peace be upon him), who is known as the last Prophet of Islam. The Qur’an and the Traditions of the Prophet (Hadith or Sunnah) are the sources from which every Muslim woman derives her rights and duties.

I. HUMAN RIGHTS

Islam, fourteen centuries ago, made women equally accountable to God in glorifying and worshipping Him – setting no limits on her moral progress. Also, Islam established a woman’s equality in her humanity with men.

In the Qur’an, in the first verse of the chapter entitled “Women,” God says,

“O mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord Who created you from a single soul and from it its mate and from them both have spread abroad a multitude of men and women. Be careful of your duty toward Allah in Whom you claim (your rights) of one another, and towards the wombs (that bore you). Lo! Allah has been a Watcher over you.” (4:1)

Since men and women both came from the same essence, they are equal in their humanity. Women cannot be by nature evil (as some religious believe) or then men would be evil also. Similarly, neither gender can be superior because it would be a contradiction of equality.

Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan (CCAA) in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan (CCAA) in Kabul, Afghanistan.

II. CIVIL RIGHTS

In Islam, a woman has the basic freedom of choice and expression based on recognition of her individual personality. First, she is free to choose her religion. The Qur’an states:

“There is no compulsion in religion. Right has been made distinct from error.” (2:256)

Women are encouraged in Islam to contribute their opinions and ideas. There are many traditions of the Prophet (pbuh) which indicate women would pose questions directly to him and offer their opinions concerning religion, economics and social matters.

A Muslim woman chooses her husband and keeps her name after marriage. A Muslim woman’s testimony is valid in legal disputes. In fact, in areas in which women are more familiar, their evidence is conclusive.

III. SOCIAL RIGHTS

The Prophet (pbuh) said:

“Seeking knowledge is a mandate for every Muslim (male and female).”

This includes knowledge of the Qur’an and the Hadith as well as other knowledge. Men and women both have the capacity for learning and understanding. Since it is also their obligation to promote good behavior and condemn bad behavior in all spheres of life, Muslim women must acquire the appropriate education to perform this duty in accordance with their own natural talents and interests.

While maintenance of a home, providing support to her husband, and bearing, raising and teaching of children are among the first and very highly regarded roles for a woman, if she has the skills to work outside the home for the good of the community, she may do so as long as her family obligations are met.

Islam recognizes and fosters the natural differences between men and women despite their equality. Some types of work are more suitable for men and other types for women. This in no way diminishes either’s effort nor its benefit. God will reward both sexes equally for the value of their work, though it may not necessarily be the same activity.

Concerning motherhood, the Prophet (pbuh) said: “Heaven lies under the feet of mothers.” This implies that the success of a society can be traced to the mothers that raised it. The first and greatest influence on a person comes from the sense of security, affection, and training received from the mother. Therefore, a woman having children must be educated and conscientious in order to be a skillful parent.

Protesters carry candles as they shout slogans during a demonstration to mark the first anniversary of the Delhi gang rape in New Delhi, India. (Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

Protesters carry candles as they shout slogans during a demonstration to mark the first anniversary of the Delhi gang rape in New Delhi, India. (Adnan Abidi, Reuters)

IV. POLITICAL RIGHTS

A right given to Muslim women by God 1400 years ago is the right to vote. On any public matter, a woman may voice her opinion and participate in politics. One example, narrated in the Qur’an (60:12), is that Muhammad (pbuh) is told that when the believing women come to him and swear their allegiance to Islam, he must accept their oath. This established the right of women to select their leader and publicly declare so. Finally, Islam does not forbid a woman from holding important positions in government. Abdur-Rahman Ibn Auf consulted many women before he recommended Uthman Ibn Affan to be the Caliph.

V. ECONOMIC RIGHTS

The Qur’an states:

“By the creation of the male and female; Verily, (the ends) ye strive for are diverse.” (92:3-4)

In these verses, God declares that He created men and women to be different, with unique roles, functions and skills. As in society, where there is a division of labor, so too in a family; each member has different responsibilities. Generally, Islam upholds that women are entrusted with the nurturing role, and men, with the guardian role. Therefore, women are given the right of financial support.

The Qur’an states:

“Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend of their wealth (for the support of women).” (4:34)

This guardianship and greater financial responsibility is given to men, requires that they provide women with not only monetary support but also physical protection and kind and respectful treatment.

The Muslim woman has the privilege to earn money, the right to own property, to enter into legal contracts and to manage all of her assets in any way she pleases. She can run her own business and no one has any claim on her earnings including her husband. The Qur’an states:

“And in no wise covet those things in which Allah hath bestowed His gifts more freely on some of you than on others; to men is allotted what they earn, and to women, what they earn; but ask Allah of His bounty, for Allah hath full knowledge of all things.” (4:32)

A woman inherits from her relatives. The Qur’an states:

“For men there is a share in what parents and relatives leave, and for women there is a share of what parents and relatives leave, whether it be little or much – an ordained share.” (4:7)

VI. RIGHTS OF A WIFE

The Qur’an states:

“And among His signs is that He created for you mates from among yourselves that you may live in tranquillity with them, and He has put love and mercy between you; Verily, in that are signs for people who reflect.” (30:21)

Marriage is therefore not just a physical or emotional necessity, but in fact, a sign from God! It is a relationship of mutual rights and obligations based on divine guidance. God created men and women with complimentary natures, and in the Qur’an, He laid out a system of laws to support harmonious interaction between the sexes.

“…They are your garments and you are their garments.” (2:187)

Clothing provides physical protection and covers the beauty and faults of the body. Likewise, a spouse is viewed this way. Each protects the other and hides the faults and compliments the characteristics of the spouse.

To foster the love and security that comes with marriage, Muslim wives have various rights. The first of the wife’s rights is to receive mahr, a gift from the husband which is part of the marriage contract and required for the legality of the marriage.

The second right of a wife is maintenance. Despite any wealth she may have, her husband is obligated to provide her with food, shelter and clothing. He is not forced, however, to spend beyond his capability and his wife is not entitled to make unreasonable demands. The Qur’an states:

“Let the man of means spend according to his means, and the man whose resources are restricted, let him spend according to what Allah has given him. Allah puts no burden on any person beyond what He has given him.” (65:7)

God tells us men are guardians over women and are afforded the leadership in the family. His responsibility for obeying God extends to guiding his family to obey God at all times.

A wife’s rights also extend beyond material needs. She has the right to kind treatment. The Prophet (pbuh) said:

“The most perfect believers are the best in conduct. And the best of you are those who are best to their wives.” God tells us He created mates and put love, mercy, and tranquillity between them.

Both men and women have a need for companionship and sexual needs, and marriage is designed to fulfill those needs. For one spouse to deny this satisfaction to the other, temptation exists to seek it elsewhere.

Black Sea Sunset Women Abendstimmung Backlighting

Women at the Black Sea sunset

VII. DUTIES OF A WIFE

With rights come responsibilities. Therefore, wives have certain obligations to their husbands. The Qur’an states:

“The good women in the absence of their husbands guard their rights as Allah has enjoined upon them to be guarded.” (4:34)

A wife is to keep her husband’s secrets and protect their marital privacy. Issues of intimacy or faults of his that would dishonor him, are not to be shared by the wife, just as he is expected to guard her honor.

A wife must also guard her husband’s property. She must safeguard his home and possessions, to the best of her ability, from theft or damage. She should manage the household affairs wisely so as to prevent loss or waste. She should not allow anyone to enter the house whom her husband dislikes nor incur any expenses of which her husband disapproves.

A Muslim woman must cooperate and coordinate with her husband. There cannot, however, be cooperation with a man who is disobedient to God. She should not fulfill his requests if he wants her to do something unlawful. A husband also should not take advantage of his wife, but be considerate of her needs and happiness.

VIII. CONCLUSION

The Qur’an states:

“And it becomes not a believing man or a believing women, when Allah and His Messenger (Muhammad) have decided on an affair (for them), that they should (after that) claim any say in their affair; and whoso is rebellious to Allah and His Messenger, he verily goes astray in error manifest.” (33:36)

The Muslim woman was given a role, duties and rights 1400 years ago that most women do not enjoy today, even in the West. These are from God and are designed to keep balance in society; what may seem unjust or missing in one place is compensated for or explained in another place. Islam is a complete way of life.

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).

By Ali Unal

Leave a Reply