Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World's Fastest-Growing Faith
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In Nigeria's Zamfara state, one woman quickly encountered the dark side of the Sharia. She was "found guilty of fornication [and] was given ioo lashes-despite her protests that she had been raped."43 As a woman she was ineligible under the Sharia to testify in court, even about her own case.
Does Islam
Respect Women?
"AFTER ME," SAID THE PROPHET OF ISLAM, "I have not left any Fitnah (trial and affliction) more harmful to men than women."' Moreover, "evil omen is in three things: The horse, the woman and the house."2
Both Muslims and non-Muslims claim that Muhammad has been misunderstood and was not so much of a misogynist as these statements make him sound. "The concept of some Christians about the rights of women in Islam," Muslim scholars Amatul Rathman Omar and Abdul Mannan Omar observe, "is based upon colossal ignorance of the teachings of the Qur'an and Islam."3 There is no doubt that Muhammad loved women, and at its inception Islam made certain innovations in women's rights. But if some Western analysts are correct, Islam is curiously susceptible to being hijacked: lately by terrorists, and in centuries past by chauvinists.
According to a popular writer on Islam, Karen Armstrong, the women of Muhammad's day "did not seem to have experienced Islam as an oppressive religion, though later, as happened in Christianity, men would hijack the faith and bring it in line with the prevailing patriarchy."4 After discovering this moral equivalence, Armstrong asserts that "the emancipation of women was a project dear to the Prophet's heart" and enumerates Islam's undeniable achievements for women: "The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status." But under Christian influence, the Prophet's broadmindedness did not carry over to the generations that followed him:
The Quran prescribes some degree of segregation and veiling for the Prophet's wives, but there is nothing in the Quran that requires the veiling of all women or their seclusion in a separate part of the house. These customs were adopted some three or four generations after the Prophet's death. Muslims at that time were copying the Greek Christians of Byzantium, who had long veiled and segregated their women in this manner; they also appropriated some of their Christian misogyny.'
Maybe it really is true that Islamic misogyny is simply a foreign, Christian influence. On the other hand, perhaps-as in other areaswhat was innovative and humane at the beginning of Islam is now antiquated and confining, because Muslims lack a mechanism for bringing what they consider to be the words of Almighty God into line with modern circumstances. Certainly some Muslims have taken to misogyny with gusto, as evidenced by the dreadful tale of the fifteen girls who died in a fire at their school in Saudi Arabia in March 2002. With no men in the school, the girls had taken off their Islamic garb for lessons. The Saudi religious police, the muttawa, would not allow them to leave the building because they were not veiled. Death for the girls was preferable to the risk of subjecting the men in the vicinity to impure thoughts.'
But this is an extreme case. To discover the facts of the matter, we may begin by looking at what the Qur'an says.
Muslims confronted by Westerners on the issue of women's rights often point to several verses that seem to establish the equality of men and women before Allah. One of them: "Men, have fear of your Lord, who created you from a single soul. From that soul He created its mate, and through them He bestrewed the earth with countless men and women" (Sura 4:1). Another: "I will deny no man or woman among you the reward of their labours. You are the offspring of one another" (Sura 3:195).
Nevertheless, there is still a hierarchy: "Women shall with justice have rights similar to those exercised against them, although men have a status above women" (Sura 2:228). This superiority is divinely ordained: "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them" (Sura 4:34). Thus, husbands are advised: "Women are your fields; go, then, into your fields whence you please" (Sura 2:223).
Aside from this directive, one could argue that so far we have found nothing stronger than a biblical verse that makes priests and ministers cringe all over the West, St. Paul's "Wives, be submissive to your husbands, as to the Lord" (Ephesians 5:22). Certainly the idea that men are superior to women has been promoted at various times on the strength of this verse, although such a reading is counterbalanced by the concurrent responsibility of the man to love his wife with sacrificial love, "as Christ loved his Church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:26).
But even if the Apostle did mean that men are superior to women in some respect, it is not in the same measure as we find in the Qur'an, for instance in its instructions about legal testimony: "Call in two male witnesses from among you, but if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses; so that if either of them commit an error, the other will remember" (Sura 2:282). That is, one female witness is worth half as much as a man.
The Qur'an teaches that "Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them" (Sura 4:34).
There is, quite understandably, some disagreement among Muslims about the proper meaning of this verse. Some are uncomfortable with the idea that Allah is telling husbands to beat their wives. In his popular translation of the Qur'an, cAbdullah Yusuf `Ali adds a crucial gloss, rendering the command as "spank them (lightly)."7 Another group of translators, who liberally mix their parenthetical commentaries into the original text of the Qur'an, go even farther, removing any sense of physical punishment from this portion of Sura 4:34: "As for those women (on whose part) you apprehend disobedience and bad behavior, you may admonish them (first lovingly) and (then) refuse to share their beds with them and (as a last resort) punish them (mildly)."' On the opposite end of the spectrum is Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall's rendering: "As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them."9
Alas, almost all translators of the Qur'an side with Pickthall in rendering the Arabic with at least some notion of physical punishment, and not just the vague "punish them."
What the Hadiths Say
The Sunnah may be a source of the translators' ambivalence. Some hadiths, although they do not appear in Bukhari's collection or in other sources that are generally considered the most sound, recount that the Prophet actually forbade wife beating. In the Sunan abu-Dawud, another of the six Sahih Sittah or reliable collections, one hadith reads: "Narrated Mu'awiyah ibn Haydah: I said: Apostle of Allah, how should we approach our wives and how should we leave them? He replied: Approach your tilth [field] when or how you will, give her (your wife) food when you take food, clothe when you clothe yourself, do not revile her face, and do not beat her."10 However, unlike the hadiths that have won general acceptance among Muslims, this one is not repeated in other collections; its attestation is considered weak.
Moreover, also found in Sunan abu-Dawud is evidence that the Prophet may have had a change of heart on this matter:
Iyas ibn Abdullah ibn Abu Dhubab reported the Apostle of Allah as saying: Do not beat Allah's handmaidens, but when Umar came to the Apostle of Allah and said: Women have become emboldened towards their husbands, he (the Prophet) gave permission to beat them. Then many women came round the family of the Apostle of Allah complaining against their husbands. So the Apostle of Allah said: Many women have gone round Muhammad's family complaining against their husbands. They are not the best among you."
Complaining husbands get permission to beat their wives. Complaining wives just get criticized for complaining.
Likewise, the same collection of hadiths has this: "Narrated Umar ibn al-Khattab: The Prophet said: A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife."12 Will he not be asked, that is, on Judgment Day? Or in Islamic society? Or both? The hadith doesn't say.
Ultimately, the very existence of Sura 4:34 puts these anti-wifebeating hadiths in doubt. It
's unlikely in the extreme that Muhammad himself would have contradicted what he himself had presented to Muslims as the word of Allah, without pronouncing the verse abrogated (as he did with some others).13
Nor is wife beating simply of historical interest in Islam, any more than is any other part of the Qur'an. Reliance of the Traveller contains the same instructions as Sura 4:34 about how to deal with a disobedient wife: "If she commits rebelliousness, he keeps from sleeping ... with her without words, and may hit her, but not in a way that injures her, meaning he may not ... break bones, wound her, or cause blood to flow."14
Such directives are not a thing of the past. In 2000 the retired Turkish Muslim cleric Kemal Guran sparked a controversy in that secularized Muslim nation with a passage in his booklet The Muslim's Handbook. According to the BBC, "the booklet, published by the Pious Foundation, which is part of the government's Religious Affairs Directorate, says men can beat their wives as long as they do not strike the face and only beat them moderately." Guran also "suggests that men are naturally superior to women." The plain words of the Qur'an support both points, but apparently some defenders of the Prophet missed Sura 4:34. The BBC article continues: "Sema Piskinsut, who chairs the parliamentary human rights commission, said the booklet was full of inaccuracies, and it misinterprets the words of prophet Mohammed and Islam.""
Maybe Piskinsut is referring not to the Qur'an, but to present-day Islam. Perhaps the charge that Guran "misinterprets the words of prophet Mohammed and Islam" really means that the aged imam is trying to revive a practice that civilized Muslims long ago relegated to the ashheap of history.
Maybe, but in allowing for wife beating, Guran is by no means alone among Muslims. In the same year that he published The Muslim's Handbook, another book giving the same advice caused a similar hullabaloo in Spain's revivified Muslim community. The Spanish imam Mohamed Kamal Mostafa's book Women in Islam "recommends verbal correction followed by a period of sexual abstinence as the best punishment for a wife, but does not rule out a beating as long as it is kept within strict guidelines." It further specifies that the husband "should never hit his wife in a state of extreme or blind anger."
He should never hit sensitive parts of the body such as the face, head, breasts or stomach. He should only hit the hands or feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body. The husband's aim ... should be to cause psychological suffering and not to humiliate or physically abuse his 16
For writing this, Mohamed Kamal Mostafa is facing a lawsuit from an association of Spanish women's groups. But what has he done? He has simply restated Sura 4:34-"send them to beds apart and beat them." Thus, the women's groups do not really have a quarrel with the imam, but with the Qur'an. Perhaps the Spanish women should sue the Prophet!
Even a relatively moderate Muslim scholar and apologist, Dr. Jamal Badawi, acknowledges that husbands have the right to beat their wives. Quoting Sura 4:34, Dr. Badawi is clearly embarrassed by this prerogative and tries to explain it away: "Such a measure is more accurately described as a gentle tap on the body, but NEVER ON THE FACE, making it more of a symbolic measure then a punitive one" (emphasis in the original).' Likewise, the editors of Sahih Bukhari gloss Sura 4:34 in a minimalist fashion, recalling the wording of cAbdullah Yusuf `Ali: "Beat them (lightly[,] your wives, if it is useful) [i.e., without causing them severe pain.]" (brackets in the original).18
The concern of these Muslim authorities to limit the force of the husband's beatings is commendable. It's another case of their sentiments being better than their religious convictions: the true God has placed greater compassion in their hearts than Muhammad placed in the Qur'an. But when kind-hearted Muslims like Badawi try to pass off the sanction for wife beating as a "gentle tap," they miss the point. These beatings are not made acceptable because they don't break bones or leave scars. Even if they inflict no physical pain at all, they're indicative of a relationship between a superior and a subordinate, not a holy union of equals.
Even more important, a gentle tap is a subjective thing. In the privacy of his home (and in the heat of the moment), one man's tap is another man's brutal beating. Also, once the book of Allah sanctions wife beating, it has created an understanding of marriage that, for all its superficial resemblance to the Western model, is in fact worlds away from the union in which the couple's "mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man."'9
Domestic Servitude
How far away the House of Islam is from this atmosphere of mutual love is clear from many Muslim sources. A hadith has the Prophet saying, "If a man invites his wife to sleep with him and she refuses to come to him, then the angels send their curses on her till morning."20 The Prophet does not say anything about why the woman might have refused. Reliance of the Traveller echoes Muhammad. This orthodox Shafi'i source lays down that: "The husband is only obliged to support his wife when she gives herself to him or offers to, meaning she allows him full enjoyment of her person and does not refuse him sex at any time of the night or day."21
Another aspect of the traditional role of Muslim women is revealed in Amir Taheri's account of the Ayatollah Khomeini's first meeting with his wife-to-be. Taheri vividly describes the scene: "She could see her suitor, but all Ruhollah could see was a tiny creature covered in black. She did not speak, as a girl whose voice was heard by strangers would be doomed."" Alas, the Ayatollah's courtship is not the stuff of great romance; it sounds more like the hiring of a domestic servant. (To his credit, however, Khomeini married only this one time, and by all accounts showed his wife tender and unflagging love.)
Women may be grateful just to be domestic servants, however, for it could be much worse. Numerous hadiths even have Muhammad informing a group of women that their sex will populate hell: "Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) of cId-al- Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, `O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)."' When the women asked why, he explained, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." To support his assessment of female deficiency, he alluded to the Qur'an: "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man? [cf. Sura 2:282, above] ... This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses? ... This is the deficiency in her religion."23
The idea that hell will be filled with more women than men appears frequently in the hadiths. To take just one additional example: "The Prophet said, `I stood at the gate of Paradise and saw that the majority of the people who entered it were the poor, while the wealthy were stopped at the gate (for the accounts). But the companions of the Fire were ordered to be taken to the Fire. Then I stood at the gate of the Fire and saw that the majority of those who entered it were women."'Z4
In light of these traditions, it's clear why Muslim men have so often fit the stereotype of misogynists who treat women with suspicion, disdain and derision. When they deal with women, they are dealing with a group believed to suffer from severe moral and intellectual shortcomings, not to mention all sorts of physical impurities in a religion obsessed with ritual cleanliness. Women are, moreover, in extra jeopardy of winding up in hell.
But to get there, they had better have permission: Muslim women whose husbands observe Islamic law to the letter must have their husbands' authorization even to venture outside their homes. The Prophet Muhammad said that if a wife leaves the house without her husband's consent, "the angels curse her until she returns or repents."25
Polygamy
The Muslim man is free to consort with virtually as many women as he chooses, for Islam also sanctions polygamy. "If you fear that you cannot treat orphans (orphan girls) with fairness, then you may marry other women who seem good to you: two, three, or four of them" (Sura 4:3
). This verse has traditionally been understood as permitting a man to have four wives, although divorce and concubinage in Islam allow him a practically unlimited number of women.
Muslims hasten to show critical Westerners the rest of the passage: "But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them, marry one only." In fairness, I should point out that the verse continues: "or any slave-girls you may own" (Sura 4:3). Another verse warns men, "Try as you may, you cannot treat all your wives impartially" (Sura 4:129). Muslims who advocate monogamy put these passages together: the Qur'an acknowledges that a man will not be able to treat all his wives impartially, and it tells him that if he cannot do so, he must marry only one wife. Therefore, they say, the Qur'an actually forbids polygamy.
Others who don't go so far point out that the Qur'an restricts a man to four wives (by the assessment of the great majority of scholars) and thus puts a humane restraint upon the practice. Before Muhammad received the Qur'an, they say, men in Arabia sometimes had hundreds of wives. Islam introduced a healthy moderation and thereby raised the status of women.
Muslims claim that polygamy is not condemned in the Bible, so Westerners therefore cannot charge that the custom is inherently immoral. They point to population imbalances and other social factors to argue that in many cases polygamy is a more compassionate alternative than monogamy. Men and women are different, they say: a woman naturally desires only one man, but a man desires many women; so Islam is more realistic than Christianity because it takes this into account. Badawi concludes,