Women are Respected and Equal in Islam
When Americans and other Westerners think of Islam and the Middle East, perhaps one of the first images that comes to mind is that of Muslim women, swaddled in thick robes, their faces covered. Islam is generally associated with disrespect for the rights, and even the personhood, of women. While women in the Western world, and indeed in many non-Western areas such as India, Japan, Korea, and others, have seen their lot in life improved and their rights as human beings recognised, this sort of liberalisation is not usually associated with the Muslim world. Is this a fair association? Is there any basis for saying that Islam degrades women, that this disrespect is not just an aberration, but is ingrained within the Muslim religion? The answer to these questions, as ought to be seen by any clear-minded observer, is YES.
Muslim Women in the West - The Whitewash
Muslim women in the United States and other Western nations often will allow themselves to be used to whitewash Islam's image as it is presented to the public at-large. Typically, these women, living in the United States and other Western nations, operate under the banner of "reaffirming" the rights which women have "traditionally" enjoyed in Islam. Much is made of the affirmation the right for women to own property and receive inheritance, primarily. Indeed, in the light of the way in which women were treated in pre-Islamic Arabia, the granting of the right to own property and to inherit from a dead relative is a step forward, considering women were denied even these in the pre-Islamic tribal system.
However, it should be noted that the Muslim women who seek to promote Islam as a tolerant and progressive force for women’s rights often draw less than honest conclusions from the simple Quranic affirmation of property rights. Usually they attempt to draw their readers into jumping from this technically correct statement about women's rights in Islam to a false association of Islam with Western-style affirmations of the personhood and legal rights of women. On a number of occasions, I have seen or heard Muslim women who will say that they are Muslim, and that they have the same rights and respect as a man, that Islam respects them and allows them the same freedom as men have. Of course, what needs to be tacitly understood is that these women are saying this while they are in the United States, or some other Western nation like Canada or Great Britain. Of course their rights are respected and they are not oppressed! They are living in a society where the sort of behaviour which many Muslim men display towards women in Muslim countries is not generally tolerated. In the West, both law and popular opinion greatly discourage activities such as wife-beating and marriage to underage girls. Society would frown upon a man who made his wife wear a veil and stay inside the house unless he was with her. It would be neither understood nor accepted that women should have an inferior legal and moral status than men, as is held by a plain reading of the Qur'an and the ahadith. In this nation, Islam has no choice but to respect the rights and dignity of women, lest it raise the ire of the general populace. However, one wonders what these Muslim women would say or think if they tried to take the same attitude in, say, Pakistan or Iran or Egypt. Clearly, the apologism which is made by Muslim women for Islam on the basis of some supposedly "enlightened" view of women's rights is nothing more than a cloak woven to try and cover the ugly truth about Islam's attitudes toward women.
This has not, of course, impeded the proliferation of websites, pamphlets, and other venues purporting to show that women are equal with men in Islam, and that Islam elevates the fairer sex. Designed to appeal to the Western mind which operates under the paradigm of equal rights for all, these forums seek to redefine terms commonly used by Western thinkers, and often resort to blatant misrepresentation so as to present a grossly one-sided and decontextualised view of Islam's attitudes toward women. "Islam supports women's rights", it is said, but the "rights" which are supported are the basic ideas presented in the body of Islamic scripture and jurisprudence, such as freedom to divorce, freedom for a virgin or widow to choose her spouse, and the freedom to own property. There are, of course, other loopholes in the body of Islamic law which allow for the practical deprivation of these granted privileges, often amounting simply to a contradicting passage in the Qur'an or in a hadith. Further, many Muslim apologists will themselves use out-of-context statements in the Qur'an or the ahadith to justify their claims (something which they often accuse their opponents of doing, even when the detractors are doing nothing more than repeating longstanding Islamic legal tradition). An example is the hadith which says "The search for knowledge is a duty of every Muslim, male and female." This is quoted to "prove" that women have every right to get any sort of education, just like a man. Of course, the context of this passage is that the knowledge is religious, that every Muslim has the obligation to learn Allah's law, not some secular or technical education. This example, as well as the whole attempt by Muslim apologists to sugar-coat Islam's treatment of women, is another example of the taqiyya, the lying for the advancement of Islam which was mentioned above. It is a grave misunderstanding to believe that "women's rights" in an Islamic context would mean anything similar to how Westerners perceive the term, which would generally include the rights to a secular education, to hold any job, to hold and use property apart from her husband's direction, the right to custody of children, etc. On the contrary, these would be explicitly denied to a woman in any Islamic system which institutes the traditional Islamic shari'a rooted in the Qur'an and the ahadith.
Often, Christians will be confronted by Muslim polemicists who preach that Islam upholds the rights of women, and who will simultaneous charge that the Bible degrades women. Muslims often point to the position of women in the Bible, which does not allow for women pastors or allow women to exercise spiritual authority over men. Of course, the polemicists conveniently ignore passages such as Galatians 3:28 which affirm the spiritual equality of women with men before God. Muslims generally fail to comprehend the Biblical teaching of spiritual equality combined with positional subordination (which causes them likewise to misapprehend the doctrine of the deity of Christ, as well). Men and women are spiritually equal, both can receive the same salvation and the same eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ. However, in the earthly realm, God has also established men as the temporal spiritual authority in the family and the churches. This does not, however, mean that men are spiritually superior to women, anymore than a general in the Army is more of a citizen of the United States than a colonel. Both are equal citizens, yet one is placed in a higher rank of authority. Indeed, the Bible teaches this concept in I Corinthians 11, where the relationship between men and women is paralleled with the relationship between God and Christ. God and Christ are the same in essence, yet Christ, as the second person of the Trinity, was positionally subordinate to the Father. In the same manner, men and women are of the same essence and spiritual value, but women are positionally subordinate to men (a subordination which will end in the eternal state when it is no longer needed). Of course, for the Muslim to engage in this attack is hypocritical, given the quite obvious inequality which is institutionalised in the Islamic religion. Yet, the attack is often made in an attempt to divert potential Western converts away from Islam's own misogyny and towards a manufactured quibble with the Bible.
Indeed, it is also common for Muslim apologists to play the gender card by presenting lists of women from the Bible who are depicted as unsavoury, licentious, and of generally bad charactre (women such as Jezebel, Herodias' daughter, etc.). The aim is to be able to point to these and say, "See? The Bible is anti-woman!" In addition to simply being a ridiculous argument, it is also easily refutable. One can simply provide a list of women (much longer, as it turns out) in the Bible who are presented in a positive light (Ruth, the widow of Zarephath, Abigail, Mary, etc.), and perhaps also a list of MEN who are depicted in a bad light (Nabal, Saul, Ahab, Judas, etc.). If the Bible is as chauvinistic a document as these apologists claim, then why would so many men be depicted in a poor light? Of course, the real point should be understood that the Bible merely depicts people as they are: sinners, some who are saved and live by faith, and some who remain lost and rebellious to their dying day.
A Woman's Legal Status in Islam
In light of Islam's own revered writings, the Qur'an and the ahadith, we see a far different picture painted from that which is presented to the West. In orthodox Islamic nations, in which the shari'a law has been established, the treatment of women generally ranges from heartbreaking to downright abominable. Even in nations where shari'a has not been formally established, the theological fundamentalism of the Islam which is almost universally held, as discussed previously, results in social and de facto political forces which militate against the exercise of anything even approximating Western-style rights by women. Often these are codified into the legal structure of the nation, even though no formal shari‘a has been established.
In Islam as found in the Qur'an, the woman is inferior to the man in matters of law and justice. For instance, it is stipulated that a woman is to receive only half the inheritance that her brothers receive when their parents pass away,
"Allah thus directs you as regards your children's inheritance: to the male, a portion equal to that of two females: if only daughters, two or more, their share is two-thirds of the inheritance; if only one, her share is a half." (Surah 4:11)
In this way, a woman is deprived of an equal share of inheritance solely because she is female, and if women are the only inheritors, they don't even receive the full inheritance! This sort of uneven distribution is elsewhere supported in the Qur'an,
"Allah directs thus about those who leave no descendants or ascendants as heirs. If it is a man that dies, leaving a sister but no child, she shall have half the inheritance: If such a deceased was a woman, who left no child, her brother takes her inheritance: If there are two sisters, they shall have two-thirds of the inheritance between them: if there are brothers and sisters, they share, the male having twice the share of the female." (Surah 4:176)
This apportionment system of giving women half the amount which a man receives is also supported by Mohammed in the ahadith1. Hence, though the Quranic right of a woman to her inheritance is affirmed, it still establishes a systematically unequal legal position for the woman.
Likewise, a woman is reckoned in Islamic jurisprudence to be worth half a man by means of testimony in a court of law. Specifically, a woman's testimony only counts for half that of a man's, thus two women are needed to counter the claims of a man.
"The Prophet said, 'Isn't the witness of a woman equal to half of that for a man?' The women said, 'Yes.' He said, 'This is because of the deficiency of a woman's mind.'"2
Not only is a woman's word not as good as that of a man's, but neither is her mind! Because of this acceptance of the notion that women are not as intelligent as men, women are accorded an inferior standing in Islamic justice. Logically, this would bear out to the disadvantage of women in pressing their rights and defending themselves or seeking redress for wrongs done to them. If a woman were raped and the deed was done secretly, she would have absolutely no redress against her assailant, unless he confessed out of guilt or fear, because his word would count for twice as much as hers and overrule her.
Women and men are also treated differently for breaking the same laws. An example of this comes from the Quranic commands against homosexuality. The punishment for women is,
"If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence of four reliable witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some other way." (Surah 4:15)
For men, on the other hand,
"If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-returning, Most Merciful." (Surah 4:16)
While women are confined in house arrest until death, with no evidence of forgiveness being available, men are set free with no punishment if they disavow their sin. The passage 4:15 provides a possible caveat in its statement “...or Allah ordain for them some other way.“ If Allah rescinds the punishment, they may go free. Of course, the will of Allah is generally understood to be interpreted and dispensed to the Muslim community via its mullahs and imams, so the women are still essentially at the mercy of the interpretive temperament of these men. This sort of one-sided, unfair treatment of women is acknowledged by scholars who are intimately familiar with Islam,
"The statement that 'men are the guardians of women' in verse 38 of Sura 4 postulates inequality of men and women in civil rights. The words are followed by two brief explanations of men's superiority over women.3 ...In Islamic law, male heirs get more than female heirs, and men's evidence is more reliable than women's; to be exact, a man's inheritance share is twice a woman's share, and his evidence carries twice the weight of hers in court...The right to divorce belongs to the husband but not to wives."4
In most Middle Eastern Muslim countries that make a pretence at some sort of representative government, women are still denied the right to vote. Rights to property and asset ownership by women, technically existing as we have seen, are in practice non-existent as women in many Muslim countries are not free to even leave the house without their husbands' permission, much less transact business and manage property of their own accord. Because of the debilitating strictures placed upon a woman’s freedom of movement and communication with others (especially men) outside of her kinship unit, she is usually not even able to exercise these Qur’an-given rights, and must consign her property and rights to her husband for him to exercise on her behalf. The few Muslim countries where women have been allowed to participate in the political process have almost invariably had problems with Islamic hard-liners who destabilise and overthrow governments. An example is Pakistan, which at one time had a female Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. However, radical Islamist agitation brought the fragile democratic government down, and it was replaced with a military dictatorship, currently headed by Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan is now openly one of the main hotbeds of radical Islamic jihadi activity, with its thousands of madrassas, or Islamic schools, churning out tens of thousands of hard-line students. The extension of rights to women is not necessarily the direct or sole cause of Islamist dissatisfaction, but is instead viewed to be a symptom of the greater evil of Western liberal democracy, which the Islamists strenuously oppose.
When Islamic parties or revolutionary groups which seek to establish orthodox Islam as the deen of a nation manage to come to power, the rights of women are completely curtailed. There is perhaps no better example of this than Afghanistan. Before the Soviet invasion of this nation, Afghanistan was a relatively open and tolerant society, one in which women had a good deal of participation, could receive the same education as men, and could even become doctors or other types of professionals. All this changed with the Soviet invasion, and the subsequent American support for Afghan opposition groups such as the Mujahadeen. These opposition groups, more often than not, were militantly orthodox in their approach to Islam. While the United States supported many of these groups because of their shared enemy, the Soviet Union, once this threat had ended, it was left primarily to these many militantly Islamic groups to pick up the pieces (now with the money and arms previously supplied by the United States). This they did over the next decade, with the process of Islamisation eventually culminating in the Taliban regime, complete with its religious police who would savagely beat women in the streets for grave offences such as laughing in public. Even with the timely demise of the Taliban regime at the hands of American forces, the rights of women in Afghanistan, briefly restored, are fast on their way to becoming non-existent again, as the various other militantly Islamic (but less anti-American) factions prepare the new constitution for that land, one which is being explicitly billed as having an Islamic shari’a foundation.
A Woman's Social Status in Islam
Part and parcel with the political inferiority of women in Islamic society is the subjugation of women in the social realm. Women are in many cases considered to be the property of men, and this dates back to the conditions found in pre-Islamic Arabia. As Dashti notes,
"In pre-Islamic Arabic society, the women did not have the status of independent persons, but were considered to be possessions of the men. All sorts of inhumane treatment of the women were permissible and customary."5
This bears out explicitly in the Qur'an,
"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 them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great." (Surah 4:34, Pickthal translation)
According to the Qur'an, men are to literally rule over women, both because of a supposed natural superiority and because men spend their resources supporting women. This passage really makes a woman into property which belongs to a man, and which exists for his use, since he has to pay upkeep. Likewise, the word "scourge" is translated from an Arabic root drb meaning “to hit, strike, or beat”. This word can also be used to describe a bullet striking its target, as in the phrase, “draboo b-r-rasaas w-gitloo”, which means, “they shot him with bullets and killed him.”
The Muslim practice of polygamy virtually turns women into a commodity to be bought and sold. Many Westerners have the impression that the "four-wives" rule follows basically the same rule and respect for marriage that the West understands, only quadrupled. This is not the case, however. In Islam, while the woman cannot divorce her husband without being considered an unbeliever and destined for hell, a man can divorce his wife on any pretext (or none at all),
"And if ye wish to exchange one wife for another and ye have given unto one of them a sum of money (however great), take nothing from it. Would ye take it by the way of calumny and open wrong?" (Surah 4:20, Pickthal translation)
What this is saying is that it's alright for a Muslim man to dismiss one of his wives and replace her with another as long as he takes nothing from the dowry which he originally gave to obtain her as his wife. Essentially, this turns his former wife into nothing more than a glorified prostitute, and quite obviously can lead to the abuse of the system. This is shown in the life of Hassan, a grandson of Mohammed. Hassan, over the course of his life, had over seventy wives, yet never exceeded the four-wife limit at any one time. He would marry a woman during the day, enjoy her company for one or a few nights, and then divorce her so that he could marry another, all within the bounds of Islamic law.6
Women were also considered by Mohammed to be deficient in religion. He is recorded as saying,
"I have not seen any one more deficient in intelligence and religion than you women."7
According to the reputed founder of Islam, over half the population is deficient in intelligence and unable to be as religious active or useful as the other! This is borne out in that the Islamic traditions taught that Mohammed also forbade women from giving themselves to extra prayer or fasting without the express permission of their husbands, as this might prevent them from being as sexually useful to their husbands as they could be.8 Mohammed also taught both that a majority of women would go to hell,9 and that the majority of people in hell were women, as he claimed to have seen in a vision.10 The early Muslim attitudes expressed through the biographical details attributed to Mohammed clearly show a very disrespectful, chauvinistic attitude toward women which has, to varying degrees, filtered down into modern Islam as seen and is widely supported in many Muslim nations.
In proper Islam, women are completely in the power of their husbands. Men are free to beat their wives (as per Surah 4:34), provided they don't break any of her bones!11 Far from being the vile activity it is viewed as in the West, wife-beating is a perfectly acceptable practice, according to the teachings of Islam's legal writings,
"On the Day of Judgement, a husband shall not be questioned for beating his wife."12
This bore true also in the earthly realm, with Mohammed commanding, "No man shall be questioned for beating his wife."13 In many Muslim nations, women are subjected to the laws of purdah, or seclusion, which refers not only to the practice of facial veiling and body coverings, but also to the seclusion of women from all public life, as much as is possible in a given situation. A woman must be veiled even in the presence of her male in-laws.14 A woman is not allowed, by Islamic law, to undertake a journey longer than three days unless accompanied by a male relative, and cannot even spend money without her husband's permission.15 A woman's body is the possession of her husband, even to the extent that her breast milk is his literal possession.16 It is even recorded that Mohammed stated that if it were proper for any person to be decreed to prostrate themselves in reverence to any other than Allah, that it would be a wife to her husband.17 In many Muslim countries, women cannot leave the house without written permission from their husbands, and cannot drive automobiles.
"Honour" Killing
Another disturbing aspect of traditional Muslim treatment of women is the phenomenon known as “honour killing.” This behaviour, which has absolutely nothing “honourable” about it, involves the murder of women by their male relatives for some perceived slight against the honour of the family unit. Primarily these slights are sexual in nature, ranging from something as serious as fornication to something as relatively innocuous as flirting with a man outside the family. A wife requesting a divorce is cited as another common motivation for honour killings, and they often occur simply because a girl refused to marry a partner chosen by pre-arrangement. There have even been instances where Muslim women have been killed because they had been raped, a crime which Islamic law often considers to be the fault of the woman, not the rapist. This despicable practice has spread to the West, brought along by the Muslim immigrants who have been settling primarily in Western Europe. Great Britain has seen a rise in this crime. For instance, on 12 October 2002, a 48 year old Kurdish man, an exile from Iraq, savagely murdered his 16 year old daughter after receiving an anonymous letter telling him that she had been sleeping with her boyfriend.18 She had brought shame upon the family, at least according to an anonymous note, and for this he repeatedly stabbed her back and chest, finally burying the blade of his knife so savagely into her throat that the metal tip snapped off after hitting bone. The BBC at the time also reported that the girl had left a note to her father detailing her intention of running away with her boyfriend, and the reason given was his previous propensity for punching and kicking her. Indeed, police reports noted that she had been beaten for months before her murder took place.
The same article also details other honour killings in Britain. In March 2002, a Muslim woman was kidnapped, strangled with parcel tape, and set on fire after filing for divorce from her husband. A Muslim man stabbed his daughter to death, over 20 strokes, because he caught her at home with a boyfriend in February 2002. In September 2002, a Muslim man went to the home of his estranged wife and hacked her and their two small children to death with a machete. Unfortunately, this sort of butchery is becoming more common in the West among the resident Muslim immigrant populations. Honour killings have also been reported in Italy, Sweden, Brazil, and Ecuador.
The impetus for this behaviour is not an aberration from the treatment of women in Muslim populations, but instead is firmly ground in the societal, and even legal, sanction of many Muslim nations. Honour killing is common across the Muslim world, more common than many would like to admit. Indeed, the United Nations Population Fund estimates that around 5,000 women are murdered each year through honour killings. The reason for this crime is the deep grounding in Arab culture of the communal sense of honour and shame. If one acts shamefully, then the shame is not just borne by the individual, but by the whole family group, often concomitant with social shunning by other members of the community. This then combines with the Islamic tendency to downgrade the personhood of women, and gives a heartbreaking cocktail of worldly religious fanaticism and the scapegoating of women. This bears out in the case, more typical than we would like to believe, of Rofayda Qaoud, a 17 year old Palestinian girl who was raped by her two brothers. She was taken into custody by the Palestinian police, and then returned to her family after she had given birth. Her mother demanded that she commit suicide. The girl refused, and her mother came into her room one night and wrapped a plastic bag around her head, slit her wrists with a razor, and then beat her on the head with a wooden stick, killing her.19 The mother specifically stated that upholding the family honour was the reason she murdered her daughter.
Honour killing is abetted by the fact that the need to maintain honour is a mitigating circumstance under the legal systems of many Muslim countries. The Palestinian mother who murdered her daughter could have received a maximum sentence of five years in prison, specifically because the honour factor was introduced and accepted as mitigating, even though the penalty for premeditated murder under Palestinian law is capital punishment. Many countries legally accept honour as a mitigating factor, including Jordan, Morocco, and Syria. In a speech on this subject, Azam Kamguian listed the articles in various Muslim countries which sanction honour killings by lowering or abolishing the punishment for murder if the murder was committed to maintain “honour”: Article 562 in Lebanon (abolished in February 1999), Article 340 in Jordan, Article 548 in Syria, Article 153 in Kuwait, Article 237 in Egypt, Article 309 in Iraq, Article 334 in the United Arab Emirate, Article 70 in Bahrain, Article 179 in Iran before 1979, Articles 418-424 in Morocco, and Article 252 in Oma.20 He also notes that Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and Qatar also apply a strict, traditional interpretation of shari’a in which honour killing is tacitly acknowledged. Indeed, a bill was recently introduced in the Jordanian parliament which would have increased penalties against those who commit honour killings. The bill was soundly defeated on the principle that it contradicted Islamic teaching and traditions, according to a Jordanian parliamentarian interviewed in the Associated Press story of 4 August, 2003. The placement of the burden of guilt for familial shame stemming from misbehaviour, even that of male members of the family, onto women is an injustice which stems from Islamic misogyny codified by centuries of tradition and orthodox interpretation of the Qur’an and the ahadith.
Women as Objects of Carnality
A study of the sayings of Mohammed as found in the Qur'an and the ahadith shows that the founder of Islam did not view women as persons deserving respect, but rather as objects to be used to fulfill the sensual lust of men. This attitude is perhaps most clearly illustrated when Mohammed said, "A woman is like a private part. When she goes out the devil casts a glance at her."21 In his view, women were little more than the portions of anatomy required to gratify his desires. The "holy" writings of Islam are full of passages demanding that women submit to and fulfill the carnal desires of their husbands at any time, and a premium is placed upon women who "serve" this capacity especially well. The ahadith state that if a man desires sexual intercourse with his woman, that she must respond immediately, even if she is engaged in baking bread at the communal oven.22 If a woman is riding a camel, and her husband demands intercourse, she must submit, and this is even said to be her duty before Allah, that fulfilling of her husband's desire.23 If a woman refuses to come to bed with her husband, Islam teaches that she is cursed by the very angels of Allah.24 A woman is also shamed and coerced into sexual submission to her husband's wishes by the threat of competition from the 72 houris (virgins) which Islam teaches a man receives for his enjoyment in Paradise,
"When a wife vexes her husband, then houris of paradise utter curses on her saying, 'may Allah destroy you because he is with you only for a short time; he will shortly leave you to come to us.'"25
Islam teaches a similarly low view of the blessed institution of marriage, reducing if from the God-ordained status of lifelong, total partnership to a mere vehicle by which a man's carnal lusts can be "legally" fulfilled. In the Qur'an, a woman is likened to a field which a man must work and cultivate so that it bears him much fruit. "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate). So go to your tilth as ye will..." (Surah 2:223) This attitude is reiterated in the ahadith, "The most equitable of the conditions of marriage is that you should fulfill that dowry with which you have made private parts lawful."26 Here we see that marriage is considered a way to make sexual intercourse legal, i.e. not fornication. Satisfaction of a man's desires, sexual and otherwise, is even made a means of entry for a woman in heaven! "Any female who dies while her husband was pleased with her will enter Paradise."27
To further humiliate, subjugate, and disgrace womanhood, the practice of female genital mutilation (sometimes called by the misnomer "female circumcision") is carried out in many Muslim nations, particularly those in Africa. This process removes from a woman the ability to receive any physical enjoyment from the conjugal act, and makes intercourse a painful duty. As a result, it makes it difficult or impossible for a woman to cleave to her husband through desire for him, as was given in her nature to Eve and her daughters. This makes her less likely to form the psychologically intimate bond to him that would normally make her more difficult for him to send away when he divorces her. Hence it seems in reality to be just another means of removing obstacles to the fulfillment of the lusts of lecherous men.
Far from respecting the rights and personhood of women, Islam as it is properly understood from the Qur'an and other sacred Islamic texts degrades the fairer sex. As taught from these texts, women are little more than joy units for men's pleasure, not accorded the rights or legal protections which men enjoy, and destined by sharia and purdah to lives of virtual imprisonment and subjugation.
Again, does all of this mean that every Muslim man beats his wife, "loves" her only for the pleasure she can bring him, and wants to force his wife to remain secluded from the world at large? No, of course not. Nor does it mean that Muslim women everywhere suffer from the horrid conditions which theocratic Islamic states impose upon them. Many Muslim women, particularly in the West but even in some of the more secular Muslim nations such as Turkey and Indonesia, do enjoy varying degrees of personal liberty and political freedom. The point is, however, that strict, orthodox Islam holds to the teachings illustrated above, and this makes the resurgence of militant, orthodox Islam in both the Middle East and Western nations a danger to the rights of and respect for women.
End Notes
(1) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 4, no. 10
(2) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 3, no. 826
(3) - Ali Dashti, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammed, pp. 113.
(4) - Ali Dashti, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammed, pp. 114.
(5) - Ali Dashti, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammed, pp. 113.
(6) - A. Shaikh, Islam: Sex and Violence, Chapter 2
(7) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 2, p. 541
(8) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 300
(9) - Sahih Muslim, vol. 1, p. 1431
(10) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, p. 28 (see also 1:301, 2:161, and 7:124 of the same collection)
(11) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 439
(12) - Mishkat, Vol. 2, p 105
(13) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, p. 215
(14) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 432
(15) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 265
(16) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, p. 27
(17) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 428
(18) - “For families that fear dishonour, there is only one remedy....murder”, The Observer (UK), filed by A. Asthana and U. Mistry, 5 Oct. 2003
(19) - “Mother kills raped daughter to restore ’honor’”, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, filed by S.S. Nelson, 17 Nov. 2003
(20) - A. Kamguian, “The Lethal Combination of Tribalism, Islam, and Cultural Relativism”, from a speech made at a conference on honour killing and violence against women, 17-19 Jan., 2003 in Stockholm, Sweden
(21) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 2, p. 692
(22) - Sahih Tirmzi, vol. 1, p. 428
(23) - Ibn-e-Majah, Vol. 1, p. 520
(24) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 7, p. 93
(25) - Ibn-e-Majah, Vol. 1, p 560
(26) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 2, p. 657
(27) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, p. 211
