http://www.islamfortoday.com/pickthallsexes.htm
The
Relation of the Sexes
1925 lecture on the "pitiful condition of Muslim
womanhood" by English convert to Islam and Quran translator
Mohammad Marmaduke Pickthall.
Today
I have to speak to you about a delicate subject -- the Islamic
position of women -- a subject which is delicate, and to me
painful, only because at every turn while examining it I am
reminded that I am in a country [India] where, among the Muslims,
a woman is emphatically not in her Islamic position, and where men
are generally indifferent to the wrongs done to her. The state to
which the great majority of Muslim women in India are reduced
today is a libel on Islam, a crime for which the Muslim community
as a whole will have to suffer in increasing social degradation,
in the weak and the sickly, in increasing child mortality, so long
as that crime is perpetuated. An unconscious crime on the part of
the majority, I know, begun in ignorance, through pursuit of an
un-Islamic tradition of false pride. But ignorance of the law is
no excuse for anybody to escape its penalties -- least of all, in
the case of the operation of natural laws can the mere plea of
ignorance exempt a man from undergoing the natural consequences of
transgression. The laws of the Shari'ah [Islamic Law] are natural
laws, and the consequences of transgressing them are unavoidable,
not only for Muslims, but for everyone. The fool who does not know
that fire will burn him, is burnt by fire just like anybody else.
And the excuse of ignorance, in the case of Muslims and the
Shari'ah, is worse than the offence. Since they, of all mankind,
should have that special knowledge which it is their mission to
convey to all mankind.
Please do not, upon hearing me thus inveigh against
the present pitiful condition of Muslim womanhood in India, think
that I am judging it by any foreign standard for wishing to
recommend foreign ways. I am judging it only by the Shari'ah and I
wish to recommend only the way of the Shari'ah; and I judge the
Western status of woman, as I judge her Eastern status, solely by
the Shari'ah as I, following the most learned and enlightened
Muslims of all ages, understand it.
"Thus have We
set you as a middle nation that ye may bear witness against
mankind and that the Messenger may bear witness against you." [Qur'an
2:143]
Surely the Messenger of Allah (may God bless and
keep him!) bears witness against you today in this matter of the
status and the rights of woman. Only recall his words: "Education
is a sacred duty for every Muslim and every Muslimah." [Muslimah =
Muslim female]
I know that an influential group of men among you
have decided in their mind that knowledge [ilm] must be taken here
in the restricted "theological" sense as meaning only knowledge of
a "religious" nature. The Holy Prophet and the Holy Qur'an never
made a distinction between the religious and secular. For the true
Muslim, the whole of life is religious and the whole of knowledge
is religious. So according to the proper teaching of Islam, the
man with the widest knowledge and experience of life is the man
best qualified to expound religious truths to resolve the problems
which arise among Muslims in connection with the practice of
religion. I deny the right of men with limited knowledge and
outlook to exclusive interpretation. I deny their conclusions and
I also deny their premises. I say that their claim to exclusive
interpretation among them to their priestly intervention between
the Muslims and the Messenger [the Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h.] whom
Allah sent to them - a thing denounced in the Qur'an repeatedly as
against religion and destructive to all true religion in the past.
But I am willing to accept their restriction for the moment. Let
us agree for the sake of argument that [ilm] means only what such
people think it means, the knowledge which such men possess. Is
every Muslimah [Muslim woman] in India encouraged or even allowed
to seek such knowledge? Does every Muslim woman in India receive
that sort of education? Does every Muslimah in India know even the
Fateha or even the
Kalima? Can every Muslimah in India say her prayers? How many
Muslimahs in India know the passages of the Qur'an and the sayings
of the Prophet which ought to govern the progressive evolution of
woman's true position in the Muslim brotherhood? Let them all be
given that education, in God's name! I ask no more as a beginning.
All the rest will follow naturally.
Our Prophet (may God bless and keep him!) said,
"Women are the twin halves of men." "The rights of women are
sacred. See that women are maintained in the rights granted to
them." Do Muslim women in India even know what their rights are?
Equality with men before the law is theirs according to the
Shari'ah. Woman have the right to own their own property, have the
right to claim a divorce from their husbands under certain
circumstances. How many Muslim women in India know that? And who
is seeing that they are maintained in the rights granted to them
by the Sacred Law? In India today, women have no legal protector
or defender. Where is that woman Judge, who, according to our
great
Imam Abu Hanifa , ought to be in every city to deal
particularly with cases touching women's rights? Where is the male
Judge to whom they have free right and access to appeal? The Qadi
used to be the guardian and defender of their rights. His position
in India today is almost as pitifully below his true Islamic
position as that of the woman herself; and one sees little reason
why it should be.
Women have equal rights with men before the
Shari'ah, and the Qur'an proclaims that they are equal with men in
the sight of God. In the Holy Qur'an, God says:
"I suffer not
the work of any one among you, whether male or female, to be lost.
One is from the other." [Qur'an 3:195]
The heathen Arabs thought women were a separate and
inferior race. The Qur'an reminds them that they are all one race,
one proceeding from the other, the man from the woman and woman
from the man.
There is no text in the Qur'an, no saying of our
Prophet, which can possibly be held to justify the practice of
depriving women of the natural benefits which Allah has decreed
for all mankind (i.e. sunshine and fresh air and healthy
movement). And there is no text in the Qur'an, or saying of our
Prophet which justifies her life-long imprisonment in her home.
This imprisonment, in turn, has lead to death by consumption or
anaemia to thousands of women, and God knows how many babies,
every year in this country! Decency and modesty is enjoined by the
Qur'an, the circle of a woman's intimate relations is prescribed
by the Qur'an. The true Islamic tradition enjoins the veiling of
the hair and neck, and modest conduct - that is all.
The veiling of the face by women was not originally
an Islamic custom. It was prevalent in many cities of the East
before the coming of Islam, but not in the cities of Arabia. The
purdah system, as it now exists in India, was quite undreamt of by
the Muslims in the early centuries, who had adopted the face-veil
and some other fashions for their women when they entered the
cities of Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia and Egypt. It was once a
concession to the prevailing custom and was a protection to their
women from misunderstanding by peoples accustomed to associate
unveiled faces with loose character. Later on it was adopted even
in the cities of Arabia as a mark of [tamaddun] a word generally
translated as 'civilization', but which in Arabic still retains a
stronger flavour of its root meaning 'townsmanship' that is
carried by the English word. It has never been a universal custom
for Muslim women, the great majority of whom have never used it,
since the majority of the Muslim women in the world are peasants
who work with their husbands and brothers in the fields. For them
the face-veil would be an absurd encumbrance. The head-veil, on
the other hand, is universal.
The Egyptian, Syrian, Turkish or Arabian peasant
woman veiled her face only when she had to go in to town, and then
it was often only a half-veil that she wore. On the other hand,
when the town ladies went to their country houses, they discarded
the face-veil, and with it nearly all the ceremonies which
enclosed their life in towns. In no other country that I know of,
besides India, do the customs which were adopted by the wealthiest
townspeople for the safety and distinction of their women at a
certain period (i.e., adopted by people having spacious palaces
and private gardens) derive from the practice of poor people (who
had only small rooms in which to confine women). This is sheer
cruelty. Not everywhere did wealthy adopt those customs. Umarah
tells us that among the Arabs of Al-Yaman, in the fifth Islamic
century, the great independent chiefs made it a point of pride and
honour never to veil the faces of the ladies of their families,
because they held themselves too high and powerful for common folk
to dare to look upon their women with desiring eyes. It was only
the dynasty which ruled in Zabid, and represented the Khilafat of
Bani'l-Abbas in Yaman which observed the haram system with some
strictness, no doubt in imitation of the Persianised court of
Baghdad.
Thus the Purdah system is neither of Islamic nor
Arabian origin. It is of Zoroastrian Persian, and Christian
Byzantine origin. It has nothing to do with the religion of Islam,
and, for practical reasons, it has never been adopted by the great
majority of Muslim women. So long as it was applied only to the
women of great houses, who had plenty of space for exercise within
their palaces and had varied interests in life. So long as it did
not involve cruelty and did no harm to women, it could be regarded
as unobjectionable from the standpoint as a custom of a period.
But the moment it involved cruelty to women and did harm to them,
it became manifestly objectionable, from the point of view of the
Shari'ah, which enjoins kindness and fair treatment towards women,
and aims at the improvement of their status. It was never
applicable to every class of society and when applied to every
class, as now in India, it is a positive evil, which the Sacred
Law can never sanction.
The general condition of Muslim women in Turkey,
Syria, Egypt and Arabia has always been emancipated as compared
with their condition now in India. For instance, the town ladies
of the middle class, wearing their veils, were free to go about,
doing their shopping and visiting other ladies. Indeed the world
of women behind the veil was as free and full of interest as that
of men, only it was separate from that of them, and largely
independent of that of men. Women, duly veiled, were quite safe in
the streets. Any insult offered to one of them was sufficient to
rouse the whole Muslim population to avenge it. The women of the
moderately well-to-do could come and go as they pleased and had no
lack of social intercourse. The degree of freedom they enjoyed in
diverse countries was regulated by racial temperament and local
traditions rather than Islamic Law, which merely guarantees to
women certain rights - and there is no law in the world so fair to
women - and lays down the principle that they are always to be
treated kindly and their rights held sacred. For instance, there
was a difference between the Arabs and the Turks in this respect,
the Turks having adopted more of the Byzantine customs. But all
that I have said applies to both. In neither of those races would
the women have put up with the conditions in which the majority of
Indian Muslim women live today; and in neither of those races
would the men have tolerated that condition for their women.
But even the condition of the Turkish woman of the
past has been found to have become a cruelty in modern times. The
reason for this is so curious that I must give it. When the Turks
first came to Anatolia and Rumelia, they were a sallow
complexioned race from Central Asia, with slanting eyes and thin
black beards, as portraits of the early Sultans and their generals
show. That type is found today among the peasantry around Adana,
[a city in southern Turkey] but hardly anywhere else. Through
centuries of intermarriage with the fair Circassians, Georgians,
Syrians, Bulgars, Serbs, Albanians and other blonde races of Asia
and Europe, the Turks have now become as fair as English people.
The change was marked by a terrible increase in the mortality of
Turkish women, particularly by an increase in the numbers of the
yearly victims to consumption. So long as the Turkish woman was of
a dark complexion, the languid, easy going life of the traditional
Khanum Efendi did not harm her. But after she became of fair
complexion, she suffered visibly from the confinement - much less
than that imposed on Indian Muslim ladies, but still measure of
confinement - of that life. The Turkish doctors then discovered
that blondes were generally weaker constitutionally than
brunettes, and required a great deal more fresh air and physical
exercise. After the full significance of that discovery dawned
upon the rulers of Turkey, they then became advocates of feminine
emancipation and, with the ruthless logic of their race, abolished
the face-veil and other unhealthy restrictions as soon as they
could.
Turkish women in the towns now dress as they have
always dressed in the country, wearing the close fitting bash urtu
(head-veil) with a longer looser head veil over it. And a long
loose mantle covering her form from head to toe -- a dress much
less coquettish, though more healthy, than the former black
charshaf and face veil. She is encouraged to take exercise and to
play games in the open air, for which special women's clubs have
been started. She is educated equally to men, though separately
from them. She is allowed to do things which would have
scandalized her great-grandmother. Yet it is all within the
Shari'ah, since the changed conditions made this enlargement of
the sphere of free activity absolutely necessary for women's
health and happiness in these days. The changes were not
revolutionary for the Turkish ladies since they had always the
example of the Turkish country folk before them to prevent them
from confusing the town dress and town restrictions with the
Sacred Law of Islam. The Turkish peasantry are very good Muslims
indeed. Nowhere does one see Islamic rules of decency more
beautifully observed than in the Turkish villages of Anatolia. Yet
the women in those villages and in Egyptian villages, and in
Syrian villages and in Circassian villages and in Arabian villages
and among the Bedawi and other wandering tribes enjoy a freedom
which would stupefy an Indian Maulvi.
It is the great misfortune of the Indian Muslims
that they have no peasantry; that they came into this land as
conquerors, with ambitions and ideas befitting noblemen and rulers
in Afghanistan and Turkistan and Persia in those days, so that now
every Indian Muslim thinks it is necessary for his Izzat
[honour/status] to treat his women in, perhaps, a wretched hut as
the original Beg or Khan Sahib [people of a higher and noble
social status] treated the women of his household, or as the
Mughal Emperor treated the women of his palace in the vast Zenana
quarters of the fort at Agra. It is the lack of a peasantry which
had made them confuse the Purdah system of the wealthy townsfolk
in the past with the Sacred Law of Islam. If there had been a
Muslim peasantry in India, like the Muslim peasantry of Arabia,
Egypt, Syria or Anatolia as the basis of the nation, the Indian
Muslims could never have fallen into the error of supposing that
the Purdah system should be practised by the poor who dwell in
hovels, and the rich would never have applied both to town and
country life. A peasantry has always common sense. It has no
absurd pretensions, no false standards. The peasant judges a woman
as he judges a man, by skill in work and skill in management. I
have seen a woman govern an Egyptian village by sheer weight of
practical good sense and character. The men obeyed her orders and
were proud of her. That is no isolated instance. Yet the Egyptian
fellahin [peasants] are ardent Muslims, and observe Islamic
regulations pretty strictly.
The laws of Islam, with regard to the position of
women as intended for the benefit of women, for their health and
happiness and the improvement of their material and social
position; and these laws are not static, they are DYNAMIC. They
contemplate reasonable change as circumstances and conditions
change. They can never sanction any custom that does injury or
wrong to women. The Purdah system is not a part of the Islamic
law. It is a custom of the court introduced after the Khilafat had
degenerated from the true Islamic standard and, under Persian and
Byzantine influences, had become mere Oriental despotism. It comes
from the source of weakness to Islam not from the source of
strength. The source of strength and of revival to Islam has
always been the peasant's farm, the blacksmith's forge, the
shepherd's hut, the nomad herdsman's tent. It was thence that
fresh brains came to the schools, fresh blood to the throne, fresh
vigour to the camp, not from the sort of people who enjoyed the
purdah system. Far better let the traces of a worn-out grandeur
go. And if the Muslims in India happen to be poor and forced to
work for a living, let them no longer feel ashamed to earn it in
the way that Islam considers honourable -- by cultivation of the
land. No country can ever in truth be called a Muslim country of
which the peasantry is non-Muslim. And Muslims settled anywhere
without a peasantry are like a flower without a root -- they
cannot draw fresh vigour from the soil.
I do not ask for any violent or sudden change.
Educate women in obedience to our Prophet's plain command, and, in
the conditions of the present day, you will see this un-Islamic
purdah system vanquished naturally. It has nothing whatever to do
with Islamic rules of modesty and decency for men and women. These
will remain unshaken -- nay, they will be greatly strengthened --
if the education which you give to both men and women be a sound
Muslim education.
The Shari'ah has nothing but benevolence for women
-- it favours their instruction and development. But it does not
wish nor expect them to assimilate themselves to men. Dr. Harry
Campbell, lecturing before the institute of Hygiene in London
recently said, "Women have smaller lungs and fewer blood cells
than men. In women, the vital fire does not burn so quickly. It is
thus obvious that women are not adapted like men for a strenuous
muscular life. Mentally, men and women differ in the realm of
emotions rather than of intellect. Intellectually men and women
stand somewhat upon the same footing. While genius is more common
in the male sex, so also is idiocy." There is therefore spiritual
and intellectual equality, and physical differences, precisely as
the Islamic law recognizes. There is nothing in the Shari'ah to
give ground for the false idea concerning women's position in
Islam which had prevailed long ago and still prevails in
Christendom. It is the spectacle of such a falling away from true
Islamic standards like this, in India, which has led non-Muslims
to declare that Muslims treat their women-folk like cattle, that
Muslims hold that women have no souls.
It is true that the Western view of women and the
problem of the sexes, differs radically from the Muslim view in
some respects, but not in the ways that Europeans usually imagine
it to differ, nor in the way in which the conduct of too many
Muslims makes it seem to the superficial observer to differ. By
acting against the teaching of the Shari'ah through ignorance - no
Muslim worthy of the name would knowingly transgress the Sacred
Law - we misrepresent Islam before the world; our witness against
mankind becomes a false witness; and the damage to the faith is
thus incalculable. Most Muslims in India seem to be utterly
unaware that Islam has furnished them with high ideals and a
system (with regards to relations of the sexes - i.e., ideals and
a system that is well able to hold their own in argument as
against the ideals and system, or lack of system) of the most
modern and advanced of Western peoples. They [Muslim Indians]
cling to wretched un-Islamic customs, which are both irrational
and inhuman, as if Islam were left without an argument in face of
the emancipation of the West. Islamic marriage is not a sacrament
involving bondage of the woman to the man, but a civil contract
between equals capable of being terminated at the will of either
party, though more readily at the man's will for reasons which
were very cogent at the time when it was instituted and still have
weight today.
In India, many Muslims seem to have adopted Hindu
ideals of the status of women in marriage, of widows remarrying
and of inheritance, if all I hear is true. Again, I would impress
on you the fact that the injunctions of the Sacred Law cannot be
neglected with impunity by anyone; and also that they are not
static, but dynamic. They point the way and give the impulse in
the right direction. They impose the limits which must be
observed. They trace the path which must be followed, but the
details at a given period must be evolved upon those lines, to
suit the needs and circumstances of that period. Islam, the
religion of human progress never aims at stagnation or
retrogression or oppression or enslavement of the mind or body,
but always at advance, at even justice, at emancipation.
It has been said that the Islamic view of woman is
a man's view, while the Christian view of women is a woman's view.
One might add that, seeing that Christendom was always ruled by
men, the Christian view has never been translated into terms of
fact, but has merely caused confusion of ideas in theory and many
inconsistencies in practice. Devotees of the sentimental ideal of
divine womanhood are apt to underestimate the human value of the
Muslim standpoint, and to talk as if Islam had lowered the social
and moral position of Eastern women, and caused their personal
degradation, thus omitting altogether and taking into account the
fact that a minority of Christian women are degraded to a depth
which every good Mohammedan would appraise with horror while a
large number are debarred from all fulfilment of their natural
functions, which the Muslim regards as a great wrong.
The historical truth is that the Prophet of Islam
is the greatest feminist the world has ever known. From the lowest
degradation, he uplifted women to a position beyond which they can
only go in theory. The Arabs of his day held woman in supreme
contempt, ill-treated and defrauded them habitually, and even
hated them. For we read in the Holy Qur'an:
"Ye who
believe! It is not allowed you to be heirs of women against their
will, not to hinder them from marrying, that you may take from
them a part of that which you have given them, unless they have
been guilty of evident lewdness. But deal kindly with them, for if
ye hate them it may happen that ye have a thing wherein Allah hath
placed much good." [Qur'an 4:19]
The pagan Arabs regarded the birth of girl babies
as the very opposite of a blessing, and had the custom to bury
alive such of them as they esteemed superfluous. The Qur'an
peremptorily forbids that practice, along with others hardly less
unjust and cruel. It assigns to women a defined and honoured
status and commands mankind to treat them with respect and
kindness.
The Prophet said:
"Women are twin halves of men."
"When a woman observes the five times of prayer,
and fasts the months of Ramadan, and is chaste, and is not
disobedient to her husband, then tell her to enter Paradise by
whichever gate she likes."
"Paradise lies at the feet of the mother."
"The rights of women are sacred. See that women are
maintained in the rights granted to them."
"Whoever does good to girls (children) will be
saved from hell."
"Whoever looks after two girls till they come of
age will be in the next world along with me, like my two fingers
close to each other."
"A thing which is lawful, but disliked by Allah, is
divorce."
"Shall I not point out to you the best of virtues?
It is to treat tenderly your daughter when she is returned to you,
having been divorced by her husband."
"Whoever has a daughter and does not bury her
alive, or scold her, or show partiality to his other children,
Allah will bring him to Paradise."
The whole personal teaching of the Prophet is
opposed to cruelty, especially towards women. He said: "The best
of you is he who is best to his wife." Innumerable are the
instances of his clemency in his recorded life. He forgave the
woman who prepared a poisoned meal for him, from which one of his
companions died, and he himself derived the painful, oft recurring
illness which eventually lead to his death. The Qur'an also on a
hundred pages declares forgiveness and mercy to be better than
punishment, whenever practicable. That is to say, whenever such
forgiveness would not constitute a crime against humanity in the
political sphere, or whenever, in the case of private individuals,
the man or woman is capable of real forgiveness, banishing all
malice, then is that is the best course, otherwise the evil would
recur in aggravated form.
The Muslim view of women has been so misrepresented
in the West that it is still a prevalent idea in Europe and
American that Muslims think that women have no souls! In the Holy
Qur'an no difference whatsoever is made between the sexes in
relation to Allah; both are promised the same reward for good, the
same punishment of evil conduct.
"Verily the
men who surrender (to Allah) and women who surrender, and men who
believe, and women who believe, and men who obey and women who
obey, and men who are sincere and women who are sincere, and men
who endure and women who endure, and men who are humble and women
who are humble, and men who give alms and women who give alms, and
men who fast and women who fast, and men who are modest and women
who are modest, and women who remember (Him), Allah hath prepared
for them pardon and a great reward." [Qur'an 33:35]
It is only in relation to each other that a
difference is made - the difference which actually exists -
difference of function. In a verse which must have stupefied the
pagan Arabs, who regarded women as devoid of human rights, it is
stated:
"They (women)
have right like those (of men) against them; though men are a
degree above them. Allah is Almighty, All-Knowing." [Qur'an 2:228]
In Arabia, the lot of poor widows was particularly
hopeless prior to the coming of Islam. The Holy Qur'an sanctions
the remarriage of widows. It legalizes divorce and marriage from
another husband, thus transforming marriage from a state of
bondage for the women to a civil contract between equals,
terminable by the will of either party (with certain restrictions,
greater in women's case for natural reasons, intended to make
people reflect seriously before deciding upon separation) and by
death. The Holy Prophet, when he was the sovereign of Arabia,
married several windows, in order to destroy the old contempt for
them and to provide for them as ruler of the State.
This brings me to the old vexing question of
polygamy. All Arabia was polygamous, or rather I should say, all
Arabia recognized no legal or religious limits or restrictions to
the treatment of women by men before the coming of Islam. Islam
imposed such limits and restrictions which transformed society.
Fault is found with our religion by most Western writers because
it does not enjoy strict monogamy. Also the very mission of
Muhammad (may God bless and keep him!) has been questioned merely
because he had several wives. I would like to point out that there
is no more brighter example of monogamous marriage in all of
history than the twenty-six year happy union of our Holy Prophet
with the lady Khadijah. But that happy union was exceptional, and
one might even claim that a happy marriage is exceptional, and
that if our Prophet had had only that one experience, his
usefulness as an example to mankind would not have been less.
However, not only did he furnish an example of a perfect
monogamous marriage, but he also furnished an example of a perfect
polygamous marriage. He provided the perfect model of behaviour to
mankind. Now the vast majority of men in those days were
polygamists, and I really do not know that they have ceased to be
so.
People sometimes talk as if polygamy were an
institution of Islam. It is no more an institution of Islam than
it is of Christianity (it was the custom in Christendom for
centuries after Christ) but it is still an existing human weakness
to be reckoned with, and in the interests of men and women (women
chiefly), to be regulated. Strict monogamy has never really been
observed in Western lands, but for the sake of the fetish of
monogamy, a countless multitude of women and their children have
been sacrificed and made to suffer cruelly. Islam destroys all
fetishes, which always tend to outcast numbers of God's creatures.
In Europe, side by side with woman worship, we see the degradation
and despair of women.
The Islamic system, when completely practised does
away with the dangers of seduction, the horrors of prostitution
and the hard fate which befalls countless women and children in
the West, as the consequence of unavowed
polygamy. Islam's basic principle is that a man is held fully
responsible for his behaviour towards every woman, and for the
consequences of his behaviour. If it does away likewise with much
of the romance which has been woven round the facts of sexual
intercourse by Western writers, the romance is an illusion, and we
need never mourn the loss of an illusion.
Take the most widely read modern European
literature, and you will find the object of man's life on earth is
depicted as the love of women (i.e., in the ideal form as the love
of one woman, the elect, whom he discovers after trying more than
one). When that one woman is discovered, the reader is led to
suppose that a "union of souls" takes place between the two. And
that is the goal of life. That is not common sense - it is
rubbish. But it is traceably a product of the teaching of the
Christian Church regarding marriage. Woman is an alluring but
forbidden creature, by nature sinful, except when a mystical
union, typifying that of Christ and his Church has happened,
thanks to priestly benediction.
The teaching of Islam is completely different.
There is no such thing as union of two human souls, and those who
spend their lives seeking it will go far astray. Sympathy, more or
less and loves there may be. But every human soul is solitary from
the cradle to the grave unless and until it finds its way of
approach (wasilah) to Allah. It is free and independent of every
other human soul. It has its full responsibility, must bear its
own burden and find its own "way of approach" through the duties
and amid the cares of life. There is no difference between a woman
and a man in this respect. In marriage, there is no merging of
personalities -- each remains distinct and independent. They have
simply entered into an engagement for the performance of certain
duties towards each other, an engagement which can be hallowed and
made permanent by mutual regard and love. If that regard and love
is not forthcoming, the engagement should be terminated. Marriage
is not a sacrament (of mystical value in itself ) nor is it a
bondage. It is a civil contract between one free servant of Allah
and another free servant of Allah. Allah has ordained between them
mutual love, has clearly defined their rights over one another,
and has prescribed for their observance certain rules of honour
and of decency. If they cannot feel the love and fear they may
transgress the rules, then the contract should be ended. The woman
retains her own complete personality, her own opinions and
initiative, her own property and her own name, in the case of
polygamous or in the case of monogamous marriage. And in the case
of polygamous marriage, she can claim her own establishment. It
therefore does not matter greatly from her point of view whether
monogamy or polygamy be the prevailing order of society.
The quasi religious objection to the mere mention
of polygamy to be met with in Europe today is owing to a
preconception with regard to marriage as a sacrament, a union in
which a woman makes the sacrifice of her identity. Monogamous
marriage remains, as it has always been, the ideal of Islam but it
is recognized as an ideal only, which it really is. In practice,
strict monogamy can be the cause of much unhappiness and also of
some serious social evils, which I have already mentioned. The law
of Islam aims for a happy marriage, so allowances are made for
known human tendencies, and divorce is made quite easy where
unhappiness can be shown to be the result of a particular
marriage. This facility of divorce, which was not in the original
Western code of monogamy, has now been introduced on grounds of
reason and humanity in most Western countries. Often involved with
this in the west is great deal of publicity and scandal as to be
almost a social evil in itself. This is certainly not the case
with the Islamic method of divorce. I might add that a happy
marriage is not rare among Muslims like it is among the people of
the West.
Polygamy is not an institution of Islam. It is an
allowance made for ardent human nature. The Qur'an does not enjoin
it, but recommends it in certain circumstances as better than
leaving women helpless and without protectors. Permission is
contained in the following verses, revealed at a time when the men
of the small Muslim community had been decimated by war, and when
there were many women captives, some with children clinging to
them:
"Give unto the
orphans their wealth. Exchange not the valuable for the worthless
(in your management thereof) nor absorb their wealth in your own
wealth. Verily that would be a great sin. And if ye fear that ye
will not deal fairly by the orphans, then marry of the women
(i.e., their mothers) who seem good to you, two or three or four;
and if ye fear that you cannot do justice (to so many) then one
only or (of the female captive) whom your right hand possess. That
is better, that ye stray not from the path of justice. And give
unto the women (whom ye marry) free gifts of their marriage
portions; but if they, of their own accord, remit to you a part
thereof, then ye are welcome to absorb it (in your wealth)." [Qur'an
4:2,3]
This passage cannot by any stretch of the
imagination be made to fit in with the view so often ventilated by
opponents of Islam. Polygamy is little practised in the Muslim
world today, but the permission remains there to witness to the
truth that marriage was made for men and women, not men and women
for marriage.
Islam holds a man absolutely responsible for his
treatment of every woman. Responsibility and decency are the
pillars of Islamic ethics, and the arch which they support admits
to liberty - the utmost liberty compatible with human happiness
and welfare. The freedom of the West, in this respect, seems to us
Muslims to have passed the bounds of decency and this brings us to
another much disputed point - the separation of the sexes.
If it is true, as life experience suggests (and the
advocates of woman's rights in Europe and America are never tired
of declaring that women's interests are separate from those of
men) that women are really happier among themselves in daily life,
and are capable of progress as a sex rather than in close
subservience to men, then the Islamic rule which makes the woman
the mistress in her sphere does not discord with human nature.
While every provision is made for the continuation of the human
race, and while the relation of a woman to her husband and near
kinsfolk is just as tender and as intimate as in the West, the
social life of women is among themselves. There is no 'mixed
bathing,' no mixed dancing, no promiscuous flirtation, no
publicity. But according to the proper teachings of Islam, there
ought to be no bounds to woman's opportunities for self
development and progress in her own sphere. Therefore, there is
nothing to prevent women from becoming doctors, lawyers, judges,
preachers and divines, but they should graduate in women's
colleges and practice on behalf of women.
Women may have their own great athletes, lawyers,
physicians, scientists, and theologians; and no true Muslim would
withhold from them the necessary means of education in accordance
with the Holy Prophet's own injunctions. But if this very hopeful
precedent for human progress is to be explored successfully, there
must be no mere sycophantic aping of the West, for the Western
aspect of the question of feminine emancipation is quite different
from the aspect which it bears among Islamic peoples. Women of the
West have had to agitate for themselves in recent years for simple
legal rights, such as that of married women to own property, which
has always been secured for women in Islam. They have had to wage
a bitter fight to bring to the intelligence of Western men the
fact that women's interests are not identical with those of men (a
fact for which the Sacred Law makes full allowance.) Women in the
West have had to agitate in order to obtain recognition of their
legal and civil existence, which was always recognized in Islam.
They now have their own separate clubs, which a Turkish lady
visitor described as their 'haram' or 'Zenana' quarters which
Muslim women in the central Muslim countries have always had in
fact if not in name. Therefore, they started from a totally
different point from that which the Muslim women start. Their men
secured the rights of women in Islam, and men will champion and
secure what further rights they may require today in order to
fulfil the spirit of the Shari'ah. In this emancipation, there
will be no strife between the sexes. Therefore there is really no
analogy with the case of women in the West.
An objection is occasionally raised about the
Islamic system on the grounds that the parents often choose a
husband for the girl, who ought to be allowed to choose for
herself. That social custom is not peculiar to Islam for it is
actually the custom in many European countries as well as all
countries and among all peoples where, it would be agreed that, a
young girl who choses a husband of whom her parents disapproved
would be courting disaster. On the other hand, no Muslim parent
would ask his daughter to remain with a man whom she disliked. She
would be taken home again. In Turkey, for example, where the
circle of a grown-up girl's male acquaintances had been enlarged
so as to include relations of a marriageable degree, the daughter
of a friend of mine informed her father that she wished to marry
Fulan Bay. Her father said: "Pek Iyi (all right!) but you clearly
understand that if you break through one old custom, you break
through all old customs which depend on it. If you marry Fulan
Bay, of whom I do not approve as a husband for you (remember I
know something of men that you do not) you cannot come to me in
the case of a disagreement and divorce, for I shall not receive
you as I should be bound by law and custom to do, if an unhappy
marriage had resulted from my choice for you. Take what I can give
you with my blessing, and go your way." The girl gave in, deciding
to be guided by her father's knowledge and experience.
When Muslims think of feminine emancipation, the
Islamic ideal must always be kept in sight or they will go astray
after something which can be no guide to them. And at the same
time we must remember - I say it again - that the rules laid down
by the Sacred Law itself, the law of kindness, is greater than the
rules laid down at any period, that woman's rights increase with
her responsibilities. The Law of Islam for women as for men, is
justice, the goal of Islam is universal human brotherhood, which
does not exclude, but must include, the goal of universal
sisterhood as well. That goal can never be attained while the
position of women is what it is today in the East or West.
Notes
For an introduction and appendix to this lecture by
Canadian writers Syed Mumtaz Ali and Rabia Mills, see
http://muslim-canada.org/pickthall.htm
Fateha
-- The Fateha is the first Sura [chapter] of the Holy Qur'an and
is recited several times in all five of the daily obligatory
prayers (ritual worship) of a Muslim.
Kalima
-- The Kalima is the
Muslim Creed : "La illaha ill Allah; Muhammad-ar-Rasul-Allah"
There is no god but God; Muhammad is the Messenger of God.
Polygamy
--
The Western form of 'polygamy' (adultery) grants no rights to
women whatsoever.