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Islam and the Position of Women [Electronic resources] - نسخه متنی

Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari

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Islam and the
Position of Women


By

Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari

The West's vociferous partisans of Women's Lib. have no
idea of the revolutionary leap forward in women's position which Islam
brought about. In the days of Islam's first appearance the position of
women was that of chattels of the men - little above the domesticated
animals. Yet the West, for all their vaunted freedom, have added nothing
to what Islam gave to women, except liberty for increased corruption and
licentiousness. Islam prohibits debauchery, laxity, vulgarity, debasement
and demoralisation. Is that to hinder women's upward advance?

Islam regards both man and woman as created by God to
rise to the full stature of the perfect human. This is in stern contrast
with those versions of the Heavenly Book which Jews and Christians have
tampered with and published as reading: "Amongst every thousand men
appears one beloved of God: but amongst all the women in the world there
is not to be found one who is included in God's grace and favour." (My
quotation is from page 519 of "Islamic and Arab Civilisation", an
authoritative work to which due respect must be paid.)

Islam proclaims that in God's eyes there is no difference
between man and woman. Each is a precious soul. In His eyes all that makes
people stand out from one another is their excelling in virtue, piety
reverence, spiritual and ethical qualities. It is open to both men and
women to achieve that type of excellence. At Doomsday each soul will be
judged, regardless of sex, according to the fruits of their actions, by
the above criteria. As it is written in Sura XXVII: Nahl -"Bee".
"Whosoever hath faith and performs decorous actions, man or woman, I
decree as their destiny a life that will be satisfied and will win that
soul a reward better than the good deeds they have done." Compare Sura
XXVIII: Qasas-"The Narration" (verse 84): "To whosoever does good,
the reward is better than the deed."

Islam regards men and women as complementary to each
other. As it is written in Sura III: Aali-Imran -"Imran's Family"
(verse 195): "Their Lord hath accepted their prayer and answered: 'Never
will I suffer the work of any one of you, male or female, to be lost. Ye
are complementary to each other'."

Many women possess such personal excellences and
intelligence that they attain great heights of true humanity and
happiness. Many men, alas, fall to the lowest depths because they flout
reason and abandon themselves to their passions.

It is related that on one occasion the Second Caliph,
Omar, said from the pulpit in the presence of a large crowd: "I will fine
any man who gives his bride 500 darhams or more as dowry. He shall be made
to give the same amount as that by which his dowry exceeds the
Mahr-as-Sunna (traditional dowry) to the public treasury." At this
a woman who was at the foot of the pulpit cried out in a loud voice her
objection to Omar's statement saying: "Your proclamation contradicts God's
law. for does not the Sura IV: Nisa'a -'The Women', say (verse 20):
'But if you decide to take one wife in place of another, even if you have
given the wife you put away a talent of gold as her marriage portion, take
not the least bit of it back.'? How can you, then, in contradiction of the
Divine Law which has stated that it is permissible to give more than the
legal minimum marriage portion, make your proclamation?" Omar could not
deny the impeachment and withdrew his proposition saying: "It was a man
who erred and a woman who uttered the truth."

Contrast with this the tragic depression of women in
pre-Islamic Arabia. What a height of dignity has been conferred by Islam
on the female sex to enable one of them to lift up her voice in public
rebuke to a Caliph and cause him to reverse his own public utterance!
Islam took from men the right to own women. It instituted equality of
human souls, with due regard to differences of male and female
constitutions.

In the 19th century religious leaders of France, after
long discussions, decided: "woman is a human being, but made to serve
man." It was not until recent years that women in European lands had any
rights to own property. In England it was not till about AD 1850 that
women were counted in the national population census. It was in 1882 that
a British law, unprecedented in the country's history, for the first time
granted women the right to decide how their own earnings should be spent,
instead of handing them over direct to their husbands immediately. Until
then, even the clothes on their back had been their husband's property.
Henry VIII had in his day even forbidden women to study the Bible when the
first English translations began to appear.

Fourteen centuries ago Islam had decreed women's total
financial independence, their right to own and dispose of property without
the surveillance or control of any man, to conduct business, trade and all
the transactions concerning their profit and loss, including the execution
of deeds of gift, without having to check with anyone. As it is written in
the Sura IV Nisa'a-"The Women" verse 33: "In no wise covet gifts
bestowed by God seemingly more freely on some than on others. Whatsoever a
man earns is his own. Whatsoever a woman earns is her own. Pray to God for
the bounty of His Providence for He knows all things."

Besides property rights Islam bestowed dignity, liberty
and freedom on women. This is not least true in the matter of marriage.
Marriage is the most important and sensitive step in a woman's life. Islam
did everything to secure her in it, and to enable her to consider the
financial as well as all the other matters concerning the situation before
she accepted him in wedlock.

Thus the rights and privileges which European women
extorted after bringing forceful pressure to bear on the societies in
which they lived, and only recently achieved, Islam bestowed upon all
women voluntarily without any form of revolt or pressure many centuries
back. Indeed there is no moment of a woman's life, and no problem she is
likely to face, for which Islam has not made beneficent and wise
provision.

It is true that today far too many women are condemned in
the East to an unsatisfactory way of life. But this is not due to Islam's
regulations. It is due to the neglect of religious precept in political,
social and financial institutions.

Poverty is one important reason for the bad conditions
under which Eastern women have to live. A few are too rich; but the
majority far too poor, victims of hunger and wretchedness. The resultant
weakness has deprived people of the strength to rise up and insist on a
change in their environment, for the sake of their families and children.
Nor have the women the power in such a situation to make use of their
legal rights and to take the men to court for the violence and tyranny of
their behaviour. Women fear the difficulties of having to live without a
male companion in a man's world.

The same economic needs cause a diminution in morals and
in human affections. Violence and injustice replace moral values.

Although Islamic lands are amongst the worst sufferers
from these modern disasters, it is not Islam itself but the deliberate
neglect and abandonment of Islamic principles by Muslims and their leaders
which has brought these tragedies upon us. For Islam is the very acme of
the counterforces to poverty and injustice, and insists that wealth must
be fairly divided amongst people of all classes, declaring that it is
wrong for people to have to live under the torture of indigence and its
pressure on hearts and souls, not least those of women and children.

Have we not men wise and just enough to eradicate these
wrongs? To cure the bitterness which they produce? To re-enact sound
Islamic measures? To restore respect for the dictates of piety and
reverence for God and men? Should not that same Islam which once rescued
woman from degrading depression, now raise her again by instituting a new
society?

What is the situation in the West? Women have fallen
victims to the bestial passions to which men have abandoned themselves
under the influence of subversive propaganda of all kinds, in which the
massmedia, particularly cinema and TV, and the advertisements that
disgrace the hoardings of our great cities, play so tragically fateful a
part.

Nowadays a woman's good reputation and dignity does not
come, as it used to, from her possession of moral excellences, education
and knowledge. Too often women of piety and learning are left in
obscurity. Respect, reputation go too much with the name of " artiste"
which some women arrogate to themselves. They perform no useful function
in society. They do not help the men forward. The name "artiste" seems to
cover a multitude of sins of incontinence and debauchery, which are the
very opposite of that virtue and chastity in which the honour of women
once resided. How many earn a shameful living as "models"?

An American sociologist writes that the modern
stripteaser can earn a million dollars a year: a fellow who is able to
knock out another man with one blow of his fist gets half a million: a man
who has spent a lifetime in the service of his fellows, in his white hairs
finds hardly enough to live on.

Professor Albert Connolly writes: "In 1919 England's
women fought for the right to be elected to Parliament, and in their
battle went to prison and suffered physically in fearless vindication of
their sex. What use are their grandchildren making of the privileges
gained for them by these courageous women pioneers? And what would their
grandmothers think of them? Maybe they are actually turning in their
graves at seeing the liberties they fought for perverted to shameless
licence. This last half century has taught us that the liberation of women
is not enough. Besides all their other sacrifices for their cause, women
seem also to have connived at the sacrifice of the respect and the ancient
realities, the moral dignity and the devotion to mankind's uplift which in
former days brought honour to the name of 'woman' and 'mother'." (Quoted
from "The Enlightened Thinkers' Magazine", No. 829).

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