Islam and Women

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Islam and Women
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Women in Pre-Islamic Near East

• Life was Rough according to law
• Hammurabis law code (1752 BCE disobedient women
  get teeth knocked out (but disobedient son get
  hands cut off)
• Middle Assyrian Laws wife who gives away
  husbands possessions gets ear cut off if she
  hits him in the groin (and equipment damaged, she
  loses a finger)
• Later Assyrian law codes include women being
  pawned for debt
• But consistently in NE law, rape/unauthorized
  deflowering of free-woman requires the man be
  killed, woman goes free
• Veil tied to class
• Assyrian law forbids slave women and harlots from
  wearing veil noble women must cover head
• Byzantine upper class houses had harem set up,
  even the Empress Irene veiled herself (including
  hands)
• Institutionalized Sexual Jealousy/Honor
• Middle Assyrian law codes prescribe flogging and
  hard labor for baseless sexual slander (yo mama
  jokes out of the question)
• Egyptian king and medicinal lack of virgins

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Women, Sex and Islamicate Civ.

• Sex penetration and ownership ? Sex is about
  power. Homo- or Heterosexual, penetrator is
  powerful, penetratee is dominated
• Women as Honor
• Pre-Islamic Arabia aqila prized possession
• Islamic Civ. ghira/rashk sexual jealousy
• Women as Danger
• Women as unreasonable, governed by desire (their
  brains are in their false hadith)
• Female sexuality is what makes men lose control
• Female sexuality is unquenchable (woman donkey)
  ? threat to husbands/males honor ? female
  circumcision to reduce womans hotness
• Female Circumcision?

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Women as Actors in Islamic Civ.

• Early/Pre-Islamic dynamos Khadija, Aisha, Umm
  Fadl is this a dying breed?
• Mother of the Believers
• The Prophet is closer to the Believers than
  their own selves, and his wives are their
  mothers. Blood-relations among each other have
  closer personal ties, in the Decree of Allah,
  than (the Brotherhood of) Believers and
  Emigrants nevertheless do ye what is just to
  your closest friends such is the writing in the
  Decree (of Allah). Quran 336
• Hadith Transmitters in early period and again
  after the 1000s CE - today
• Legal Scholars behind closed doors
• Rulers? Shajarat al-Durr Queen of the Muslims
  in 1250s in Egypt
• Power behind the throne ex. the Sultanate of
  the Women in 16oos Ottoman Empire

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Women and the Quran

• Tell the believers to lower their gaze and guard
  their sexuality, this is more pure for them, and
  God is most knowing of what you do. Tell the
  female believers to lower their gaze, guard their
  sexuality and not make evident their beauty
  except what shows normally. And instruct them
  to cast their veils over their upper chests and
  not to make evident their beauty except to their
  lords, their fathers or the fathers of their
  lords, their sons, their nephews, their women or
  slaves or male servants not of sexual ability or
  children not yet of age. And instruct them not
  to move their legs such that what beauty of
  theirs that is hidden is known. And seek Gods
  forgiveness all O you believers so that you may
  prosper. (2431)
• Men are responsible for women (qawwamun ala)
  due to that by which God has granted favor to
  some over others, and by what they (men?) have
  spent from their wealth. So righteous women are
  obedient, guarding in secret what God has
  guarded. And those women whose disobedience you
  fear, admonish them, then leave their beds, then
  scourge them. If they obey you, seek not a way
  against them, indeed God is most lofty, great
  (434)
• Surat al-Ahzab
• And from His signs is that He created for you
  mates from among you to dwell in them in peace,
  and He created love and mercy between you.
  Indeed in that there are signs for those who
  reflect. (3021)
• Divorce and Marriage by al-maruf what is
  known / right

• Lo! men who surrender unto God, and women who
  surrender, and men who believe and women who
  believe, and men who obey and women who obey, and
  men who speak the truth and women who speak the
  truth, and men who persevere (in righteousness)
  and women who persevere, 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 guard their modesty
  and women who guard (their modesty), and men who
  remember God much and women who remember - God
  hath prepared for them forgiveness and a vast
  reward.

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Women and Islamic Law Traditional Narrative

• Women are equal to men before God but separate
  notions of nudity (but free/slave distinction
  remains)
• Women are under the care/supervision of men
  (mahram male guardian) ? separate inheritance
  laws
• Marriage is Contractual arrangement between woman
  and man
• Rights and obligations not to be seen as
  best possible situation. Rather, fiqh is for
  worst possible cases sexual rights
• Violation of contract is grounds for divorce men
  can divorce at any time women can ask for
  divorce or forfeit dowry
• Womens Sphere is separate from Mens
• Twice as many women needed for court testimony in
  financial matters
• Female Circumcision al-sareeh ghayr saheeh wa
  al-saheeh ghayr sareeh limited is recommended in
  most Sunni schools, although today muftis say
  its prohibited unless done by a skilled doctor

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Modernity and European Feminism

• 1850s onwards sees Ottoman/Egyptian contact with
  Europe
• Elites vacation in Europe, French becomes
  language of the harem
• 1860s British travelers in upper Egypt notice
  that Xian women more fastidious about veil than
  Muslims
• 1899 lawyer Qasim Amin writes book the
  Liberation of Women saying that veiling not
  required in Islam
• Huda al-Sharawi (d. 1947) Saiza Nabrawi create
  Egyptian Feminist Union, attend 1923 Womens
  conference in Rome. Upon return they remove
  their face-veils.
• Gender/Women Issues tied to power and thus to
  concerns about Colonialism, Cultural Authenticity
  (Amins book as Anti Egyptian)

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Modernist / Islamist Reading

• Generally embraces traditional Islamic law, but
  with more emphasis on womens rights to education
• Most clearly seen in the writings of Sayyid Qutb
  (d. 1966), Miryam al-Jameela, Muhammad Asad
• Complementarity of men and women Muslim family
  designed for men and women to have different
  functions men earn , women raise family (what
  about dual-income?) (Enlightenment European
  argument)
• Islamic Law is Liberation
• Hijab allows women to be judged by personality
  and not beauty

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Progressive Reading

• Thematic vs. Traditional Exegesis (same as Jihad)
• Not Male authored
• Spirit of the Quran as opposed to details of
  Islamic law
• Ex. Quran universalizes the privilege of
  modesty for women in Jahiliyya society
• There is no set cultural context/interpretive
  lens for the Quran because it is universal
• Gender distinctions exist, but they have
  different meanings in different times
• Ex. 434 mens responsibility is based on
  conditions of verse, ex. womens court
  testimony too

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Further Reading

• Women in Muslim Unconscious by Fatima Sabbah
  (1984)
• Sexuality and Eroticism amongst Males in Moslem
  Societies
• Women Gender and Social Change (ed. Haddad
  Esposito)