14

Women and Islam⁵⁶⁶

Richard Burton⁵⁶⁷ in his “Terminal Essay” defending Islam against Western criticism argued that “the legal status of womankind in al-Islam is exceptionally high” and that the “Moslem wife has greatly the advantage over her christian sisterhood.” He also goes on to claim that Islam is sex-positive: “Moslems study the art and mystery of satisfying the physical woman.” His evidence for the claim was the abundance of pornographic literature with titles like the Book of Carnal Copulation and the Initiation into the Modes of Coition and Its Instrumentation. Burton must have been aware that these works were written by men for men, though the significance of this fact seems to escape him. One of the books cited by Burton—The Book of Exposition in the Art of Coition—begins “Alhamdolilillah Laud to the lord who adorned the virginal bosom with breasts and who made the thighs of women anvils for the spear handles of men.” In other words women were created by God for man’s pleasure—as his sex object, in modern parlance.

In fact, a much more famous work, Shaykh Nefzawi’s The Perfumed Garden,⁵⁶⁸ a sixteenth-century treatise that Burton himself was to translate from the French, is very revealing of Islamic attitudes toward women and their sexuality. Women’s sexuality is never denied but seen as a source of danger: Do you know that women’s religion is in their vaginas? asks the Shaykh. They are insatiable as far as their vulvas are concerned, and so long as their lust is satisfied they do not care whether it be a buffoon, a negro, a valet, or even a despised man. It is Satan who makes the juices flow from their vaginas. The Shaykh quotes Abu Nuwas with approval:

Women are demons and were born as such

No one can trust them as is known to all

If they love a man it is only out of caprice

And he to whom they are most cruel loves them most

Beings full of treachery and trickery, I aver

That man that loves you truly is a lost man

He who believes me not can prove my word

By letting woman’s love get hold of him for years

If in your own generous mood you have given them

Your all and everything for years and years,

They will say afterwards, “I swear by God! my eyes

Have never seen a thing he gave me!”

After you have impoverished yourself for their sake

Their cry from day to day will be for ever “Give”:

“Give man, get up and buy and borrow”

If they cannot profit by you they’ll turn against you

They will tell lies about you and calumniate you

They do not recoil to use a slave in the master’s absence

If once their passions are aroused and they play tricks

Assuredly if once their vulva is in rut

They only think of getting in some member in erection

Preserve us, God! from women’s trickery

And of old women in particular. So be it.

Here we have a complete inventory of a woman’s faults as seen by Muslim men—deceit, guile, ingratitude, greed, insatiable lust, in short, a gateway to hell. In contrast to his dithyramb on the position of women in Islam in the “Terminal Essay,” in his Introduction to his translation of the Perfumed Garden a year later, Burton finally concedes “the contempt which the Mussulman in reality feels for woman.”

Bullough, Bousquet, and Bouhdiba also regard Islam as a sex-positive religion in contrast to Christianity, which “made something unclean out of sexuality,” to use Nietzsche’s phrase. But in the last page and a half of his survey Bullough suddenly feels obliged to qualify his remarks by admitting that Islam “at the same time relegated women to the status of inferior beings.” Though he still thinks Lane-Poole’s judgment, that “the fatal blot in Islam is the degradation of women,” is “exaggerated.”

Similarly, Bousquet compares Islam to Christianity: “Islam is clearly and openly favorable to the pleasures of the flesh as such, without any secondary consideration. Christianity is clearly hostile to them.” But he also has to admit, “the greatly inferior position imposed on the woman by Islamic law, in particular from the sexual point of view.”⁵⁶⁹

Only Bouhdiba, while rejoicing in Islam’s superiority on matters sexual, seems unable to find any evidence, at least in the Koran, of any misogyny and glides blithely on with his sexual, Islamic fantasies of the “infinite orgasm” and “the perpetual erection.”

To see Islam as sex-positive is to insult all Muslim women, for sex is seen entirely from the male point of view; a woman’s sexuality, as we shall see, is either denied or, as in The Perfumed Garden, seen as something unholy, something to be feared, repressed, a work of the devil. But still as Slimane Zeghidour put it, sexuality occupies as fundamental a place in Islamic doctrine as it does in psychoanalytical theory. I hope to show that in its obsession with cleanliness, Islam reveals a disgust with the sexual act and the sexual parts that is pathological and always the same contempt for women.

According to the Dictionary of Islam,⁵⁷⁰ “although the condition of women under Muslim law is most unsatisfactory, it must be admitted that Muhammad effected a vast and marked improvement in the condition of the female population of Arabia.” Bousquet concurs; the reforms effected in favor of women make Muhammad seem “a champion of feminism” in that particular historical context. Two reforms often quoted are the prohibition against burying female children alive and the establishment of rights of inheritance of women (“whereas,” adds Burton, “in England a ‘Married Woman’s Property Act’ was completed only in 1882 after many centuries of the grossest abuse”).

But as Ahmed al-Ali shows in Organisations Sociales chez les Bedouins, the practice of burying unwanted female children probably had a religious origin and was extremely rare. Muslim writers have simply exaggerated its frequency to highlight the supposed superiority of Islam. As far as inheritance is concerned, a woman has half the share of a man and as we shall see later, she by no means, pace Burton, has complete power over the disposal of her own property. Muhammad, in this as in so many other matters, simply did not go far enough; Muhammad’s ideas of women were like those of his contemporaries—women were charming, capricious playthings, liable to lead one astray.

According to the scholar Schacht, women under Islam were in many ways worse off: “The Quran in a particular situation had encouraged polygamy and this from being an exception, now became one of the essential features of the Islamic law of marriage. It led to a definite deterioration in the position of married women in society, compared with that which they had enjoyed in Pre-Islamic Arabia and this was only emphasized by the fact that many perfectly respectable sexual relationships of Pre-Islamic Arabia had been outlawed by Islam.”⁵⁷¹

Bedouin women working alongside their husbands enjoyed considerable personal freedom and independence. Leading a nonsedentary life, tending cattle, she was neither cloistered nor veiled, but active; her contributions to the community much appreciated and respected. Segregation was totally impractical. If ill-treated by their husbands many simply ran away to a neighboring tribe. Despite Islam—rather than thanks to Islam—even in the nineteenth century, “Amongst the Bedouins their armies are led by a maiden of good family, who, mounted amid the fore ranks on a camel shames the timid and excites the brave by satirical or encomiastic recitations.”⁵⁷²

The tenth-century Arab Historian, al-Tabari’s account of Hind bint Otba, the wife of Abu Sufyan, the head of one of the aristocratic families of Mecca, gives a vivid picture of the independence of aristocratic women before Islam. Women swore allegiance as much as men, took part in negotiations with the new military chief of the city—that is, Muhammad himself—and were often frankly hostile to the new religion. When Muhammad arrived at Mecca in A.D. 630 with 10,000 men, a rather overawed Abu Sufyan finally led out a deputation to make a formal submission and swear allegiance. The women led by Hind gave theirs only very reluctantly. Hind reproached Muhammad for having imposed obligations on women that he had not imposed on men. When the Prophet enjoined them never to kill their children, Hind retorted that this was rather fine coming from a military leader who had spilled so much blood at the battle of Badr when seventy men had been killed and many prisoners later executed on Muhammad’s own orders.

Modem reformist Muslim intellectuals—male or female—when confronted by the apparent backwardness of the position of women (a situation which has remained stagnant for centuries), have tended to invent a mythological golden age at the dawn of Islam when women putatively enjoyed equal rights. For example, even Nawal el Saadawi,⁵⁷³ the Egyptian feminist who has done more than anyone else to speak positively of Muslim women’s right to express their sexuality, writes of “the regression of the Arab woman in Islamic philosophy and culture in contrast to her situation at the time of Muhammad or in the Spirit (or essence) of Islam.” Similarly the Algerian Rachid Mimouni⁵⁷⁴ says, “It is clear that it is not the religion of Allah (which is at fault) but its interpretation.... Fundamentalism is an imposture. It discredits the message of Mohammad.” The thought is that it is not Islam that is to blame for the degrading of women. Of course to talk of “the essence of Islam” is simply to perpetuate the malignant influence of religious authority and to perpetuate a myth. These same Muslim thinkers, when faced by the textual evidence of the inherent misogyny of Islam, are confused and anguished. Refusing to look reality in the face, they feel obliged to interpret these sacred texts, to apologize, to minimize their manifest hostility to women—in short, to exonerate Islam. Others try to argue that these traditions were perpetuated by dubious Muslims whose motives were suspect.

Yet to do battle with the orthodox, the fanatics, and the mullas in the interpretation of these texts is to do battle on their (the fanatics’) terms, on their ground. Every text that you produce they will adduce a dozen others contradicting yours. The reformists cannot win on these terms—whatever mental gymnastics the reformists perform, they cannot escape the fact that Islam is deeply antifeminist. Islam is the fundamental cause of the repression of Muslim women and remains the major obstacle to the evolution of their position.⁵⁷⁵ Islam has always considered women as creatures inferior in every way: physically, intellectually, and morally. This negative vision is divinely sanctioned in the Koran, corroborated by the hadiths and perpetuated by the commentaries of the theologians, the custodians of Muslim dogma and ignorance.

Far better for these intellectuals to abandon the religious argument, to reject these sacred texts, and have recourse to reason alone. They should turn instead to human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted on December 10, 1948, by the General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris and ratified by most Muslim countries) at no point has recourse to a religious argument. These rights are based on natural rights, which any adult human being capable of choice has. They are rights that human beings have simply because they are human beings. Human reason or rationality is the ultimate arbiter of rights—human rights, the rights of women.

Unfortunately, in practice, in Muslim countries one cannot simply leave the theologians with their narrow, bigoted world view to themselves. One cannot ignore the ulama, those learned doctors of Muslim law who by their fatwas or decisions in questions touching private or public matters of importance regulate the life of the Muslim community. They still exercise considerable powers of approving or forbidding certain actions. Why the continuing influence of the mullas?

The Koran remains for all Muslims, not just “fundamentalists,” the uncreated word of God Himself. It is valid for all times and places; its ideas are absolutely true and beyond all criticism. To question it is to question the very word of God, and hence blasphemous. A Muslim’s duty is to believe it and obey its divine commands.

Several other factors contribute to the continuing influence of the ulama. Any religion that requires total obedience without thought is not likely to produce people capable of critical thought, people capable of free and independent thought. Such a situation is favorable to the development of a powerful “clergy” and is clearly responsible for the intellectual, cultural, and economic stagnation of several centuries. Illiteracy remains high in Muslim countries. Historically, as there never was any separation of state and religion, any criticism of one was seen as a criticism of the other. Inevitably, when many Muslim countries won independence after the Second World War, Islam was unfortunately linked with nationalism, which meant that any criticism of Islam was seen as a betrayal of the newly independent country—an unpatriotic act, an encouragement to colonialism and imperialism. No Muslim country has developed a stable democracy; Muslims are being subjected to every kind of repression possible. Under these conditions healthy criticism of society is not possible, because critical thought and liberty go together.

The above factors explain why Islam in general and the position of women in particular are never criticized, discussed, or subjected to deep scientific or skeptical analysis. All innovations are discouraged in Islam—every problem is seen as a religious problem rather than a social or economic one.

Adam and Eve⁵⁷⁶

Islam took the legend of Adam and Eve from the Old Testament and adapted it in its own fashion. The creation of mankind from one person is mentioned in the following suras:

4.1. O Mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multiple of men and women

39.6. He created you from one being, then from that (being) He made its mate.

7.189. He it is who did create you from a single soul and therefrom did make his mate that he might take rest in her.

From these slender sources Muslim theologians have concluded that man was the original creation—womankind was created secondarily for the pleasure and repose of man. The legend was further developed to reinforce the supposed inferiority of women. Finally, the legend was given a sacred character so that to criticize it was to criticize the very words of God, which were immutable and absolute. Here is how Muhammad describes women in general: “Be friendly to women for womankind was created from a rib, but the bent part of the rib, high up, if you try to straighten it you will break it; if you do nothing, she will continue to be bent.”

The story of Adam and Eve is further elaborated in:

2.35-36. And We said: O Adam! Dwell thou and thy wife in the Garden, and eat ye freely (of the fruits) thereof where ye will; but come not nigh this tree lest ye become wrongdoers.

But Satan caused them to deflect therefrom and expelled them from the (happy) state in which they were; and We said: Fall down, one of you a foe unto the other! There shall be for you on earth a habitation and provision for a time.

7.19-20. And (unto man): O Adam! Dwell thou and thy wife in the Garden and eat from whence ye will, but come not nigh this tree lest ye become wrongdoers.

Then Satan whispered to them that he might manifest unto them that which was hidden from of their shame and he said: Your Lord forbade you from this tree only lest ye should become angels or become of the immortals.

20.120-121. But the Devil whispered to him saying: O Adam! Shall I show thee the tree of immortality and power that wasteth not away?

Then they twain ate thereof, so that their shame became apparent unto them, and they began to hide by heaping on themselves some of the leaves of the Garden. And Adam disobeyed his Lord, so went astray.

God punishes Adam and Eve for disobeying his orders. But there is nothing in these verses to show that it was Eve (as in the Old Testament) who led Adam astray. And yet Muslim exegetists and jurists have created the myth of Eve the temptress that has since become an integral part of Muslim tradition. Muhammad himself is reputed to have said: “If it had not been for Eve, no woman would have been unfaithful to her husband.”

The Islamic tradition also attributes guile and deceit to women and draws its support from the following text in the Koran:

12.22-34. [Joseph has been installed in the house of the man who bought him.] Now the woman in whose house he was solicited him, and closed the doors on them. “Come,” she said, “take me!” “God be my refuge,” he said. “Surely my lord has given me a goodly lodging. Surely the evildoers do not prosper.” For she desired him; and he would have taken her but that he saw the proof of his Lord. So was it, that We might turn away from him evil and abomination; he was one of Our devoted servants. They raced to the door; and she tore his shirt from behind. They encountered her master by the door. She said, “What is the recompense of him who purposes evil against thy folk, but that he should be imprisoned or a painful chastisement?” Said he, “It was she that solicited me”; and a witness of her folk bore witness, “If his shirt has been torn from before then she has spoken truly, and he is one of the liars; but if his shirt has been torn from behind, then she has lied, and he is one of the truthful.” When he saw his shirt was torn from behind he said, “This is of your women’s guile; surely your guile is great. Joseph, turn away from this and thou woman, ask forgiveness of thy crime; surely thou art one of the sinners.” Certain women that were in the city said, “The Governor’s wife has been soliciting her page; he smote her heart with love; we see her in manifest error.” When she heard their sly whispers, she sent to them, and made ready for them a repast, then she gave to each one of them a knife. “Come forth, attend to them,” she said. And when they saw him, they so admired him that they cut their hands, saying, “God save us! This is no mortal; he is no other but a noble angel.” “So now you see,” she said. “This is he you blamed me for. Yes, I solicited him, but he abstained. Yet if he will not do what I command him, he shall be imprisoned, and be one of the humbled.” He said, “My Lord, prison is dearer to me than that they call me to; yet if Thou turnest not from me their guile, then I shall yearn toward them, and so become one of the ignorant.” So his Lord answered him, and He turned away from him their guile; surely He is the All-hearing, and the All-knowing.

Modern Muslim commentators interpret these verses to show that guile, deceit, and treachery are intrinsic to a woman’s nature. Not only is she unwilling to change, she is by nature incapable of changing—she has no choice.⁵⁷⁷

In attacking the female deities of the polytheists, the Koran takes the opportunity to malign the female sex further.

4.117. They invoke in His stead only females; they pray to none else than Satan, a rebel.

43.15-19. And they allot to Him a portion of his bondmen! Lo! man is verily a mere ingrate.

Or chooseth He daughters of all that He hath created, and honoureth He you with sons?

And if one of them hath tidings of that which he likeneth to the Beneficent One (i.e., tidings of the birth of a girl-child), his countenance becometh black and he is full of inward rage.

(Liken they then to Allah) that which is bred up in outward show, and in dispute cannot make itself plain?

And they make the angels, who are the slaves of the Beneficent, females. Did they witness their creation? Their testimony will be recorded and they will be questioned.

52.39. Or hath He daughters whereas ye have sons?

37.149-50. Now ask them (O Muhammad): Hath thy Lord daughters whereas they have sons?

Or created We the angels females while they were present?

53.21-22. Are yours the males and His the females That indeed were an unfair division!

53.27. Lo! it is those who disbelieve in the Hereafter who name the angels with the names of females.

If Mr. Bouhdiba is not convinced by these, here are some more verses from the Koran that seem to us of a misogynist tendency:

2.178 O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the murdered; the freeman for the freeman, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female.

2.228. Women who are divorced shall wait, keeping themselves apart, three (monthly) courses. And it is not lawful for them that they should conceal that which Allah hath created in their wombs if they are believers in Allah and the Last Day. And their husbands would do better to take them back in that case if they desire a reconciliation. And they (women) have rights similar to those (of men) over them in kindness, and men are a degree above them. Allah is Mighty, Wise.

2.282 But if he who oweth the debt is of low understanding, or weak or unable himself to dictate, then let the guardian of his interests dictate in (terms of) equity. And call to witness, from among your men, two witnesses. And if two men be not (at hand) then a man and two women, of such as ye approve as witnesses, so that if the one erreth (through forgetfulness) the other will remember.

4.3. And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or the (captives) that your right hand possesses. Thus it is more likely that ye will not do injustice.

4.11. Allah chargeth you concerning (the provision for) your children: to the male the equivalent of the portion of two females.

4.34. 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 (beat) them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.

4.43. O ye who believe! Draw not near unto prayer when ye are drunken, till ye know that which ye utter, nor when ye are polluted, save when journeying on the road, till ye have bathed. And if ye be ill, or on a journey, or one of you cometh from the closet, or ye have touched women, and ye find not water, then go to high clean soil and rub your faces and your hands. Lo! Allah is Benign, Forgiving.

5.6. And if ye are sick on a journey, or one of you cometh from the closet, or ye have contact with women and ye find not water, then go to clean high ground and rub your faces and your hands with some of it.

33.32-33. O ye wives of the Prophet! Ye are not like any other women. If ye keep your duty (to Allah), then be not soft of speech lest he in whose heart is a disease aspire to you, but utter customary speech.

And stay in your houses. Bedizen not yourselves with the bedizenment of the time of ignorance. Be regular in prayer, and pay the poor due, and obey Allah and His Messenger.

33.53. And when ye ask of them (the wives of the Prophet) anything ask it of them from behind a curtain. That is purer for your hearts and for their hearts.

33.59. O Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round when they go abroad. That will be better, that so they may be recognized and not annoyed.

Equally, in numerous hadiths on which are based the Islamic laws we learn of the woman’s role—to stay at home, to be at the beck and call of man, to obey him (which is a religious duty), and to assure man a tranquil existence. Here are some examples of these traditions:

—If it had been given me to order someone to prostrate themselves in front of someone other than God, I would surely have ordered women to prostrate themselves in front of their husbands.. , . A woman cannot fulfill her duties toward God without first having accomplished those that she owes her husband.

—The woman who dies and with whom the husband is satisfied will go to paradise.

—A wife should never refuse herself to her husband even if it is on the saddle of a camel.

—Hellfire appeared to me in a dream and I noticed that it was above all peopled with women who had been ungrateful. “Was it toward God that they were ungrateful?” They had not shown any gratitude toward their husbands for all they had received from them. Even when all your life you have showered a woman with your largesse she will still find something petty to reproach you with one day, saying, “You have never done anything for me.”

—If anything presages a bad omen it is: a house, a woman, a horse.

—Never will a people know success if they confide their affairs to a woman.

Islamic culture and civilization is profoundly antifeminist, as the following sayings from various caliphs, ministers, philosophers, and theologians through the ages reveal:

Omar the second caliph (581-644) said: “Prevent the women from learning to write! say no to their capricious ways.”

On another occasion he said, “Adopt positions opposite those of women. There is great merit in such opposition.” And again, “Impose nudity on women because clothes are one reason for leaving the house, to attend marriages and to appear in public for ceremonies and parties. When a woman goes out frequently she risks meeting another man and finding him attractive even if he is less attractive than her husband; for she is attracted and distracted by anything she does not possess”.

The antifeminist sayings of Ali (600-661), the Prophet’s cousin and the fourth caliph, are famous:⁵⁷⁸

“The entire woman is an evil and what is worse is that it is a necessary evil!”

“You should never ask a woman her advice because her advice is worthless. Hide them so that they cannot see other men! ... Do not spend too much time in their company for they will lead you to your downfall!”

“Men, never ever obey your women. Never let them advise you on any matter concerning your daily life. If you let them advise you they will squander all your possessions and disobey all your orders and desires. When alone they forget religion and think only of themselves; and as soon as it concerns their carnal desires they are without pity or virtue. It is easy to get pleasure from them but they give you big headaches too. Even the most virtuous among them is of easy virtue. And the most corrupt are whores! Old age does not spare them of their vices. They have three qualities worthy of an unbeliever: they complain of being oppressed when in fact it is they who oppress; they take solemn oaths and at the same time lie; they make a show of refusing the advances of men when in fact they long for them ardently. Let us implore God’s help to escape their sorcery.”

And finally to a man teaching a woman to write: “Do not add evil to unhappiness.”

It will be appropriate to end this introduction with two quotes from the famous and much revered philosopher al-Ghazali (1058-1111), whom Professor Montgomery Watt describes as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad. In his “The Revival Of The Religious Sciences,” Ghazali defines the woman’s role:

She should stay at home and get on with her spinning, she should not go out often, she must not be well-informed, nor must she be communicative with her neighbours and only visit them when absolutely necessary; she should take care of her husband and respect him in his presence and his absence and seek to satisfy him in everything; she must not cheat on him nor extort money from him; she must not leave her house without his permission and if given his permission she must leave surreptitiously. She should put on old clothes and take deserted streets and alleys, avoid markets, and make sure that a stranger does not hear her voice or recognize her; she must not speak to a friend of her husband even in need.... Her sole worry should be her virtue, her home as well as her prayers and her fast. If a friend of her husband calls when the latter is absent she must not open the door nor reply to him in order to safeguard her and her husband’s honour. She should accept what her husband gives her as sufficient sexual needs at any moment.... She should be clean and ready to satisfy her husband’s sexual needs at any moment.

The great theologian then warns all men to be careful of women for their “guile is immense and their mischief is noxious; they are immoral and mean spirited.” “It is a fact that all the trials, misfortunes and woes which befall men come from women,” moaned al-Ghazali.

In his Book of Counsel for Kings, al-Ghazali sums up all that a woman has to suffer and endure because of Eve’s misbehavior in the Garden of Eden:

As for the distinctive characteristics with which God on high has punished women, (the matter is as follows): “When Eve ate fruit which He had forbidden to her from the tree in Paradise, the Lord, be He praised, punished women with eighteen things: (1) menstruation; (2) childbirth; (3) separation from mother and father and marriage to a stranger; (4) pregnancy; (5) not having control over her own person; (6) a lesser share in inheritance; (7) her liability to be divorced and inability to divorce; (8) its being lawful for men to have four wives, but for a woman to have only one husband; (9) the fact that she must stay secluded in the house; (10) the fact that she must keep her head covered inside the house; (11) the fact that two women’s testimony has to be set against the testimony of one man; (12) the fact that she must not go out of the house unless accompanied by a near relative; (13) the fact that men take part in Friday and feast day prayers and funerals while women do not; (14) disqualification for rulership and judgeship; (15) the fact that merit has one thousand components, only one of which is attributable to women, while 999 are attributable to men; (16) the fact that if women are profligate they will be given [only] half as much tornment as the rest of the community at the Resurrection Day; [This does not seem like a punishment! An error of translation?] (17) the fact that if their husbands die they must observe a waiting period of four months and ten days before remarrying; 18) the fact that if their husbands divorce them they must observe a waiting period of three months or three menstrual periods before remarrying.⁵⁸⁰

Such are some of the sayings from the putative golden age of Islamic feminism. It was claimed that it was the abandonment of the original teachings of Islam that had led to the present decadence and backwardness of Muslim societies. But there never was an Islamic utopia. To talk of a golden age is only to confirm and perpetuate the influence of the clergy, the mullas, and their hateful creed that denies humanity to half the inhabitants of this globe, and further retards all serious attempts to liberate Muslim women.

I shall now examine in detail all the different ways Islam has devised to subjugate all Muslim women.

An Inferior Being

Muhammad is reported to have told his men to treat kindly those two weaklings “women and slaves.” In general Islam treats women as intellectually, morally, and physically inferior. First comes man, then comes the hermaphrodite (who in Islam has a distinct legal status), and last the woman. Conservative Muslim thinkers have even revived discredited anthropological theories purporting to show that the cranial capacity of women is far smaller than that of a man. “Women have less reason and faith” goes one famous hadith. A woman is seen as being in a state of impurity during her menstruation, but this impurity is not limited to her period of menstruation. It is reported that Muhammad had never touched a woman who did not belong to him. When the women who gave him their allegiance asked to shake him by the hand, he replied, “I never touch the hand of women.” Further hadiths on this subject:

—Better for a man to be splashed by a pig than for him to brush against the elbow of a woman not permitted him.

—Better to bury an iron needle in the head of one of you than to touch a woman not permitted him.

—He who touches the palm of a woman not legally his will have red-hot embers put in the palm of his hand on Judgment Day.

—Three things can interrupt prayers if they pass in front of someone praying: a black dog, a woman, and an ass.

Liberal Muslims may wish to dismiss these hadiths as inauthentic but what will they say to the Koran which also says: “Draw not near unto prayer when ye are drunken, till ye know that which ye utter, nor when ye are polluted, save when journeying on the road, till ye have bathed. And if ye be ill, or on a journey, or one of you cometh from the closet, or ye have touched a woman, and ye find not water, then go to high clean soil and rub your faces and your hands” (sura 4.43; see also sura 5.6).

The theologians ultimately lean on the Koran to prove their point that women are inferior to men and in doing so, of course cut short any argument, for no one argues against the word of God. Thus they find divine sanction for their absurd pseudoscientific views. Here are the relevant verses:

3.36. And when she had given birth to it, she said, “O my Lord! Verily I have brought forth a female,”—God knew what she had brought forth; a male is not as a female—and I have named her Mary, and I take refuge with thee for her and for her offspring, from Satan the stoned.”

43.18. What! make they a being (i.e., a woman) to be the offspring of God who is brought up among trinkets, and is ever contentious without reason.

4.122. And whose word is more sure than God’s?

Women are by nature inferior and can be compared to a bottle whose crack is irreparable. Muhammad used to say: “Handle the bottles (women) with care.”

Inequality In Matters of Sexuality

Bullough, Burton, Bousquet, and Bouhdiba insist that Islam is a sex positive religion, thereby underlining their own male-centered vision. For in Islam, a woman’s sexuality or her sexual needs are not taken into account. For Muslim jurists, marriage is one of two legitimate ways that a man can have relations with a woman (the other being concubinage with a slave woman). As one Muslim jurist put it, marriage for a Muslim male is “the contract by which he acquires the reproductive organ of a woman, with the express purpose of enjoying it.”⁵⁸² The converse, of course, is not the case; the reproductive organ of the husband is not exclusively reserved for one woman. The Koran permits men an unlimited number of women (sura 4.3).

“Happy now the believers, humble in their prayers, shunning vain conversation, paying the poor-due, and who restrain their appetites except with their wives or the slaves whom their right hands possess: for in that case they shall be free from blame.” (suras 23.1, 5, 6).

The Koran knows man is incapable of impartiality—“You will not be able to deal equally between your wives, however much you wish to do so”(sura 4.129)—and yet allows polygamy (which would be more fairly called polygyny, since of course women are not permitted more than one husband). As G. H. Bousquet in his classic L’Ethique Sexuelle de l’Islam continually emphasizes, the Muslim conception of marriage has nothing in common with the Christian one. There is in Islam a complete absence of the idea of association, partnership, or companionship between the married couple. The Arabic word for “marriage” is “nikah” which is also the word for “coition,” and in contemporary French slang “niquer” means “to fuck.” Bousquet’s conclusion on the subject of Muslim marriages could be summarized thus: The Muslim marriage is essentially an act by which a woman, often without being consulted, must put herself sexually at the disposition of her husband, if need be next to three other wives and an unlimited number of concubines. She must be ready to be turned out as soon as she ceases to please and never expect a conjugal partnership to arise.⁵⁸³

Muslim jurists have insisted that the justice demanded of husbands toward their many wives is in the nature of expenses or gifts for each of the wives and not that of love or sexual relations. The Prophet, of course, has special privileges divinely sanctioned by the Koran: He can have more than four wives without being obliged to share his nights equally between them:

O Prophet! We allow thee thy wives whom thou hast dowered, and the slaves whom thy right hand possesseth out of the booty which God hath granted thee, and the daughters of thy uncle, thy paternal and maternal aunts who fled with thee to Medina, and any believing woman who hath given herself up to the Prophet, if the Prophet desired to wed her—a Privilege for thee above the rest of the Faithful. We well know what we have settled for them, in regard to their wives and to the slaves; ... that there may be no fault on thy part. ... Thou mayst decline for the present whom thou wilt of them, and thou mayest take to thy bed her whom thou wilt, and whomsoever thou shalt long for of those thou shalt have before neglected, and this shall not be a crime in thee. (p. 33.49-51)

As Aisha, the prophet’s wife once remarked to Him, “God comes to your aid rather conveniently when it is a question of your desires.” The Prophet enjoyed the embraces of nine wives and, according to al-Ghazali, Muhammad was able to perform his conjugal duties to all his nine wives in one morning. What is clear is that women are seen as objects: to be acquired and gotten rid of according to the man’s whim and fancy. If one wife does not suffice, advises al-Ghazali, take some more (up to four). If still you have not found peace, change them. What could be simpler!

A wife cannot legitimately ask her husband to satisfy her sexually—she can only demand that she be fed, clothed, and housed. Sexually, the husband is the master of the enjoyment of his wife. The converse is not true. The husband’s refusal to make love to his wife is simply considered as a free renunciation of his legitimately acquired sexual rights.

Muslim jurists are unanimous in saying that if the husband is incapable of sexual intercourse with his wife because of the ablation of his penis, the wife can ask for and obtain divorce immediately. However if his incapacity is due to other causes—impotence, for example—divorce is not granted straightaway. The husband is given one lunar year to consummate the marriage.

Of course, it is legally essential that the wife be a virgin when she asks for a divorce. Once the marriage has been consummated the woman’s sexual rights seem to vanish. According to the Shafi’ites, the woman can ask for divorce only in the case of the ablation of her husband’s penis—no other case is admitted. According to the Malekites and Hanefites, once the marriage has been consummated the woman has no rights whatsoever in this field; the husband is only obliged to have sexual intercourse with her once. Islam protects the rights of men and men only. The famous story of the debate over sodomy illustrates further the Muslim attitude toward sex. It appears there were certain men in Muhammad’s entourage who “enjoyed their women from front and from behind.” Some women asked Muhammad’s opinion. Muhammad received the appropriate revelation which is recorded in the Koran sura 2.223: “Your women are as your field—go unto them as you will.” The ambiguity of the phrase has been a source of conflict ever since. Nobody ever thought of consulting the women themselves; they were excluded from the debate. Muslim theologians concluded that a man could take his wife when he wanted and how he wanted, from the front or from the back, as long as he ejaculated in the woman’s vagina. In other words, man can choose the time and mode of the cultivation of his field as long as he sows the seed in a place from which he will reap the best harvest.

Sodomy was considered a grave sin though there seems to be disagreement on whether it was punishable by death or not. Muhammad also said less ambiguously: “The woman should never refuse her husband even on the saddle of a horse” (or, according to another version, “on the top of a burning oven”). On another occasion the Prophet cursed the woman who always says “later” or pretends to have her period to escape her marital duties. Yet another hadith recounts: Two prayers that never reach the heavens are that of the escaping slave and that of the reluctant woman who frustrates her husband at night.

The wife who refuses her husband is considered insubordinate and the husband has the right to punish her physically, something which is again divinely sanctioned in the Koran (see sura 4.34 quoted earlier).

She can also lose her right to maintenance and protection. For example, under Egyptian law (Article 67, Code du Statut Personnel): “A woman loses her right to maintenance if she refuses to give her self to her husband without a legitimate reason.”

We have seen how by marriage the husband acquires the “reproductive organ” (“al bud”) of his wife and that the converse is not the case. In fact, the woman has no rights over her own “bud,” her own sexual organ. As Mohammad Qotb, a well-known Muslim writer put it,

The guardian does not have the right to invite people to steal something which does not belong to him. Similarly the girl who is only simply the guardian of her honor (her bud) does not have the right to make use of it (her sexual organ) nor can she invite anyone to violate it. For it is not simply a case of her own honor but also a case of her parent’s honor, the honor of her family, of society and of all humanity.

Here we might say a few words about circumcision. Nowhere is there a greater divergence between theory and practice as in the case of circumcision, and, for once, Muslim practice is far more demanding than Islamic law. For the majority of Muslims, membership in Islam necessarily implies circumcision. In Java “to circumcise” means “to receive someone in the bosom of Islam.” It is, if you like, the Muslim equivalent of Christian baptism. For Christians the Muslim is by definition circumcised—the Turk of Aleppo in Shakespeare’s Othello is the “circumcised dog.” And yet in Islamic law it is simply a recommendation, not an obligation. It is not at all alluded to in the Koran. It is nonetheless held to be founded upon the customs of the Prophet. However, the early Muslims do not seem to have taken it too seriously: Omar the pious caliph once said that Muhammad was sent to the World to Islamisize it, not to circumcise it.

In modern Muslim society circumcision is a universal custom followed by even the most liberated, Westernized families. The circumcision of a child is a great occasion for a family and is celebrated with much pomp and ceremony, that is surpassed only by marriage festivities. Is circumcision necessary or is it a barbaric tradition left over from pre-Islamic times? Here is how Bouhdiba characterizes the whole operation:

As to the mutilated child the only resource left to him is to shout his pain and cry out at the castrating violence done to his body. This bruise to his flesh, these men and women who are torturing him, this gleaming razor, the screeches of the nosey old women, the sacrificial cock, ... and all those men and women who come to congratulate the patient’s “happy accession to Islam”—that is what a circumcision amounts to for a child.... Add to this the painful wound which is slow to heal (sometimes long and terrible weeks), sometimes accidents leading to serious complications: infections, hemorrhages, severance of the penis, arteries of the penis cut, ... Nothing can justify the practice of circumcision especially in view of the enormous physical and psychological damage it can inflict. It is not without reason that some talk of barbaric and traumatizing operations.

This leads us to female circumcision. According to the nineteenth century Dictionary of Islam and Burton, it was widespread in Arabia, where “clitoris cutter” was a legitimate profession practiced by old women, and perhaps most other Islamic countries. Bousquet thinks it was rare in North Africa. Bouhdiba writing in 1978 is of the opinion that it was rare in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey, and Iran but practiced everywhere else. According to the Minority Rights Group’s Report “Female Genital Mutilation: Proposals for Change,” published in 1992, the practice is still followed widely across Western, Saharan, and Eastern Africa, as well as in Yemen and Oman, by Muslims, Christians, Jews, and animists. “Tens of millions of girls are affected every year.” Unlike the public nature of the boy’s circumcision, female excision is practiced discreetly, and does not have the symbolic significance either—defloration of a virgin on the night of her wedding constitutes far more than the excision, the equivalent of a boy’s circumcision.

Again, female excision is not mentioned in the Koran and learned doctors of theology, when they deign to address the matter, spend very little time on it, simply recommending it as a pious act. What exactly does the operation involve? According to the omniscient Burton,⁵⁸⁶ “in the babe [the clitoris] protrudes beyond the labiae and snipping off the head forms female circumcision.” “Excision,” continues Burton,

is universal amongst the negroids of the Upper Nile, the Somal and other adjacent tribes. The operator, an old woman, takes up the instrument, a knife or razor blade fixed into a wooden handle, and with three sweeps cuts off the labia and the head of the clitoris. The parts are then sewn up with a packneedle and a thread of sheepskin; and in Dar-For a tin tube is inserted for the passage of urine. Before marriage the bridegroom trains himself for a month on beef, honey and milk; and if he can open his bride with the natural weapon he is a sworder to whom no woman in the tribe can deny herself. If he fails, he tries penetration with his fingers and by way of last resort whips out his whittle and cuts the parts open. The sufferings of the first few nights must be severe.

In modern times little seems to have changed; here is how the Economist describes the situation in 1992: “The procedure varies from mildly painful to gruesome, and can involve the removal of the clitoris and other organs with knives, broken glass, and razors—but rarely anesthetic. It can lead to severe problems with menstruation, intercourse and childbirth, psychological disturbances and even death.” In this gruesome act of “disbudding” of the female are embodied all the Muslim males’ fears of female sexuality. Female circumcision is “the proper complement of male circumcision, evening the sensitiveness of the genitories by reducing it equally in both sexes: an uncircumcised woman has the venereal orgasm much sooner and oftener than a circumcised man and frequent coitus would injure her health,” Burton assures us. With the subsequent reduction in the sensitiveness of the sexual parts of the woman, the man has to multiply his efforts to satisfy her; and if the woman’s clitoris has been entirely removed this may well prove impossible. This latter fact has been the source of much psychosexual neuroses among the Arab male. “Anatomy is destiny,” says Freud, in which case a mutilated anatomy is a mutilated destiny. I shall return to the subject of female circumcision in my chapter on “Assimilation & Multiculturalism” where I shall discuss attempts to eradicate this barbaric custom.

“When the faithful cohabits with his wife, the angels surround them from the earth to the heavens, sensual pleasure and desire have the beauty of mountains. Each time you make love, you are making an offering,” said Muhammad addressing a gathering of true believers. The Koran endorses this view: sura 5.89. “Do not deprive yourselves of pleasures deemed legitimate by God;” sura 24.32. “And marry those among you who are single.” On another occasion, Muhammad said, “I married many times and those who do not follow my example are not with me. Those of you who is capable of setting up house should marry.” Muhammad also forbade one of his followers to take up a vow of chastity. And of course, Muhammad himself had a particularly active sex life, which for many Christian historians was but licentious self-indulgence.

Thus Islam is favorable to the pleasures of the flesh—especially for men—pleasures that are present in paradise. But what precisely is there about the Islamic heaven that so many find delicious and others like Karl Popper find intolerable? Paradise is full of the sexual orgasms—of men. Beautiful nymphets have been especially created by God to reward the faithful (Muslim) male inhabitants of heaven:

78.31-33. “But for the God-fearing is a blissful abode, enclosed gardens and vineyards; and damsels with swelling breasts for companions; and a full cup.”

55.54-58. “On couches with linings of brocade shall they recline, and the fruit of the two gardens shall be within easy reach: ... Therein shall be the damsels with retiring glances, whom nor man nor djinn hath touched before them: ... Like jacynths and pearls: ...”

45.70-74. “In these gardens will be chaste and beautiful virgins.... nymphs, cloistered in their tents.... which neither man nor demon will have touched before them.”

46.10-22. “They shall recline on jeweled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds.”

56.35-38. “We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions, for those on the right hand.”

52.19-20. “Eat and drink in peace as a reward for what you have accomplished, resting on elbows on beds lined up in rows. We shall give them as wives wide-eyed houris.”

37.48-49. “Near them shall be blushing virgins with large, beautiful eyes who will be like hidden pearls.”

44.51-55. “The pious will be in a peaceful abode among, gardens and fountains; clothed in satin and brocade, face to face. We shall marry them to wide-eyed houris. In utter tranquility, they will demand all kinds of fruit.”

38.49-53. “The pious will have a beautiful place to come back to; the gardens of Eden with their gates wide open where reclining on beds they will ask for abundant fruit and exquisite drinks, all the while next to them will be blushing virgins as companions. This is what has been promised you on Judgment Day.”

2.25. “In these gardens, they will have wives of purity and live for ever.”

It was not for nothing that Muhammad said, “There will be no bachelors in Paradise.” In these utterly childish and sensual fantasies, the woman once again has been created to serve man—there are no fantasies of dark-eyed gigolos serving reclining, sensual women. The Koranic paradise was further elaborated with much glee by Muslim commentators. As Suyuti,⁵⁸⁷ for example, wrote: “Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal. The sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each elected will marry seventy houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetising vaginas.”

Thus we need to qualify the statement that “Islam is sex-positive.” We have already qualified it in one way—it is sex positive only from the male point of view: the entire ethico-juridical system elaborated by the ulamas is conceived in the interest of the male. We need to qualify it in two more ways. Islam may be sex-positive but not without restrictions whose transgression is punishable by death. We shall look at this aspect later in the chapter. Finally, in its attitudes toward purity and impurity we find a totally negative phobia; and it is to this we shall now turn.

“If ye are polluted than purify yourselves,” says the Koran 5.9. Minor impurity resulting from, for example, touching one’s penis is effaced by an ablution. Major impurity entails the washing of the whole body, and as the Prophet said, “He who leaves but one hair unwashed on his body will be punished in hell accordingly.” Major impurity results from sexual contact; any emission of sperm (male or female—Muslims believed that women also discharged a fluid at the moment of orgasm); sexual intercourse; anal intercourse; bestiality; menstruation; puerperium (after childbirth); nocturnal emissions. No moral idea is involved, the simple fact of intercourse renders you impure—whether the intercourse was permissible or not in Islamic law is irrelevant. For example, theologians pose the question: Is the fast of someone who has intercourse in the middle of the afternoon with a young boy or a foreign woman valid? Reply: if there has been no orgasm then the fast is still valid. The question of sin does not arise. Nor is there a question of hygiene. Minor impurity means that the polluted person cannot pray, perform the ritual circumambulation of the Kaaba, or touch the Koran. A person guilty of major impurity, in addition to the above prohibitions, cannot recite the Koran or penetrate the mosque. All the natural bodily functions seem to be a source of one kind of impurity or other. Islamic law is full of absurd details that can only be described as obsessional and probably neuroses inducing. As Bouhdiba put it,⁵⁸⁸ Muslim society has produced men and women made sick by cleanliness; a whole society with an anal complex. This association of sex with pollution can only be described as negative, though of course we are aware that these laws concerning purity play an important part in integrating the individual in the society to which he belongs.

We have already seen how a woman during menstruation is considered impure and is forbidden to fast, pray, go round the Kaaba, to read or even touch the Koran, to enter a mosque, or to have sexual relations with her husband. This is not in consideration of the delicate condition of the woman, as some modern apologists would have us believe—she is not dispensed of these things but is actually actively forbidden them because of her impurity.

The Koran time and again enjoins women to be pious and above all to be obedient—to God and to their husbands: surah 4.34. Virtuous women are obedient. Women are expected to be submissive, submissive to God, to a religion enunciated, elaborated, and interpreted by men. Women are totally excluded from any religious deliberations: sura 16.43. “And before you We sent only men to whom We revealed the Revelation. If you do not know that, question the People of the Book.”

Modern Muslim apologists have made exaggerated claims about the role played by the wives of the Prophet in the propagation of the religion. In reality this role was either very limited or nonexistent. The Koran simply asks the wives of the Prophet to stay at home. Visitors to Muhammad’s house were forbidden to talk directly to his wives. Surah 33.32-33. “O Wives of the Prophet do not be too seductive of speech lest the evil-hearted should desire you. Keep to accustomed speech. Stay in your homes. Do not try to imitate the ostentatious clothes of the women of the former times of ignorance. Get on with your prayers; give alms and obey God and his Apostle.”

33.53. O Believers do not enter the Prophet’s houses until leave is given you for a meal. Do not enter before the appropriate moment. When you are invited, enter! As soon as you have taken the meal retire, without seeking familiar talk. For this offends the Prophet and he is ashamed of you. But God is not ashamed of the truth. When you ask for something from His wives ask them from behind a curtain! That is more decent for your hearts and for theirs. It is not right for you to offend God’s Apostle; nor to marry His widows after Him. That would be an enormous sin in God’s eyes.

When and how could these wives teach under such daunting conditions? There is certainly no mention of it in the Koran, which limits itself to ordering them to obey God and His Apostle, to act decorously and to threaten them if they do not obey.

33.30-31. “O Wives of the Prophet! Those of you who commit a proven sin shall be doubly punished. That is easy enough for God. But those of you who obey God and His Apostle and do good works shall be doubly rewarded; for them We have made a generous provision.

It is safe to say that women have played no role in the development of Muslim dogma.

The inequality between men and women⁵⁸⁹ in matters of giving testimony or evidence; or being a witness is enshrined in the Koran: sura 2.282 (quoted above).

How do Muslim apologists justify the above text? Muslim men and women writers point to the putative psychological differences that exist between men and women. The Koran (and hence God) in its sublime wisdom knew that women are sensitive, emotional, sentimental, easily moved, and influenced by their biological rhythm, lacking judgment. But above all they have a shaky memory. In other words, women are psychologically inferior. Such are the dubious arguments used by Muslim intellectuals—male and, astonishingly enough, female intellectuals like Ahmad Jamal, Ms. Zahya Kaddoura, Ms. Ghada al-Kharsa, and Ms. Madiha Khamis. As Ghassan Ascha points out, the absurdity of their arguments are obvious.

By taking the testimony of two beings whose reasoning faculties are faulty we do not obtain the testimony of one complete person with a perfectly functioning rational faculty—such is Islamic arithmetic! By this logic, if the testimony of two women is worth that of one man, then the testimony of four women must be worth that of two men, in which case we can dispense with the testimony of the men. But no! In Islam the rule is not to accept the testimony of women alone in matters to which men theoretically have access. It is said that the Prophet did not accept the testimony of women in matters of marriage, divorce, and hudud. Hudud are the punishments set down by Muhammad in the Koran and the hadith for (I) adultery—stoning to death; (2) fornication—a hundred stripes; (3) false accusation of adultery against a married person—eighty stripes (4) apostasy-death ; (5) drinking wine—eighty stripes; (6) theft—the cutting off of the right hand; (7) simple robbery on the highway—the loss of hands and feet; robbery with murder—death, either by the sword or by crucifixion.

On adultery the Koran 24.4 says: “Those that defame honourable women and cannot produce four witriesses shall be given eighty lashes.” Of course, Muslim jurists will only accept four male witnesses. These witnesses must declare that they have “seen the parties in the very act of carnal conjunction.” Once an accusation of fornication and adultery has been made, the accuser himself or herself risks punishment if he or she does not furnish the necessary legal proofs. Witnesses are in the same situation. If a man were to break into a woman’s dormitory and rape half a dozen women, he would risk nothing since there would be no male witnesses. Indeed the victim of a rape would hesitate before going in front of the law, since she would risk being condemned herself and have little chance of obtaining justice. “If the woman’s words were sufficient in such cases,” explains Judge Zharoor ul Haq of Pakistan, “then no man would be safe.” This iniquitious situation is truly revolting and yet for Muslim law it is a way of avoiding social scandal concerning the all-important sexual taboo. Women found guilty of fornication were literally immured, at first; as the Koran 4.15 says: “Shut them up within their houses till death release them, or God make some way for them.” However this was later canceled and lapidation substituted for adultery and one hundred lashes for fornication. When a man is to be stoned to death, he is taken to some barren place, where he is stoned first by the witnesses, then the judge, and then the public. When a woman is stoned, a hole to receive her is dug as deep as her waist—the Prophet himself seems to have ordered such procedure. It is lawful for a man to kill his wife and her lover if he catches them in the very act.

In the case where a man suspects his wife of adultery or denies the legitimacy of the offspring, his testimony is worth that of four men. Sura 24.6: “If a man accuses his wife but has no witnesses except himself, he shall swear four times by God that his charge is true, calling down upon himself the curse of God if he is lying. But if his wife swears four times by God that his charge is false and calls down His curse upon herself if it be true, she shall receive no punishment.” Appearances to the contrary, this is not an example of Koranic justice or equality between the sexes. The woman indeed escapes being stoned to death but she remains rejected and loses her right to the dowry and her right to maintenance, whatever the outcome of the trial. A woman does not have the right to charge her husband in a similar manner. Finally, for a Muslim marriage to be valid there must be a multiplicity of witnesses. For Muslim jurists, two men form a multiplicity but not two or three or a thousand women.

In questions of heritage, the Koran tells us that male children should inherit twice the portion of female children:

4.11-12. A male shall inherit twice as much as a female. If there be more than two girls, they shall have two-thirds of the inheritance, but if there be one only, she shall inherit the half. Parents shall inherit a sixth each, if the deceased have a child; but if he leave no child and his parents be his heirs, his mother shall have a third. If he have brothers, his mother shall have a sixth after payment of any legacy he may have bequeathed or any debt he may have owed.

To justify this inequality, Muslim authors lean heavily on the fact that a woman receives a dowry and has the right to maintenance from her husband. It is also true that according to Muslim law the mother is not at all obliged to provide for her children, and if she does spend money on her children, it is, to quote Bousquet, “recoverable by her from her husband if he is returned to a better fortune as in the case of any other charitable person. Therefore there is no point in the husband and wife sharing in the taking charge of the household; this weighs upon the husband alone. There is no longer any financial interest between them. ”⁵⁹⁰

This latter point referred to by Bousquet simply emphasizes the negative aspects of a Muslim marriage—that is to say, the total absence of any idea of “association” between “couples” as in Christianity. As to dowry, it is, of course, simply a reconfirmation of the man’s claims over the woman in matters of sex and divorce. Furthermore, in reality the woman does not get to use the dowry for herself. The custom is either to use the dowry to furnish the house of the newly married couple or for the wife to offer it to her father. According to the Malekites, the woman can be obliged by law to use the dowry to furnish the house. Muslim law also gives the guardian the right to cancel a marriage—even that of a woman of legal age—if he thinks the dowry is not sufficient. Thus the dowry, instead of being a sign of her independence, turns out once more to be a symbol of her servitude.

The woman has the right to maintenance but this simply emphasizes her total dependence on her husband, with all its attendant sense of insecurity. According to Muslim jurists, the husband is not obliged under Islamic law to pay for her medical expenses in case of illness. Financial independence of the woman would of course be the first step in the liberation of Muslim women and thus it is not surprising that it is seen as a threat to male dominance. Muslim women are now obliged to take equal responsibility for looking after their parents. Article 158 of Syrian law states “The child—male or female—having the necessary means is obliged to take responsibility for his or her poor parents.” The birth of a girl is still seen as a catastrophe in Islamic societies. The system of inheritance just adds to her misery and her dependence on the man. If she is an only child she receives only half the legacy of her father; the other half goes to the male members of the father’s family. If there are two or more daughters, they inherit two-thirds. This pushes fathers and mothers to prefer male children to female so that they can leave the entirety of their effects or possessions to their own descendants. “Yet when a new-born girl is announced to one of them his countenance darkens and he is filled with gloom”; (sura 43.15). The situation is even worse when a woman loses her husband—she only receives a quarter of the legacy. If the deceased leaves more than one wife, all the wives are still obliged to share among themselves a quarter or one-eighth of the legacy.

The right to bloody vengeance⁵⁹¹ is acknowledged by Islam. Sura 2.178 states, “Believers, retaliation is decreed for you in blood shed: a free man for a freeman, a slave for a slave; and a female for a female.” It is clear from this text that a free man and woman do not have the same legal status. Muslim jurists have decided, that in cases of manslaughter, the pecuniary compensation (in Arabic, “diya”) in the case of a woman is half that of a man. For the Malekites, the diya for a woman or a male Jew or Christian is equivalent to half of that of a Muslim male—whether it concerns manslaughter or premeditated murder. Muslim jurists have also decided that anyone who causes the loss of a fetus must pay the diya; the diya for a male Muslim fetus is double that of a female fetus.

Men’s authority over women and the obedience women owed to the men are divinely sanctioned in the Koran (suras 4.34 and 2.228 mentioned earlier).

Muslim jurists⁵⁹² are unanimous in their view that men are superior to women in virtue of their reasoning abilities, their knowledge, and their supervisory powers. And since it is the man who assumes financial responsibility for the family, it is argued, it is natural that he should have total power over the woman. These same jurists, of course, totally neglect changing social conditions where a woman may contribute her salary to the upkeep of her family—power over women remains a divine command and “natural” or “in the nature of things.” Muslim thinkers continue to confine Muslim women to the house—to leave the house is against the will of God and against the principles of Islam. Confined to their houses, women are then reproached for not having any experience of the outside world! Catch 22 or simply Islamic logic? Here is an example of this wonderful logic:

[By leaving the house a woman] runs the risk of meeting dangers which are contrary to the spiritual qualities of womanhood which she incarnates and with which she fulfils the noblest virtues in life. To leave the house is to go against the will of God and is condemned by Islam. Her household chores are limited and thus her experience which she acquires [is also limited]; whereas the man’s tasks outside the house, embrace a wider horizon; his experience and his relationships are greater and more varied.

The rights of women are referred to in sura 2.228, quoted earlier. The pre-eminence of men, however, is never forgotten. Women have the right to maintenance (“nafaqa,” in Arabic), that is, food, shelter, and clothing. And that, according to Ms. Khamis is largely sufficient—what more could a woman reasonably ask? The duties as opposed to the rights of a woman are another matter. Some jurists seem to think that a Muslim woman should occupy herself with household chores, quoting a famous hadith that recounts that the Prophet ordered his daughter Fatima to confine herself to the house and her household chores and her husband Ali to all his duties outside the house. Other jurists hold the view that her task is not to occupy herself with the house, “Her sole duty is to stay at home to satisfy the sexual appetite of her husband.” Al-Ghazali, in the “Proof of Islam,” sums up the traditional view:

[a man marries] in order to have an untroubled mind as far as house work is concerned: kitchen, cleaning, bedding. A man, supposing he is able to do without sex, is not capable of living alone at home. If he were to take on himself the task of doing all the housework, he would no longer be able to dedicate himself to intellectual work or knowledge. The virtuous wife by making herself useful at home is her husband’s helpmate ... and at same time satisfies his sexual desires.⁵⁹³

Above all the virtuous woman is obedient and her obedience is firmly linked to her obedience to God. According to a hadith, the woman who accomplishes her five prayers, fasts, guards her chastity, and obeys her husband, will go to paradise. The Muslim jurists further assure obedient women that their rewards “will be the same as those Muslims who fight for the defense and propagation of the Islamic faith.” Traditions enjoining wives to be obedient are numerous:

—The woman who dies and with whom the husband is satisfied will go to paradise.

—If it had been given me to order someone to prostrate themselves in front of someone other than God, I would surely have ordered women to prostrate themselves in front of their husbands.... A woman cannot fulfill her duties toward God without first having accomplished those that she owes her husband.

—The virtuous woman is the one who engenders joy every time her husband looks at her; and who obeys him as soon as he orders her and who preserves her chastity and his belongings in his absence.

The wife can refuse to do her housework—that is her right—but in doing so she is being disobedient to her husband and consequently to God. As Simone de Beauvoir⁵⁹⁴ so perceptively remarks,

Man enjoys the great advantage of having a God endorse the codes he writes and since man exercises a sovereign authority over woman, it is especially fortunate that this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being. For the Jews, Mohammedans, and Christians, among others, man is master by divine right; the fear of God, therefore, will repress any impulse towards revolt in the downtrodden female. One can bank on her credulity. Woman takes an attitude of respect and faith toward the masculine universe.

If she refuses to obey her husband, he can file a complaint with a magistrate who invariably finds her in the wrong and orders her to obey. If she refuses to submit to the judgment of the magistrates, the Penal Code of Egypt and Libya, Article 212, stipulates⁵⁹⁵that “the judgments can be implemented in a coercive manner if the situation demands it. The houses can be besieged by the forces of order if the need arises following the instructions of the judge.” This law is based on the Islamic ban on a woman leaving her house. Islam has given man the means to chastise his wife if she remains disobedient (see sura 4.34 discussed above). She, of course, has no right to admonish her husband; men are warned not to listen to them: “Unhappiness to the slave of a woman,” says a hadith. Another says, “Take up positions opposing women; there is much merit in such opposition.” Yet another says, “As soon as man begins to obey every whim of a capricious woman, God throws him in hell.” According to theologians,⁵⁹⁶ the husband has the right to administer corporal punishment to his wife if she

1. refuses to make herself beautiful for him;

2. refuses to meet his sexual demands;

3. leaves the house without permission or without any legitimate reason recognized by law; or

4. neglects her religious duties.

A Hadith attributes the following saying to the Prophet: “Hang up your whip where your wife can see it.” There are a number of other hadiths that contradict this one. In those, Muhammad explicitly forbids men to beat their wives—in which case the Prophet himself is contradicting what the Koran, enshrining divine law, permits.

What recourse does a woman have against a difficult husband? The Koran talks vaguely of a mutual “agreement” (sura 4.128). For modern theologians, even though it is the husband who is violent, demanding, or difficult, it is still the wife who has to adapt herself, to bend, and accommodate her husband’s whims.

The Vell⁵⁹⁷

The Arabic word “hijab” is sometimes translated as veil, but it can signify anything that prevents something from being seen—a screen, a curtain, or even a wall—and the hymen. The root of the verb “hajaba” means “to hide.” By extension, hijab is used to mean something that separates, demarcates a limit, establishes a barrier. Finally, hijab has the sense of a moral interdiction. The Koran also uses two other words, “djilbah” and “khibar.” The former is likewise translated as “veil,” but also as “outer garment” and even “cloak.” “Khibar” is similarly translated as “veil,” but also as “shawl.” In this philological aside, we may also mention the names of other garments that are used to cover Muslim woman in part or entirely throughout the Islamic world. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia we find haik, safsari, akhnif, and adjar. In Egypt, Israel, Syria, Iraq, and among the Bedouins, we find abaya, tarna, izar, milhafa, khabara, chambar, niqab, litham, and bourqou; in Iran, bourda, tchador, pitcha, and rouband; in Turkey, yatchmek, yalek, harmaniya, and entari; in India and Pakistan, burka.

In the struggle for the liberation of the Muslim woman the veil has become a symbol of her servitude. Thus in 1923 the President of the Egyptian Feminist Union, Ms. Houda Cha’araoui, and her colleagues defiantly threw their veils into the sea. Similarly in 1927 there was a campaign of “de-hijabization” in communist Turkestan. Not less than 87,000 Uzbek women publicly repudiated their “black cowls”, though not before 300 of their sisters had been killed by the male heads of the Muslim families for betraying Islam. In 1928, at the independence celebrations, the Shah of Afghanistan ordered his wife to “unveil” herself in public. Following the public scandal, the shah was obliged to backtrack and cancel his projects for the emancipation of women. He himself was obliged to abdicate. In 1936 Reza Shah of Iran forbade the tchador by a special decree. Obviously the people were not ready to break with tradition and so after mass protests in 1941 he also had to retreat and abrogate the law.

The hijab was imposed by the Koran (see suras 33.53, 33.59, and 33.32- 33) and also:

24.30-31. Enjoin believing women to turn their eyes away from temptation and to preserve their chastity; to cover their adornments—except such as are normally displayed;—to draw their veils over their bosoms and not to reveal their finery except to their husbands..

The veil and the injunction to Muslim women to stay at home came with Islam; for it is clear, as I have already indicated, that Bedouin women enjoyed considerable freedom, accompanied their husbands on long marches and made themselves indispensable in the camps. But all this was to change as Islam became more and more an urban phenomenon and as it came into contact with other more developed civilizations whose customs the Muslims adopted. The veil was adopted by the Arabs from the Persians, and the woman’s obligation to stay closed in at home was a tradition copied from the Byzantines, who in turn had adopted an ancient Greek custom. Of course, Muslim theologians have a totally different explanation of the origin of the hijab. According to them it was imposed on women by God to please one person, i.e., Omar ibn al-Khallab. They refer to a tradition that recounts that Omar one day said to the Prophet: “The pious and the profligate have easy access to your house and see your wives. Why don’t you order the mothers of all believers to cover themselves?” And Muhammad received the revelations quoted earlier. According to another version, attributed to Aisha, Omar accidentally touched her hand and excused himself by saying that had he the power no one would steal a glance at her. Yet another rendition is recounted by historian al-Tabari. The real function of the hijab is to cover up the awra which we have no right to see. By “awra” is meant “the shameful parts of the body and those parts we hide out of dignity and pride. As for women, they are entirely awra. ”⁵⁹⁸ According to Muslim jurists, awra for men consists of those parts between the navel and the knees-and they are concealed in all cases except for exposure to his wives and concubines. No one seems to agree on women’s awra. According to Hanafites, the woman can uncover her face and hands, only so long as this does not lead to or provoke temptation, seduction, or discord. For the other three Sunnite sects a woman can only uncover her face and hands in cases of emergency—the need for medical attention, for example. The liberal attitude of the Hanafites is only apparent and not real⁵⁹⁹—in reality, a woman has only to be smiling and pretty for the ulamas to strictly reimpose the veil. Even old women are advised to remain covered. Koran 24.60 says, “It shall be no offence for old spinsters who have no hope of marriage to discard, their cloaks without revealing their adornments. Better if they do not discard them.” Those wishing to keep women’s faces and hands uncovered rely on the following hadith recounted by Aisha, the Prophet’s wife: “Asma, the daughter of Abu Bakr [and the sister of Aisha] was one day in front of the Prophet without a veil. The Prophet said to her—‘Asma, a grown woman should only show this.’ ” And He showed her face and her hands.

Meanwhile various Muslim experts contradict each other on this point. Some insist that even a woman’s heels should be well-hidden, citing an appropriate hadith to back up their arguments. Not only is it a symbol of women’s servitude but also a symbol of the woman’s total lack of trust in the father, the brother, or the husband; and at the same time the male possessiveness: for the brother, and the father she is the merchandise that must not be shop soiled; and for the husband she is an object to be used at home and then carefully wrapped and put away, lest another covet her. The question of hijab continues to play an important role in modem debate and is of more than academic importance. A New York Times reporter described the situation in April 1992 in Iran:

The most visible battle for women’s rights is still fought through their wardrobes. In the 13-year revolution, perhaps no other issue has been debated with such fury as the rules for what constitutes “good hejab” or head covering. “Research proved female hair had a kind of radiance” that might tempt men, Iran’s first president under the revolution, Abol-Hassan Banisadr, said in the early days of the Islamic republic. In the years that followed, women were insulted, arrested, fined and even lashed for bad hejab.... After the all-encompassing chador, held in place with one’s hand or one’s teeth, the second most acceptable garment is the rappoush [a loose, long garment] worn with a scarf.

Do women have the right to leave their houses?⁶⁰⁰ Hijab also applies to the “hiding” of women behind the walls of her house. The Koran is clear on this point in sura 33.33, ordering the wives of the Prophet to stay in their homes. For reformists this only applies to the wives of the Prophet; for conservatives it applies to all Muslim women. Ghawji, a conservative, has systematically set out under what conditions a woman can leave her house, giving copious quotes from the Koran and the hadiths.

1. She may leave only in case of a real need.

2. The exit must be authorized by her husband or legal guardian.

3. She must be well-covered, including her face, to avoid tempting any men who might be around; she must move with her head bowed down looking neither left nor right. (Koran 24.31).

4. She must not put on perfume. The Prophet has said: “Any woman who puts on perfume and passes in front of men is a fornicator.”

5. She must not walk in the middle of the road among men. The Prophet on noticing the confusion on leaving a mosque, said: “You women do not have the right to walk amongst men—stick to the sides.”

6. She must walk in a chaste and modest manner (sura, 24.31).

7. When talking to a stranger, her voice must remain normal (sura 33.32).

8. If inside a shop or an office, she must avoid being left alone behind a closed door with a man. The Prophet has said: “There can never be a tete-a-tete between a man and a woman without the devil interfering and doing his worst.

9. She must never shake the hand of a man.

10. Even at a female friend’s house, she must not discard any clothes covering her in case there is a man hiding in the house. The Prophet has said: “Any woman who takes off her cloak in other than her own house or the house of her husband is rending apart the envelope that protects her in front of God.”

11. The wife must not go beyond a thirty-kilometer limit without being accompanied by her husband or a relative.

12. A woman must never attempt to imitate a man.

Jurists have elaborated in precise detail what a woman who does leave the house should wear. She can wear anything she likes as long as it conforms to the following conditions:

1. Her dress must cover the entire body except the face and hands.

2. The dress must not be too fine or elaborate.

3. It must be of thick material and not transparent.

4. It must not cling to her body tightly; it should be loose.

5. It must not be perfumed.

6. It must not resemble any kind of man’s wear.

7. It must not resemble the clothes of unbelievers.

8. It must not be “luxurious” or glamorous or of too great a value.

These jurists cite hadiths forbidding women to put on perfume, to wear a wig, to put on make up, or otherwise to interfere with nature. These same authors who condemn make-up for interfering with divine creation see no contradiction in demanding the excision of the clitoris, which is seen as a pious act to be encouraged. According to a famous hadith, if you “Leave the woman without clothes, they will remain at home.”

Thanks to the courageous efforts of certain reformists, women at last did win the right to education. Unable to stem the tide of the feminist movement, and faced with a fait accompli, the conservatives now claimed Islam had never denied women this right, and that it was the duty of every Muslim to educate himself or herself. The University of al-Azhar, a bastion of male privilege, opened its doors to women in 1961. These claims on behalf of Islam are of course false.⁶⁰¹ Traditions discouraging or prohibiting the education of women are numerous: “Prevent them from writing;” “Do not add an evil to unhappiness” are the norm. Indeed if Islam had sincerely approved of educating women, why was it that women had remained illiterate and ignorant for so many centuries? If she is to stay at home, if she is forbidden to talk to strange men, how will she acquire her learning? If her family gives her permission to learn, what will she be allowed to study? Essentially, most modern Muslim thinkers propose religious education for women, with a few courses on sewing, knitting, and looking after the house. These thinkers base their arguments on the hadith where the Prophet said, “Do not teach women writing; teach them spinning and the sura ‘The Night’ (al-Nur).” The message is clear—she must not overstep her domestic domain. She was created by God to be a wife and mother; hence, any venture into pure chemistry, astronomy, or geometry is against her nature, her needs, and the needs of her family.

It should be apparent by now⁶⁰² that by going to work Muslim women would automatically upset a great many Islamic laws governing women and the family. In Islam only men work, earn money, spend it, and are responsible for their wives’ maintenance—all of which give men legitimate, divinely sanctioned authority over their wives. Some apparently reformist thinkers insist that every Muslim woman has the right to work. But on closer examination, we see that by “work,” these thinkers mean something very limited: teachers of girls, nurses looking after only women, doctors for women. According to the learned doctors, she can do any kind of job except (1) those which are incompatible with her faith—such as cleaning drains, fishing in lakes or rivers; (2) those that are incompatible with her feminine nature—ticket inspector, police officer, dancer; (3) those which she is incapable of handling physically, for example, factory work; (4) those that demand the use of a horse or a bicycle; (5) and, of course, those that require the use of reason—she cannot be a judge or imam. Other thinkers forbid women the job of actress, air hostess, or saleswoman. The arguments most frequently used to limit women’s work are (1) a woman’s nature; she was made by nature to stay at home, look after her husband’s sexual demands, and raise children; (2) her limited reasoning powers; and (3) her psychological weakness because of menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth.

These thinkers are afraid that as soon as a woman leaves her husband’s house, she will fall into sin. They reduce all contact between men and women to sex. So that work that might be seen as a confirmation of woman’s being, a fulfilment of her person, of her human dignity, of her personal freedom, is in the eyes of the Muslim thinkers nothing but a degradation of her dignity and honor.

Despite all the obstacles put in front of them, Muslim women have managed to leave their households, have acquired educations, have started to work, and forge careers for themselves; thus, they have laid claims to their rights as consonant with their new position in society. For example, in 1952 Egyptian feminists assembled their forces and claimed the right to vote and the right to become members of Parliament. The ulamas of the University of al-Azhar rallied their forces and in June 1952 promulgated a fatwa liberally sprinkled with quotes from the Koran and the hadiths that demonstrated that Islam condemned any attempt by women to aspire to any post as a member of Parliament. The learned doctors further pointed out that⁶⁰³ (1) women did not possess enough intellectual force; (2) women, because of their femininity, are exposed to dangers that could lead them to abandon reason and propriety; (3) according to Abu Bakr, when the Prophet heard that the Persians had made the daughter of Chosroes their queen he exclaimed: “Never will a people who trust their affairs to a woman succeed”; (4) failure inevitably follows on the appointment of a woman to a public post; (5) Islamic law accords to a woman’s testimony only half the weight of a man’s; (6) according to the Koran “men decide for women in view of the fact that God has given preference to the former over the latter; (7) God obliges men to be present at the mosque on Fridays and to conduct the holy war but not women; and (8) public posts were attributed by Islamic law only to men fulfilling certain conditions.

For all these reasons the learned doctors decided that Islamic law forbade women to assume any posts of public responsibility and in particular the post of member of Parliament. Happily, despite the efforts of the ulamas, Egyptian women got the vote in 1956. In Syria, women got the vote in 1949, again despite the obstacles put in their path by the ulamas.

Islam explicitly forbids certain professions to women: head of state, head of the armed forces, imam, and judge.

The system of guardianship in Islam⁶⁰⁴ further limits the rights of women. According to the Malekites, Shafi’ites, and Hanbalites, even a woman of legal age cannot conclude her own marriage contract on her own. Her legal guardian alone has this right. According to the Hanafites, a woman can conclude her own marriage but with the agreement of her guardian. Of course, the guardian must be male and Muslim. If a woman is a virgin, irrespective of age, her guardian can force her to marry someone of his choice, according to the Malekites, Shafi’ites, and Hanbalites. Even the theoretical right to choose her husband accorded her by the Hanfites turns out to be illusory. Theoretically, on reaching puberty a woman can no longer be forced to marry against her will; but since a majority of girls are forced to marry before they reach puberty, the right to choose remains a fiction. Even assuming she reaches puberty, under the Hanfites she simply has the right to say “Yes” or “No” to the person picked by her guardian. There is no question of her going out and choosing her own husband. It is the legal guardian who will choose for her, and characteristically when making his inquiries, the desirable qualities of the husband will be described in a few lines whereas the desirable qualities of the wife will be explained in a text twelve times longer.

In any case, when and how could a Muslim woman possibly go out and meet her Prince Charming in view of all the constraints imposed on her by Islam that we have described in this chapter—forbidden to leave the house, forbidden to talk to men? Child marriages continue to be practiced, and the fact that the Prophet himself married Aisha when she was only nine and he was fifty-three encourages Muslim society to continue with this iniquitous custom. As Bousquet, writing in the 1950s, noticed, in North Africa generally and in Algeria particularly, even after a century of French rule, consummation of marriages with young girls continues, often resulting in serious accidents, and sometimes death.

In all cases a Muslim woman is not permitted to marry a non-Muslim. All Muslim males can at any moment separate themselves from their wives, can repudiate their wives without formality, without explanations, and without compensation. It is enough for the husband to pronounce the phrase “You are divorced” and it is done. The divorce is revocable for up to a period of three months. If the husband pronounces “You are divorced” three times, then the divorce is definitive. In the latter case the divorced wife cannot return to her husband until she has been married, “enjoyed,” and divorced by another husband. Divorce depends entirely on the will and caprice of the husband—he may divorce his wife without any misbehavior on her part, or without assigning any cause. The mother has the right to keep custody of the children, but as soon as she decides to remarry, she automatically loses her right to her children from the previous marriage. In the case where the husband has the custody of children, if he remarries he does not lose this right to keep his children. Thus the woman is faced with the choice of remarrying and losing custody of her children or keeping her children and not marrying. This of course leads to total insecurity for the women. Divorce is very frequent in Arab countries; instead of keeping four wives at the same time—which is rather expensive—a man simply changes his wife several times as recommended by the great al-Ghazali. If a woman asks a man for a divorce, he may agree if he is paid or compensated in some way. In such a case she is not entitled to the repayment of her dowry. The Koran sanctions such a dissolution: 2.229. “If ye fear that they cannot observe the ordinances of God, then no blame shall attach to either of you for what the wife shall herself give for her redemption.”

An annulment of a marriage means a woman loses the right to the dowry and must give back what she has already received. Divorced women do have the right to remarry but “must wait keeping themselves from men, three menstrual courses” (2.228).

Finally, I shall end with a revised list of what a woman has to suffer under Islam because of her misdemeanors in the Garden of Eden. She is forbidden to (1) be a head of state; (2) be a judge; (3) be an imam; (4) be a guardian; (5) leave her house without permission of her guardian or husband; (6) have a tete-a-tete with a strange man; (7) shake a man’s hand; (8) put on makeup or perfume outside the house; (9) uncover her face for fear of “temptation”; (10) travel alone; (11) inherit the same amount as a man—she must make do with half; (12) bear witness in cases of hudud (see page 310) and accept that her testimony is worth only half that of a man; (13) perform the religious rituals when menstruating; (14) choose where she will live before she is ugly or old; (15) marry without permission from her guardian; (16) marry a non-Muslim; and (17) divorce her spouse.

The measure of a society’s degree of civilization is the position it accords to women, in which case Islam fares very badly indeed. In the words of the great John Stuart Mill, “I am convinced that social arrangements which subordinate one sex to the other by law are bad in themselves and form one of the principal obstacles which oppose human progress; I am convinced that they should give place to a perfect equality.”

Case Histories: The Women of Pakistan

To be a woman in Pakistan is a terrible thing.”

Pakistani woman, suspended from her job in a hotel in 1990 for shaking hands with a man.⁶⁰⁵

I tell you, this country is being sodomized by religion.

Pakistani businessman, ex-air force officer.⁶⁰⁶

Let these women be warned. We will tear them to pieces. We will give them such terrible punishments that no one in future will dare to raise a voice against Islam.

Pakistani mulla (priest) addressing the dissenting women of Rawalpindi.⁶⁰⁷

Today, in Pakistan, respect for women no longer exists, and crimes against them have increased dramatically. They claim to have “Islamized” us. How can you Islamize people who are already Muslim? Ever since Zia gave power to the mullahs, it seems as though every man feels he can get hold of any female and tear her apart.

Ms Farkander Iqbal, Deputy Police Superintendent, Lahore, Pakistan.⁶⁰⁸

One of the ironies of the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as a homeland for the Muslims of India, is that its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was not at all religious. In fact, in today’s Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Jinnah would very probably be flogged in public: during his years in England, Jinnah had developed a decidedly un-Islamic taste for whiskey, and even pork. It is also now clear that Jinnah envisaged a basically secular state; he said in one of his last major speeches:

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan.... You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the state [my emphasis].... We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are citizens and equal citizens of one state.... Now, I think we should keep in front of us our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual [my emphasis], but in the political sense as citizens of the State.⁶⁰⁹

When asked by a journalist in July 1947 if Pakistan would be a religious state, Jinnah replied, “You are asking a question that is absurd. I do not know what a theocratic state means.” Why, in that case, had Pakistan been deemed necessary? M. J. Akbar has argued convincingly that Pakistan was not demanded by the Muslim masses of India; it was created by an alliance of the clergy (mullas) and powerful landlords. “While the landlords and capitalists allowed the clergy to make Pakistan a religious state, the clergy allowed the landlords guaranteed property rights and the capitalists unbridled control over the economy. Theocracy and landlordism/capitalism are the two pillars of Pakistan and BanglaDesh.”⁶¹⁰

After Jinnah’s untimely death in 1948, the Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan prepared a constitution that was also essentially secular. This was not at all acceptable to the mullas, who began foaming at the mouth at the very mention of democracy. Under pressure from them, the democratic constitution was withdrawn. Then in 1951, Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated by an unknown gunman, who many believe was paid by the mullas.

In 1971, after years of military rule, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took over as martial law administrator and, in 1972, as prime minister. Though Bhutto was also essentially secular minded, he was no democrat. He also made overtures to the mullas; banned gambling and alcohol, despite his own well-known taste for whiskey; and declared that the Ahmadi sect was non-Muslim. In 1977, General Zia al-Haq took over in a military coup declaring that the process of Islamization was not going fast enough. The mullas had finally got someone who was prepared to listen to them.

Zia imposed martial law, total press censorship, and began creating a theocratic state, believing that Pakistan ought to have “the spirit of Islam.” He banned women from athletic contests and even enforced the Muslim fast during the month of Ramadan at gunpoint. He openly admitted that there was a contradiction between Islam and democracy. Zia introduced Islamic laws that discriminated against women. The most notorious of these laws were the Zina and Hudud Ordinances that called for the Islamic punishments of the amputation of hands for stealing and stoning to death for married people found guilty of illicit sex. The term “zina” included adultery, fornication, and rape, and even prostitution. Fornication was punished with a maximum of a hundred lashes administered in public and ten years’ imprisonment.

In practice, these laws protect rapists, for a woman who has been raped often finds herself charged with adultery or fornication. To prove zina, four Muslim adult males of good repute must be present to testify that sexual penetration has taken place. Furthermore, in keeping with good Islamic practice, these laws value the testimony of men over women. The combined effect of these laws is that it is impossible for a woman to bring a successful charge of rape against a man; instead, she herself, the victim, finds herself charged with illicit sexual intercourse, while the rapist goes free. If the rape results in a pregnancy, this is automatically taken as an admission that adultery or fornication has taken place with the woman’s consent rather than that rape has occurred.

Here are some sample cases.⁶¹¹

In a town in the northern province of Punjab, a woman and her two daughters were stripped naked, beaten, and gang-raped in public, but the police declined to pursue the case.

A thirteen-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped by a “family friend.” When her father brought a case against the rapist, it was the girl who was put in prison charged with “zina,” illegal sexual intercourse. The father managed to secure the child’s release by bribing the police. The traumatized child was then severely beaten for disgracing the family honor.

A fifty-year-old widow, Ahmedi Begum,⁶¹² decided to let some rooms in her house in the city of Lahore to two young veiled women. As she was about to show them the rooms, the police burst into the courtyard of the house and arrested the two girls and Ahmedi Begum’s nephew who had simply been standing there. Later that afternoon, Ahmedi Begum went to the police station with her son-in-law to inquire about her nephew and the two girls. The police told Ahmedi they were arresting her too. They confiscated her jewelry and pushed her into another room. While she was waiting, the police officers shoved the two girls, naked and bleeding, into the room and then proceeded to rape them again in front of the widow. When Ahmedi covered her eyes, the police forced her to watch by pulling her arms to her sides. After suffering various sexual humiliations, Ahmedi herself was stripped and raped by one officer after another. They dragged her outside where she was again beaten. One of the officers forced a policeman’s truncheon, covered with chili paste, into her rectum, rupturing it. Ahmedi screamed in horrible agony and fainted, only to wake up in prison, charged with zina. Her case was taken up by a human rights lawyer. She was released on bail after three months in prison, but was not acquitted until three years later. In the meantime, her son-in-law divorced her daughter because of his shame.

Was this an isolated case? Unfortunately no. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in its annual report that one woman is raped every three hours in Pakistan and one in two rape victims is a juvenile. According to Women’s Action Forum, a woman’s rights organization, 72 percent of all women in police custody in Pakistan are physically and sexually abused. Furthermore, 75 percent of all women in jail are there under charges of zina. Many of these women remain in jail awaiting trial for years.

In other words, the charge of zina is casually applied by any man who wants to get rid of his wife, who is immediately arrested, and kept waiting in prison, sometimes for years. Before the introduction of these laws the total number of women in prison was 70; the present number is more than 3000. Most of these women have been charged under the Zina or Hudud Ordinances.⁶¹³

Safia Bibi, a virtually blind sixteen-year-old domestic, was raped by her land-lord and his son. As a result, she became pregnant and later gave birth to an illegitimate child. Though her father brought a case against the men, they were acquitted since there were not the requisite number of male witnesses. However, Safia’s pregnancy was proof of fornication and she was accordingly sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, fifteen lashes, and a fine of a thousand rupees. The judge smugly stated that he had given a light sentence in view of her age and near blindness. Happily, public pressure resulted in the revocation of the sentence. Since Zia’s Islamization program got under way, the number of attacks on women has increased. In every way the lot of women has worsened under the Islamic laws. With the passage of the sharia bill in 1991, the position was further degraded, if that is possible. As one prominent feminist put it, “The shariah bill is a means to control women and marginalize them instead of bringing in a just order. It is a law that facilitates aggression against women but ignores the corruption in the country and it disregards violence against women.”⁶¹⁴

The Western press naively believed that the election of Benazir Bhutto as Pakistan’s prime minister in November 1988 would revolutionize women’s role not just in Pakistan, but in the entire Islamic world. Under Islamic law of course, women cannot be head of an Islamic state, and Pakistan had become an Islamic republic under the new constitution of 1956. Thus, Benazir Bhutto had defied the mullas and won. But her government lasted a bare twenty months, during which period Nawaz Sharif, who was the prime minister briefly in the early 1990s, is said to have encouraged the mullas in their opposition to having a woman as the head of an Islamic state. Benazir Bhutto’s government was dismissed on charges of corruption, and her husband imprisoned in 1990.

The lot of the Muslim woman was harsh before Benazir’s election, and nothing has changed. She has pandered to the religious lobby, the mullas, the very people who insist that a woman cannot hold power in an Islamic state, and has repeatedly postponed any positive action on the position of women. As one woman opposition member of the National Assembly put it in 1990, “Benazir Bhutto has not demonstrated a commitment to anything other than her own desire to wield power.”⁶¹⁵ Benazir Bhutto has shown herself to be far less radical than the Western media had hoped for. She agreed to an arranged marriage with a man she had known for seven days, and she constantly wears the traditional headscarf. At this year’s Cairo Conference on Population (September 1994), she again went out of her way to take the side of the Muslim conservatives. “We thought we elected a Cory [Aquino], but it looks like we got Imelda instead,” said one disappointed member of the National Assembly.⁶¹⁶

The statistics concerning the women of Pakistan show the same grim picture. Pakistan is one of only four countries in the world where female life expectancy (51 years) is lower than the male (52); the average female life expectancy for all poor countries is 61. A large number of Pakistani women die in pregnancy or childbirth, six for every 1000 live births. Despite the fact that contraception has never been banned by orthodox Islam, under Zia the Islamic Ideology Council of Pakistan declared family planning to be un-Islamic. Various mullas condemned family planning as a Western conspiracy to emasculate Islam. As a result, the average fertility rate per woman in Pakistan is 6.9. Pakistan is also among the world’s bottom ten countries for female attendance at primary schools. Some people put female literacy in the rural areas as low as 2 percent (Economist, March 5, 1994). As the Economist put it, “Some of the blame for all this lies with the attempt of the late President Zia ul Haq to create an Islamic republic.... Zia turned the clock back. A 1984 law of his, for instance, gives a woman’s legal evidence half the weight of a man’s.” (Economist, Jan. 13, 1990).

Indeed a large part of the blame lies with the attitudes inculcated by Islam, which has always seen woman as inferior to man. The birth of a baby girl is the occasion for mourning. Hundreds of baby girls are abandoned every year in the gutters and dust bins and on the pavements. An organization working in Karachi to save these children has calculated that more than five hundred children are abandoned a year in Karachi alone, and that 99 percent of them are girls. ⁶¹⁷

At the time of a wedding, the family of the bride provides the dowry. Many families are under social pressure to provide a large dowry, which is a crushing burden for many of them. There tends to be a prenuptial agreement between the families regarding the size of the dowry. Yet, despite this agreement, many young newly married women are subjected to further pressure—even beatings—to ask their parents to provide more. When this is not forthcoming, the young woman is burned to death. In 1991 alone there were more than two thousand dowry deaths. Many deaths go unreported, since the family wants to avoid scandal at all costs. Few such cases are investigated by the police, and most of them are passed off as “kitchen accidents.”

Two young sisters were taken to a hospital,⁶¹⁸ where the doctor diagnosed an infection of the bones caused by a lack of sunlight. The girls’ father had forbidden them to leave their home. This forced seclusion sometimes takes a bizarre and tragic form, as in the case of those Muslim girls known as the Brides of the Koran, who are compelled by their families to marry the Koran. In large feudal, land-owning families, especially in the province of Sind, women are allowed to marry only within the family—in many cases only to first cousins—to ensure that the family property stays in the family. A marriage outside the family would entail a break up of the property when the woman inherited her proper share of the family estate. When the family runs out of eligible male cousins, the young woman is forced to marry the Koran in a ceremony exactly like a real wedding except that the bridegroom is lacking. The bride is sumptuously dressed, guests are invited, food, and festivities follow. At the ceremony itself, the bride is instructed to place her hand on the Koran, and she is wedded to the holy book. The rest of her life is spent in total seclusion from the outside world. She is not allowed to see a man—in some cases, not even on television. These brides are expected to devote their time to studying the Koran or doing craft work. Such desolate emptiness takes its toll, and many of the brides of the Koran become mentally ill. As one out of an estimated 3,000 brides of the Koran in the Sind put it, “I wish I had been born when the Arabs buried their daughters alive. Even that would have been better than this torture.”

Little did Jinnah realize how literally true his words were when he said in a 1944 speech:⁶¹⁹ “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners.”

Despite the secular vision of its founder, Jinnah, Pakistan has drifted toward a theocratic state. Pakistani politicians have been totally cowardly in giving in to the demands of the mullas. Fear of fundamentalists has only encouraged the fundamentalists even more. It is difficult for the largely secularized West to realize what power these people can sometimes wield over the masses, encouraging them to carry out the most vile acts imaginable, all in the name of God. For instance, a mob in Karachi, hysterically manipulated by a mulla, stoned to death an abandoned infant on the presumption that it was illegitimate and thus could not be tolerated. Another mob cut off a man’s hand because the mulla leading them alleged that the man was a thief; no proof, no trial, just the mulla’s word. Benazir Bhutto has moved more and more toward appeasing the religious right. It would be just as well to remind her of her own words uttered in 1992 when she was not in power:

Does [Pakistan] want to be a democracy in which human rights are respected and where an enlightened vision of Islam prevails? Or will it be content to make do with an authoritarian government dominated by fundamentalists? And which authority should legislate—parliament or the federal court dispensing the sharia (Islamic law)? In the absence of answers to these questions, the situation is confused today, and confusion spawns anarchy. (Le Monde, March 4, 1992)

But we do not need to leave with a completely pessimistic picture. Pakistani women have shown themselves to be very courageous, and more and more are fighting for their rights with the help of equally brave organizations such as Women’s Action Forum (WAF) and War Against Rape. WAF was formed in 1981 as women came onto the streets to protest against the Hudood Ordinances, and to demonstrate their solidarity with a couple who had recently been sentenced to death by stoning for fornication. In 1983, women organized the first demonstrations against martial law.