Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

How Does One Say 'Queen' in Islam? 23
Two of the criteria of eligibility for the caliphate are being a male
and being an Arab. While the latter criterion has been violently
challenged and thousands of Muslims have died to defend the idea
that any Muslim can become caliph, no one has ever questioned
the criterion of maleness. In any case, no one has ever endangered
life and limb to contend that the criterion of maleness for occupying
the position of caliph violates the principle of equality which is the
base of Islam. How could Islam reconcile these two points: the
principle of equality among all believers and the very restrictive
criteria of eligibility for the caliphate? Here is one of the enigmas
of political history that it is incumbent on the people of today to
clarify. The aim of my voyage into the past in search of the sultanas
and their titles is one small step in that direction. A foray into the
past brings with it one absolute certitude: to return there is impossible,
because what has changed in the world, including Muslim
societies, is not just the demands of women and of men vis-a-vis
the powers that be, but the very environment in which they live,
the air they breathe, the Heaven they look to, the earth on which
they walk. The Heaven of the Abbasid caliphs is no longer our
Heaven, their earth is no longer ours. The earth revolves around
the sun, but in their time for many people it was the sun that
revolved around the earth. However, the struggle for democracy in
the sense of equality did not begin with the importation of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is Western, as everyone
knows; it began in the first centuries of Islam with the Kharijite
sect.
At the very beginning this sect, one of the many which challenged
Islam as a political practice, questioned the requirement that the
caliph must be from the Quraysh tribe, asserting that anyone,
regardless of ethnic origin, had the right to be caliph, to lead
Muslims. The Kharijites ('those who quit') refused to play the
political game by the rules any longer, making dialogue with them
impossible within the heart of Islam. 39 When the Kharijites declared
their disagreement with the criteria of eligibility of the leader, it
came as a shock. At that time there was consensus: only an Arab
had the right to lead. In order to understand the atmosphere and
mentality that reigned in the first centuries of Islam, it might be a
good idea to consider the attitude of a refined intellectual like Ibn
Hazm the Andalusian, a good Muslim who tried to conform to the
Muslim egalitarian ideal, but who remained fiercely aristocratic in
his soul.
Ibn Hazm cites the names of three men who were not of the