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women and islamic law 237had turned the originally intended basis of calculation on its headsince it assumed that male shares are the variable (x) that determinesthe value of the ordinate ( y), the female shares. In this equation,male inheritors always get twice the amount of female share, regardlessof the actual number of female inheritors (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … toinfinity!) and regardless of the amount of shares calculated on thebasis of the number of females in the family. This is, of course, unacceptableand violates Allah’s proposition in this verse. We need toremind ourselves that Allah’s legislation reflects the conditions ofobjective reality that universally exist for all humankind. And if it issaid that ‘to the male, a portion equal to that of two females’, it isnot just a purely hypothetical, abstract scenario but also an adequatereflection of a concrete social condition. In this case, if ‘to the male,a portion equal to that of two females’ should apply we need to havea situation where the number of female inheritors is twice the numberof male inheritors, as illustrated by a few examples in thistable:two femalesfour femalessix femalesone maletwo malesthree malesHow will this change if there is more than twice the number offemales compared to the number of male inheritors, that is, if theratio is for example, 3:1; 4:1; 6:2 or 12:4? In these instances thesecond injunction comes into play, which states: ‘if there be morethan two females, then they should receive two-thirds of what heleaves’. 17 This confirms again, first, that Allah always calculatesfemale shares first, which might increase or decrease, and, second,that the male share is not always twice the amount of the femaleshare. If, for example, these are four inheritors (one male + threefemales), the male share is 33.333 percent, while the female share(s)are 66.666 percent, and divided by three this equals 22.222 percenteach. And if there are six inheritors (one male + 5 females), the maleshare is again 33.333 percent, but the female share(s) change to17The best translation in MS’s sense would be: ‘If there are more than twofemales (in the family), their share is…’, as observed by MF: ‘If there be more thantwo females, then they should receive…’ and AA: ‘And if they be women above two,then for them…’.