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women and islamic law 295The Problem of Original SinThe imposition of a specific dress code on women has often beenjustified by references to the story of Adam and Eve and to theoriginal sin of humankind. It is therefore important that we revisitthe evidence given for this and then decide whether it withstandsclose scrutiny. Historians of religion will tell us that not all religioustraditions accept the notion of humankind’s original sin, and thatthose which do have various versions of the story that do not necessarilymake women responsible for the original sin. The Old Persianreligions, such as Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Mazdaism, orthe ancient Indian religions, such as Vedanta-Hinduism, Brahmanism,and Buddhism, do not posses any mythological account of the existenceof an original sin, nor do they blame women for any sort ofur-sin. Nevertheless, many of them regard women as essentially inferiorto men in their attempt to achieve sacredness, as a result ofwhich women are asked to put a veil over their mouth and nose sothat they cannot poison with their breath the sacred flame that burnsfor men. Socially, such inferiority has been translated into servitude,such that women have been forced to serve their (male) masters asif they were gods. 46Judaism was the first religion which attached the stigma of originalsin to the cunning nature of women, and Christianity followed bybasically accepting the account of the Old Testament. Centurieslater, when Jews and Christians converted to the new religion ofMuÈammad’s (ß) mission, this story sneaked into the collective consciousnessof qur"anic exegetes and remained there for centuries,despite the fact that there is no textual evidence for any such misogynistrhetoric in the Book. The story can be found in Genesis 1-19,46For Hinduism, see Arvind Sharma, ed., Goddesses and women in the Indic religioustradition (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Mildreth W. Pinkham, The status of women in Hinduism asreflected in the Pur§nas, Mah§bh§rata, and the R§m§yana (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1941); and Lynn E. Gatwood, Devi and the spouse goddess: Women, sexuality, andmarriages in India (Riverdale: Riverdale Co., 1985), ch. 5 (‘Women and Caste Level’,75–107). For Buddhism, see Diana Y. Paul (with Frances Wilson), Women in Buddhism:Images of the feminine in Mah§y§na tradition (Berkeley; London: University of CaliforniaPress, 1985), ch. 1 (‘“Temptress,” Daughter of Evil’, 3–59); and Rita M. Gross, Buddhismafter patriarchy: A feminist history, analysis, and reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany:State University of New York Press, 1993), ch. 2, section 5 (‘Do innate female traitsand characteristics exists? Roles and images of women in Indian Mahayana Buddhism’,55–77); I. B. Horner, Women under primitive Buddhism: Laywomen and almswomen(London: Routledge, 1930), ch. 2 (‘The daughter’, 19–34), ch. 3 (‘The wife’,35–71).