booke

women and islamic law 303According to the Book, righteousness is an ethical category and notbiologically inherent in the male sex.God sets forth, for an example to the unbelievers, the wife of Noahand the wife of Lot… ( Al-TaÈrÊm 66:10)And God sets forth, as an example to those who believe, the wife ofPharaoh…and Mary, daughter of Imran… ( Al-TaÈrÊm 66:11–12)Both these verses demonstrate that Allah does not define righteousnesson the basis of the female sex either. The Book gives examplesof righteous women (the wife of Pharaoh, Mary) immediately afterit mentions the example of disbelieving women (the wives of Noahand Lot)—two good and two bad examples in equal measure! Also,there is not the slightest hint in Allah’s verses that women’s monthlycycle makes their prayer or fast invalid, or that ‘women are deficientin religion’. Religion is bigger than prayer and fast, and Allah isabove such petty notions that claim that female menstruation, sovital for the preservation and procreation of the human race, wouldmake women religiously and spiritually inferior.The truth is that the male chauvinist studies of medieval exegetesand \adÊth scholars reflect the influences of the social conditions oftheir times. One influence was the existence of slavery in Arab-Muslim society. It is well-known that in ancient Arabia only freewomen wore the headscarf in order to distinguish them from bareheadedslave girls. Today, slavery has disappeared, and so has thenecessity to differentiate free women from slave girls. Some peopleargue that what has survived until today is the proper, legal traditionof free women, which should be the norm: women should go veiled.But people forget that the way the dress of a free woman was distinguishedfrom the dress of a slave girl was a historical conventionthat had no legal basis in Allah’s law. Also, it was neither logical northeologically sound to demand that the slave girl should not wearthe Èij§b. Because, if it is true that a woman’s body and face causefitna (social and sexual disturbance) 53 among men, all women in53This is the fuqah§"’s legal interpretation of the qur"anic term ‘temptation’ (as in2:102; 8:28) or ‘mental confusion’ (6:23). Because of this fear of temptation or unlawfulattraction it is regarded as unlawful for men to look at women’s #awra except incases of necessity. For women, it is unlawful to dress improperly as this can causefitna among men (a desire to have unlawful, extramarital sexual relations). \anafÊscholars stress that this interdiction has been made regardless of the factor of temptationand that every woman has to observe the rules of #awra due to the explicit rulings(see al-ZuÈaylÊ, al-Fiqh al-isl§mÊ, vol. 4, 200–204).