Islam's Reformers .pdf

the French proverb, “Chacun pour soi et Dieu pour tous.”The sixty-forth âyat of the sûrat âl ’Imrân says, “O Jews andChristians, who say, ‘We believe in Allah’s book’! Come tothe word [îmân, six principles of îmân] on which we have nodisagreement.” We refer this difference between thenationality that provides religious freedom and that does not tothe arbitration of humanity!38 - The reformer says:“In the Islamic family life, the man is the absolute ruler andthe woman is the natural subject. In Anatolian villages there arewomen who work more than their husbands and who ploughlike their husbands. The man works outside and the womanworks inside the house. They do not have time to go around orto divert. Their material and spiritual needs are quite limited.The man, crushed under poverty and oppression, tortures hiswife as if he revenges himself on his wife. The woman obeysand never rebels. The man’s thought is not so extensive as totreat his wife rightfully and with pity. The woman’s intellect andthought are not so much as to look for the reasons why sheendures all these hardships and for the way of escaping them.For this reason, divorce hardly occurs to her mind. In big cities,where people admire Europeans and try to be like them, divorcetakes place more often. They lose Islamic customs, theirpersonalities, their spirits, and the value of family. For suchreasons as money, beast-like sexual desires and following thefashion, women also have to work. The religions, nationalities,ideas and feelings of these people, who are called‘progressives’, are unlike one another. Especially the girls whohave received education in Europe or America and come backhave lost their spiritual values all the more. They live likeChristian women. Their behaviours are insincere and imitative.”The religion reformer’s point of view and writing arereasonable here. We hear about those women who admireeven Christian women’s confessing before the priest. Howterrible an example of injuring the basis of our religion out of acraze of imitating Europeans and Americans! In Islam, one doesnot need be forgiven by a man before one can entreat Allâhuta’âlâ to forgive one’s sins; let alone having one’s sins forgivenby a man, it is not permissible even to tell about one’s sins toanother person. As it is a guilt to commit sins, it is another guiltto tell someone else about them. See this delicacy, this purity in- 99 -