Islam's rebel women
CLAIMING INDEPENDENCE, ASSERTING PERSONAL CHOICE
How did a religion that originally offered women greater
freedom than they had known in traditional societies come to be associated with
their repression? Muslim feminists are claiming again the independence and
respect that was accorded to women during the early centuries of Islam.
By ABDERRAHIM LAMCHICHI
07/28/03: (Le Monde Diplomatique) WE CANNOT judge the era
of the founding of Islam by the values of our own time: And, indeed, what we
understand as the emancipation of women was never really considered by any of
the great monotheistic religions. Some of the West's Christian establishments
have accepted relatively equal rights, contraception, abortion and divorce only
under pressure from women's associations and after long battles. Islam is aware
of these changes. It is inclined to blame the Koran or canon law for the
prevailing misogyny in the Muslim world.
The problem is less religion itself than the way it has
been interpreted by commentators. The Koran has multiple teachings with many
meanings, and Muslims have always been free to comment on them according to
circumstances. The texts have been interpreted over centuries and used both to
endorse conservatism and intolerance and to promote openness, freedom,
forgiveness and intellectual revival.
There is plenty of historical evidence for the servitude
of women and the contempt and hatred they have suffered. The inequitable legal
and social situation of women in most Muslim countries is extremely poor. But
is this situation directly attributable to a religion that is seen as sexist,
or is it the result of religious or civil authorities interpreting that
religion according to a male desire to dominate, despite Islam's insistence on
the equal dignity of men and women and the virtues of love and happiness?
We often forget the exceptional place given to love and
sexuality in the literature, poetry and art, even in the sacred texts and laws
of this wonderful civilisation. Western explorers encountering the Muslim world
have been fascinated, or scandalised, by a faith that openly venerates the
pleasures of the flesh, a tradition devoted to sensory satisfaction and
hedonism as manifestations of divine grace. Love and luxury, sensuality and
enjoyment: nothing was condemned. Islamic culture produced an art of love: a
wise, realistic and subtle Prophet, who mused about desire and pleasure; a
revealed text, the Koran, that does not evade relations between the sexes; and
a literature that included the golden odes of the pre-Islamic poets, the
Hadiths, Sufi writings and manuals of the erotic arts.
This aspect of the imagination flourished before Islam
among the Bedouin Arabs and others in the area Islam first conquered. During the
rapid expansion of Islam in the 9th-14th centuries, there arose a refined urban
civilisation in Damascus, Aleppo, Basra, Baghdad, Kufa and Cordoba. Arts and
sciences flourished, as did music and architecture, poetry and philosophy,
chivalry and courtly love (dharf): a culture of love and eroticism (1). Some
Islamic mystics, including al-Hallaj, martyred in 922, held beauty to be an
attribute of God, sexuality an act of faith, and human love an earthly
manifestation of divine love. The physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037), a
great Arab philosopher, described many methods of contraception (2). During the
era of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad, erotic tales (many of Buddhist, Hindu
and Persian origin) were translated into Arabic and compiled; under the Mameluke
regime in Egypt they were given an Arab-Islamic polish, and later shared with
the world as Sheherezade's stories of the Thousand and One Nights.
The sexuality of this world favoured men, and many
passages in the Koran stress the pre-eminence of men; but most pre-modern
societies shared this view, and the works of Muslim theo-logians condemning
hedonism and devaluing women are mild in comparison with the views of eminent
Christians who held women to be weak, a source of temptation, existing only to
serve men and bear children.
And the message of the Koran and the ethics of the
Prophet were a strong force for liberation in the lands that became the heart
of Islam. Before Islam, women were tribal and family property, their function
to bear and raise children. In the patriarchal family only male descendants
were recognised, and it was not unusual for girls to be killed at birth or
buried alive. In Arabia, as in other patriarchal societies around the
Mediterranean (all to be deeply marked by the three monotheistic religions),
control of women's sexuality was part of a strategy of domination: men had the
monopoly on the exchange of property, and women were property. Boys were
preferred to girls and girls were married young. According to the family code
of honour, still in force today, girls must be virgins and wives chaste.
Marriages were arranged to seal tribal alliances.
Islam sought to promote a new moral code, representing
women as beings of reason, having rights, entitled to respect and a fair
hearing. The Koran introduced remarkable innovations: the obligation of
husbands to provide for wives and children; inheritance; financial independence
for wives; rights at divorce and for widows; freedom to manage and dispose of
property.
Some theologians interpreted the Koran's severe
regulations on the universal practice of polygamy as enjoining monogamy.
Polygamy is permitted under Islam, subject to equity, but it is not a religious
rule. Forced marriage had been a feature of many pre-Islamic societies but,
according to interpretations of religious law, it was condemned by Islam and
the consent of both parties was an absolute requirement. Draconian conditions
attached to repudiation were calculated to dissuade husbands
from resorting to it.
CONTRARY to common belief, Muslim women did not lead the
confined life they do now under strict regimes. Early Islam was a time of
relative tolerance between the sexes, who mixed freely, even in public places.
Wives and concubines - women of rank - were confined but ordinary women came
and went freely. Among the Prophet's contemporaries, other women besides his
wives, daughters or companions had an important role. They took part in
discussions and expressed strong public dissent. Many women attended legislative
assemblies and held high office. Muhammed entrusted Khadija (d 619) to spread
the word and allowed Umm Waraqa to conduct
prayers because of her knowledge of the Koran. Muslim
history is full of independent women: warriors, poets, wealthy businesswomen
and efficient administrators.
Many women had considerable political influence in the
later classic age. Some were intellectuals or theologians, others heads of
state such as the Queens of Yemen, Asma (d 1087) and her daughter-in-law Umra
(d 1138), who gave the Friday sermon in the mosque; or the Fatimid, Sitt
al-Mulk, sister of the caliph al-Hakim, who reigned 1020-1024. But this golden
time was followed in the 14th century by a dismal period. Legal, social and
cultural constraints became harsher, art and science gave way to dogma that
stayed unchanged for centuries. The position of women deteriorated. Local
traditions were revived, and these, with the strictures of theologians,
perpetuated a male-centred system, an ethos of servitude supporting a decadent
social order.
The sumptuous palaces that caliphs and potentates built
throughout the empire to house their many slaves and concubines reinforced the
image of a religion both sophisticated and puritanical. From this era comes the
caricatured Western view of Islam as a place where sex is confined and
debauchery rife, and the fascination with the harem, with its important place
in the design of palaces. For most of the Muslim poor, beset with material
cares, monogamy was and is the rule.
Islam spread rapidly, dominating societies where
traditions were in flux. Sometimes it adjusted to the local culture, even where
that was the antithesis of Koranic teaching; sometimes it took issue with
unjust aspects of local culture. Authorities in the Muslim world usually ruled
in accord with a prevailing balance of social forces, the weight of local
tradition, the teachings of the Koran as interpreted by the local culture, the
legislative practices of theological doctrines and the direction of political
development. Religious law has had to take account of local conditions.
The idea of improving the condition of women was first
considered in the 19th century under the Ottoman Empire, and engaged Muslim
reformers (the Salafis) and members of the Arab nahda (renaissance).
Distinguished men supported the cause. Mumtaz Ali, from India, wrote a book on
women's rights in 1898. Rifa'at al-Tahtawi (1801-1873), from Egypt, was an
early reformer who saw education and employment as essential conditions for
emancipation, after a visit to Paris in 1826 (3). The Egyptian reformer
Qassim Amin (1863-1908) (4) condemned the servitude of
women and recommended that the hijab be abandoned, polygamy banned and girls
educated. His ideas were violently condemned by the ulema but had a
considerable impact on the forerunners of the women's movement. In 1913,
another Egyptian, Mansour Fahmy, defended a thesis at the Sorbonne on the
condition of women in Islam (5). The Tunisian reformer Tahar Haddad (1899-1935)
also condemned the alienation of women.
Since the fall of the Ottoman empire and independence,
Muslim states have been confronted with violent social and economic upheaval,
new patterns of consumption, advances in medicine, urbanisation and the
employment of women. In recent decades, the family has changed profoundly and
the time is right to improve the condition and legal status of women. Women are
often the focus of resentment when new arrangements break down, since
conservatives and neo-fundamentalists see them as a visible embodiment of
fears.
In Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, supposed to protect the holy
places of Islam and set the standard for Islam's norms, women are generally
confined to domestic activities. Educated middle-class women are not allowed to
drive cars and are often barred from holding political office. Under the
Taliban in Afghanistan, there was sexual apartheid. In regions where tribal
traditions thrive, women are subject to shocking ancient customs (stoning as a
punishment for adultery in northern Nigeria, crimes of honour in
Pakistan). These shameful customs, for which there is no
religious justification, have been encouraged by the proliferation of radical
Islamist movements and are widely tolerated by the authorities. Other countries
have made significant reforms. Egypt introduced a family code with a monogamy
clause. Polygamy has long been prohibited in Turkey and Tunisia. It is very
limited in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, and not common in
Muslim countries in Asia.
Muslim law, in the strict sense, does not apply in all
areas, except in countries where sharia is recognised as the only law: Saudi
Arabia, Sudan since 1983, Iran under Khomeini, Pakistan since 1988, Afghanistan
under the Taliban. Legal provisions borrow from religious law in limited areas
but on the whole modern law prevails. True secularisation of family law is
confined to the ex-Soviet Muslim states of Central Asia, to Turkey, where
parliament recently abolished the rule that sole parental authority was vested
in the father, to Indonesia, to Tunisia (where Habib Bourguiba imposed monogamy
in 1956), and to most Muslim countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Provisional solutions are disputed between reformers and
modernisers, and conservatives. Some developments have been bizarre. Iran under
the mullahs established equal inheritance rights based on a new reading of the
Koran, while socialist Algeria introduced a family code in 1984 that was
fiercely opposed by women's organisations. A huge Islamist demonstration in
Casablanca in 2000 forced the incoming government in Morocco to withdraw a
revised version of the mudawwana (code of family law) and a plan to integrate
women in development.
Throughout the Muslim world, women writers, journalists,
film directors, artists, political militants, lawyers, and others have fought
for emancipation. Important battles have been won: girls are now admitted to
schools and universities, the age of marriage has been raised, polygamy is in
retreat, women of child-bearing age have fewer children and
contraceptives are available. In Egypt, Lebanon, Syria,
Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey and Indonesia, women have access to education.
They have entered the professions and the arts and hold top public, economic,
political and administrative posts. In Turkey and the Indian subcontinent,
women won the vote earlier than in some European countries. Muslim women have
been heads of government. There are women ministers and heads of department.
MUSLIM women all over the world have taken control of
their lives and fought for their rights. The present generation is supported by
a network of associations, extending family planning centres, combating sexual
exploitation, opposing family pacts that shield men from punishment, supporting
single mothers and women living alone. This is closely bound up with the need
to build free and democratic societies.
The traditional Islamist political parties have a
different attitude from the radicals and neo- fundamentalists, who fear women
as a source of temptation and are repelled by the Western way of life. Some
prominent Islamist men subscribe to a patriarchal and sexist ideology but
reformers in the movement have a more complex view. Although they insist that
men and women must not mix and that women must wear the hijab in public, they are
not, in principle, against Muslim women having rights and exercising
responsibilities within the limits of their concept of morality.
In the Maghreb, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Iran and
Indonesia, women are being educated and breaking into employment. Women
militants are keen for academic and professional success but they wear the
hijab and are devout followers of Islam. The traditional confinement of women
made them invisible but these women wear the hijab as a signal of their intent
to
enter the public domain and assert their rights, starting
with the division of work and power within the family.
Many women think misunderstandings have arisen not so
much from the principles of Islam as from conservative interpretations, which
they reject, or the perpetuation of local practices with no religious basis.
Some share their male colleagues' vision of the world, rejecting the West, seen
as a threat to Islamic values, and defending the traditional foundations of the
family.
Others, wanting independence, boldly demand more freedom,
real political responsibilities and genuine emancipation. They are often forced
to leave political movements. They fight for emancipation under the banner of
religion, believing that submission to God is the only way to be free of the
power exercised by men - husbands, fathers, teachers, line managers.
These women speak with a new voice. They are inventing
Islamic feminism, a lever to reach an influential position in society and to
get responsible posts in government, universities, business, politics and
corporate life.
________________________________________________________
(1) See the fables of Al-Jahiz (780-805), who wrote in
praise of young men and courtesans; The Perfumed Garden by the Baghdad scholar,
Muhammad Ibn Dawud (868-909); and the 15th-century erotic manuals of Nafzawi.
(2) The poet and saint, Jalal Ud-Din al-Rumi (died 1273),
was the founder of the Sufi way, al-Mawlawiyya, and author of the Masnawi, a
masterpiece of Islamic literature.
(3) His book praising the freedom of French women was
published in 1834. A translation into French appeared as L'Or de Paris,
Editions Sindbad, Paris, 1989.
(4) His works on the emancipation of women were published
in 1899 and 1900.
(5) He was expelled from the university in Egypt where he
lectured. A French version of his work appeared as La Condition de la Femme
dans l'Islam, reissued by Poche/Allia, 2002.
(6) Author of a book on the position of Muslim women,
1930.
Translated by Barbara Wilson
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AUTHOR * Abderrahim Lamchichi is a political scientist,
and author of 'Geopolitique de l'islamisme', (L'Harmattan, Paris, 2001)
[Note: URL accessible to paid subscribers only]
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Le Monde diplomatique -- July 2003