Culture and religion contribute a lot to social behaviour and norms. Every religion promotes somewhat different cultural and historical foundations. The influence the individual world religions have on the status of women is very much differentiated. Religious beliefs and cultural norms have played a significant role in gender politics. From ancient Greece to Rome, from Christian Europe to Brahamanical India, women faced discrimination and humiliation. Women often suffered from lack of security and were excluded from decision-making processes in economic, social, and political spheres.
In early stages of the Greek civilization, woman had no legal rights. According to the Greek mythology, an imaginary woman called Pandora, like Eve of the Jewish mythology, was the source of all human ills and misfortunes. Just as the concocted story about Eve deeply influenced the Jewish and Christian conception of the woman and adversely affected their law, customs and morals as well as their general attitude towards life, so was the impact of Pandora fiction upon the Greek mind. The Greeks regarded woman as a sub-human creature whose rank in society was in every way inferior to that of man, for whom alone was reserved honour and a place of pride.
When the Romans emerged from darkness on the bright horizon of history, their social traditions recognised man as the chief of the family unit, possessing full authority and power over the members of his family; so much so that he could take the life of his wife. The basic doctrine of Christian Europe was that woman was the mother of sin and root cause of all evils. She was the primary cause of inviting man to sin and corruption.
In Europe, under the influence of the Christian Church, the woman was crushed economically and made to depend wholly on man permanently. She was given limited rights of inheritance, and even more limited right of acquiring and holding property. She had no control even over her own earnings, as these were all seized by the husband with full proprietary rights. Divorce from either party was totally prohibited. Similar is the story of Egypt, Babylon, Iran and other countries.
The sub-continent has also been suffering from one excess or the other for centuries. Here, on the one hand the woman is made to worship the man who becomes her master and lord: she has to sub-serve her father as a maid in childhood, become a chattel of the husband in youth and submit’ humbly to her children in widowhood. History testifies that when a community shakes off barbarism and advances towards civilization, its women follow its men as maids and bond-women. Initially the community gains momentum from the store of energies that accrue from the wild life of the desert, but at a later stage of development it begins to realise that it cannot go any further by keeping half of its population in a state of bondage. Thus, when the community finds the pace of advancement being retarded, the feeling of necessity compels it to enable the neglected half also to keep pace with the advanced half. Eventually gender imbalances give rise to feminist movements. And thus this term gender justice or gender equality has been introduced by the west. The state in which access to rights or opportunities is unaffected by gender is called gender equality or gender justice. It also refers to share equitably in the distribution of power, knowledge, resources, right of choice and agency, participation in social, political and economic development. Moreover, closing doors of oppression, violence and repression is based on gender. To them gender equality is primarily an equal power relation between men and women in order to achieve fair, sustainable, resilient and thriving communities.
But feminist movements are unable to solve the problems of women and fail to provide a suitable world for them. Even today women are subjected to domestic violence, trafficking, dowry deaths, female infanticide, feticide, sexual objectification and violence and sexual harassment at workplaces. Owing to the fact, the moral concepts underlying the social system prevalent in the west are unnatural and irrational.
In the beginning of the modern age, efforts made to raise the womenfolk from virtual slavery brought about wholesome effects in the community life. Rigorous regulations relating to marriage and divorce were moderated. Economic rights of women of which they had been completely deprived were almost restored. Moral doctrines which held women low and contemptible were reformed. Social concepts which had reduced them to virtual slavery were modified. Portals of higher education and training were opened to them also along with men. These reforms gradually helped to bring out their hidden capabilities suppressed by wrong social laws and moral concepts. They beautified the houses, lent charm and sweetness to social life and undertook welfare activities. Under their good influence and care, public health was improved, new generations brought up better, patients nursed and home science was rapidly developed. These were the initial fruits of the awakening brought about in the lives of women by the new culture.
But there is another side of the picture. The doctrines that gave birth to this awakening were inclined towards an extreme from the very beginning. This inclination rapidly increased during the 19th century, until with the advent of the 20th century the pendulum of social life in the west had already swung to the opposite extreme. If we study these instances carefully, we shall see how difficult it is for man to attain a balanced and just view with regard to woman, grasp it fully and practise it in life. A balanced view can only be the one which, on the one hand, allows the woman an opportunity for developing her personality and capabilities fully, and enables her to play her due role in the cultivation of human civilization with full-grown capacities and skills, and, on the other, prevents her from becoming a means of moral decay and disintegration. Her partnership with man should be so adjusted that co-operation of one with the other produces wholesome results in the building up of community life. Man has been trying hard for centuries to attain this balanced and just view but has not yet succeeded. Sometimes he swings to one extreme and renders one half of humanity useless; sometimes he swings to the other extreme and the whole of humanity becomes paralysed.
This balanced and just view is not imaginary; it does exist. But man’s faculty of judgment has become so blunted by continuously shifting his position between the two extremes for centuries that now he does not even recognise it. Indeed he spurns it, speaks disparagingly of it, and tries to put to shame those who happen to possess it. In actuality Islam is the only religion that is the true advocate of equity.
The Oxford Dictionary of Islam states that the general improvement of the status of women in Arab societies included prohibition of female infanticide and recognising women’s full personhood
Under Islamic law, marriage was no longer viewed as a status but rather as a contract, in which the woman’s consent was imperative. The dowry, previously regarded as a bride-price paid to the father, became a nuptial gift retained by the wife as part of her personal property”. “Women were given inheritance rights in a patriarchal society that had previously restricted inheritance to male relatives.”
Annemarie Schimmel states: “Compared to the pre-Islamic position of women, Islamic legislation meant an enormous progress; the woman has the right, at least according to the letter of the law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work.”
William Montgomery Watt states that Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him), in the historical context of his time, can be seen as a figure that testified on behalf of women’s rights and improved things considerably. Watt explains: “At the time Islam began, the conditions of women were terrible – they had no right to own property, were supposed to be the property of the man, and if the man died everything went to his sons.” Muhammad, however, by “instituting rights of property ownership, inheritance, education and divorce gave women certain basic safeguards.” Haddad and Esposito state that “Muhammad granted women rights and privileges in the sphere of family life, marriage, education, and economic endeavours, rights that help improve women’s status in society.” Whereas, in the United States of America and London, women were given right to vote in 1920 and 1928 respectively.
It is also important to note that there exists evidence that Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) did not view himself as entirely superior to Aisha, at least not enough to prevent Aisha from speaking her mind, even at the risk of angering him. In fact, after Prophet Muhammad’s death, which ended Aisha and Prophet Muhammad’s 9-year-long marriage, Aisha lived fifty more years in and around Madinah. Much of her time was spent learning and acquiring knowledge of the Qur’ān and the Sunnah of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him). She was regarded as the most reliable source of hadīth literature. She was known for her “…expertise in the Qur’ān, shares of inheritance, lawful and unlawful matters, poetry, Arabic literature, Arab history, genealogy, and general medicine.”
Her intellectual contributions to the verbal texts of Islam were in time transcribed into written form, becoming the official history of Islam after the death of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him). In her entire life she was a strong advocate for the education of Islamic women, especially in law and the teachings of Islam. She was known for establishing the first madrasa for women in her home. Attending Aisha’s classes were various family relatives and orphaned children. Men also attended her classes, with a simple curtain separating the male and female students. Throughout her life many prominent customs of Islam, such as veiling and seclusion of women, began.
Aisha’s importance to revitalising the Arab tradition and leadership among the Arab women highlights her magnitude within Islam. Aisha became involved in the politics of early Islam and during the reigns of the first three caliphates: Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman. Before Islam when women were not expected, or wanted, to contribute outside the household, she delivered public speeches, became directly involved in war and even battles, and helped both men and women to understand the practices of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him).
Besides Aisha, other mothers of believers and other Muslim women of that time had a prominent role in family and public life. Another wife of the Blessed Prophet, Umm Salama acted as his advisor during negotiations concerning the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah with the Makkans in 628 C.E. One of the main objects of this treaty was to determine the relations between Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) and the Muslims of Madinah with the Quraysh in Makkah. The treaty was aimed at achieving peace between the two groups. This treaty was essential since it established a 10-year peace deal between the two groups.
What most of the people fail to understand is that God has honoured women by giving them value in relation to God – not in relation to men. But as western feminism erases God from the scene, there is no standard left save and except men. As a result, the western feminist is forced to find her value in relation to a man. And in so doing, she has accepted a faulty assumption. She has accepted that man is the standard, and thus a woman can never be a full human being until she becomes just like a man – the assumed standard. God dignifies both men and women in their distinctiveness, not their sameness.
Contrary to this, no matter what a man does, he will never be able to have the status of a mother. And yet even when God honours women with something uniquely feminine, women are too busy trying to find their worth in reference to men, to value it or even notice it. Women too have accepted men as the standard; so anything uniquely feminine is, by definition, “inferior”.
In the battle between stoic rationality (considered masculine) and selfless compassion (considered feminine), rationality reigns supreme. A Muslim woman or any other woman does not need to degrade her in this way. She has God as standard. She has God to give her value; she doesn’t need a man here. Somehow, we considered it women’s liberation to abandon the raising of another human being in order to work on a machine. We accepted that working in a factory was superior to raising the foundation of society – just because a man did it. Then after working, women were expected to be superhuman – the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect homemaker, and have the perfect career. And while there is nothing wrong, by definition, with a woman having a career, we soon came to realise what we had sacrificed by blindly mimicking men. Nowadays women in the west are choosing to stay home to raise their children. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, only 31 per cent of mothers with babies, and 18 per cent of mothers with two or more children, are working full time. And of those working mothers, a survey conducted by Parenting Magazine in 2000, found that 93 per cent of them say they would rather be home with their kids, but are compelled to work due to “financial obligations”. These “obligations” are imposed on women by the gender sameness of the modern west and removed from women by the gender distinctiveness of Islam. It took women in the west almost a century of experimentation to realise a privilege given to Muslim women 1,400 years ago. Women will never reach true liberation until she stops trying to mimic men and start giving value to the beauty in their own God-given distinctiveness.
And on March 18, 2005 Muslim women made the very same mistake. Something is not better just because a man does it. And leading Prayer is not better just because it is leading. The Prophet never asked Lady Aisha or Lady Khadijah, or Lady Fatimah – the greatest women of all time – to lead. These women were promised heaven and yet they never led prayers. God has given no special privilege to the one who leads. The imam is no higher in the eyes of God than those who pray behind him. Similarly, Muslim women are allowed to work. But they are not forced to earn bread for themselves. The irony is that in the name of equality, women are forced to work whether or not they are willing to take up that burden.
On the other hand the concept of nobility of rising a new generation has escaped from the materialistic Muslim minds. Women who are at home are not willing to raise fruitful assets for the human community. The men are the prime reason for this failure, because the standard they have maintained for the mothers of their children is not very promising. The idea of an Islamic family is much influenced by either western or eastern culture or norms of societies. The tragedy of man’s misfortune has been that the one possessing the beacon of Light has himself gone night blind. Therefore Muslim women are unwilling to set an example for others. The Shari’ah is under scan because Muslim men and women are not becoming the replica of early age Muslims.