The Truth about Muslims Podcast equips listeners to think critically about media, Muslims, and the mission of God. Since 9/11, people are asking “What is really going on in the Muslim world?” “Is the media giving us the whole picture?” “Do we have reason to fear?” As Christians, “How should we respond?” Join hosts, Trevor Castor and Howard Ki in exploring what God is doing in Muslim ministry and how he is using missionaries throughout the Muslim world. You can listen on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music or YouTube.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Moyra Dale discusses various forms of veiling among Muslim women, the origins of veiling in Islamic teachings, differing legal and social attitudes toward veiling, and the fashion and personal expression aspects of wearing the hijab.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Moyra Dale Lecture: Muslim Women & Coverings:
In this session, we’re going to talk a little bit about how Muslim women cover themselves and why. Often, Muslims ask us, Mary was veiled. They see that in the Jesus film, and I think that’s an accurate reflection of her culture at the time. Why don’t Christians veil now? The classic image of the Muslim world is a veiled woman, yet there’s wide variety of forms and interpretations availing right across the Muslim world.
Some theological, far more cultural. So there’s different forms. The hijab usually refers to just covering the hair and the neck, the body. The nakab covers the face completely. The burqa is used for the, more completely covering outfit that we see in Afghanistan often, and the chador is the, wrap around that the Iranian woman used, 1 big, piece of material to cover themselves.
So where does all this come from? Well, you may have looked at some of these verses in the earlier session on verses on women in the Quran. There’s 2 particular chapters, 33 where the wives of the prophets are told not to display themselves. There’s another section saying if you come and eat, eat and then off you go quickly and ask for the prophet’s wives behind the screen. And that said to relate to when Muhammad had just married Zainab and some of his followers were hanging around and talking, and he wanted to actually retire with Zainab.
So these verses were revealed. And then in verse 59, it goes on to talk about the prophet’s wives and the daughters and the women among all believers should draw their cloaks over their bodies. That will be better so they’ll be known as respectable woman so as not to be annoyed and God is ever forgiving, most merciful. So that extends it just from the prophet’s wives. Maybe they should be an example for everyone else, but it also belongs to all believing women.
One of the traditions mentions that when Mohammed married Safia or when he took Safia, the Jewish girl, people were wondering, is she going to be his wife or his concubine? And they said we’ll know whether he puts a veil on or not. If he veils her, then she’s gonna be one of his wives. So it was a sign of the more respectable women, women who could afford to be veiled, stay at home, didn’t have to go out and work in the field sometimes. The other chapter is Enur chapter 24 where the believing women again, all the women are asked to lower their gaze, cover their private parts, don’t show off their adornment, and draw their veils over their bosoms.
So 60 suggests there’s a bit more freedom if you’re past the age of marrying and childbearing, but you’re still encouraged to cover. So what should they cover? Well, that’s where a lot of a difference comes in. Some people say they should cover everything. Nothing should show.
Maybe just one eye so they can see where they’re going. Other people suggest that just the body and the hair be covered, not the face and hands. Woman’s hair, like women’s voices, is often associated with being aura or shameful or particularly distracting for men. Other people just say it’s about basic modesty, clothes that don’t emphasize the form. The most common is just the simple covering of the head and around the neck and shoulders, but you’ll see a wide variety.
Who do they cover in front of? Basically non related men, father, brother, son, men who they’re not in a potential marriage relationship with. And they also cover in front of God in formal prayer. So in Muslim understanding, when they kneel to pray, God is understood as unfamiliar or distant in relationship to the women. When do they cover?
Well, the consensus suggests puberty is the best time, but some people I know get their daughters into hijab a lot younger. Other young woman would say, when I get older, I’m gonna get more religious. That’s when I’ll cover. Often when women make the pilgrimage, when they come back, they’ll wear the they’ll wear the hijab and stay in hijab. In some countries, it’s compulsory, Saudi Arabia, Iran today, Afghanistan, Northern Nigeria, some of the Sudanese states.
In other countries, it’s forbidden. Iran under the Shah, it was forbidden. Turkey under Ataturk, France today. So some legalize for it, some against it. Others are content to give people a bit more freedom.
Some countries will say this particular form, maybe the all encompassing form, is forbidden. There’s a whole range of meanings. It’s not just about theology and the interpretation of these verses. Sometimes it can be a fashion statement. If I’m sitting in Southeast Asia in an airport, there’ll be advertisements on the television showing all the different stylish ways that young women can wear the hijab and look gorgeous.
Particularly, it’s a fashion statement when it’s worn with tight fitting tops and pants. But most people would say that’s not really a hijab. A hip hop journalist, Adisa Banjoko, says our deen, our religion, is not meant to be rocked. I see these so called Muslim sisters wearing a hijab and then a bustier or a hijab with their belly button sticking out. You don’t put on a hijab and try and rock it.
On the opposite side, wearing the hijab often means that a young woman is modest, and therefore, she’s marriageable, someone who young guys can look at and think about marrying. In many situations, it can be a protection against being harassed. As it said in Surah 33 verse 59, cover yourself so that you won’t be harassed. And in countries where women are subjected to a lot of harassment in public space, the hijab can be really important in in protecting against that. It can be part of identifying the self as a Muslim and then particular forms of hijab signal particular allegiances within Islam to different groups.
Or it can mean anti colonial identity. I am making a stand that I belong to this country not influenced by colonialism. It’s only a piece of material, but it carries a whole complex of meanings of identity and belonging. Don’t make too quick assumptions about what it means, but ask your friend about how she understands it, when she donned it, why she’s wearing it, if she is.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Moyra Dale discusses the increasing involvement of women in Islamic education and leadership roles, driven by growing access to education and religious resources. Dale also highlights the story of Hoda El Habash as an example of this trend.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Moyra Dale Lecture: The Women’s Mosque Movement:
Women scholars have always existed within Islam, but the whole growth in numbers of women studying in mosques and madrassas is something new in the Islamic world from China to Indonesia to the Middle East. And this has been fed by the growth in women’s education and literacy around the world together with increased availability of religious resources in tracks, cassettes, AV materials, even satellite and Internet. And the other factor is the growth in conservative Islamic movements right across the Muslim world which is both enabled by and contributing to the growth in religious materials. These movements put a priority on religious education including for women. Some women are self educated, but increasingly religious institutions are offering training to women.
Even Al Azhar opened its doors to women in 1999. The word comes from the word meaning to call or to invite, and the contemporary movement relates dawah, calling people, not only to non Muslims, but also to the duty of every practicing Muslim towards fellow Muslims to follow correct Islamic practice. And in many ways, the Da’iyeh embodies the contemporary Islamic movement and is kind of like a figure of authority, like the previous or the earlier scholars. One woman teacher said, The Da’iyeh is the ambassador of God to people and the successor of the prophet, Khalifat and Nabi. So through the role of Da’iyeh, women are given potentially a role of authority and an implicit leadership, followers of the prophet that was usually reserved for men.
But how they take it up is shaped by their personal context, their own access to education and family support. And I wanna tell you the story of Hoda El Habash. She’s an example of how a woman became a or a or a missionary for Islam. As a 17 year old, she began teaching women in classes in homes and mosques how to memorize the Quran, how to interpret it. Her role is supported by her family.
Growing up, her father would combine his business trips with doing dawah in local mosques. And in his own family, Hooda remembered how in the evenings, he’d gather the family to pray behind him in the mornings too. Him and my brothers and us, the mother and sisters lined up behind him, and afterwards in the evening, he’d teach us. He encouraged his children to attend the mosque programs including over the long summer holiday month and Hooda’s mother also gave her freedom to attend the mosque instead of requiring her to be involved in all the household chores that are normal for women. Another brother and 2 sisters are religious teachers and other siblings are also involved or support them financially.
Hood is one of a line of women who stand out in each generation for their education. She describes her mother. Back in her time, women were illiterate. Many people didn’t know how to read. In her village in Lebanon, there was only her and another girl who learned to read, and people would celebrate by putting them on a horse and parading them through the village.
Huda herself was only one of 4 or 5 girls who’d memorized the whole Quran in her Sharia school when she was growing up. And now she says there are 1,000. And now her daughter Inas is pioneering in being allowed to go as a young woman to study abroad in the Gulf for tertiary study. Hooda says that this isn’t widely acceptable in our conservative society, but in Nas, in allowing her to travel, our intent is that she become a world class da’iya. Her studies are secular, but the intent is dawah, calling people to Islam.
Hood is married to an engineer and combines her role as wife and mother with a busy teaching schedule. And the whole importance of family would come through testimonies of women at the mosque which would often include stories of struggle for some women to come to the mosque in the face of opposition from a husband or a mother-in-law. Hooda herself follows very conservative norms of conduct and dress outside the home or in front of non related men. She’s always dressed in dark blue or full length, dark blue or black full length overcoat and headscarf showing only her face. She’s careful to always defer to the male leadership of the mosque and make sure that women’s voices can’t be heard in the male section of the mosque.
By keeping her practice conservative, she avoids censure. So women gain the right to challenge traditional norms of religious leadership by showing their conformity to religious social practices of dress and general behavior and then supporting their position from the religious texts, from the Quran, from the hadith. Hoday encouraged the women in the program to take any opportunity to be involved in dawah in their normal lives. They were taught how to use occasions like wedding, birth, funerals as chances for dawah. She said, if you hear a good tape, copy it.
Give it away to other people. Leave pamphlets or tracks in public places that people might pick up and read. Girls who traveled overseas for study or work were given contact of other graduates in the mosque and encouraged to think about what contribution they could make in religious teaching and leadership. Some young people were learning English so that they could reach out to the foreigners coming to the city and teach them about Islam. To be a daia, religious qualifications are important and so are personal ones.
To be a leader in the program that I attended, a woman should have memorized the whole Quran, to know about our religion so she can answer any questions and to have a good personality which means she should be calm, patient and treat people well. For, the domestic role is still required, but it becomes part of an expanding sphere of involvement. Huda is involved in teaching local people and sometimes expatriates as well as lecturing in local regional countries. The content of her teaching moves between the everyday, every night responsibilities of women’s worlds and global discussions of the nature of Islam and the place of women within it and she draws on the traditional texts of the Quran and the Hadith, the books of interpretation, tafsir alongside CD recordings and satellite programs. She’s an example of the many women who are taking up leadership in programs right around the world within Islam today.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Moyra Dale explores the significant women in Muhammad’s life, particularly his wives, and details his marriages, including Khadija and other wives such as Aisha and Hafsa. Dale also references specific incidents involving some of his wives and their implications in the Quran.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Moyra Dale’s Lecture: Women Surrounding Muhammad:
Today, I want to introduce you to some of the women who are around Muhammad who are important in his life and who are still cited today as examples. We’re going to start by looking at Muhammad’s wives. His first wife was Khadija. At the time when they got married, she was 40, and he was 25. She was a successful trader.
Mohammed worked for her. She was so impressed with him. She asked him to marry her, and he remained faithful to Khadija. She basically funded him the whole of the time that she was alive. She was his first convert to Islam along with Ali, his nephew.
So some people suggest that Islam was born in the arms of a woman. Khadija was the one who comforted Mohammed when he first came back terrified from the visions he was having. After Khadija died, Mohammed later married 10 women, one of whom died quite soon after her marriage to Mohammed, so probably 9 wives. All apart from Aisha had been married before they married Mohammed. So the first wife he took was Sauda, a Muslim widow.
She’s described as dark and slow and fat. Apparently, not that attractive. She surrendered her rights for Mohammed. He used to spend one night with each women woman in turn, and she surrendered her rights when she set forth that Mohammed might divorce her so she could still stay as one of the mothers of the believers as they were known. Aisha is the one who was betrothed at 6, married at 9, and went to where Mohammed was living with Saud along the eastern wall of the mosque in Medina.
She was then widowed at 18 and eventually died at 66. She’s a very influential figure in Sunni Islam and her father, Abu Bakr became the first caliph, the first leader of the Muslim community after Mohammed. 3 months after he married Aisha, he married Hafsa. That was a bit of a stormy relationship. She was divorced again and then remarried to him.
She was the one who kept a copy of the Quran which suggests that she might have been literate and her father, Umar ibn Khutab, was the second leader of the Muslim community, the second caliph. Then there was Zaynab bint Khuzaymah who died early. Salama, the widow of one of Mohammed’s companions known as a very wise woman, advised Mohammed particularly after the truth of Hudayba when his men didn’t want to obey him and rebelled. She led the list of companions who were qualified to give legal verdicts, and she died at 84 years of age, the last of Mohammed’s wives. Zainab Bint Jash was married initially by Mohammed to Zayd, his adopted son and freed slave.
But Zainab was quite a aristocratic woman, didn’t like being married to a freed slave. Married life wasn’t peaceful. And it’s recorded that Mohammed came in one day to visit Zayd and saw her and apparently felt very attracted to her, and Zayd divorced her. Mohammed then received a revelation that adoption did not exist in Islam. He couldn’t adopt, so Zayd was no longer in a son relationship to him and then he was free to marry Zaynab and that’s discussed in chapter 33 verses 37 and 40 of the Koran.
Another wife was Jewariya Bint Al Hariz, married to a chief of a Muslim tribe. Her husband was killed in battle with the Muslims, and she was known for her great beauty. Another very beautiful woman was Safia Bintouye, who was a young Jewish woman. Both her father and then her husband were killed in fights with the Muslim community. So she was Mohammed’s Jewish wife.
Habiba is the one who ranked 3rd after Aisha and Salamah for her knowledge of the Hadith and her eloquence and then the last one was Maimunah Harissa who was the sister of Zainab, the wife who died quite early. She was the last woman Mohammed married. And the Quran reflects quite a number of incidents between Mohammed and his wives. Chapter 33, verse 6, verses 30 8 to 38 maybe talking about a desire of the women to have more finances, more goods, maybe some bickering that was going on between Asia and Zainab, reflected in again the same verses 50 to 55, 59. Chapter 24 talks about the incident with Aisha when she was traveling one day with the Muslim community, and she left at one point to go out and relieve herself in the desert.
And the the caravan moved on without her. She was so light. They didn’t realize she wasn’t in her caravan enclosure, and she was eventually found by a soldier who brought her back to Mohammed. And that led to a big scandal about whether she’d actually been away with this soldier. And Mohammed was on the verge of divorcing her until he finally received a revelation from God that she was innocent.
And anyone who accused anyone wrongly of adultery should receive the punishment of an adulterer. Chapter 66 seems to refer to an incident with Hafsah and Aisha, and some suggest it may refer to Miriam, Mohammed’s beautiful Coptic Christian concubine from Egypt. She was lovely. She was curly haired. The wives were jealous and Mohammed was found one day in bed with Miriam when it was Hafsa’s day and she said, prophet, on my day, my turn and in my bed.
And at that point, Mohammed moved Mariam out of town. Mariam had the only son that Muhammad bore and he died when he was only 18 months. There was another concubine, Rahaina, one of the Bani Quraiza, a Jewish tribe that was slaughtered by the Muslims. She wouldn’t accept Islam so she was sent to the harem as a concubine. Then there are 3 women who refused to be his wives, Asma, Mulaikha and Fatima.
Mohammed’s daughters, 3 of them died during his lifetime, Zena, Rukaia and Qalthoum. Rukaia was married to Usman, and after she died, Usman married Qalthum, and Hayid, Muhammad’s son-in-law, became the 3rd caliph, and Fatima married Ali ibn Talib, Muhammad’s nephew who became the 4th caliph. So all of 4 caliph were either Muhammad’s father or daughters in law. And Aisha is kind of the exemplar, the special woman for the Sunni. Fatima is held up by the shia.
Mohammed had a number of quite feisty female companions too who were written about and I’ll mention just a few of them. Sumayya who is a freed slave, one of the first followers of Muhammad and the first one to be martyred to be killed as a Muslim. Then there was Asma who was a paternal sister of Aisha, and she at some cost to herself took provisions to Mohammed and her father, Abu Bakr, when they were hiding in a cave out of Mecca when the Meccans were wanting to kill them. Safia was Mohammed’s paternal aunt, very active in some of the battles of the Muslim community, and most famous, Nusayba bint Kaab who at the battle of Uhud took water to the fighters, saw the Muslims losing, took a sword and a bow and arrow from the fighters who were running away and fought beside Mohammed protecting him. He said whenever I turn to the left or the right on the day of that battle, I always saw her fighting in my defense.
She received a number of wounds and participated in quite a few other battles. And the last one I’ll mention is Umwaraka who was wealthy, spent her time in prayer, meditation, and was appointed by Muhammad as a woman to lead prayer in her house. So the woman disciples are depicted as actively involved in the prophet’s preaching, in battles, and in debates
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Moyra Dales discusses the role of hadith in shaping the lives of Muslim women, highlighting both positive and negative traditions, the process of authenticating hadith, and Muslim women’s efforts to challenge and critique certain traditions.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Moyra Dale Lecture: Muslim Women in the Hadith:
Last time we looked at women in the Quran, what the Quran actually said about women. But as well as the Quran in Islam, there’s a whole body of hadith or traditions that unpack what’s said in the Quran in the lives of everyday Muslims. So today we wanna look at a few of the more common traditions about Muslim women and maybe how they deal with some of the more perhaps problematic ones. I wonder what traditions you’ve heard. What are the ones that are most commonly out there or that are quoted?
Perhaps one of the most common and one of the most disturbing traditions about Muslim women is the one that talks about how Mohammed was on his way to prayer, and he passed by a group of women. And he said, women, give alms because I’ve seen that the majority of the dwellers in hellfire were you women. The majority were 910ths. The women asked, why is it so, Alois apostle? He replied, you curse frequently.
You’re ungrateful to your husbands. I haven’t seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. Well, that’s a pretty discouraging tradition about women. A more positive one is paradise is under the feet of women. A slightly more difficult one is those who entrust their affairs to a woman, have her as ruler, will never know prosperity.
One that’s maybe a bit more hopeful for some Muslim women is the one that says, of all things that are permissible, the one that’s most displeasing to God is divorce. There’s such a huge body of traditions that it’s actually quite possible to find material from whatever angle you want to focus on, positive or negative. And the traditions I find are quoted very often with little regard for their authenticity, for how, how well regarded they are. For example, one that’s quoted often is Muhammad saying about, I should take half your religion from this little redhead. I hear that frequently, but when you look into it, it’s actually not at all supported.
Not many people think it’s authentic. So where did the hadith come from? Where did the traditions even begin? After Muhammad died, people were wanting to say, what should we do? What shouldn’t we do?
How do we find out what’s right for Muslims to do? What’s proper? What’s improper? And the answer is, basically, the words and actions of Mohammed and his companions are what Muslims do, and anything you can’t find there is wrong. So out of that developed a huge literature about all the things that Muhammad said and did.
And innovation or heresy in Islam is anything that contradicts Mohammed’s example. Well, when we look at the whole science of traditions, because there was a plethora of flowering of different traditions and they started to analyze what was right, what was wrong, we find there’s 2 sections, and that’s on the diagram in your workbook. The first is the or the collection of reporters, and then the or the actual text. So our traditional or train of reporters might be something like Homaeda Abdallah bin al Zubayr narrated to us that Sufayan told us, that Yahya bin Said al Ansari told us, that Mohammed bin Ibrahim Al Taymah told us he’d heard he heard Al Qama bin Waqas Al Laythi saying, I heard Umar bin Al Khattab say that Mohammed, may god be pleased with him and grant him salvation, said that, and that’s a fairly standard tradition. So how do you classify traditions?
One is the number of reporters involved at each stage and how trustworthy they are. But I want to focus on number 5 in the diagram, the reliability and the memory of the reporters. If it’s sound or, every reporter is trustworthy and known to be truthful. Hassan, the source is known and the reporters are unambiguous. It’s getting a bit dodgy.
Maybe some reporters are a bit disparaged. They tell lies. They make mistakes. There’s other reports that are more authentic that opposed to it. And then if it’s totally forged or made up, it’s.
And as the hadith proliferated, Muslims spent a lot of time checking them. And there’s a table in your book of 4 or 5 of the most major collections, so well reported. Al Bukhari, who lived about 200 years after Mohammed, looked at 3 to 600000 traditions. He accepted 7000 without repetitions, about 2 and a half 1000. So how do Muslim women challenge a hadith if they’re unhappy with it?
Well, Munisi looked at the tradition, those who trust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity. And she did quite a stunning critique of the main narrator, Abu Bakr. She basically said it’s likely he had political reasons that would make him want to bring up a hadith like that to protect himself. And also we know he’d once lied, and therefore, he couldn’t really be trusted. But to do that kind of work demands lots of time, lots of access to fairly difficult to get hold of sources to track down.
What about more ordinary people? Well, the woman I studied under talked about the tradition of Mohammed which says the majority of people in hellfire are women because you curse frequently. You’re ungrateful to your husbands. I haven’t seen anyone more deficient in intelligence than you. And the woman said, why?
He said, well, isn’t the evidence of 2 women equal to 1 man? And they said, yes. That’s in the Quran. He said, well, they’re lacking in intelligence. Isn’t it true that a woman can’t pray or fast when she’s menstruating?
He said yes. And he she said, Mohammed said, well, they’re obviously lacking in religion. So Hud al Habash took this tradition, and she said, well, if it’s a real tradition, just putting out a little bit of caution there, maybe it is, maybe it’s not. Perhaps he was only talking to a specific group of women. Those women who he passed to were actually ones who cursed a lot and ungrateful to their husbands.
It didn’t include all the women. Witness of 2 women equal to 1 man, well, that might have been true in his time, but when women and men get equal education, that’s no longer true. It shouldn’t still apply. And also we know that Muhammad on a couple of times had taken the advice of women in what to do, So we can’t interpret this to understand that he meant that all women are lacking in intelligence because he obviously trusted some. So women like Hudah al Habash use context, use different ways of unpacking it to make sense of these hadith.
Women’s daily lives are shaped by the Quran and by the traditions. So I wonder how some of the women you know deal with some of the more troubling verses and hadith. And I wonder too what Bible story you might like to bring up and tell in a conversation about some of these texts.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Moyra Dale offers a brief lecture on the various approaches of Muslim women in the Qur’an.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Moyra Dale Lecture: The Qur’an and Muslim Women:
This week, we’re going to look at some of the texts that shape the lives of Muslim women. What the texts are, what’s actually written about them, and how much authority they have in the lives of women. Well, we’re going to look first of all at the Quran and the hadith, but you just need to be aware that there are sometimes also local volumes that are significant. In a lot of Muslim book shops, you’ll find a book called The Ideal Muslimah or Female Muslim that talks about all the duties, the rights, the roles, the responsibilities of Muslim women, what she needs to live a proper pious life. And for Muslim women in the Indian subcontinent, maybe the book that most shapes their lives is the Bahashti Ziwar, which is translated as heavenly ornaments.
It’s often given to a new bride as soon as she gets married. And again, that unpacks all the rulings and sayings about Muslim women. And, so if you’re talking to women from that kind of area, you need to know what’s in that book and what it means for them. But all those books still fundamentally go back to 2 sources, the Quran and the traditions. And today, we’re going to focus a little bit on the Quran, and what’s written for women in the Quran.
But first, perhaps it’s good to ask, how much authority does the Quran have and how much does the Hadith have? Well, there’s different schools of opinion. El Ghazali, who’s perhaps the greatest Muslim scholar, medieval teacher says, God has but one word which differs only in how he expresses it. On occasions, he indicates his word by the Quran, on others by words in another style not publicly recited and called the prophetic tradition, but both are mediated by the prophet. They’re equally authoritative.
Amina Wadud, who’s an African American Muslim scholar, she holds the primacy of the Quran higher. She says, while I accept the role of a prophet, both with regard to revelation as understood in Islam and the development of Islamic law on the basis of his practices, I place greater significance on the Quran. This fits with the understanding of Quranic preservation versus historical contradictions that exist within the hadith literature or the traditions. As well as authority, we have to ask how the texts are translated. So one writer says, a Muslim woman ought to wear the hijab, cover her whole body except her face or hands.
So if you say that, or if you say it’s immodest for a woman to reveal her hair, all these assertions about modesty rely on reference to a set of Quranic verses, a set of prophetic traditions or hadith, reports about the companions, and most importantly, the cumulative juristic or scholarly efforts in selecting, preserving, and giving meaning to these textual sources, how they’ve been interpreted over the years. And even then, there can be regional and individual differences in interpretation with the different schools of law. So in Medina, a woman wasn’t allowed to contract a marriage, but had to be given by her guardian. Whereas if a woman lived in Kufa, she could she had the right to contract her own marriage. One judge ruled that Koranic injunction to make a fair provision for divorced wives was legally binding.
Another judge was ruled that it was only directed at the husband’s conscience and carried no legal weight. So different modes of interpretation had quite significant differences in fallout in the lives of women. Now let’s start looking at what the verses actually say in the Quran about women. And you’ve been given a couple of tables to look at. The first looks at women in the Quran in terms of topical subjects, the value of daughters versus to treat men and women as the same versus to treat them differently.
Verses about hijab, divorce, adultery, polygamy, paradise, marriage, honoring parents. And then in there’s, of course, the chapter of the Quran, chapter 4, Anissa, which is the surah of women. That’s how its name translates. And the first 36 or 43 verses, and then from, say, a 124 to a 130, are some of the most significant verses written about Muslim women. And I’ve asked you to look at some of those and interact with them in the forum.
Another way of understanding what the Quran teaches about women is to look at the different women who are talked about in the Quran. And again, you’ve got a table unpacking some of those. In 1 chapter 66, there’s Noah and Lot are examples of warning, and Pharaoh’s wife and Jesus’ mother mother Mary are examples of women who should be emulated. In fact, one writer says the whole theme of chapter 66 is female rebellion in a prophet’s household and its punishment. Obviously, Mohammed was having problems at the time.
So there are also references to Adam and his wife. And it’s interesting asking in the quranic version, who was the one who was tempted to sin? That might be worth looking up. The wives of Noah and Lot get a few mentions. The women of Abraham, Sarah gets a lot written about her.
In the Koranic understanding, Sarah was the first to believe in her husband’s mission in Abraham as prophet together with Lot, his cousin or nephew. And so Muslims, or at least Muhammad, saw them as a kind of model for Muhammad, his first wife Khadija and his nephew Ali, who then became his son-in-law, were his first converts. Then there’s a little bit about Hagar. Not much at all in the Quran, a whole lot more in the traditions. Potiphar’s wife, who’s not named in the Quran, but he’s very well known in the traditions as, Moses and the women around him, the queen of Sheba, Bilquis, the mother of the wife of Zechariah, mother of John or Yahya, and then a whole lot about Mary, the mother of Jesus.
One question that’s debated by Muslims is whether Mary was actually a prophet or not. Some people say, yes, she’s like a prophet. She’s the only woman who’s given a name in the Quran. There’s a whole lot of women described, but none of them are named in the Quran with the exception of Mary. And there’s a whole chapter of the Quran, chapter 19, named after her.
She’s included in the list of prophets in surah 21 and, described as among the special people because angels spoke to them. Others, however, reject that and say she can’t be a prophet because in chapter 12 verse a 109, chapter 16 verse 43, prophets can only be men and because of the need for a prophet to have physical purity. Some see her as a man because they say among women are some who are perfect and knowledgeable and who attain the standard of men. They’re in a real sense men. And there was one intriguing mystic, Ibn al Arbi, a 12th century Sunni Muslim who taught that now try and get your head around this.
I’ll say it slowly. Adam was really the first female for Eve was born from his inside. Adam was the first female because Eve was born from his inside, an act which was repeated by the second Adam who is Mary in generating Jesus. Some interesting teaching around the person of Mary, and she’s revered by Muslims. And then lastly, there’s a number of references to Muhammad’s wives known as mothers of the believers in chapters 33, a whole lot in that chapter.
And I’ve given you the references, chapter 24, chapter 66. That’s a quick overview of some of the women who are described in the Quran, some of the issues that have to do with women and women’s lives and we’ll be exploring that more in the forum. Our next session will take us to look at how women are talked about in the hadith or the traditions.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Vivienne Stacey discusses women’s rights in Islam. This topic is continually debated as Muslims wrestle with reforming Islam to be more compatible with the twenty-first century. She discusses how Islamic law is developed as well as reformed. This process has significant implications for Muslim women’s rights and the ongoing process of reforming Islam.
In this, session, we’re looking further at human rights in Islam, and we will look at it in general again, and then more specifically in relation to women. Traditionalists and modernists in Islam are whenever so divided as on the question of the position and rights of women. New laws relating to the position of women have been introduced in many Muslim lands. Reform laws have often been linked to a new way of us interpreting the Quran. When you think of it, the Quran is divine law.
It’s an internal book. So how can you change divine law? That’s the basic question. How can a divine law be amended? In adapting and interpreting Quranic teaching for the modern world, four principles can be observed.
1st, a procedural device by which the reformers did not change the divine law, but gave orders that it was not to be applied. That’s one way. The courts, in certain circumstances, were not to hear a case. 2nd, laws are formulated partly from one school of law and partly from another or from several. There are four main schools of Islamic law, and, generally, one is prevalent in a certain part of the world.
The Hanabi law in Pakistan and India, I think. But one way that the jurists have tried to accommodate what’s happening in the modern world and to up, as it were, bring a ruling to bear on the modern world is to take something from one school of law and then something else relating to that from a second school of law and even a 3rd or a 4th. So bringing together, points that might, support each other from the different schools of law, you can come up with a different interpretation. So that’s basically the idea. And the third way, a new use of consensus.
The word is Ijma for consensus, the Arabic word, ijma, if you want to transliterate it. It involves going back to the original sources and making fresh deductions. Consensus in in Islam means the agreement of the community of Muslims. Muz Mohammed is reported to have said that his community would never agree on error. My community will never agree in error on error.
Finally, administrative orders based on one of the three principles described above, and sometimes with something added, which is not contrary or repugnant to Islam, have made possible the adoption of reforms even in Islamic states. So these, law in Islam is a very important subject. It’s it’s this law and theology is the sort of very essence of Islam in many ways, you could say. And so, Islamic law is very important. So how does it you adjust a book written in the 7th century AD, and addressing a certain kind of situation, and a a small book too.
How do you, interpret and live by it in the 20th century or the 21st century? How do you apply it? So you have the traditions to help. You have, the schools of law, which have become more formalized, and so there is quite clear what this school of law is saying and what that is. So maybe there’s nothing said about a certain point in the Hanover School of Law.
So you take something from another school of law, and you make a a new interpretation, which will be relevant to the situation of this century. That’s the general idea. Now it’s quite true that Islam gets a bad press in the West on the subject of basic human rights, and I think we’ve already gone into the sort of different world view. We’re really talking about different world views, because Islam in Islam, God, the one God, Unitarian model of God, the Unitarian, not Trinitarian model of God is the center of that worldview. So everything has to come to 1.
You have one community. Heaven and the, this world and the next is to be eventually 1. The world is in 2 parts, the world under which is the part of the world where Islam rules, and the part of the world where Islam is yet to rule, but it comes to be 1 as Islam becomes the religion as the whole of mankind, as it was in the beginning when Adam and, the time of Adam, that’s ideal Islam going back to Adam as the first one who submitted to God, therefore, the first Muslim. Historically, the faith starts in the 17th 7th century, but, in thinking, it’s it’s or in concept, it’s it’s starts at the beginning, because it’s the ideal religion of man, and different prophets come to call man back to God. So, this is a worldview matter, and you cannot match the world, this Unitarian worldview, with other worldviews.
There are bound to be things that don’t quite match. Islam is god centered and not man centered. Social Islamic social concepts do not separate the individual from the state, but are both part of one system, accountable to the one god. And sec secularists see the need to protect the individual by law so that the state does not exceed its bounds, and such an idea is foreign to Islam. I’m recapitulating from what we said in the last session.
But I want to go on, to some more, exact matters concerning, women in Islam. Country after country has introduced, reforms in laws for women. In one of the earliest was Tunisia in 1956, the code of personal status, fixed minimum ages for marriage. It totally abolished polygamy, provided that no divorce may be pronounced outside, and it provided that no divorce may be pronounced outside a court of law court of law, gave women the same right of divorce as men. This was followed by a law disallowing unilateral repudiation of of the wife by the husband and the introduction of judiciary divorce with a quality of appeal for each spouse.
In 1959, the Tunisian constitution legally ended all sex, discrimination. Tunisian men and women can ideally take an equal share in political life, not only in voting, but in the election to any public office, including that of president of the republic. In practice, and this is where the rub is, the in practice, few women are elected to public office. The number of women, magistrates, lawyers, and plea police increases annually, and women also hold jobs in the media. So things are moving, but the basic problem here is that having obtained rights, I just mentioned, Eunice and I will mention 1 or 2 other countries, but we can’t go through them all.
But the point is, having obtained them, how do they exercise them? I mean, how are they exercised on their behalf, and how does, how does an illiterate woman make some kind of stand or progress or protest when the law of the country says 16 or 17, whatever it is, is the minimum age for marriage when her birth is not, documented. And, so she doesn’t really know how old she is, and and probably doesn’t know much about the laws because she hasn’t been told or educated. So obtaining rights is one thing, and exercising them is another. Tunisia is very advanced in its laws in a sense.
Quite interesting to look at what Gaddafi did in Libya. He concerned himself with young people, and there was a great increase of primary school teachers. Who put a great emphasis on this. And it’s, the government has tried to change attitudes through reforms, such as the suppression of dowry payments and a policy favoring the emancipation of women. But there’s an ideological hardening within the regime, and, it doesn’t get worked out as much in a society as it might.
And it’s also difficult to mensch to measure what’s happening in a society where many freedoms are suppressed. It’s, so Egypt. Well, the great reformer of of of modern Egypt, the thinker and modernist and reformer, Muhammad Abdu, had a profound intro, in what should we say, influence about in the 19 twenties, I think, in in that age. A series of laws relating to status and rights of women were passed in 1920, 1928, 1929. And then in 1943, a law of inheritance was passed, and this made provision for inheritance by orphaned grandchildren.
Now, here’s an issue. The Quran says that, a woman will get half, a daughter will get half what a brother gets. And that’s clearly, we’ve read this and studied it in male is responsible for the provision of the family and, has extra economic responsibilities, so a daughter gets half. So what about inheritance then? And what about that might be just in a certain society where there’s the extended family and all that, but what about under urbanization?
What about these mega cities? Cairo will soon be a mega city if it isn’t already. A third of Egyptians live in Cairo. So it’s, if it’s not a make mega city, it’s gonna be one soon. It isn’t.
I think they say 20,000 or 20,000,000 or 25,000,000. I was reading about Mexico this morning, has the capital of Mexico has 25,000,000 people. It is a mega city. But in the Islamic world, they’re going to be megacities. Karachi is will be 1.
These are at the moment, they’re perhaps in over 10,000,000, but they’re not yet 20 or 25,000,000. In those kind of cities, people come to get work, and, they have to leave behind their villages, and their, what happens in in in the in Balochistan, in the further distant places of the country, and they come rather uprooted and and rather alone. We’re gonna look at this when we look at globalization. We’ll look at globalization and postmodernity and all this. It it arises, I think, out of the the this this tremendous going to the city, where you may have 2 doors down the road, somebody from a totally different background than yours.
The extended family may not be there at all, and it may be 500 or a 1000 miles away. So in that kind of situation, women need to inherit, as much as men inherit. I might need as much as my brother if I’m in, if I were a Muslim woman in that situation. And so there are attempts in not only to improve the position of women, but to improve the provisions for children. Pakistan called its major reform in among women as it were.
The major reform was in 1961, and it was the family laws ordinance. It was family laws ordinance, So better provision provisions for children and for orphans under that. But still, this basic question, there may be rights given, but how are they to be exercised if people aren’t always aware of them? The more that education spreads, and you have tremendous changes in education, Gaddafi gives equal chances to men and to girls and boys in education. Go to any Libyan town.
I’ve been to quite a few. There’s a major school arrangement, schooling arrangement, and a a major educational, I mean, medical arrangement, hospitals, schools, they’re everywhere. But, Saudi in one generation, really, is becoming totally literate. Tremendous change. And what about, fax and email and all this?
It’s all spreading, And there will be people who know the rights. Some of the keen Islamic lawyers who Muslims like, Hera Jalani, sister of Elva Jahanghir, these 2 campaigners for human rights in Pakistan, They have objected on the question of of rapes, anti rape societies, and abuse of women. They have campaigned on this field, and I I met an an African some while ago, and he told me that in Kenya, there’s an anti rape society formed, women getting together, to deal with rape and to deal with, the abuse of women and rape. You see, the Quran says, 4 male witnesses for rape, that would condemn both parties. But, for male witnesses, and who’s likely to to see 90% of the rapes that take place anyway?
But the punishment, certainly for the woman, may be death. It may not be death by the law of the country, but it may be by custom. And I have I lived in this hospital in in Pakistan. I didn’t work in it, but I I lived on its campus. We would have very sad cases.
Perhaps a a cousin had raped a young woman, a young somebody, 17 or something, and she’s brought to the hospital for an abortion, and that as a Christian hospital, the hospital would not perform an abortion, and we knew that she would probably be killed by the family. It was a disgrace to the honor of the family. Or somebody whose husband has gone off to the Gulf countries, and she gets pregnant, her husband’s been away a year, well, this the it’s very likely, unless she can get an abortion somewhere that she will be killed, because in that part, even if the law says something about it, it doesn’t, the local custom and pressure, whole business of shame and dishonor, brings that pressure, but it’s unlikely that she would, survive. But, the Quran seems not to to give full human rights to the women to the woman on this question of, adultery. So but in some states, like Tunisia, there would be legally fair, hearing for those who knew how to apply for it.
Now, I’ve traveled quite a bit in Tunisia, and I hope to go there in February again. You have a situation of the major cities where people aren’t women are quite a lot of them well educated, and they would know their rights. But if you go to some of the interior of the country and some of the south of it, there are very backward areas. If you go to Sidi Baiz, which is about the middle of the country, quite a backward area, and I can I would guess that most of the women would not know their rights? So it’s one thing to obtain rights, it’s another thing to be able to exercise them.
But in Pakistan, we had the problem, and it’s still, as far as I know, exists. The Quran says about the testimony of 2 women equaling that of 1 man. If there’s a coffee over there, if anyone needs to buy one, of a new debate on women and Islam in Pakistan, headed to the doctor and the ladies. The doctor actually was a a Muslim theologian who used to appear on, television representing a very conservative view, and it sort of was a radio television debate on on, some of these issues. But particularly, the issue came up of, it says here, the writer puts it, cutting women down to half.
Because under the law in Pakistan until 19 I’m not sure when this came in. It’s sometime in the 19 seventies. See, the you had the family laws ordinance of 1961, and for a long time, women had had the vote anyway. But there was a a growing fundamentalism in Pakistan, so sometime in the seventies, and I I I’m sorry, I don’t know the date, but, there was the move to introduce into the courts the ruling that, 2 women were required, to equal the testimony of 1 man. So if if a woman had something to say, and on the other hand, a man had something to say, which was different, The testimony of the one woman was not enough.
It had to be 2 women saying that. And it really split the is it gonna be 1 and 1? And, the, the judiciary, the Supreme Court, I suppose, made the decision that the judge in each case could decide, whether it’s 1 to 1 and 2, or 1 to 2. Now that made it very unpopular for both. It it made the whole nation, mad, really, because the traditionalists wanted 2 to 1, and the more modern and the secularists, they wanted 1 they wanted 1 to 1.
So to leave it in the hands of a judge, each on each individual case didn’t satisfy anybody. I don’t know if it was, I don’t know what would have happened if there had been a ruling or if they stayed as they were, but, this is was a debate, the doctor and the ladies, a new debate on women in Islam in Pakistan, and it arose over this matter. And there there there are other areas, in which these matter these things come up about, the question of the custody of children and how how fair, that is for the wife, I suppose, and there’s a divorce, who has custody and for how long? Some of these matters seem to be very much in favor of the father and and not of the of the mother. So family laws is a is a an issue.
You might want to ask some questions, perhaps. While you’re thinking of your questions, let me mention some articles or some references in books. There’s an interesting book, Women in the Muslim World, edited by Lois Beck and Nikki Kedi, Harvard University Press 1978. 1 the second chapter, is on legal reform as an indicator of women’s status in Muslim nations. Well, that’s or rather, that’s 20 years old, but still, one, one of the comments she makes here, the Elizabeth White, the the writer, says that, the Muslim majority nations of the world have low rates of reported economic activity by women, low female literacy, and low female school enrollment at all levels.
We’ve talked about the improvements in certain countries already, in Saudi and other wealthy countries. But in Pakistan, and I would say this is still true today, in Pakistan, 5th 80 5 percent of the 10 to 14 year old girls are illiterate. And in Pakistan, Libya, and Iran, 95% of women over 60 are illiterate. Throughout the world, the poor, the rural, and the female, half of the population are least likely to be educated. Okay.
How do these people if there are rights given, how do they get them implemented implemented? So there’s a long way to go, even in the country which does allow, women to have the vote. Pakistan, allows women to have the vote, and, generally, they are instructed how to vote. So that’s, one article which I found very interesting. What is required in some countries is a civil registration of births and deaths, but if you don’t have it, then what?
And if you have rules, laws about the minimum age for marriage and all this, and it’s not enforced, then what? Somebody may be married below the minimum age, but there won’t be an enforcement of it. Of of, there won’t be a, even if it’s challenged, nothing will be done, no punishment will be given for those who arrange this marriage. Is here’s an exa an article on human rights in Islam, and, this is a statement about through about mus through Muslim statement on human rights in Islam. In 1980, a seminar on human rights in Islam was organized by the International Commission of Jurists together with the University of Kuwait and the Union of Arab Lawyers.
So if you want to, study this, you can photocopy it. One purpose of the seminar was set forth in a single sentence. The time has come to refute the idea that the initiation and continued development of the concept of human rights must be attributed exclusively to Western culture. And then Islam was first to recognize basic human rights almost 14 centuries ago, and so on. Okay.
You can read that if you want to. Then, Nazame Islam, process and conflicts in Pakistan, in Pakistan’s program of Islamization with special reference to the position of women. Quite a a lengthy paper, but when president Zia when well, he was general Zia, when he took over by martial law in the late seventies, he introduced Nizami Mustafa, the ordering of society according to the way of Islam. So this is a study on how this affected his introducing of a different, legal code. We had 3 legal codes.
We had martial law law martial law, so those codes. We had civil law, and then we had this religious law, and they operated in together for a while. Women in and law reform in contemporary Islam. Again, another article from, Kedi’s, book, Beck and Kedi. And one here, I think I’ve already mentioned the political status of women in the Arab Gulf States.
That’s from the no. I haven’t mentioned this. This is Middle East Journal. Middle East Journal, volume 43, number 1, winter 1989. And, I’ll only I’ll conclude by telling you one thing about the political status of women in the Arab world gulf states.
When the queen went to Saudi Arabia some years ago, she was well received and given the status of an honorary woman an an honorary man. I’m sorry.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Vivienne Stacey discusses the concept of human rights according to Islam. She addresses the topic of apostasy and the infamous blasphemy laws of Pakistan. This topic is significant as historically hard-line Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia attempt to reform their societies to be more compatible with twenty-first century. The question remains whether or not Islam can be reformed to accommodate ideas like religious pluralism. Similarly, Pakistan continues to struggle with the incompatibility of its blasphemy law and its membership in the UN which upholds a declaration of universal human rights.
Our subject in this session is law reform and human rights for women in Islam. I think we have first to think about human rights in Islam in general, and then how women are affected. Islam presents as a quotation from a Muslim, Breuil, who wrote a book on the subject, Islam presents man, mankind, I think, with a charter of human liberty within a religious framework, which emphasizes the necessity of his being aware of his responsibility and accountability. I have here actually, a paper on Islamic human rights in Islam, And there are Muslims do also have a charter of human rights, which isn’t the same as the United Nations charter, but they have subscribed to the United Nations charter. But there is an innate, what should we say, ideological conflict on the, on the idea of human rights, as I hope to show by by, taking some notes out of a lecture given by Colin Chapman in Cyprus in 1995.
One of Colin Chapman’s books is over there, and then somebody’s bought it. He’s he’s an up and coming thinker and, writer. So three basic convictions about human rights in Islam, Muslim convictions, Islam is theocentric while the west is anthropocentric. So God is at the center of thinking for Muslims, and man is at the center of thinking for many in the West, or not just the west. And then here’s a quotation from another Muslim writer.
Human rights in Islam exist only in relation to human obligations. Individuals possess certain obligations towards god, fellow humans, and nature, all of which are defined by the Sharia law. When individuals meet these obligations, they acquire certain rights and freedoms, which are again prescribed by the sharia. Those who do not accept these obligations have no rights, and any claims of freedom that they may make upon society lack justification. And then another Muslim writer, unlike Western philosophical and political perception of the separability of the individual and the state, Islamic social concept concepts do not make such a distinction.
The individual does not stand in any adverse adversary position, vis a vis the state, but is an integral part thereof. The consequence of this relationship is that there is no apparent need to delineate individual rights in contraposition to the state. So we’ve got, duties rather than rights, and then secondly, communism rather than individualism. I’m sure you’re aware of this. Human rights have developed in the West to protect individuals from the coercive power of the state.
Such an idea is alien to Islam. And so this is why it’s extremely difficult, to well, I I don’t know how, actually, some Muslim countries can accept the Charter of Human Rights, the UN Charter. But except for sections about religion, I think, Saudi Arabia has accepted it, but he there’s an exception on the religious points in that. Most other nations have accepted the UN Charter, but there is a contradiction at the basis. The contradiction that, that one’s rights, are defined in terms of one’s obligations to God, fellow human beings, and nature in Islam.
And, the the fundamental idea, that an individual doesn’t need rights, his human and individual like like rights protected from the power of the state because the individual is an integral part of the state. So you how do you reconcile that? I I ultimately, I think you can’t, perhaps. But anyway, there’s an effort to do it. So there are tensions.
Let’s look at 1 or 2 of them. The United Nations Charter of Human Rights of Rights. It’s a charter of human liberty, actually. Oh, no. No.
It’s the it’s UN Charter of Rights, isn’t it? Human rights. It’s the, Muslims who have a Charter of Human Liberty, which is a parallel setup, according to their real their thinking. Okay. Well, the here we’ve got tensions and conflicts.
The United Nations article number 2 says, no distinctions to be made, equality without distinction of any kind. That’s in inverted commas. Without distinction of any kind. In quality, without distinction of any kind. But fiqh, take that, the Muslim understanding of it, takes distinctions for granted.
Dignity and brotherhood were originally only for believers in Islam. And Sherfi speaks of 3 great inequalities in the Islamic legal tradition between men and women, between Muslims and non Muslims, between free men and slaves. And then under the question of women, United Nations article number 16 and, 16.1. Equal rights as to marriage, during marriage, and its dissolution. But Muslim women cannot marry a non Muslim man.
And it but the other way around, a Muslim man can marry a world, And probably the most celebrated inequality under traditional Islamic law is the unequal treatment of women, who are considered the wards of men. Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, United Nations article 18 includes this, in inverted commas again, freedom to change his religion or belief. And there is a different understanding of freedom of conscience in Islam. A freedom a Muslim will say there is freedom of belief, but it is, in effect, freedom to become a Muslim or freedom to remain a Muslim, but it is not freedom to leave the household of Islam and join anything else. So Kenneth Craig makes this very clear in his writings.
Freedom to remain Muslim, obviously. Freedom to become Muslim, but not freedom no basic freedom to leave Islam. It’s unthinkable. But in Islam, freedom of expression is allowed on conditions that this right is to be exercised for righteousness of all, we may call it the common good, as one Muslim writer says. Individual freedom in Islam is perhaps the most difficult to relate to the modern concept of freedom, says another Muslim writer, Majid Khaduri.
And then, there are certain arguments that Muslims use. They say, the west uses the concept of human rights for its own advantage, and I think we could find some justification for that as I always like to read the newspapers, in my own country when I go to Britain, and occasionally, I read them in Cyprus. I like to read them when I come to the States. I have a go at the New York Times, and then I try one of the Los Angeles papers and so on. But I think that the West is guilty here.
Uses, the West uses concept the concept of human rights for its own advantage. It’s true in this sort of international dealing. Anyway, but this is not the point. The point is that there is a basic difference between the way Muslims look at human rights and the basic difference in the way they look at, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Let’s have a look.
I’ll just quote 1 or 2 texts from the Quran. I’m not giving this as a, you won’t get a handout because it’s, these are notes on a lecture a lecture, and I haven’t got I haven’t asked for permission to circulate it. But Quran, chapter, surah 2 verse 256 says, there is no compulsion in religion. Muslims are very keen on quoting that, that no one is going to be compelled. There is no compulsion in religion.
And then Sura 49 verse 14 distinguishes between belief based on personal conviction and formal acceptances of Islam. The state cannot enforce Islam. Sura 109 verse 5, to you, your religion, and to me, mine. Now this was addressed to Meccan idolaters. It can provide a basis for coexistence and pluralism, or can it?
Muhammad was only a warner, a warner with no authority to convert forcibly. Sura 10 verse 99, if God had willed, all could have believed together. If God had willed, he could have made you all 1 Ummah, Ummah community, all one community. He could have done that. Surah 30 verse 30.
Man’s freedom is based on the innate disposition given to man by God. And there are a whole lot of verses which are favorable to Christians, and some of them have been abrogated, canceled, but some remain. And, there’s a a really, you can find a a sort of argument in the Quran or a statement in the Quran that the purpose of the conquest of Arabia and between 622 AD and 6 32 AD when Mohammed died, he united Arabia, which was no considerable which was a considerable feat. But the purpose of the conquest was not to impose Islam, but to create a situation in which Islam could have a hearing. That’s that’s an argument.
There were relations that Mohammed had with Christians in Abyssinia. There was the constitution of Medina, and there was the code of Ummah. These are all, if you like, statements about relationships, with those who well, certainly, the relationships with the Christians in in Aben Abasinya, and the letter that Mohammed sent, we have still got record of it, that he sent to local, surrounding countries, to Bahrain, and to some who accepted and some who rejected the invitation to to join Islam. So how is conversion seen by Islam? This will affect men and women.
There’s a verse in the Quran, Surah 4 verse 89 that says, how Muslims should deal with those who renounce the faith of Islam. Now not allowing someone to renounce the face of faith of Islam is, denying what we would consider basic human rights. But this is what the Quran says. They long that you should disbelieve, even as they disbelieve, that you may be upon a level with them. So choose not friends from them till they wherever you find them.
Choose no friend nor helper from among them. None of these verses that are quoted I’ve only quoted 1. Excuse me. None of them are about Muslims becoming Christians. But they are about people who are renouncing Islam.
A study of Muslim commentaries shows that in their original context, none of these verses are concerned with Muslims becoming Christians. Most of them deal with those who are known as hypocrites, that is idolaters who made a profession of Islam but were not sincere, and later went back to their former life. But you see, these these these verses have remained and have formed the basis of what is called the law of apostasy, that anyone denying Islam, renouncing Islam is, to be punished by death, and it would be considered a merit for someone to kill such a person. This accounts for certain we’ve talked about martyrdom, and it but it’s extends further than that. The Hadith literature contains a variety of sayings of the prophet about apostasy, and we find reference to the death penalty.
The death penalty isn’t actually mentioned in the Quran, but there’s an implication of it in the verse, that I read. I mean, it’s not a blanket statement in the Quran that anyone who renounces Islam should be killed, but there is a statement that those who were hypocrites, idolaters, and who then took on Islam and then drifted away or denounced it, they should be killed. So it was for that immediate situation. But from that, they there’s a possibility of building this whole law of apostasy, and it’s reinforced with the Hadith, which definitely says, that anyone leaving Islam or rejecting Islam, is an apostate and should be killed. It may not be accord according to the law of the land, so we have Saudi has no other law but the Quran.
So it’s the constitution of the country. So it’s death for anyone who declares themselves who’s Saudi by birth and declares themselves non Muslim. But it doesn’t apply in quite a numb a large number of countries, because there is civil law as well as religious law. And, it doesn’t The nearest we come to it in Pakistan is the blasphemy law, and that’s being a real test and very, very difficult. They have no one has ever actually been, executed under the blasphemy law.
Blasphemy law has been in, probably for the last, I don’t know, 8 or 10 years. It first was that anyone, in any way saying anything offensive about Mohammed or or or Islam, could be imprisoned for life or killed. And then about 3 or so years ago, it was changed that there was no other punishment except death. And Christians have been tried under that law, and, Muslims have been tried under it. If anyone has reports somebody having said something denigration to the prophet denigrating the prophet, they could be arrested and tried.
And, unfortunately, people have used it to they want some land belonging to a neighbor, then they’ve accused the neighbor of, saying something about the prophet that he shouldn’t have said. So, you know, that sort of there’s a political twist to some of these things. And sometimes it’s been somebody completely innocent, like Rehmat Masih, Christian boy, who was about 12 or 13. He was accused of of, writing something, not according to what the, writing something that was disrespectful of the Quran, I think it was. Well, actually, he was illiterate.
It was highly unlikely that he wrote anything. I think he’s supposed to have written it on the walls of a mosque or something. So anyway, he was freed but eventually acquitted. But, in being acquitted, he was in danger of his life from the religious leaders, so he cannot live. Anyone who’s acquitted, I think a 100 people have been arrested under this law, some Muslims and some Christians.
But, any Christian arrested under it and acquitted is unlikely to be able to stay in Pakistan because of the religious leaders wanting to bring into operation what the civil law didn’t bring in, the law of apostasy. So the traditional response to apostasy in sharia law is summed up by a Sudanese Islamic scholar, Abdulahi Ahmed Anaim. And he says, on the basis of these sunnah and standard commentaries on the Quran, traditional Islamic schools of jurisprudence are unanimous in holding that apostasy is punishable by death, although they differ on such questions as whether to execute the sentence immediately or grant the apostate a reprieve of a few days to allow him time to reflect and reconsider his position in the hope that he may reembrace Islam, thereby saving his life as well as his soul. The most significant test of Muslim attitudes to conversion, however, is not, sorry, I’ve lost my place, is not the statements of jurists and theologians of the past and present, but what actually happens in practice. However liberal and tolerant Muslim leaders can be, what really seems to count at the end of the day is the attitude of a particular family to 1 or more of their number who seem to be turning their backs on their religion, and that was instance you saw that in the case history that we studied earlier, my Pakistani friend who was killed, and shame and dishonor to the family.
It’s either the family or it may be religious leaders. The civil courts may acquit. Movement from the Muslim Ummah community to another community necessarily implies the repudiation of the Islamic state along with its ideology, which comes from the religion of Islam. To convert out of Islam means clearly to abandon its world order, which is the Islamic State. That is why Islamic law has treated people who have converted out of Islam as political traitors.
No state can look upon the political treason directed to it with indifference. It must deal with traitors. So it needs to be pointed out that there is a real tension, if not an inconsistency, at this point between the traditional Islamic responses to conversion and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this charter has been officially accepted by most countries, including Islamic states and states in which Muslims are a majority. It allows the freedom not only to hold and practice one’s own religion, but also to change one’s own own religion. But the punishment by death, in the case of apostasy, has been unanimously agreed upon by all the 4 schools of Islamic jurisprudence.
So there are 4 main schools of Islamic law, and they all agree on the punishment is right this punishment of apostasy. So I have to, I think, give this sort of background because this affects men and women. It affects any any who is any person who is Muslim. I think you could, it’s useful to have a have a a a printout or a published text of the charter of unit UN Charter of Human Rights. I’m always misquoting almost quoting its title.
It’s the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That’s the correct title. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I when I traveled across North Africa Africa in the seventies early eighties, I used to keep it in a copy of it with me. I had it in Arabic and in English.
I just felt this, and I used to give it to certain photocopy it and give it to certain, people because I thought it’s, people at least should know, what is written and what their country has signed. But, we have, as you see, a sort of dichotomy here because, there is a different concept of the rights and duties of the individual and the responsibilities between state and the individual, particularly this idea, that this the individual is to be protected from the state by by the human rights here delineated. Whereas, that is not a Muslim idea because the individual is an integral part of the state. Well, we’ll try to come back in the next session when we study. We’ll deal more particularly, further with this question in relation to women.