Islam and women’s citizenship
Two discourses therefore merge into each another: a discourse on equality and fraternity between men and women in Islam, and a discourse on difference, which establishes an essentialist inequality between men and women. The latter actually completes another two essentialist inequalities: that between Muslims and non-Muslims and that between a free man and a slave.
How can these paradoxes be overcome? How can these subtle connections be understood? This article is divided into two parts. We will initially attempt to underscore hints of citizenship within Islam. This will be a return to the past, an archaeology of our representations.
Secondly, we will evoke the religious foundations of inequality in Islam and the difficult construction of citizenship. This discussion will be projected forwards into the future, towards the project of women’s full citizenship on Islamic territory in the aftermath of such a promising Arab Spring.
In order to gain a good understanding of the Islamic point of view on men and women’s respective roles, it is necessary to place the Muslim perspective into its metaphysical dimension. The Koran considers a human being as a soul who meets God in this life in order to be able to access knowledge, obey Him and therefore gain access to paradise and immortality. Consequently, the Koran considers men and women to be equal in front of God. In fact, they are considered identical in this respect. In surah 4 (an nissa), verse 1, God revealed:
“Men, fear your Lord who created you from one soul, and from this soul created his partner, and from them both, a multitude of men and women”.
This principle of equality of the sexes can also be found in surah 49 (al houjourat) verse 1:
“Oh men, we created you from a man and a woman, we divided you into people and tribes, so that you could know each other. The most worthy in front of God is he who fears Him the most”.
In these passages the Koran addresses male believers as much as their female counterparts, encouraging them to do good for which they will be rewarded, and to avoid evil for which they will be punished. This highlights an egalitarian moral and ethical code. Women are rewarded or punished in relation to their faith or disbelief, their virtue or vice, as cited in the Koran “no one shall carry another one’s burden” (surah 6, al anaam, verse 164).
Several significant points also strengthen the Koran’s contribution to the creation of a new social order. The latter granted women an honourable status, creating a sort of rough sketch of female citizenship within Muslim cities. Of these, the following can be cited:
1) The revival of woman’s image
In Judo-Christian civilization the myth of the fall of man justifies the right that men have seized to render women responsible for all their ills and weaknesses. Eve, a symbol of sin, sexuality and death, is only redeemed by the appearance of the Virgin Mary who represents obedience, purity and eternal life. The Koranic narrative does not demonize Eve. In fact, nothing within the sacred text accuses Eve of tempting Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. Eve is not borne of Adam’s rib and is equal to him in front of the temptation to disobey. Their responsibility is identical: both committed an error, repented and were forgiven. Islam does not recognize the original sin.
This rehabilitative image of women can be found in multiple archetypal female figures. For example, generous Assia, the Pharaoh’s daughter who took Moses in, or that of Ayub’s wife, whose patience and faith are still legendary today. Even Zuleika, the seductress who tried to tempt prophet Joseph is represented in a humane way that opens up a path of peace and repentance to her in the Koran. Throughout the entire Koranic narrative, wise, courageous and pious women like Mary, her mother Anne, Ismael’s mother Agara and Balkis, Queen of Saba have embodied Duty and Sacrifice.
2) The abolition of female infanticide:
In pre-Islamic Arabia, female infanticide was practiced by certain tribes on the simple premise that young girls could be taken prisoners during intertribal wars causing shame and dishonour to their clan. The Koran describes this misogynistic attitude well in surah 16, The Bee, verse 58 and 59: ‘And when one of them is informed of the birth of a female daughter, his face becomes dark, and he suppresses grief. He hides himself from people because of the affliction caused by what he has been informed of. Shall he keep her, hiding his shame or bury her in the earth? Certainly, evil is their judgement’.
Koranic verses that put an end to this practice were revealed in the form of solemn decrees that rigorously condemned the murderers and instituted the right to life as an inviolable right. In surah 81, The Folding Up (At-Takwir) we can read the following verses: “When the female buried alive, is questioned for what crime she was killed”.
3) The establishment of a new family order
In pre-Islamic culture and in the period of transition between matriarchy and patriarchy different family systems ways of dividing and qualifying descendence existed. These included group matrimony, polyandry, polygamy, etc. Polygamy was the most predominant within this anthropological diversity and the Koran deals with it in a flexible and gradual way. The following verse introduces some boundaries, leaving men with an impression of freedom of choice:
“Therefore marry all the women that are of your liking, be they two, or three or four; but if you fear not being just, just take one”. (surah, The Women, Verse 3).
By employing a progressive pedagogy the Koran carried out a rupture with the existing order: it instituted new norms on polygamy and limited the number of potential wives to four. Moreover, by imposing the condition and rule of equality, it forced men to have a much more limited choice.
Another short verse from surah 129, on Women, recalls the impossibility of ensuring equal treatment for each wife despite a husband’s intention to do so.
“If you are polygamous you will never be able to treat your wives equally, even if you may have the strongest desire to do so”
4) The institution of a new successor regime in favour of women:
The Koran instituted inheritance rights of women. This revolutionized ancient succession regimes. While in pre-Islamic Arabia, a woman could not aspire to succession, the Koran recognized women as successors, as mother, daughter, sister and wife. One of the first verses in surah 7 of The Women introduces this news reform:
“A certain portion of the inheritance that parents and relatives left for them is assigned to males; and a portion of their parent’s and family’s inheritance is also reserved for women, whatever its quantity”.
This reform is confirmed in the surah of The Cow where verse 180-181 can be found:
“If you leave and goods in case of death you are obliged to make a will in favour of you father, mother, or relatives in the most conveniently recognized way. This is an obligation for those who fear God.”
This recognition of women’s right to family assets opens the road to the recognition of their new status within Muslim cities. In fact, by allowing women to dispose of their goods as they saw fit, the Koran assigned them a legal status through the system of separate ownership.
5) The abolition of the ancient practice of stoning
To clarify the problem of stoning it is necessary to recall that in ancient societies adultery has always been repressed as a violation of the exclusivity of carnal belonging that legally defines marital consortium.
Relations between a married woman and another man have always been condemnable because they appeared as a usurpation of a husband’s right of ownership over his wife. It was also an outrage to man’s symbolic capital, his honour. Lastly, it was perceived as a wrong against the family in which the woman had been integrated where it was often considered as a violation of the obligation of purity.
In the Koran, first source of legislation, there is no verse that mentions stoning. Penalties against guilty parties vary on a circumstantial basis, as well as on the marital status of the lovers. For guilty married parties, Koranic sanctions are as follows:
a) Flagellation inflicted with 100 whip lashings (surah, The Light, verse 2)
b) Indefinite detention or detention for life (surah, The Women, verse 15)
c) Physical or moral reprimand and social disapproval (surah, The Cow, verse 16)
d) The practice of the liaan curse, when a man questions his wife’s loyalty but is unable to provide four eye witnesses (Surah, The Light, verses 6-9).
On the other hand, Islam granted women some inalienable rights, of which we cite the following:
The right to knowledge and instruction:
The Koran recommends that all men as well as women try to gain knowledge. The first Surah, Adherence (Al’Alaq), confirms this suggestion: Read, in the name of your Lord that created, that created man from a blot of blood. Read, for your most noble Lord is he who has taught man what he did not know.
The right to work:
Woman has the right to work and to exercise remunerated employment. Verse 32 of surah, The Women states: “A part of what men have earned will return unto them, likewise, a part of what women have earned will return unto them”.
Verse 124 confirms this: “Men or women who carry out pious works and are believers are those we will enter Paradise and won’t be touched by anything, not even by a date”.
The right to property:
Women can freely dispose of her money, property or her belongings within the limits of the law. The Koran grants a woman part of her father, husband or brother’s inheritance after death. Moreover, her husband has no right of protection over her inheritance.
Marital rights:
Woman has the right to choose her own husband freely. Noone can impose a wedding upon her against her will. Many women, such as Razzia bint Jabeur and Assia bint Nooman, refused the Prophet Mohammed and he respected their choice. The bride has the right to be supported by her husband, namely to be fed, clothed and housed as appropriate to her rank and social class.
Civil and Political Rights:
Within Islam, women enjoy all political rights. This recognition is based on the Surah of Repentance, verse 71: “Male and female believers are another’s friends. They expect what is advantageous and they prohibit what is reprehensible”.
This founding rule allows us to interpret the Koran as a feminist project, granting women full citizenship rights. At its origins, Islam conceded similar political rights to men and women. Muslim women distinguished themselves in the direction of State Affairs at the level of political decision-making, as well as strategic planning.
Venerated within her tribe, the Prophet’s first wife was able to provide him with all the psychological and logistical assistance he needed to diffuse the new religion, of which she was the first convert.
Khadija, mother of all believers, together with many women of the Quraysh tribe, became followers of the new religion even when it was secret. They participated in the clandestine fight on enemy territory. Some, like Umm Haiba –Abu Sufyan’s daughter – embraced the new religion before their parents and were persecuted by their same families. After the migration to Medina and the establishment of a Muslim state, women swore loyalty to the Prophet in the same way as men did. The fact that women participated in this type of election indicates several things. Above all, it demonstrates that women had independent personalities and were not simply male subordinates: she swears loyalty as he does. Secondly, with this oath, women strive to obey God and the Prophet as men did. Thirdly, it proves that women swore allegiance to the Prophet on the basis of two premises: as a political and military leader, on the one hand and, as mandated by God and on the other. From this perspective, women participated in Jihad. As Roubay bint Mouawwidh recounts: “We participated in the Prophet’s campaigns. We would bring water to the soldiers, serve them and carry the dead and wounded to Medina (reported by al Bukhari).
Nessiba bint Kaab fought alongside the Prophet in the Battle of Uhud and did not drop her scabre until after having been wounded three times. The Prophet held her in high esteem and would say – she deserves more consideration than men do. The Prophet nominated Samara al Assadya Mohtasib as mayor of Mecca. The Calpih Omar ibn el Khattab offered Echiffa bent Salman the same charge in Medina.
The Prophet’s biographers and traditional accounts also refer to the principal role played by another female personality: Umm Salama. Actively involved in public affairs, Umma Salama frequently accompanied the Prophet during his military expeditions, shared his strategic preoccupations and carried out the role of political adviser in the case of difficult negotiations (episode of Hudaybiyya).
Another female figure, Aisha, the Prophet’s adored wife, played a determining role in Islam’s political history. As an expert in political science and procedures of negotiation and persuasion, Aisha participated in the management of public affairs during the first two Caliphates. She also contributed to the third Caliph, Othman ibn Affan’s destabilization by refusing to publicly support and assist him while he was being besieged by his opponents.
Aisha cleverly designed the armed opposition that degenerated into a bloody civil war: The Great Discord. The battle is known as the Battle of the Camel because the fiercest battle occurred in the area surrounding the camel carried by Aisha’s servant. It should also be noted that when the prince of the believers, Omar ibn el Khattab asked for Atika Bint Zaid’s hand in marriage, the latter asked for the freedom to attend the communal prayer at the mosque as a precondition for the wedding. In those days, the mosque was similar to the Greek Agora, a communal space where debates and public discussions occurred. After Caliph Omar’s murder, the state council met in the Prophet’s female companion, Fatima bint Qais of the Quraysh’s household.
These historical episodes in which Muslim women participated in the management of cities contributing to the genesis of Islamic politics demonstrate that Islam is not at all opposed to women’s civil rights. By illustrating these historical fragments of women in Islam and by highlighting this female memory, we realize that being Muslim today primarily means the pride to reconnect with an immense intellectual and creative tradition. However, it also means sorrow linked to the feeling of decline, unease and of terrible failure. How can we not be shocked by the very large gap that exists between theory and practice, the gap between the position of women at the origins of Islam and its current situation within certain religions?
The development of fundamentalist movements has generated a regression that has not only re-questioned secular rights but also some rights guaranteed by Islam. Everywhere respect for Islam and the observance of Sharia law are invoked to justify discrimination against women and attacks on women’s rights. The politicization of religious norms and conservative Islamist discourse play an important role in resisting citizenship’s evolution in general and women’s status in particular. Religion continues to be instrumentalised to justify practices and conceptions that constitute an outrage to the dignity of women and a negation of their rights as human beings.
The mechanisms of non-citizenship
The origin and source of all discrimination that is still invoked in the name of Islam is the refusal of equality between men and women. This negation is justified by a Koranic verse that states: “Men are superior to them (women)” (surah 2, Verse 228). This verse embodies what Virginia Woolf calls “the hypnotic power of domination”.
Indeed, this male predominance that has become inherent to Islam can be observed on three levels: at the institutional level, on the representational level and on the level of legitimacy.
At the institutional level, the male labeling of certain religious offices can be noted. Similarly, religious rituals – at least public ones – display the masculine by designating men as mediators of the sacred. Here, we can cite Amina Wadud’s (Islamic Studies lecturer at the Commonwealth University of Virginia) attempt to feminize certain religious offices and to guide a mixed prayer in New York on 18 March 2005, an endeavour that was perceived very negatively in Muslim circles.
On the representational plane we are assisting to a predominantly patriarchal culture at the expense of the innovating word. As Fatma Mernissi demonstrates in her book, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, dozens of misogynistic “Hadith” of dubious origin stigmatize women, rendering them responsible for all evil.
In terms of legitimacy, if “the male order’s power is due to the fact that it appears as a justification”, as Pierre Bourdieu’s states in his work on male domination, then this does not hold true for Islam. There are two types of legitimacy that are frequently invoked here.
The first is a reference to nature. A female nature exists: a natural disposition to motherhood, affection and the irrational. This enables the exclusion of certain rights and certain functions, which are reserved to men to be presented as natural. As demonstrated by anthropological and psychological studies along with other related literature this invocation of nature is without doubt a social and ideological construction, a sort of naturalization of the social.
The second and more dangerous type of legitimacy is found in the references to sacred texts and Scripture. For all conservative Muslims, the negation of women’s citizenship is based on the transformation of religious norms into legal rules in order to put them at the basis of an intangible law.
This mystification utilizes a dogmatic mechanism: the arbitrary decision to only consider normative statements in their exegesis and interpretation “of a general acceptance of terms utilized out of context”.
According to conservative exegetes what counts is “the general acceptance of the term and not the specificity of the cause”. This means that statements concerning polygamy, the Hijab, the ban for Muslim women to marry non-Muslims, the right for men to correct and beat his wife should be considered as broad principles – universal and timeless, valid in all situations – even if it is widely known that they derive from a type of causality that the Fuqaha call “asbab ennouzoul”. This causality allows these statements to be relativized, enabling a historicist approach to sacred scripture. According to Tunisian thinker Mohamed Talbi, this mechanism has prevented us from having a “vectorial” reading, which goes beyond text and conjuncture to actually find the Legislator’s intention – God’s in this case – in order adhere to it in a better way.
These observations exemplify the difficult construction of women’s citizenship in Islam. Nevertheless, beneath the push of modernity and alongside transformations affecting the status of women, the latter’s access to theological university culture constitutes an important innovation. Zaytuna, where over 60 percent of students are women, works hard to tackle sexist prejudice, misogynist stereotypes and to generate a new perception on the other. The school of feminist theology and “Feminist Islam” continue a critique on religious language and it’s androcentric preconceptions. They underline the problem of textual interpretation. Indeed, their action to deconstruct inequality is divided into several essential phases.
Firstly, it deals with reformulating citizenship from the perspective of gender, demonstrating the necessity to conceive women’s rights struggles as struggles for citizenship. These struggles do not simply concern “a minority’s interests” but society as a whole.
Secondly, the separation between public and private has to be redefined. This gap physically places men and women in reciprocally opposite spheres and also determines the attention given to different interests and needs. For quite some time public and/or political solutions have eluded sexual, domestic and family problems. In order to contrast the idea that private issues fall outside the political framework, feminists argue that issues relating to sexuality, reproduction and “private injustices” such as domestic violence necessitate public attention.
It is necessary to decipher the traces of a forgotten, occulted and censored history of women in Islam, academics, of the Fuqaha, etc. It is necessary to bring interpretational conflicts to light in order to overcome literal readings that cancel out history. This feminist knowledge has to be diffused and encouraged. Lastly, divergences between secular and Islamic feminists have to be overcome and work has to be done to involve new generations of Muslim women.
Women’s citizenship is a guarantee of human rights and a contribution to democracy. Its negation is not only a violation of human rights, but also suicidal for the future.
In fact, according to the Arab Report on Human Development 2002, a comparison between development factors in a study carried out in 192 countries indicates that the weight of natural resources, such as the abundance of underground resources and rainfall, does not exceed 20 percent, material resources, infrastructures, buildings and machines account for 16 percent, while the most important factor is human and social capital at 64 percent. What is truly decisive here is the fulfillment of the individual enjoying full citizenship.
Translation by Maria Elena Bottigliero