Gender in Islam: equality, law and feminism

Overview

Recall questions on the spiritual and legal equality of women and men, significant women of early Islam, local culture, awra and modesty, family law, feminist rereadings of scripture and their critics, the headscarf and the veil, and Muslim women's religious scholarship.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   On what basis do Muslims hold that women and men are spiritual equals?

   Model answer

   The Qur'an states that humanity was created from a single soul, addresses believing men and believing women in parallel when listing the virtues and the reward attached to them, and says that whoever acts well, male or female, enters the garden without any shortfall. Religious obligations are the same for both: the declaration of faith, prayer, fasting, almsgiving and pilgrimage. The Qur'an also assigns responsibility for the first disobedience to Adam and his wife together, so no tradition of blaming woman for the fall arises. Muslims therefore hold that before God the two stand on identical terms.

2. 2

   Why do some argue that spiritual equality has not translated into equality in law?

   Model answer

   Because classical fiqh assigns different rules to men and women in several areas: shares in inheritance, the number of witnesses in certain financial matters, the unilateral form of divorce available to a husband, the permission of polygyny for men only, the requirement of a guardian for a woman's marriage in most schools, and the ascription of maintenance duties to husbands and obedience in some respects to wives. Defenders argue these form a coherent package in which men bear financial obligations that offset differences in entitlement, and that the rules assumed a specific social structure. Critics reply that the package has outlived that structure and that unequal rules cannot express equal worth.

3. 3

   Who were the significant women of early Islam, and why do Muslims cite them?

   Model answer

   Khadija was a successful merchant, the Prophet's employer and then his wife, the first person to accept his message and the one who sustained him materially and emotionally in the hardest years. Aisha transmitted a very large number of prophetic reports, taught leading scholars of the next generation and later led a political and military faction. Fatima, the Prophet's daughter, is central to Shi'a devotion as part of ahl al-bayt. Others include Umm Salama, consulted at a moment of political crisis, and Nusayba, who fought at Uhud. Muslims cite them to show that women were visible in commerce, scholarship, politics and warfare at the tradition's origin.

4. 4

   How have local cultural norms affected Muslim practice regarding gender?

   Model answer

   Practices vary enormously between Muslim societies, which suggests that culture rather than revelation is doing much of the work: rules about whether women pray in mosques, work outside the home, drive, travel alone or lead female study circles differ sharply between regions with the same scriptures. Many Muslim scholars argue that customs such as forced marriage, honour-based violence, female genital cutting and the denial of inheritance shares to daughters are local traditions that persist despite Islamic law rather than because of it, since the law grants women property, consent in marriage and a defined inheritance. The counter-argument is that religion and culture cannot be separated so cleanly, because jurists themselves worked within patriarchal societies and their rulings carry those assumptions.

5. 5

   What is awra, and how do Muslims understand the laws of modesty?

   Model answer

   Awra denotes the parts of the body that should be covered in public. Muslim jurists derived rules of modest dress from Qur'anic instructions to lower the gaze and to draw coverings over the chest, and from prophetic practice. Modesty is required of both sexes and applies to conduct and speech as well as clothing, and for men the schools generally specify at least the area from navel to knee. For women the schools differ, most requiring everything but face and hands to be covered before unrelated men, some requiring more, and some modern scholars arguing the requirement is for general modesty rather than a fixed uniform. Rules also differ by context, since more is permitted among family and other women.

6. 6

   What is meant by family law in the Muslim context, and where does it bear on women?

   Model answer

   Family law covers marriage, divorce, maintenance, custody and inheritance, and it is the area of classical law that most Muslim states retained when they adopted European codes elsewhere. It bears on women in the marriage contract and the dower payable to the bride, in her right to refuse a match, in the different mechanisms of divorce open to husband and wife, in maintenance during and after marriage, in custody rules that often give mothers young children and fathers older ones, and in inheritance shares. Reform in this area has therefore been the central battleground of gender debate in Muslim societies, since it is where religion still governs directly.

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