Part Four: Women in the Islamic World


I. Development of the Islamic Law

These are the main ideas that govern the status of women in the primary sources of Islam: The Quran, the Word of God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad and the Sunnah, the sayings and deeds of the Prophet. These sayings and deeds, when proven to be authentic and soundly transmitted directly from the Prophet to those who wrote them down and are examined through scientific procedures by the scholars, are what the Sunnah means.
These two sources of Islamic laws were interpreted and applied in socio-historical contexts by human beings.
The Quran is not a law book. It does however provide principles and guidelines, as we have seen, that were incorporated into Islamic law through selection and interpretation.
Using reason and influenced by diverse geographic locations and customs, early jurists developed a body of laws which, while somewhat uniform in their essentials reflected the differences of juristic reasoning and social customs of a patriarchal and a male dominated society. Islamic law is thus the product of divine laws as understood and interpreted by male religious scholars in the past and handed down to their successors who were using them as legal texts. These texts were given a sacrosanct character and believed to be the only sound interpretations of the primary sources. These interpretations reflect not only local customs but also a patriarchal mind, which is of the utmost importance for the issue concerning the status of women in Islam. Moreover, in practical life, these interpretations were understood and applied in a more patriarchal sense. This explains the gap between the real principles and the real situation of the majority of Muslim women.
The dynamic legal development of the Islamic law in the first three or four centuries after the Prophet came to be stifled. There were different factors: On top of them were the debates between the jurists about whether or not the door of “Ijtihad” (personal reasoning or interpretation) was closed on the basis that the elaboration of the law was essentially complete. Jurists were then encouraged to follow and imitate (taqlid) the established authoritative doctrines rather than practice “ijtihad” - new interpretation - which came even to be denied. Other factors contributing to stop the creative legal activity were the growing political fragmentation and decay, the assimilated customs contrary to the Quranic spirit, and finally the Mongols invasions of the thirteenth century which destroyed the cultural centers and the scholars of the eastern Muslim world, including mosques, universities and libraries, and killed hundreds of thousands of the region’s inhabitants. The response of the Muslim community amid this collapse was a withdrawal into conservatism and resistance to change. Unfortunately, many of the practices of the time, which had resulted from the acculturation of foreign customs and pre-Islamic traditions that were contrary to Quranic values, were already associated with religion, and thus were preserved. This conservative reaction, coupled with the claim that the “door to ijtihad” (new interpretation) had been closed in legal matters in favor of “taqlid” (imitation), resulted in the relative stagnation of the Muslim community and its jurisprudence. These sources of conservatism contributed to the rather static character of Muslim society and law in the medieval period, a situation that persisted up to the eighteenth century, when calls began for the revival, renewal, and reform of Islam, particularly the radical rejection of taqlid (imitation) in favor of (Ijtihad) new interpretation. This perspective gave rise to debates about the compatibility between Islam and modernity in the nineteenth century, culminating in further calls in the twentieth century for Islamic reform and the revival of the dynamism of Islamic law, with particular emphasis on modern social conditions, public interest, and focusing on the spirit, rather then the letter, of the law.
II. The Principles and the Practice

The Quran reformed Arabian patriarchal society but this society, as well as the larger community of all the new Muslim people, were not able to get rid of all their own patriarchal mentality, the universal mentality of the time. The new Muslim converts didn’t get enough education on the issue of women’s status to be ready to leave all the old ideas for the new ones on this subject.
Historically, women’s role in society was determined as much by social and economical factors as by religious prescriptions. Social customs, poverty and illiteracy often eroded or subverted Quranic intent. While Islamic law did provide the parameters for behavior regarding marriage, divorce and inheritance, the actual rules in practice – whether or not men took more than one wife, or whether divorce was common, or how modesty expressed itself in terms of women’s dress or participation in the work force – were the result of local conditions and social class, which often differed from urban to rural settings and from one country or region to another. Women in Africa and Southeast Asia were never as secluded nor covered as their sisters in Saudi Arabia or in the Indian subcontinent. Islamic laws that protected women’s right to inherit were often circumvented by families who sought to protect the property of the patriarchal family. Historically, the role of women in religious observances and education was similarly restricted. In the centuries after the death of the Prophet, men increasingly cited a variety of reasons, from moral degeneration in society to women’s tendency to be a source of temptation and social discord, to restrict both her presence in public life and in the mosque.
As in all the world’s major religious traditions in pre-modern societies and cultures, in Islam both the reassertion of tribal custom and historical interpretations and practices often undermined Quranic reforms and reaffirmed a male dominance that perpetuated the inequality of women.