Ideals and role models for women in Qur'an, Hadith and Sirah
Courtesy of Islamic.Org
To sum up, the qualifications of women for work of all kinds are not in doubt, despite some spurious ahadith to the contrary. Women can do work like men, but they DO NOT HAVE to do it to earn a living. They are allowed and encouraged to take the duties of marriage and motherhood seriously and are provided with the means to stay at home and do it properly.
The Muslim woman has always had the right to own and manage her own property, a right that women in this country only attained in the last 100 years. Marriage in Islam does not mean that the man takes over the woman's property, nor does she automatically have the right to all his property if he dies intestate. Both are still regarded as individual people with responsibilities to other members of their family - parents, brothers, sisters etc. and inheritance rights illustrate this.
The husband has the duty to support and maintain the wife, as stated in the Qur'an, and this is held to be so even if she is rich in her own right. He has no right to expect her to support herself, let alone support his children or him. If she does contribute to the household income this is regarded as a charitable deed on her part.
Because of their greater financial responsibilities, some categories of male relations, according to the inheritance laws in the Qur'an, inherit twice the share of their female equivalents, but others, whose responsibilities are likely to be less, inherit the same share -mothers and fathers, for instance are each entitled to one sixth of the estate of their children, after bequests (up to one third of the estate) and payment of debts. (Qur'an 4:11):
For parents a sixth share of the inheritance to each if the deceased left children;If no children, and the parents are the (only) heirs, the mother has a third; if the deceased left brothers (or sisters) the mother has a sixth...
Women are thus well provided for: their husbands support them, and they inherit from all their relations. They are allowed to engage in business or work at home or outside the house, so long as the family does not suffer, and the money they make is their own, with no calls on it from other people until their death.
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Nevertheless the womanly state in marriage is given full respect in Islam, and so are the rights of children. No Muslim woman could feel ashamed to say she was only a housewife. She is the head of her household, although the husband has the final say in major decisions. According to a hadith:
Nor are women expected to do the housework. If they have not been used to doing it, the husband is obliged to provide domestic help within his means, and to make sure that the food gets to his wife and children, already cooked. The Prophet (saw) himself used to help with the domestic work, and mended his own shoes.Women are not even obliged in all cases to suckle their own children. If a divorcing couple mutually agree, they can send the baby to a wet-nurse and the husband must pay for the suckling. If the mother decides to keep the baby and suckle it herself, he must pay her for her trouble!
This is laid down in the Qur'an itself, (2:233):
The mothers shall give suck to their offspring for two whole years, if the father desires to complete the term, but he shall bear the cost of their food and clothing on equitable terms...If they both decide on weaning, by mutual consent, and after due consultation, there is no blame on them. If ye decide on a foster-mother for your offspring, there is no blame on you, provided ye pay what ye offered on equitable terms ...What basis does all this leave for the male attitude that women are only fit for maternal and household duties?
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Nevertheless the womanly state in marriage is given full respect in Islam, and so are the rights of children. No Muslim woman could feel ashamed to say she was only a housewife. She is the head of her household, although the husband has the final say in major decisions. According to a hadith:
The ruler is a shepherd and is responsible for his subjects, a husband is a shepherd and is responsible for his family, a wife is a shepherd and is responsible for her household, and a servant is a shepherd who is responsible for his master's property. -Hadith: BukhariThe wife must defer to her husband in respect for the fact that he maintains and protects her out of his means (Qur'an 4:34), but not if he tries to make her break the laws of Allah. Likewise children's obedience and respect for parents goes only to the limits set by Allah. If the parents try to make them disobey Allah, then it is their duty to disobey the parents. If the husband willfully fails to maintain his wife, she has the right to divorce him in court.
Women are also entitled to respect as mothers: Allah says in the Qur'an (31:14):
And we have enjoined on man (to be good to his parents: in travail upon travail did his mother bear him...
The Prophet (saw) said:
and in another hadith the Prophet (saw) told a man that his mother above all other people, even his father, was worthy of his highest respect and compassion.
Paradise lies at the feet of mothers...
and in another hadith the Prophet (saw) told a man that his mother above all other people, even his father, was worthy of his highest respect and compassion.
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In cases of divorce, the mother has first claim to custody of the young children, followed by other female members of her family, if she remarries or is unable to look after the children. The right reverts to the husband's family only after the children reach an age of greater independence, which varies according to the school of law, and then the wishes of the child must be taken into consideration, if the example of the Prophet (saw) is to be followed. In a disputed case, he asked the child:
This is your father and this is your mother, so take whichever of them you wish by the hand. -Hadith: Abu Dawud, Nasa'i, Darimi
The boy went to his mother.
In another case a woman approached the Prophet telling him that her husband had embraced Islam while she had refused to do so, adding that her daughter was being deprived of mother's milk as her father was taking her away. The Prophet made the child sit between mother and father and said both of them should call her. The child would go to whoever she chose. The child responded to the mother. The Prophet prayed to Allah to guide the child and the child then chose the father, and hence Rafi (the father) took the child (Hadith: Abu Dawud)3
Yet in this country it is still a novelty to give the child such rights.
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Although the Islamic marriage contract is a civil agreement between the two parties, not a sacrament like the Christian one, it is not just a relationship of material convenience. The words used to describe marriage in the Qur'an are poetic and beautiful:
And among His signs is this: that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that ye may dwell in tranquility with them, and He has put love and mercy between your hearts, verily in that are Signs for those who reflect. -Qur'an 30:21
They are your garments and ye are their garments -Qur'an 2:187
Love, mercy, intimacy and mutual protection and modesty are the qualities expected of an Islamic marriage. Even in Paradise marriage remains as one of the great joys:
Yet contraception has never been forbidden in Islam, as the Prophet (saw) gave permission for the withdrawal method, so long as the wife agrees. By analogy other methods of preventing conception are also allowed.
But parents have no right to force young women to marry against their will after they have reached marriagable age. There is much evidence in the hadith to show that forced marriages are not legal and the wife has the right to have them annulled:
Messenger of Allah! Nothing can keep the two of us together. As I lifted my veil, I saw him coming, accompanied by some men. I could see that he was the blackest, the shortest and the ugliest of them all. By Allah! I do not dislike him for any blemish in his faith or his morals, it is his ugliness that I dislike. Had the fear of Allah not stood in my way, I must have spat on him when he came to me. ... I am afraid my desperation might drive my Islam closer to disbelief.
The Prophet asked her if she would return the garden Thabit had given her, and she agreed to do this and was given a divorce.4 Thabit did not do any better with his other wife, Habibah. And there are also examples of similar cases from the times of the first three khalifahs.
Ideally speaking, women in Islam are treated like queens, indeed they are better protected than our British royal family is now! Not only are they are allowed to divorce their husbands, rather than live apart and unable to remarry, like Princess Diana, but they are also protected from scandal-mongers.
No-one is allowed, without permission, to invade their privacy in their houses (24:27-28) not even their husbands when they return from a long journey.
Men are not allowed to treat them with disrespect, to look at them more than once, or to touch them -even, some hadiths seem to show, to shake their hands - and if anyone spreads rumours about their chastity without the support of four eye witnesses to the act itself, they themselves are liable to punishment in this life and the hereafter (24:23)!
To make this demand for respect abundantly clear to the men, the wives of the Prophet are asked in the Qur'an to be modest in their appearance, and behaviour, to stay quietly in their houses and not make a great display of themselves as some well-known people were (and still are) prone to do; not to speak too pleasantly to men for fear of `those in whose hearts is a disease', and to be pious and virtuous and pure.
Ordinary Muslim women too are urged to lower their gaze and wrap themselves closely in their outer garments, letting their head-coverings fall over their neck opening, so that they may be recognized as respectable women and not molested. The Prophet's wives are also reported to have covered part of their faces with their cloaks when they were among strange men. Those who regard veiling as a form of exploitation should ask themselves which is more exploitative of women, the mini skirt or the veil?
Many Muslim women, from the Prophet's wives onwards, have aspired to the same degree of modesty and virtue as these passages enjoin and yet managed to participate actively in society by doing good deeds, working to help support their families, and/or pursuing their education. Women figured prominently among the earliest scholars of Islam. The Prophet's wife Aishah was one of the foremost transmitters of hadiths and, like other wives and Companions of the Prophet was often surrounded by students wanting to learn from her: one of her pupils, Urwah Ibn az-Zubayr said:
Whenever we Companions of the Prophet (saw) encountered any difficulty in the matter of any hadith we referred it to Aishah and found that she had definite knowledge about it.
Hafiz ibn Hajar said:
The Prophet (saw) was keen to see that women were educated in Islam as well as the men and ordered the men to pass on what they had learned to their women:
Muslim women have the right to have education from their husbands and if not, to go elsewhere to get it. An early Muslim scholar, of the Maliki school of law, named Ibn al-HÆjj, otherwise a strict critic of the over-liberal behaviour of the women in Cairo, wrote:
If a woman demands her right to religious education from her husband and brings the issue before a judge, she is justified in demanding this right because it is her right that either her husband should teach her or allow her to go elsewhere to acquire education. The judge must compel the husband to fulfil her demand in the same way that he would in the matter of her worldly rights, since her rights in matters of religion are most essential and important. -al-Mudhkal
Women can be educated by men. The Prophet sent Umar Ibn al-Khattab to teach the women of the Ansar:
And women taught men too, not only the wives of the Prophet but many others later were teachers of men, e.g. Aishah bt. Sa'id Ibn Abi Waqqas, who taught the first compiler of Hadith, Malik; and Sayyida Nafisa, granddaughter of al-Hasan, the Prophet's grandson, who taught Imam Shafi'i, and much later a woman taught Ibn al-Arabi, the famous Sufi thinker and greatly influenced his thought.
According to the Prophet (saw):
Women's views were listened to, respected, and usually supported, by the Prophet (saw) as we have seen. Another example is when the Prophet's pilgrimage to Makkah was stopped by the Makkans who made an agreement with him that he and the Muslims could return the following year. He told the people to shave their heads and offer their sacrifices where they were, but they did not obey, so he asked his wife Umm Salamah, and she advised him to lead them by doing so himself. He took her advice, and it worked. His successors, even the rather male chauvinist Khalifah Umar, did their best to follow his example in this. Umar, trying to regulate the exorbitant demands for mahr marriage gifts that women were making had to retreat after a woman stood up and disputed with him, quoting the Qur'an to support her case:
Hadith: Ibn al-Jawzi Umar also used to seek the counsel of Shaffa the market inspector, pay due regard to her and hold her in high esteem. (Ibn Hajar al-Isabah quoted by Hasan Turabi)
So, to conclude, these are the ideals to which Muslim women can aspire and frequently have done in the past. In a truly Islamic society, they are guaranteed:
Verily the Companions of the Garden shall that day have joy in all that they do; they and their spouses will be in groves of (cool) shade reclining on thrones of (dignity); fruit will be there for them, they shall have whatever they call for; `Peace', a word (of salutation) from a Lord Most Merciful. -Qur'an 36:55-57
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Husbands are expected to treat their wives kindly during marriage and even during and after divorce. Allah says in the Qur'an:
... Live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If ye take a dislike to them, it may be that ye dislike a thing, and Allah brings about through it a great deal of good. Qur'an 4:19
The Prophet (saw) said:
The most perfect believers are the best in conduct and the best of you are those who are best to their wives.(Hadith: Ibn Hanbal)
Married couples are urged in the Qur'an to deal with one another in a spirit of mutual consultation and agreement, even when contemplating divorce and the custody of children:
... If they both decide on weaning, by mutual consent, and after due consultation, there is no blame on them ... -Qur'an 2:233
How much more so, then, should this spirit predominate in the happy marriage!
Marriage is also intended by Allah to be fruitful. In the Qur'an He tells us:
... He has made for you pairs from among yourselves, and pairs among cattle; by this means does he multiply you... -Qur'an 42:11
Your wives are as a tilth for you... -Qur'an 2:223
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Yet contraception has never been forbidden in Islam, as the Prophet (saw) gave permission for the withdrawal method, so long as the wife agrees. By analogy other methods of preventing conception are also allowed.
The practical aspects of marriage are covered by the marriage contract, in which the wife can specify conditions, and many Muslim women have taken advantage of this to take to themselves the right of divorce if, for example, the husband takes another wife (CARDS on Polygamy). It must include a marriage gift - sadaqah or mahr - to the wife from the husband, of an amount and nature agreed between them.
Usually, according to custom and convenience - a practice later endorsed in the Shari'ah - a young inexperienced woman would be represented in the negotiations by a `marriage guardian' or wali who is there to see that her interests are served. This wali should be her father or grandfather, but it is possible for some older or more experienced women to appoint any person of their choice to act for them. When the Prophet (saw) married the widow, Umm Salamah, her son acted as her wali, and the Prophet (saw) asked his permission to marry her. (Ibn Rushd) The wishes of close relations, in particular parents, must be taken into consideration, and their permission must be asked. According to some ahadith it is better to break off a marriage which displeases one's parents, as they are the gateway to Paradise.
Parents have a responsibility to help their children find spouses,
Umar Ibn al-Khattab and Anas reported God's Messenger (saw) as saying that it is written in the Torah, `If anyone does not give his daughter in marriage when she reaches 12 and she commits sin, the guilt of that rests on him.' -Hadith: Baihaqi
and
Abu Sa'id and Ibn Abbas reported God's Messenger (saw) as saying: `He who has a son born to him should give him a good name and a good education and marry him when he reaches puberty. If he does not marry him when he reaches puberty and he commits sin, its guilt rests only upon his father. -Hadith: Baihaqi
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But parents have no right to force young women to marry against their will after they have reached marriagable age. There is much evidence in the hadith to show that forced marriages are not legal and the wife has the right to have them annulled:
Ibn Abbas reported that a girl came to the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad (saw) and she reported that her father had forced her to marry without her consent. The Messenger of Allah (saw) gave her the choice ... (between accepting the marriage and invalidating it). -Hadith: Ibn Hanbal
In another version the girl said,
`Actually, I accept this marriage but I wanted to let women know that parents have no right (to force a husband on them). -Hadith: Ibn Majah
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Messenger of Allah! Nothing can keep the two of us together. As I lifted my veil, I saw him coming, accompanied by some men. I could see that he was the blackest, the shortest and the ugliest of them all. By Allah! I do not dislike him for any blemish in his faith or his morals, it is his ugliness that I dislike. Had the fear of Allah not stood in my way, I must have spat on him when he came to me. ... I am afraid my desperation might drive my Islam closer to disbelief.
The Prophet asked her if she would return the garden Thabit had given her, and she agreed to do this and was given a divorce.4 Thabit did not do any better with his other wife, Habibah. And there are also examples of similar cases from the times of the first three khalifahs.
♥♥♥
Ideally speaking, women in Islam are treated like queens, indeed they are better protected than our British royal family is now! Not only are they are allowed to divorce their husbands, rather than live apart and unable to remarry, like Princess Diana, but they are also protected from scandal-mongers.
No-one is allowed, without permission, to invade their privacy in their houses (24:27-28) not even their husbands when they return from a long journey.
Men are not allowed to treat them with disrespect, to look at them more than once, or to touch them -even, some hadiths seem to show, to shake their hands - and if anyone spreads rumours about their chastity without the support of four eye witnesses to the act itself, they themselves are liable to punishment in this life and the hereafter (24:23)!
To make this demand for respect abundantly clear to the men, the wives of the Prophet are asked in the Qur'an to be modest in their appearance, and behaviour, to stay quietly in their houses and not make a great display of themselves as some well-known people were (and still are) prone to do; not to speak too pleasantly to men for fear of `those in whose hearts is a disease', and to be pious and virtuous and pure.
Ordinary Muslim women too are urged to lower their gaze and wrap themselves closely in their outer garments, letting their head-coverings fall over their neck opening, so that they may be recognized as respectable women and not molested. The Prophet's wives are also reported to have covered part of their faces with their cloaks when they were among strange men. Those who regard veiling as a form of exploitation should ask themselves which is more exploitative of women, the mini skirt or the veil?
Many Muslim women, from the Prophet's wives onwards, have aspired to the same degree of modesty and virtue as these passages enjoin and yet managed to participate actively in society by doing good deeds, working to help support their families, and/or pursuing their education. Women figured prominently among the earliest scholars of Islam. The Prophet's wife Aishah was one of the foremost transmitters of hadiths and, like other wives and Companions of the Prophet was often surrounded by students wanting to learn from her: one of her pupils, Urwah Ibn az-Zubayr said:
Abu Musa al-Ash'ar_ said:I did not see a greater scholar than Aishah in the learning of the Qur'an, obligatory duties, lawful and unlawful matters, poetry and literature, Arab history and genealogy.
Whenever we Companions of the Prophet (saw) encountered any difficulty in the matter of any hadith we referred it to Aishah and found that she had definite knowledge about it.
Hafiz ibn Hajar said:
... it is said that a quarter of the injunctions of the Shari'ah are narrated from her.
Return home to your wives and children and stay with them. Teach them (what you have learned) and ask them to act upon it. -Hadith: Bukhari (CARD)
Muslim women have the right to have education from their husbands and if not, to go elsewhere to get it. An early Muslim scholar, of the Maliki school of law, named Ibn al-HÆjj, otherwise a strict critic of the over-liberal behaviour of the women in Cairo, wrote:
If a woman demands her right to religious education from her husband and brings the issue before a judge, she is justified in demanding this right because it is her right that either her husband should teach her or allow her to go elsewhere to acquire education. The judge must compel the husband to fulfil her demand in the same way that he would in the matter of her worldly rights, since her rights in matters of religion are most essential and important. -al-Mudhkal
Women can be educated by men. The Prophet sent Umar Ibn al-Khattab to teach the women of the Ansar:
It is reported by Umm `Atiyah thaat when the Messenger of Allah came to Madinah, he ordered the women of the Ansar (Muslims of Madinah) to gather in one house, and sent Umar Ibn al-Khattab to them (to convey the teachings of Islam). He asluted them while standing at athe door of the house and they returned his greeting. Then he said, `I am a messenger of the Messenger of Allah, sent especially to you.' -Hadith: Bukhari
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And women taught men too, not only the wives of the Prophet but many others later were teachers of men, e.g. Aishah bt. Sa'id Ibn Abi Waqqas, who taught the first compiler of Hadith, Malik; and Sayyida Nafisa, granddaughter of al-Hasan, the Prophet's grandson, who taught Imam Shafi'i, and much later a woman taught Ibn al-Arabi, the famous Sufi thinker and greatly influenced his thought.
According to the Prophet (saw):
It is the duty of every Muslim (male or female) to seek knowledge. -Hadith: Bukhari(?)
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Women's views were listened to, respected, and usually supported, by the Prophet (saw) as we have seen. Another example is when the Prophet's pilgrimage to Makkah was stopped by the Makkans who made an agreement with him that he and the Muslims could return the following year. He told the people to shave their heads and offer their sacrifices where they were, but they did not obey, so he asked his wife Umm Salamah, and she advised him to lead them by doing so himself. He took her advice, and it worked. His successors, even the rather male chauvinist Khalifah Umar, did their best to follow his example in this. Umar, trying to regulate the exorbitant demands for mahr marriage gifts that women were making had to retreat after a woman stood up and disputed with him, quoting the Qur'an to support her case:
Umar forbade the people from paying excessive dowries and addressed them, saying: `Don't fix dowries for women over 40 ouces. If ever that is exceeded I shall deposit the excess amount in the public treasury.' As he came down from the minbar (platform), a flat-nosed lady stood up from among the women audience and said:
'It is not within your right.' Umar asked: `Why should this not be of my right?' She replied, `Because Allah has proclaimed, "Even if you had given one of them (wives) a whole treasure for dower, take not the least bit back. Would you take it by false claim and manifest sin?' (Qur'an 4:20)
When he heard this, Umar said: `The woman is right, and the man (Umar) is wrong. It seems that all people have deeper wisdom and insight than Umar.' Then he returned to the minbar and said, `O people! I had restricted the giving of more than four hundred dirhams in dower. Whosoever of you wishes to give in dower as much as he likes and finds satisfaction in so doing, may do so.'
Hadith: Ibn al-Jawzi Umar also used to seek the counsel of Shaffa the market inspector, pay due regard to her and hold her in high esteem. (Ibn Hajar al-Isabah quoted by Hasan Turabi)
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So, to conclude, these are the ideals to which Muslim women can aspire and frequently have done in the past. In a truly Islamic society, they are guaranteed:
- respectable married status, - legitimacy and maintenance for their children, - the right to negotiate marriage terms of their choice, - to refuse any marriage that does not please them, - the right to obtain divorce from their husbands, even on the grounds that they can't stand them (Mawdudi), - custody of their children after divorce, - independent property of their own, - the right and duty to obtain education, - the right to work if they need or want it, - equality of reward for equal deeds, - the right to participate fully in public life and have their voices heard by those in power, and much more besides. What other religion, political theory, or philosophy has offered such a comprehensive package?- personal respect,
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