Women in Islam: Standard and Practice

Post 23--:

I continue the series that originally started in Post 19. Please check out the context of this material there.

The questions I was to answer were:
(a) How does the Qur’an say women should be treated?
(b) How does the above conform to or contradict what is practiced in many
Muslim countries or cultures?

Here is my response to those questions:

I interpret the questions as intended to evoke a discussion about Muslim suppression of women, since that is such a major Christian concern.

If you ask the same question about the Bible, you will get a wide variety of (contradictory) answers. There are OT texts about women from which pretty well all Christians distantiate themselves. For one thing, they are written from a male point of view—what the male should do for, with or to women. They were subject to men and valued mainly as wives and mothers. A father could sell his daughter into slavery. A father could annul his daughter’s vows or pledge, as could a husband his wife’s. Adultery could lead to stoning, but for both partners. The husband had various unilateral rights over his wife. A woman was worth half a man. Women could be taken as booty after victorious battles. They could become ceremonially unclean. Etc., etc. In the NT, women were restricted in their leadership roles. Christians have long rejected all or most of these ideas for sound Biblical and theological reasons, somewhat parallel to the Islamic doctrine of abrogation.

You find similar situations in the Qur’an and in the Muslim community. There is a wide range of interpretations from the literal to contextual-historical. Just as Christians have largely rejected the OT perspectives on women, especially those they see as oppressive, so do many educated Muslims argue their way out of similar Qur’anic texts. Most Muslim men tend to agree that women are honourable but fragile creatures that need to be protected from other men. Hence, the elaborate precautions to which some are subjected in terms of movement and dress code, while others dress and move about as they please. Most men regard women as too emotional and therefore insist that they, the men, should do the thinking and make decisions for them. They are seen as powerful when they play their legitimate role as mothers and wives who bring up and teach the next generation. They are allowed to conduct business and own property, but not at the expense of their primary role in the family. There is currently a dynamic at work in many Muslim communities that tends to restrict women more than was the case in the past, especially with respect to dress. One American female Muslim medical doctor practicing in Saudi was absolutely amazed at the restrictions placed on women in Saudi and condemned it outrightly as a retrograde form of Islam.

At the levels of militant fundamentalism and folk Islam, the literal interpretation tends to hold sway. Folk Islam is intimately mixed up with local pre-Islamic cultures. Its adherents often identify these foreign accretions as part of core Islam, with the result that anyone critiquing some cultural tradition may be accused of attacking Islam itself. In Saudi, public amputations constitute public entertainment after Friday prayers, but many educated Muslims are horrified.

The reality is that there is hardly any consistent pattern around the Muslim world. In many Muslim communities, women play a much larger role than the above would lead us to expect, while in most countries stoning and amputation form only a distant memory. And yet there have been several female Muslim heads of state in the largest Muslim countries! If Islam or the Qur’an were really as reprehensible and violent in its core as we witness today in some quarters, then the high civilization and culture they once reached would hardly have been possible.

A major difference between Christianity and Islam is that the former has experienced the philosophical developments from the Renaissance on—initially spurred on by Cordovan Islam—up to the current climate in the West. Before those developments, Christian individuals, religious leaders and nations were cruel and intolerant in ways hard to believe today, even though we already had the Bible. The change towards more civilized relationships is due as much to those philosophical developments as to our reading of the Bible. Most Muslims have not gone through this development.

How should women be treated according to the Qur’an? Your answer will be determined by the approach you prefer, literal or contextual-historical. Does the practice of some countries reflect the Qur’an correctly? To the extent that it is the result of a literal interpretation and mixed up with traditional cultural accretions, in agreement with more liberal Muslims, I would say “No.” But those who practice various forms of suppression of women, will, of course, answer “Yes!” They are the literalists. So, how and on what basis do I, a non-Muslim, answer these questions? Which is the true Islam or the right interpretation of the Qur’an?

I will interrupt my series and continue the subject of the treatment of women in the next post by reproducing an article on the subject by Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, an Indian moderate Muslim scholar.

Frequent Misconceptions re. Islam and How to Counter Them

Post 22--:

This post is number 3 in my series published in Christian Courier. Please go back to the introduction to this series in post 19 in order to understand its intention and its content. Without reading that introduction, you may wonder why I write this post.

Probably the most common misconception about Muslims is that they are all the same. They are indeed united with respect to certain core doctrines and the practice of the five pillars, but that’s as far as it goes. If you’re a Christian, you will realize that there are all kinds of Christians in this world ranging from raving fundamentalists to rank liberals. The same is true for Islam. There is folk Islam that is usually syncretistically entwined with local religions and cultures and then there is the Islam of the serious cleric or academic. There are fundamentalists, militants, pious, secular, tolerant and intolerant, moderates, mystical and political Muslims. And since Muslims are reared in many different cultures, Pakistani and Nigerian Muslims are again different from each other. There are many “denominations” even, with the main split being between Sunni and Shi’ite. There are five main legal traditions, all of them considered equally orthodox. Some wear clothes we explicitly associate with Islam, while others follow Western fashions. So, when you talk of Muslims (the people) or of Islam (the religion), which people or which Islam are you referring to?

In view of this confusion, how can you know your Muslim neighbour or colleague? You can do so only to a certain extent by socializing with her, him or them. You can to some extent know a specific Muslim or a specific community of Muslims by personal interaction. That still does not mean you know Muslims in general.

An added difficulty in the West is that militant Muslims tend to hide themselves among the moderates. Even the moderate Muslims may not always realize that a specific person is a militant, perhaps a member of a sleeper group that can be called into militant action at any time and is prepared to do so at any cost to himself.

Some Westerners have a good Muslim neighbour, colleague or friend and conclude from this relationship that all Muslims are peaceful, to be completely accepted at all levels of society and to be fully trusted. Others are more influenced by the negative images they pick up from the media or from hysterical writings published by certain anti-Muslim groups. They may consider all Muslims dangerous and think of Islam as a threat to Western society.

Like stereotypes, all these misconceptions are based on distorted truths. There are reasons for them to develop; they are not altogether wrong. What is wrong is their generalization. There are peaceful Muslims and militant Muslims; friendly Muslims and hostile Muslims, but no generalization covers them all. The cure for our various misconceptions is to get realistic. We must be aware of all these differences and react appropriately to the various Muslim individuals and groups we encounter.

That said—and, because of its political incorrectness, I hesitate to state what’s coming!—, we must beware of ever thinking we understand Muslims fully, especially if they have been brought up in a Muslim country or ghetto. Though I keep trying, I find it very difficult to establish genuine friendship with Muslims and Muslims often tend to resist it. Deep down there always seems to be a degree of mutual suspicion. It is impossible to predict what their reaction will be to a critical event between the West and Islam. Many moderates the world over unexpectedly rejoiced over 9/11. What is needed here is unending patience and then some more.

Many people fear Muslim challenges to secular society and consider them illegitimate. In the history of Dutch immigration to Canada in the 1950, of which I was a part, the generation that brought Dutch Calvinism to Canada in the 1950s also challenged Canadian secularism. They did not mean to threaten Canada but to bless it. Many Canadians were offended by this challenge, but these Calvinists persisted and scored some amazing victories that still bless Canadians today, often without them knowing it. Many Muslims similarly challenge Canadian secularism. Some people feel threatened by this Muslim challenge. Those Dutch Christians should remember that Muslims have the same right to challenge Canadian culture in our pluralistic society as they did in the 1950s and 1960s. “Father” Abraham (Kuyper) himself, the ancestor of this tradition, would have defended their right to challenge the established secular order.

We should counter them not by repressing their efforts, for we are not here to defend secularism, but by reviving and updating our own Christian principles and once again challenge secularism with the weapons of “our” Spirit. Muslims badly need to see a wholistic Christianity in action in our secular context. And who knows, in the course of our simultaneous challenges we could rub shoulders with each other as allies in some common causes, without ignoring or erasing the core differences that will keep us separated.