The celestial paragon and the terrestrial subordinate: The paradox of womanhood in islamic thought

“ The Fatimite caliphs had lofty and pretentious claims to the allegiance of the Moslem world. They traced their descent from Fatima, a daughter of the Prophet, whom Muhammed himself regarded as one of the four perfect women. At the age of fifteen she married Ali, of whom she was the only wife, and the partisans of Ali, as we have seen, disputed with Omar the right to the leadership of Islam upon the Prophet’s death. ”

“ Fatima, daughter of Mahomet, and one of the four perfect women. The other three are Khadîjah, the prophet’s first wife; Mary, daughter of Imrân; and Asia, wife of that Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea.
Fat ́ima, a holy woman of China, who lived a hermit’s life. There was “no one affected with headache whom she did not cure by simply laying her hands on them.” An African magician induced this devotee to lend him her clothes and stick, and to make him the fac-simile of herself. He then murdered her, and got introduced into the palace of Aladdin. ”

“ The pure life of Fatima, Mahumud's only daughter, is greatly esteemed as an example of female excellence, whom they strive to imitate as much as possible, as well in religious as in moral or domestic duties. ”

“ And be it observed that Al-Islam (the faith, not the practice) popularly decided to debase the social state of womankind, exalts it by holding up to view no fewer than two examples of perfection in the Prophets household. Khadijah, his first wife, was a minor saint, and the Lady Fatimah is supposed to have been spiritually unspotted by sin, and materially ever a virgin, even after giving birth to Hasan and to Hosayn. [FN#23] There is no objection to intermarriage between equal clans, but the higher will not give their daughters to the lower in dignity. ”

“ The perpetual virginity of Fatimah even after motherhood (Hasan and Husayn) is a point of orthodoxy in Al-Islam as Juno’s with the Romans and Umá’s with the Hindu worshippers of Shiva. During her life Mohammed would not allow Ali a second wife, and he held her one of the four perfects, the other three being Asia wife of “Pharaoh,” the Virgin Mary and Khadíjah his own wife. ”

“ These were the promises with which Mohammed aroused the enthusiasm of his followers. Fanatical zeal has been so enkindled in men that many thousands have perished in an effort to spread these doctrines throughout the world.
Saints will live nearer to Allah than ordinary believers and will have conversation with him. No people can enter heaven unless they be Moslems. The gate to heaven is reached by a bridge. This bridge is as narrow as a hair, and only believers can walk it. When a soul approaches the gate it finds Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed, standing there. ”

“ The Mohammedan religion has done much to degrade womanhood. To be sure, female infanticide formerly practised by the heathen Arabs was abol [Pg 141] ished by Islam, but that death was not so terrible as the living death of thousands of the Arab women who have lived since the reign of the 'merciful' prophet, nor was its effect upon society in general so demoralizing. In the 'time of ignorance,' that is time before Mohammed, women often occupied positions of honor. There were celebrated poetesses and we read of Arab queens ruling their tribes. ”

“ As a social system Islám is a complete failure: it has misunderstood the relations of the sexes, upon which the whole character of a nation’s life hangs, and, by degrading women, has degraded each successive generation of their children down an increasing scale of infamy and corruption, until it seems almost impossible to reach a lower level of vice.
The fatal spot in Islám is the degradation of women. The true test of a nation’s place in the ranks of civilisation is the position of its women. ”

“ Moslem literature, it is true, exhibits isolated glimpses of a worthier estimation of womanhood, but the later view, which comes more and more into prevalence, is the only one which finds its expression in the sacred tradition, which represents hell as full of women, and refuses to acknowledge in its women, apart from rare exceptions, either reason or religion, in poems which refer all the evil in the world to the woman as its root, in proverbs which represent a careful education of girls as mere waste. ”

“ Page 74. “Women, for their own purposes, often devise falsehoods, and are very expert in artifice and fraud.”—It was a saying of Muhammad that “women are deficient in judgment and religion,” which induces their co-religionists of the other sex to believe that they are more inclined than men to practise whatever is unlawful. When woman was created, the Devil, we are told, was delighted, and said: “Thou art half of my host, and thou art the depositary of my secret, and thou art my arrow, with which I shoot, and miss not.” ”

“ Mohammed was not exempt from the prejudices entertained by his countrymen towards the sex. The sentimental gallantry and respectful homage tendered its members by Western nations is unknown to the suspicious and sarcastic Oriental. The Prophet declared that the majority of persons he saw in hell during his nocturnal journey were women. But if the power of woman to act directly upon the fortunes of Islam was disdained, her indirect influence in that direction was enormous and undeniable. ”

“ Moslems, though they regard women with unspeakable contempt, agree to reverence Fatima as a very holy and almost worshipful person, and her dust renders Kûm a holy place, attracting tens of thousands of pilgrims every year, although, unlike pilgrimages to Meshed and Kerbela, Kûm confers no lifelong designation on those by whom it exists. Its estimated population is 10,000 souls, and at times this number is nearly doubled. ”

“ The fiery warlike character of the prophet, the propagation of the religion by fire and sword—the total degradation of the female character—the seraglio and the attendant eunuchs, and the low and sensual offices of the black-eyed Houris in Mohammed's paradise, are all too revolting to the women of christian countries, to be even contemplated with composure for a moment. We are not to wonder at the implacable hostility of christian females all over the world towards the moslem. ”

“ THE POSITION OF WOMAN IN ISLAM Men and women come from the same essence, possess the same soul, and they have been equipped with equal capability for intellectual, spiritual, and moral attainment. Islam places man and woman under like obligations, the one to the other. ”

“ The chief mosque was crowded with men herded within a rather small sort of verandah, where they stood while service was conducted in a loud discordant series of shrieks. A crowd of veiled women and [186] children pressed against the bars of the enclosure, but Mohammedanism has no place for women within her gates. Once for all Mohammed made the position of the women in the Moslem world unspeakably low and degraded: he said, “Woman was made from a crooked rib, and if you try to bend it straight it will break.” A woman, according to the universal Mohammedan belief, has no soul. ”

“ And yet, Mohammed manifestly wavered in his treatment of women and in the ideals which underlay it. A certain equality between man and woman is at one time taught in the Koran, as when it said: "The women ought to behave to their husbands in like manner as their husbands should behave towards them, according to what is just." And again the prophet said: "Ye men have right over your wives and your wives have right over you." This truly is reciprocity. And yet he asserted that "woman is a field--a sort of property which her husband may use or abuse as he thinks fit;" ”

“ Like the Chinese, the Mohammedan women are denied the hope of immortality. "Earthly women, when they die, cease to have any existence; but men, if faithful to Mohammed, are to enter paradise, and be associated with a new race of transcendently beautiful female beings." "The glories of eternity," says the Koran, "will be eclipsed by the resplendent 'women of paradise,' created 'not of clay, as mortal women are, but of pure musk, and free from all natural impurities, defects, and inconveniencies incident to the sex ”

“ How do we know that the good husband will desire the good wife, however good, when he has two-and-seventy maidens of Paradise all to himself? The trust that he will, cannot be trusted; it is a perfidious consolation to poor women. No wonder Muslim wives are obsequious, when it depends on the will, pleasure or caprice of their husbands whether they shall be re-married in the other world or not. ”

“ Can there be any real happiness for a Mohammedan woman? She gets little comfort from her religion, although if she is a perfectly obedient wife, attends faithfully to her religious duties, and does not weep if her child dies, she has a hope that she may be one of seventy houris who will have the privilege of attending upon her lord and master in his sensual paradise. The idea of these two horrors, divorce and other wives to share her home, is constantly before her. ”

“ They have neither any social nor any religious life. If there were nothing else to condemn the system of Mohammed, this is sufficient. I know what splendors of art it has produced, what achievements in war, what benefits to literature and science in the dark ages of Europe. But all the culture of a race that in its men has borne accomplished scholars, warriors, and artists, has never touched the women. The condition of woman in the Orient is the conclusive verdict against the religion of the Prophet. ”

“ For, in pagan India, debased and abused as woman is, she is still allowed some interest in religion, and some common expectations with the other sex, concerning the future state. But in Mohammedan countries, even this is nearly or quite denied her. "It is a popular tradition among the Mohammedans, which obtains to this day, that woman shall not enter Paradise;" and it requires some effort of the imagination to conceive how debased and wretched must be the condition of the female sex, to originate and sustain such a horrible and blasphemous tradition. ”

“ I. In the first place, the Koran does not teach that women have no souls. Not only was Mohammed too deeply indebted to his rich wife Khadijah, to venture such an assertion, but he actually teaches in the Koran the immortality and moral responsibility of women. One of his wives having complained to him that God often praised the men, but not the women who had fled the country for the faith, he immediately produced the following revelation:
"I will not suffer the work of him among you who worketh to be lost, whether he be male or female." ”

“ The institution of female slavery is distinctly a blot. The lot of the Moslem girl morally and socially is not so much unhappy as neglected. Her ordinary education is practically negative; the religious part of it is regarded as superfluous. But it is a popular fallacy, as I have already pointed out, to attribute to Islam the doctrine that women have no souls. Unfortunately, however, the idea prevails generally throughout Europe that these precious possessions are ignored by modern custom: that the fair sex is not encouraged to pray either in private or in public. ”

“ The lives of women are thus becoming enlarged. They are being released from the degraded position which they occupy in all Mohammedan countries. The popular impression that the Mohammedan religion denies souls and immortality to women is a fallacy. The Koran teaches the reverse, and admits them to the hope of Paradise ”

“ So much for our esteemed fellow-Christians in Egypt, descendants of what in heathen times was long the foremost nation, in the world.
"Women are not to be excluded from paradise, according to the faith of El Islam; though it has been asserted by many Christians, that the Muslims believe women to have no soul. In several places in the Kur-an, Paradise is promised to all true believers." They will be admitted by God's mercy on account of their faith, not of their good works ”

“ That Mohammed had a due respect for the female sex, as far as was consistent with the prevailing state of education and opinion, is evident both from his own faithful affection to his first wife ʿHadîgah, and from the fact that 'believing women' are expressly included in the promises of a reward in the future life which the Qur′ân makes to all who acknowledge one God and do good works. ”

“ She was a descendant of al-Hasan, the martyred ex-Khalifa, and an example of how the fated family of the Prophet was an early school for women saints. Even in the Heathenism we have traces of female penitents and hermits, and the tragedy of Ali and his sons and descendants gave scope for the self-sacrifice, loving service and religious enthusiasm with which women are dowered.
All these stood and stand in Islam on exactly the same footing as men. The distinction in Roman Christendom that a woman cannot be a priest there falls away, for in Islam is neither priest nor layman. ”

“ It follows that however enlightened the main basis of Mohammedanism it is fundamentally opposed alike to Christianity and to modern theories of democratic government and the equality of the sexes. “Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God has gifted the one above the other,” says the Koran. ”

“ Surely the ignorance and degradation of one-half of a community which has a world population of 233 millions is a question that concerns all who love humanity.
The origin of the veil of Islam was, as is well known, one of the marriage affairs of Mohammed himself, with its appropriate revelation from Allah. In the twenty-fourth Surah of the Koran women are forbidden to appear unveiled before any member of the other sex, with the exception of near relatives. [Pg 6] And so by one verse the bright, refining, elevating influence of women was forever withdrawn from Moslem society. ”

“ The Koran says nothing about a woman’s praying, therefore she is excluded from the Mosques at the hours of prayer. Behold a religion that practically excludes one-half the human race! It was not until Mohammed was fifty-eight years of age, and the husband of many wives, and had under his own roof experienced what the Moslem women of to-day declare, when there is more than one wife “there is fire in the house,” that he wrote in the Koran the “ordinance of veil,” that badge of jealous subjugation, which marks an era in the degradation of women in all the Orient. ”

“ How can it be otherwise when woman, the heart and life of the family circle, was in his mind because of inherited ideas relegated to the position of prisoner and slave rather than to that of companion and helpmeet? "It was Islam that forever withdrew from Oriental society the bright, refining, elevating influence of woman by burying her alive behind the veil and lattice of the Harem." ”

“ Where the general opinion is favourable to the improvement of the position of women in society, there is always found a way to secure it to them without conflicting with the divine law; but a radical reform will remain most difficult so long as that law which allows the man to repudiate his wife without any reason, whereas it delivers the woman almost unarmed into the power of her husband, is considered to be one of the permanent treasures of Islâm. ”

“ The seclusion of women cannot be wholly attributed to the precepts of the religion of Islam. In the time of Prophet Mohammed, and for generations after, women used to accompany the armies to the battlefield, singing stirring melodies to encourage the fighting men, and tending those who were wounded. Even nowadays among the tribal people, such as nomadic Arabs, and among the Circassians, there is no such absurdly strict seclusion of women as is fostered by the harem system; yet those primitive people are much more earnestly devoted to that religion than the advanced Ottomans. ”

“ Muslim women's status is controversial. Some critics claim that Muslim men oppress Muslim women by compelling them to remain hidden behind the veil, sequestered in the home, and ignorant of the world by denying them access to education and worldly opportunities. Defenders of some practices suggest that many of them, such as the veil, are cultural traditions that pre-date Islam and are intended to protect, not constrict, women, or that many Muslim women adopt the life style of the veil voluntarily. There are Muslim women who agree and disagree with the critics.
Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. ”

“ But she is at least oppressed by no tradition of renunciation or asceticism, and she has, in favour of her fulfilment and just cherishing, text after text in the sacred Book. The recent tendency to a purer Islamic practice, hand in hand with the growth of rationalism, offer her hope of early liberation from extraneous bonds and of development as a free human agent. The women of Islam have as guide rules of law, sanctioned by revelation, which if practised are more rational and more insistent on justice and human freedom than any other precepts ever codified into statutes. ”

“ Be that as it may, the Muslim ladies, with whom I have been long intimate, appear to me always happy, contented and satisfied with the seclusion to which they were born; they desire no other, and I have ceased to regret that they cannot be made partakers of that freedom of intercourse with the world we deem so essential to our happiness, since their health suffers nothing from that confinement by which they are preserved from a variety of snares and temptations; besides which they would deem it disgraceful in the highest degree to mix indiscriminately with men who are not relations. ”

“ The possibilities of the Egyptian women are great either for good or for evil.
It is said that Ismail Pasha, the grandfather of the present Khedive, who in his day ruled Egypt with a tyrant's hand, was himself ruled by a woman. His mother, a woman of strong character, was the power behind the throne. Much has been said about the downtrodden condition of Egyptian women, and none too much. Islam puts its heel on the neck of woman. It debases and despises her. But there is another side to the picture. Woman was born an invincible spirit, which even the yoke of Islam has not been able to crush. ”

“ Mohammedan countries are perhaps the only ones where a woman can be said to possess, in some respect at least, any advantages of liberty over men. The Christian woman is unrestrained in her movements, and can freely enter the house and harems, where she is known, when she pleases; and the Moorish woman, wrapped up in the ample folds of her garments, and so disguised as to baffle whatever direction she may choose, without incurring the slightest risk of being recognised. ”

“ Isolated and secluded as the women of Islam are, and their privacy so rigorously guarded by a ring fence of stringent rules, it is not possible for the European to give an adequate opinion thereon. But according to the reliable authority of so eminent a Moslem as Syed Ameer Ali, and others, the women among civilized Moslem communities know their prayers and religious duties just as well as the men—and are devout and pious—more so perhaps than the other sex. ”

“ In Persia is added the mourning for a month, for Hassan and Hossein, the martyred grandsons of Mohammed. As in all religions, women are most [Pg 240] zealous and devoted in the performance of these duties, but the practice of Islam has nothing to satisfy their soul hunger. Their belief in God is cruel fatalism, and all their rites work no change of heart, and give no peace of conscience.
The Gospel comes to them with a special appeal, and bringing its own message. That they should have any message, or be considered at all, is news to them; they are so used to neglect and disrespect. ”

“ They are doomed to perish together on the rock of Predestination, unless these “masters” can be brought to revise the interpretation they have put on their Prophet’s teaching. Muhammad, as a matter of fact, was careful not to draw a too narrow line between [Pg 302] the scope and the limitations of the human will. There is nothing in his message which need deter a progressive Muslim from accepting the belief that the first step is with him always, and there is no doubt that the acceptance of such a belief by the whole Muslim world would go far to breathe new life into the body politic. ”

“ But if we hesitate about passing judgment on the reforms we have just set forth, we acknowledge unreservedly, to make amends, that the education of woman is an imperious necessity for the future of Islam.
Education has nothing to do with the above-mentioned customs. It is in agreement with all the principles of the religion, and during the period of Islamic splendour, was lavished on Mussulman femininity whose culture was superior to that of European women in those days. ”

“ The complete emancipation of women from the ties, which held them back in the past during the ages of despotism and ignorance, is a basic aim of the Party and the Revolution. Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated. ”

“ Now, let me be clear: issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we've seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world. ”