A basic reason for the incompatibilities that have crept into our Muslim society is that man has disregarded the respect-worthy emotions of woman. It is a fact that he has never tried to understand woman. He has never considered her worthy enough of being understood. But has this neglect given him any peace? If your left eye is aching, can your right eye sleep peacefully?
Woman under the Prevalent Laws
In your mind you have quite easily concluded that since the "Sharia Laws" (Religious Laws) have been formulated by men, they give them an upper hand and tend to suppress women. There is no doubt that our prevalent ''Sharia Laws'' would result in the same mess. However, the reason is not as you have understood it. If we consider your reason to be correct, then men 'by nature' are such that they want an upper hand and want to overpower and enslave women. What we call 'Nature' consists of something that he has brought along from his animal life. As far as animals are concerned, you never see a male keeping an upper hand over his female. As such, men cannot have this streak because of their animal instincts. Besides animal instincts, the qualities that manifest in 'human nature' are in fact the result of heredity, circumstances, education and nurturing. Therefore, it would be incorrect to claim that because our ''Sharia Laws'' have been made by men, they have given women a degraded position in them. Instead, it would be more appropriate to say that these laws had been formulated under such circumstances when tyranny, instead of justice, was the order of the day.
At that time, the 'woman' was hated. Hence, according to these laws and ideas, a woman's status was that of a down-trodden, enslaved and degraded being. These laws relate to our monarchical period and, as I have often repeated before, our prevalent 'Islam', too, was more or less formulated at that time. Life in this period, whether it concerned men or women had coercion as its prominent feature. For example, all the laws formulated at that time reserved all the rights for the ruling class. The ruled had no rights; they could only beg for the royal benevolence. They could not demand anything as of right. According to these laws, the landlord had all the rights, and the tiller of the land was treated as a servant. According to these rules a rich man could get all the luxuries whenever he wanted, and the poor received even their daily bread as a charity. In fact the poor got something, too, but this was only to save the giver from the influence of the evil eye. So much so that according to these beliefs, a rich man could buy his paradise with his money, but a poor man had to cry and beg for his salvation. It is so obvious, therefore, that in an environment where such laws and beliefs have been devised even for male subordinates, a woman cannot expect better treatment.
Women and Quran
All of these were the results of the above mentioned laws and moral codes, which were the product of times mentioned above. However, the Muslim criteria of fixing the status of a woman, or man, are neither these social laws nor this moral code. For the Muslims, there is only one standard under the sky, and that is the book of God, which they profess to believe in. What status does the Quran endows for woman? The details are lengthy, but their gist reminds me of a joke which Allama Iqbal used to relate. He would say, "If I were not a Muslim, and I had studied the Quran like an ordinary student, then I would have concluded that this book was written by a woman, who was taking revenge on man, for the usurped rights of her community". If one studies the religions and cultures of the world, it leaves no doubt in one's mind that a woman has been pushed to extreme degradation. On the other hand, in the Quranic study it appears as if she has been favoured very much. For a start, the Quran has rejected the common belief that God created man (Adam) first and then woman (Eve) was created out of his rib. By now, you must have understood that according to the Quran, this very concept that human beings were created by a special couple called Adam and Eve, is wrong. The Quran, in effect, presents Adam as the representative of mankind or humanity.
Birth of a Human
The theory of evolution tells us that life began with a single cell that later divided itself into two i.e. an ovum and a spermatozoon. The Quran corroborates the same by saying: God created you from a single life cell and from it created its mate (for man a woman and for woman a man) and from them twain (4:1). In other words the single life cell swelled and divided itself into two and this continued until then a great number of men and women inhabited this world. And from them were created many men and women (4:1). You should note that the Quran does not discriminate between men and women by virtue of their genders. Their life source is the same, and they are like two branches of the same origin.
Zauj (One of a Pair)
The Quran calls both man and woman as Zauj; but in Urdu we call a woman the Zauja of a man. We do not call a man the Zauj of a woman. The Quran, however, calls both man and woman, Zauj to each other, meaning companions. Further, it does not say that the woman is a man's Zauj, and that the man is not. God addresses human beings and tells them: He has made Zauj among you (30:21, 42:11). Zauj means a friend and companion; which implies that men and women are each other's friends and companions. Accordingly, Zauj would mean the ones who are complementary to each other. Given this meaning, a man complements a woman, and a woman complements a man. They are Zauj to each other. The Quran has gone to the extent of saying, you are from each other (3:195). Therefore, no individual can call itself complete unilaterally.
After this, the Quran has negated the myth that 'Adam had faltered in the paradise due to a woman'. The belief of Satan trapping the woman and then the woman tempting Adam, who sinned and was then kicked out of paradise was rejected as has been mentioned in Torah of Jews. The Quran says that both man and woman are capable of compliance or defiance of laws; both can err and commit mistakes. Therefore, it said: Satan misguided both of them (2:36). Hence it is wrong to surmise that woman is responsible for all the sins committed in this world, and that the man is completely innocent.
Both Man and Woman are Respectable
Having seen the negative stance, let us explore the positive angle. The Quran ordains: Verily We have made humankind worthy of respect (17:70). This reference is not only for man, but for woman also. In the norms of the Arabic language when one wants to mention both men and women together, would say "Bani so and so". In the Quran, "Bani Israel" does not mean only men of
The Quranic Aim
By the way this point should make you understand the aim of the Quran, viz.:
(i) To develop human potentialities and to harmonize them in a balanced way. (Balance here means the appropriate and proper weight. Whatever weight anything is supposed to have, it should have just that. Everyone knows the importance of the exact or the correct weight of an ingredient in a doctor's prescription;)
(ii) The society in which people have to deal with each other should be balanced;
(iii) Humans and the forces of nature should also strike a harmonious balance.
In other words, the purpose of human life is to establish a balance. Now, when in the Quran human life refers to both men and women, is it possible that we can achieve this balance with only one gender (either men or women alone)? Can you imagine maintaining this balance by ignoring half of humanity altogether? A basic reason for all the imbalances in human life is the consideration of half of humanity as a whole. This deprives us of the benefits of a balanced way of life, as in general it remains incomplete. This ignorance goes a step further. The half (which man considers as being human), has been further divided and sub divided to such an extent, that the very self of ninety-nine percent of humans has been discriminated against. Only those who belong to the "upper strata", according to their self-made norms, are considered humans. This is irrespective of any bias towards intellectuals like Plato, or to any religious leader. Every where you see the division and distinction of classes is prevalent. (But this subject does not fall into the inquiry your have made, so I shall not talk about it in detail in this letter.)
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