Is Male a Degree above Female in Status? Part 8

Conclusion

It is easy for power to get corrupted and become a source of injunction, oppression, and stagnation.[i] With the rise of patriarchy, many customs and traditions were developed. Of these customs and traditions, many have disappeared or were gradually abandoned, while some still remains. The Muslim world’s stagnation and backwardness, nourished by scholasticism, have also contributed to the stagnation of Muslim women.

The authenticity of different Hadith should be judged in accordance with the letter and spirit of Quranic verses. Where there is any dispute or apparent inconsistency between the two, the Quranic direction must prevail. Muslim should read the Quran as an ‘open’, rather than a ‘closed’ text and strove continually to understand its deeper meaning. It means acting on these words of Iqbal (d.1938): “The teaching of the Quran that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessor, should be permitted to solve its own problem.”[ii]

The negative ideas about women that prevail in Muslim societies are rooted in certain theological ideas. Until we demolish these certain theological foundations of Muslim culture’s misogynistic and andocentric tendencies, Muslim women will suffer discrimination despite statistical improvement in education, employment, and political rights. Religious endorsements of patriarchal society insinuations are not an inherent part of the tradition, but represent a later addition to and distortion of its fundamental core. Indeed closer examination of the religious traditions reveals that their egalitarian cores also provide resources to undermine patriarchal family structures. Moreover, in Islam sexual equality is ontological in that the Quran teaches that God created humans from a single self (nafs). It does not privilege the man’s creation or endow him with attributes or faculties not given to the women. Rather, humans ‘manifest the whole.’[iii]

The primary meaning of ‘zulm’ is that of putting in a wrong place. In the moral sphere it means primarily to act in such a way as to transgress the proper limit and encroach upon the right of some other person. Generally speaking ‘zulm’ is to do injustice in the sense of going beyond one’s bounds and doing what one has no right to.[iv] Readings that project ‘zulm’ (injustice resulting from transgressing against a person’s rights) into divine discourse violate the Quranic teaching that God never does any ‘zulm’ to people[v]. Islamisation , in its true sense, may be interpreted as a strategy of dismissing misogynist and other hegemonic traditions and introducing Quranic values of equity and compassion.

In order for Muslim men and women to establish a just and moral social order, Muslim women’s full human dignity needs to be realized, as echoed in the Quran, by removing whatever impediments there are in the way for them to actualize their surrender to Allah as a vicegerent (khalifah). The participation of Muslim women as full and equal partners in the community’s socio-economic development and progress is the need of the hour.

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[i] Quran 6:123, 20:24, 27:34, 33:67, 34:34, 43:23-24

[ii] Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf: Lahore, 1962, p.168

[iii] Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships, in Islamic Thought, SUNY:Albany, 1992, p-43

[iv] Toshihiko Izutsu, The Structure of Ethical Terms in the Koran, Keio Institute of Philosophical Studies; Tokyo, 1959, p.152-153

[v] Quran 18:49, 22:10, 24:50, 29:40, 30:9, 50:29, 9:70