Introduction
The question of the functions of women in the Islamic public has elicited a heated debate both within and out of the Muslim society from as early as the days of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH!). Even with the advent of civilization and democracy, there remains significant opposition to women’s involvement in public processes.
The book challenges recalcitrant institutions and inflexible traditions- religious, political, academic, and cultural- that have bound women to their traditional roles and directs her claims to intellectual rights and to reorganize global guidelines and social and political orders.
From the introduction, the audience becomes aware of Mernissi’s intention. When she asks a man at a grocery store whether a woman can head Muslims, a customer who overheard their conversation replies ‘May God protect us from the catastrophes of the times!’, yet another customer replies ‘Those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity!’ (Mernissi, pg. 1).
Going Against Tradition
Mernissi’s accounts of the history of early Islam could be easily dismissed by those who oppose her feminine approach to the issues pertaining to women as they are at odds with tradition. The responses she receives at the grocery store only seem to affirm this considering that they came from a true ‘barometer’ of the public opinion’ (Mernissi, pg. 1).
Mernissi’s mission in writing this book is somewhat revisionist: that of proving that in reality, Islam promotes political parity between men and women. She argues that calls to religious recognition of misogyny (hatred for women) are against the foundational egalitarian content of the Prophet.
To prove this, she examines these hadiths and sura from the Quran and notes that these calls surfaced at a very important point in the history of Islam, when the Prophet, his wives, and the growing religion were facing internal and external strains. Muhammad was a defender of human rights and much of the existing internal resistance to women’s involvement in public affairs came from the identity crisis plaguing a Muslim society struggling to come to terms with civilization.
Mernissi argues that rather than moving forward, Muslims are preoccupied with their past and resort to tradition, especially the existence of certain texts in the Quran that came into being in the early days of Islam in Medina. During this period, false hadiths were inserted into the Quran by those aiming to achieve political and economic ends and identifies two hadiths from Abu Batra and Abu Hurayra that continue the fight against women. Both of these men did not qualify to be transmitters of hadith and both had their own reasons for introducing anti-female hadith.
Mernissi draws from early works by Imam Zarkashi’s Collection of ‘A’isha’s Corrections to the Statements of the Companions to question Abu Hurarya’s hadiths (Mernissi, pg. 78). She further investigates the origin of misogyny that led to the recognition of such hadith and says that this was not the intention of Muhammad, but of internal and external strains operating in Islam in Medina.
In fact, Muhammad’s relation with his wives was of mutual nature and he even included them in his public activities. She quotes the Quran (Sura 33, verse 35) to prove that all believers are equal before Allah. Allah and Muhammad demanded that the people return to Medina to discuss the equality of the sexes but this was rejected (Mernissi, pg. 128).
The hijab, she argues, goes against the egalitarian principles of the Prophet. Muhammad pictured a courteous society in which violence and supervision were unnecessary, in which human self-control rendered the veiling of the women superfluous. Muslims can accurately begin to understand the initial principles of Islam only by examining the context in which the hadiths were written and hence begin to re-consider the position of women in the Islamic community.
Inconsistencies
Despite her assertions that the tradition of misogyny was not part of the Muslim tradition, she makes rather doubtful statements, notably in book 7. For example, she says that tribal Islam soldiers were ‘strongly homosexual’ (Mernissi, pg. 163). She does not explain how hadiths by Abu Batra and Abu Hurayra were accepted by rigorous hadith collectors such as al-Bukhari or even how these questionable people continued with their roles as hadith collectors.
She also mentions that only men inherited during the pre-Islamic period (Mernissi, pg. 122) but fails to mention how Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife, became a very prosperous businesswoman and inherited a lot of wealth. Mernissi is silent on this topic and instead, goes on about how the other wives to the Prophet (PBUH!), such as Umar al-Khattab struggled among the men to bring about equality.
Besides, she illustrates how Islam ensured a woman’s right to inheritance, and when she is at the point of explaining unequal inheritance in the pre-Islamic period, she drifts away and talks of some false prophet and the effects of introducing social equality. A final weakness in her claims comes in the sources that she uses, despite giving vivid examples from the Quran, one feels that she could have used a wider range of references from which she could have compared the contents.
References
Mernissi, Fatima. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Islam. London: General Books, 1992.