WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT AND ISLAM - 7

[Introduction]    [Our Contemporary World ]   [The Problem ]    [Is empowerment the Solution ]   [What has Islam to offer ]   [Islam's own empowerment ]   [Clarification of certain issues ]   [Would Muslims allow.... ]  Clarification of certain Issues It may still be necessary to go a little further to clarify certain issue that appear to many, especially to non-Muslims, to contradict the exalted position Islam had accorded women as has been discussed above. Some of these issues include the share of inheritance, the issue of evidence, polygamy, restriction in a marriage to non-Muslim men and invalidity of Women political leadership. Inheritance - That a Muslim woman receives half of what a man receives in the share of inheritance has lead many an ignorant observer to rush to the conclusion that Islam values woman as half the value of man. Those who mean mischief have found a ready example of Islam’s oppression of women and a ready ear in those ignorant non-Muslim observers, or so they thought. The fact is however different. First the Islamic laws of inheritance are easily the most equitable that mankind has known, but it is beyond the scope of this short paragraph to go further, the interested reader can inquire further in so may published works. Here we can only point the fact that women in Islam, unlike their Hindu or post-modern counterpart, receive dowry in marriage from a man. Besides, as a wife all her basic needs of food, cloth and shelter are provided for by her husband. When not married she remains the responsibility of her father or brother whose duty it is to take care of her. By simple arithmetic the woman who gets half of what her male brother gets could end up twice richer than the same brother. So Islam is simply being practical, and the logic is clearly unassailable. If any has a better system let him share his wisdom with all and sundry, we should all be ready to learn. Evidence - In the course of the evolution of the Sharia, some of the sources were interpreted to mean that in certain circumstances the Sharia either doesn’t admit the evidence of women or it takes the evidence of two women in place of that of one man. But the Sharia is not static it evolves over time to meet the dynamics of society. Surprisingly, even the Muslims, who ought to know better, are resisting this dynamism of the Sharia. But luckily scholars in the Sudan, who more than any other Muslim community today on the globe, are having to live the Sharia in the present time, not in the past, have re-examined these interpretations in our contemporary context and have now given women equality in evidence. In respect of the verse in al-Baqra, (Q.2:282) for example, they have argued that at that point in time, seventh century Arabia, women were not involved in commercial transactions and hence were not deemed to be familiar enough with the intricacies of trade to make their evidence in such matters reliable. Today, however, many women are involved and quite familiar with trade and commerce thus obviating the need to undervalue their evidence. The details, it would be appreciated, cannot be provided here. Polygamy - This is one touchy issue which can hardly be resolved in a paragraph but on which luckily a lot has been written. While we refer readers to more detailed works on the subject, we need mention one very important point: that Marriage in Islam is not absolutely compulsory and if one wishes to marry he is free to enshrine such conditions as the contracting parties may wish to consent to and this ought to take care of the fears of those who do not, for whatever reason, wish to be part of a polygamous family. One may also be tempted to ask why wouldn’t women be granted the same opportunity, so that they can also have multiple husbands. We only need to point to one fact, that in a polygamy, for every child both the mother as well as the father can be known with certainty, while in a polyandry there could be no doubt about the mother but it will be difficult to establish the father with absolute certainty. Islam deems certainty in the parentage of children too seriously to risk any confusion. Restriction in the marriage - While Islam allows Muslim men to marry women from among the people of the book. Jews and Christians, It does not allow Muslim women same, is this not a form of discrimination? How many times has one heard Muslims, especially the men, trying to explain by pointing to the fact that because women are weak their is the fear that a non-Muslim husband may either convert her to his religion or carry the children from this marriage over to his religion. This, however, is not Islam’s reason, it only shows how uninformed Muslims themselves are about the Sharia. First Islam does not view a woman as weak on matters of faith and conviction, for Islam knew the generation of Makkan women who made the first and the second hijra against all manners of threats and hardship. It should also be recalled that the first person to die of the torture in Makka was a Muslim women. We actually need not go very far, in Nigeria we also know of army generals who will come out to command troops but go home to stoop and be commanded by a woman. Islam’s reason has nothing to do with this idea (or is it figments of imagination?) of the weakness of women. The main reason is simple and easy to comprehend. In the Sharia the married woman has a right to be fed, clothed and sheltered by her husband, and these rights are justiciable. In other words if the husband should fail in his duty she could go to a Sharia court which will force him to pay up. If, however, the husband is not a Muslim the Sharia cannot enforce itself on a non-Muslim. On the other hand if the wife is non-Muslim and she goes to court the Muslim husband will be forced to pay up. The restriction is not therefore a discrimination, on the contrary it is meant to secure and uphold the rights Islam had given married women. Political Leadership - We have already seen the need, some would say necessity, for women to participate in politics, but can a woman hold the highest political post of the head of state? Most Muslims would say no a woman cannot hold the post of the head of state. The evidence hinges on the hadith which says that: "a nation would never succeed that make woman in charge of her affairs." This evidence has however been faulted by some scholars. First, one of the scholars argued, the hadith does not seem to be in agreement of the spirit of the story of Bilqis the queen of Sheba in the Qur’an, for Bilqis, who was the head of her state, and was praised by Qur’an for her wits and sagacity and actually succeeded since she came into Islam along with her people. Secondly the hadith itself could not pass the credibility test on three counts. Third there is no explicit text of the Qur’an which says no to women leadership. Some scholars therefore believe that there is no barrier to women leadership any more than the standards that Islam has placed for such leadership, which applies to any Muslim, male or female.