| Subject: A Woman's Inferior Legal Status in Islam |
Author:
Hector Carreon
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Date Posted: 23:51:44 05/30/04 Sun
A Woman's Legal Status in Islam
In light of Islam's own revered writings, the Qur'an and the ahadith, we see a far different picture painted from that which is presented to the West. In orthodox Islamic nations, in which the shari'a law has been established, the treatment of women generally ranges from heartbreaking to downright abominable. Even in nations where shari'a has not been formally established, the theological fundamentalism of the Islam which is almost universally held, as discussed previously, results in social and de facto political forces which militate against the exercise of anything even approximating Western-style rights by women. Often these are codified into the legal structure of the nation, even though no formal shari‘a has been established.
In Islam as found in the Qur'an, the woman is inferior to the man in matters of law and justice. For instance, it is stipulated that a woman is to receive only half the inheritance that her brothers receive when their parents pass away,
"Allah thus directs you as regards your children's inheritance: to the male, a portion equal to that of two females: if only daughters, two or more, their share is two-thirds of the inheritance; if only one, her share is a half." (Surah 4:11)
In this way, a woman is deprived of an equal share of inheritance solely because she is female, and if women are the only inheritors, they don't even receive the full inheritance! This sort of uneven distribution is elsewhere supported in the Qur'an,
"Allah directs thus about those who leave no descendants or ascendants as heirs. If it is a man that dies, leaving a sister but no child, she shall have half the inheritance: If such a deceased was a woman, who left no child, her brother takes her inheritance: If there are two sisters, they shall have two-thirds of the inheritance between them: if there are brothers and sisters, they share, the male having twice the share of the female." (Surah 4:176)
This apportionment system of giving women half the amount which a man receives is also supported by Mohammed in the ahadith 1. Hence, though the Quranic right of a woman to her inheritance is affirmed, it still establishes a systematically unequal legal position for the woman.
Likewise, a woman is reckoned in Islamic jurisprudence to be worth half a man by means of testimony in a court of law. Specifically, a woman's testimony only counts for half that of a man's, thus two women are needed to counter the claims of a man.
"The Prophet said, 'Isn't the witness of a woman equal to half of that for a man?' The women said, 'Yes.' He said, 'This is because of the deficiency of a woman's mind.' " 2
Not only is a woman's word not as good as that of a man's, but neither is her mind! Because of this acceptance of the notion that women are not as intelligent as men, women are accorded an inferior standing in Islamic justice. Logically, this would bear out to the disadvantage of women in pressing their rights and defending themselves or seeking redress for wrongs done to them. If a woman were raped and the deed was done secretly, she would have absolutely no redress against her assailant, unless he confessed out of guilt or fear, because his word would count for twice as much as hers and overrule her.
Women and men are also treated differently for breaking the same laws. An example of this comes from the Quranic commands against homosexuality. The punishment for women is,
"If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence of four reliable witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some other way." (Surah 4:15)
For men, on the other hand,
"If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-returning, Most Merciful." (Surah 4:16)
While women are confined in house arrest until death, with no evidence of forgiveness being available, men are set free with no punishment if they disavow their sin. The passage 4:15 provides a possible caveat in its statement “...or Allah ordain for them some other way.“ If Allah rescinds the punishment, they may go free. Of course, the will of Allah is generally understood to be interpreted and dispensed to the Muslim community via its mullahs and imams, so the women are still essentially at the mercy of the interpretive temperament of these men. This sort of one-sided, unfair treatment of women is acknowledged by scholars who are intimately familiar with Islam,
"The statement that 'men are the guardians of women' in verse 38 of Sura 4 postulates inequality of men and women in civil rights. The words are followed by two brief explanations of men's superiority over women 3.....In Islamic law, male heirs get more than female heirs, and men's evidence is more reliable than women's; to be exact, a man's inheritance share is twice a woman's share, and his evidence carries twice the weight of hers in court...The right to divorce belongs to the husband but not to wives. 4"
In most Middle Eastern Muslim countries that make a pretence at some sort of representative government, women are still denied the right to vote. Rights to property and asset ownership by women, technically existing as we have seen, are in practice non-existent as women in many Muslim countries are not free to even leave the house without their husbands' permission, much less transact business and manage property of their own accord. Because of the debilitating strictures placed upon a woman’s freedom of movement and communication with others (especially men) outside of her kinship unit, she is usually not even able to exercise these Qur’an-given rights, and must consign her property and rights to her husband for him to exercise on her behalf. The few Muslim countries where women have been allowed to participate in the political process have almost invariably had problems with Islamic hard-liners who destabilise and overthrow governments. An example is Pakistan, which at one time had a female Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. However, radical Islamist agitation brought the fragile democratic government down, and it was replaced with a military dictatorship, currently headed by Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan is now openly one of the main hotbeds of radical Islamic jihadi activity, with its thousands of madrassas, or Islamic schools, churning out tens of thousands of hard-line students. The extension of rights to women is not necessarily the direct or sole cause of Islamist dissatisfaction, but is instead viewed to be a symptom of the greater evil of Western liberal democracy, which the Islamists strenuously oppose.
When Islamic parties or revolutionary groups which seek to establish orthodox Islam as the deen of a nation manage to come to power, the rights of women are completely curtailed. There is perhaps no better example of this than Afghanistan. Before the Soviet invasion of this nation, Afghanistan was a relatively open and tolerant society, one in which women had a good deal of participation, could receive the same education as men, and could even become doctors or other types of professionals. All this changed with the Soviet invasion, and the subsequent American support for Afghan opposition groups such as the Mujahadeen. These opposition groups, more often than not, were militantly orthodox in their approach to Islam. While the United States supported many of these groups because of their shared enemy, the Soviet Union, once this threat had ended, it was left primarily to these many militantly Islamic groups to pick up the pieces (now with the money and arms previously supplied by the United States). This they did over the next decade, with the process of Islamisation eventually culminating in the Taliban regime, complete with its religious police who would savagely beat women in the streets for grave offences such as laughing in public. Even with the timely demise of the Taliban regime at the hands of American forces, the rights of women in Afghanistan, briefly restored, are fast on their way to becoming non-existent again, as the various other militantly Islamic (but less anti-American) factions prepare the new constitution for that land, one which is being explicitly billed as having an Islamic shari’a foundation.
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