Women in Islam

**Muslim women** ( *Muslimāt*, singular مسلمة *Muslimah*) have very different lives in different countries and even inside the same country. This is because of local culture and old customs that started before Islam came to those places. At the same time, all Muslim women follow Islam. This gives them some things in common and a shared identity, even when their cultures are very different. The place and rights of women in Islam come from the Quran (the holy book of Islam), the hadith (stories about what the Prophet Muhammad said and did), agreement of religious scholars (*ijma*), comparing new questions to the Quran and hadith (*qiyas*) and fatwas (answers from religious experts).

In Islam, children have no religious duties. When a person becomes an adult (reaches the age of maturity), the rules for men and women become clear. Many Western countries say men and women must be treated exactly the same by law. Islam says men and women are equal through justice and fairness, not by being exactly the same. Muslim women must do the same main religious duties as men (prayer, fasting, giving to the poor, and – if they can – pilgrimage to Mecca). They do not have to attend Friday prayer at the mosque.

Before Islam, women in Arabia had very few rights. Islam brought more freedom and rights for women. Prophet Muhammad listened to women and sometimes used their ideas in the Quran. Women could pray together with men, buy and sell things, and teach others. His wife Aisha was an important teacher of medicine, history, and public speaking. Some women had political power, sometimes alone or with their husbands. However, women did not become religious leaders or imams.

Many rules about women today come from old local customs and male-led ideas, not directly from the Quran. The question of women's place in Islam is talked about a lot in the modern world.

Other things that affect Muslim women's lives are, customs from before Islam, normal country laws (these are allowed if they do not go against Islam), government religious offices (for example the Indonesian Ulema Council and Turkey's Diyanet), and spiritual teachers, especially in Sufism.

Many Sufi writers, including the famous Ibn Arabi, wrote about the spiritual importance of women in Islam.

## Rules and sources of law 
In the time before Islam (called pre-Islamic Arabia), marriage was mostly about helping the family or tribe. Tribes wanted strong friendships with other tribes. People thought it was very important that a woman was a virgin when she married. This was seen as honor for the tribe. Historian William Montgomery Watt says that all marriages of Prophet Muhammad had a political reason. They made friendly ties stronger. This was normal in Arab custom before Islam.

### Primary 
The chapter called *An-Nisa* ("Women") is the fourth chapter of the Quran. It is named this because it talks about women many times. Important verses are 4:34 and 4:127–130.

One verse says:

In Sunni Islam, rules for women come from the Quran and from hadith (stories about Prophet Muhammad) that most scholars agree are true. These rules were written a long time ago, so they were affected by the world at that time. These secondary sources are agreement of scholars (*ijma*), comparing new things to the Quran and hadith (*qiyas*), personal thinking by trained scholars (*ijtihad*) and fatwa, written or spoken answers from religious leaders. Fatwas are not forced, but most Muslims follow them. They explain what women can and cannot do. All actions for Muslims (men and women) are put into five groups, required, recommended, allowed, not liked and forbidden

Scholars sometimes disagree about these secondary rules, and the rules can change over time, and different countries follow different ideas.

## Gender roles in the Muslim community 
Islam teaches that men and women are made as a pair. Everything in the universe comes in pairs (Quran 51:49). One cannot be complete without the other. Islam sees the universe as balanced. This balance comes from pairs (for example male and female) that work together in harmony.]]

Because men and women are seen as a pair with different strengths, Islam usually gives them different main roles, such as, a woman’s main place is the home. She is the leader of the home, a man’s main place is the world outside the home.

Women are highly respected for many jobs inside the home and community, such as teaching religious rules, healing the sick, taking care of children and family and helping arrange  In real life, the roles are not always strict. Many Muslim women in history and today have important jobs outside the home. Examples include queens and sultanas, elected leaders of countries, rich businesswomen. In Islam, the family and home are the most important part of life. A man’s work outside must never comes before the family. A Hadith indicates that it is unlawful (haram) for the wife to refuse her husband sexual intimacy.

A lady must also take care of her Muslim husband and house, including cooking and other household chores.

It is not allowed for a Muslim woman to travel unless she is accompanied by a Mahram (husband or any other relative who she is prohibited from marrying).

## Modern debate about women in Islam 
Inside the Muslim world, people argue a lot about women's rights. Some use the Quran, hadith, and stories of early Muslim women to support their ideas. Conservatives and Islamic feminists both do this, but they reach different answers.

### Conservative views and Islamist groups 
Conservatives say the different rules for men and women are different because men and women have different duties, not because men are worth more. For example, a man must pay money to his bride when they marry and must pay for the family. A woman does not have to do that.

The modern Islamist movement wants a stronger role for Islam in daily life. In some Islamist places, women have lost rights, such as, under the Taliban in Afghanistan, women had to wear the full burqa in public, Women were not allowed to work or go to school after age 8, women could be whipped or killed in public for breaking the rules.

In Iran after the 1979 revolution, the rules are stricter, but many women go to university (60% of students are women) and some women are members of parliament.

### Liberal and feminist views 
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, the world started paying more attention to how women are treated in Muslim countries.

Liberal Muslims and Islamic feminists say some point, like, women and men should be more equal, Islam can change with the times if scholars use new thinking (*ijtihad*), Sharia law can protect women if leaders really want it to.

Many Muslim women fight for their rights inside Islamic rules. A significant examples are, in Malaysia there are two legal systems, one normal and one Sharia. In 2006, Marina Mahathir (daughter of a former prime minister) wrote that Muslim women get worse treatment than non-Muslim women (for example, polygamy is allowed only for Muslims, and fathers almost always get the children after divorce). Women’s groups asked for female Sharia judges. In 2010, Malaysia appointed the first two women as Sharia judges.

A controversial law passed by the government of India was that maintenance was available only during the iddat period after divorce, and after that, the responsibility for paying maintenance was shifted to the woman's family or the Waqf Board. This created problems for Muslim women, who were considered discriminated against by the law as they were deprived of the basic right to alimony under Secular law.

Muslim men are allowed to have up to four wives at a time in India. A law has made Talaq-e-biddat illegal, but Talaq-e-ehsaan and Talaq-e-hasan are legal and Courts are being appealed against it. In Talaq-e-hasan, the husband pronounces "talaq" only once a month, usually when the wife is not menstruating. Then the couple waits for a month after the first "talaq" is pronounced and the marriage remains as it is. If the husband does not repeat the word "talaq" in the next month, the couple can reconsider and come to a compromise. If the husband pronounces the word "talaq" three times in the third month, the divorce becomes official. In Talaq-e-Ehsan, the husband pronounces "talaq" once and waits for the expiry of a three-month iddat or waiting period. If the husband and wife start living together again before the expiry of the three months, the divorce is considered void. If reconciliation does not occur during this waiting period, the divorce becomes official. The Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) states that Mohammed married Aisha when she was just seven years old and consummated their union when she was nine, so it is not illegal for nine-year-old girls to get married.

## Women, Sharia, and local customs 
'' for rules about women:

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All schools of Islamic law say Sharia rules are for every Muslim man and woman who is an adult. The Quran speaks to both men and women many times (for example Quran 33:35).

Most Muslim countries have normal laws and courts, but also Sharia laws and religious courts for family matters. A few countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan under Taliban, Pakistan, Yemen) also use Sharia for crimes.

Many people mix up Sharia, old tribal customs, and religion, and local habits. They do not always know where a rule really comes from. Bad customs that hurt women (for example giving a girl to pay for a crime, or “honour” killing) are not from the Quran. They come from old tribes.

### Testimony in court 
In some old Islamic rules, the word of two women can equal the word of one man in money cases, In very serious crimes (hudud), only men’s testimony is accepted by some schools.

### Dress code 
 wearing a loose head scarf]]
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The Quran says the main reason for clothes is to cover private parts. Being close to God is more important than clothes (Quran 7:26). It also tells women not to show their beauty to strangers (Quran 24:31).

All traditional schools say women must cover the body in public (neck, ankles, arms). But the Quran does not say women must cover the face or hair. Only the wives of Prophet Muhammad were told to cover more (Quran 33:59). In the past, slave women (non-Muslims) only had to cover from navel to knee. Free Muslim women covered more. Covering hair was common long before Islam in ancient Greece, Christian, and Jewish communities too.

Today Muslim women dress in many different ways. Some countries (Turkey, Tunisia) once forced women not to wear headscarves in schools and government offices. Now those rules are gone or relaxed. Only Iran (and Taliban Afghanistan) force women to wear special religious clothing in public.

In the United States, almost half of Muslim women (46%) always wear something visible (usually hijab) to show they are Muslim. Only 1% say a family member forces them.

### Gender separation 
Islam keeps men and women separate in some places (mosques, weddings, schools) to help modesty. Many mosques have a women’s prayer room or a balcony for women. Women do not pray when they have their period or right after giving birth. In family law, a man may have up to four wives (polygamy), a Muslim man can marry Christian or Jewish women, a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man and daughters usually inherit half of what sons inherit. These rules come from the Quran, but many Muslims today want to change or re-think them.

## Legal matters 
### A woman as a witness 
The Quran says that in money and loan cases, two men should be witnesses. If two men are not there, one man and two women are enough. The reason given is “so if one woman forgets, the other can remind her” (Quran 2:282).

### Property and inheritance rights 
The Quran says both sons and daughters must get a share when parents die (Quran 4:7). But a daughter's share is usually half the share of a son. Muslim scholars say this is fair because men must pay for the family (food, house, clothes) and women keep all their own money and do not have to pay for the family.

A woman keeps everything she owned before marriage. Her husband gives her a gift called *mahr* (dower) when they marry. That money belongs only to her. Any money she earns after marriage is also only hers. In the past, many rich Muslim women owned land and gave big gifts to mosques and schools. In some old cities, 25% to 50% of big charity gifts came from women.

### Sexual crimes 
#### Zina (sex outside marriage) 
Zina means sex between people who are not married to each other. This includes adultery (when a married person has sex with someone else) and fornication (when unmarried people have sex). The Quran says the punishment is 100 lashes (for unmarried people). 

Old books say married people who do zina can be stoned, but four good men must see the act at the same time, or the person must say four times that they did it. Because it is almost impossible to find four eyewitnesses, almost nobody was ever punished for zina in the past. Today a few countries have brought the old punishments back, but they are still very rare.

#### Rape 
Rape means a man forces a woman to have sex when she does not want to and they are not married to each other. The Quran and the oldest Islamic books do not have the modern idea of rape. Old scholars treated rape as a kind of violent crime (hirabah) or as forced zina (sex outside marriage).

Some important points in traditional Islamic law includes the woman (the victim) is never punished, only the man (the rapist) gets the punishment, most scholars say the woman's own words are enough to start a case if there is other evidence (for example, injuries or witnesses who heard her scream), the rule about four men seeing the act is only for normal zina (when both people agreed) and it is not needed for rape.

The Girl of Qatif was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison for reportedly being attacked and raped by a number of other men when she was alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married. This was a crime in the tightly segregated (segregated from males) nation of Saudi Arabia. The Hudood Ordinance of Pakistan included the crime of rape, known as "zina-bil-jabr" (zina by force), as a subset of zina. As a result, four eyewitnesses were needed to prosecute this crime. Because there were no four eyewitnesses to demonstrate that the sexual encounter was not consenting, this law tragically led to rape victims being suspected of Zina. After reporting the rape to the authorities, a rape victim who had been raped by a cousin was charged with "adultery" and given a 12-year prison sentence in Afghanistan. Every year, laws prohibiting consensual sex outside of marriage, known as zina, result in the punishment of rape victims in the United Arab Emirates. Some countries (including the  United Arab Emirates) punished women who reported rape but could not bring four witnesses. Now the law in Dubai and the UAE has changed, rape victims are no longer charged with zina or adultery if they cannot prove the rape.

### Domestic violence 
The Arabic word *iḍribūhunna* can mean “hit” or “beat”. But the same word is used many other ways in the Quran (for example: “go away”, “travel”, “set an example”). Some scholars say it means “separate from her” or “leave the house”, not hit. Most old scholars said, The Prophet Muhammad hated the idea of hitting wives. Many famous scholars said hitting a wife is wrong or almost forbidden. Even if hitting is allowed, it must never hurt or leave marks (some said only with a small toothbrush or handkerchief).

Today many important Muslim leaders say hitting a wife is never allowed in Islam. Some people say the verse lets husbands hit wives. Other people say the Prophet never hit a woman and told men not to do it. Conventionally, this verse emphasizes male dominance and female obedience.

According to verse 4:128 of the Quran, it is not sinful for a woman to seek peace if she believes her husband will ill treat her or forsake her; in fact, peace is preferable.

Domestic violence is however still a problem in Muslim-majority cultures, where women face social pressures to submit to violent husbands and not file charges or run away.

## References