ISLAM AND WOMEN LIBERATION BY BABA ALI MUSTAPHA

          

HISTORICAL REFLECTION

        The concept of Women’s liberation sprang up in the Euro- Christian World because of various form of injustice found in that society against women. Female see themselves marginalized in the political, educational and socio-economic spheres of life. This tread of decreasing respect for humanity in general and the women in particular is a consequence of the atheistic nature of the West. However, because of the lack of divine guidance in the feminist movement

, the champion of the cause of women ended up doing more harm to the sanctity of womanhood than good. There is thus a need for the Muslim to understand that feminism is not the panacea for the evils of the Oppressed Women.

          First, it will be pertinent to study the background against which feminist movement developed. Because the Western civilization take pride in tracing it’s root to ancient Greece and Rome, let us see what was the role of Women in the Greek democracy which was described as a great advance in the history of civilization.

          The status of women in Greece was no more than that of childbearing slaves. In the words of Socrates: “woman is the greatest source of chaos and disruption in the world. She is like the defali tree which outward look very beautiful but if sparrows eat it they die without fail”.

          Those were the words of the greatest philosopher. In Ancient Rome, the woman was a legal nonentity. She could not appear in court as a plaintiff, and in the eyes of the law she was regarded as an imbecile. She was like a slave who could neither hold any civil or public office, nor be a witness, surety, tutor or curator, nor adopt a child or be adopted, nor make nor enter into contract.

          With the advent of the Middle ages, women were “equal” to men only in soul. St. Paul wrote “ A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man” (1 Cor.11:7). Early Christian leaders enjoined woman to live continual penance for the evils she had brought to man. Was she not the one who persuaded Adam to taste the forbidden tree and on that account caused him to be cast off from paradise?

St. Tertullian said “ to women” each of you is an Eve, the sentence of God on this sex of yours live in this age: the guilt must necessarily live too, you are the devil’s gateway, you are the unsealer of that tree, you are the first deserter of Divine law, you are she who persuaded him when the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image in man. On account of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die”.

          In the era of Puritanism and Calvinism, woman was at her lowest social status in the 18^th century.

THE MOVEMENT BEGINS:

          With the advert of French Revolution, some effort was made to improve the status of women in Europe. Condorcet, a French Philosopher and Revolutionary wrote an essay on “The admission of women in full citizenship” in 1790. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first to draw the attention of the English-speaking world to the plight of women in her “VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN”. Mary Wollstonecraft, today considered as one of the pioneer of the women’s right movement was herself a victim of her society. Her father was a drunkard and she had to work at an early age to support her family. She even attempted suicide. Afterwards, she devoted her life to work in order to make the relationship between man and woman “ a rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience”.

          Organised feminist appeared in the U.S.A in the 60’s with the development of the women’s liberation from two sources: First, young female student involved in the civil right anti-war movement. Second, American business and Professional women who established the National Organisation for Women (N.O.W) in 1966.

CONSEQUENCES:

          The women liberation movement spread and publicized their demand. The feminists’ demands are centred round women’s education, employment, abortion, birth control including male contraception, child care for working mothers and family life.

          The feminists contend that women should be allowed to have free abortion at will and abortion must be legalized. This is one of the evils taught by the feminists as it open the door to immorality and the murder of many innocent children yet unborn. If women can have coitus without risking unwanted babies, it is hardly possible to demand that female remain chaste. 

          The ‘basic unit of socialization’, the family, is in danger of extinction if women “Liberation” should have its way. They insisted that women should not accept the role of housewives and they denigrate the noble function of motherhood. This is a direct threat to the existence of humanity.

          This misguided call for the “liberation” from the yoke of childbearing and motherhood is not without consequences. Women are now being used as sex sum bold in the advertisement industry. In a bid to liberate herself from male “control”, the feminist has only succeeded in further entrenching herself in the service of man, using her naked body to gratify his lust. The breaking up of families in countries like America has resulted in children who grow up without parental love or guidance and who end up as dangerous criminals. Witness the very rising crime wave in America. Collapse of families has also resulted in people seeking out new avenues for obtaining solace and support, cohabitation, multigenerational commons, new religion, drugs and alcohol. Unfortunately, the influence of feminist movements spread to Muslim lands as one of the weapons of cultural imperialism in the colonial and neo-colonial era. Some Muslim rulers and intellectuals were deceived into believing that the Western woman is a figure to be emulated by the Muslim woman. Egyptian ruler Mohammed Ali Pasha and Khedives Ali Pasha encouraged cultural imperialisms in bid to “free” Muslim women. The Tanzimat movement in Turkey went a long way to de-Islamize the Muslim woman in the name of ‘creating a better position for women’.

          One of the misguided Muslim who attacked Islam under the guise of calling for ‘emancipation’ of Muslim woman was an Egyptian Judge, Qassam Amin. Qassam Amin attacked Purdah, polygamy and divorce as the cause of decay of the Muslims. His book Tahiri al-maraat (Women freedom) and Al-mar’at, al Jadiah (The New Woman) were full of slander against the pure Shariah. He was a pathetic example of how successful a Muslim could be de-personalized and brain washed by Western the rhetorics. Qassam Amin believed in the superiority of Western culture and morals. He wrote “Europe is ahead of us in every way, and although it is comforting to think that while they are materially superior to us, we are morally better but that is not true. The Europeans are morally more advanced and all classes posses the social virtue”.  This shows the way in which Western Christian propaganda caused a Muslim to extol the virtues of the feminist campaign, a campaign which lead to “an epidemic of crime”, lawlessness and universal indulgence in illicit sex as a result of the complete disintegration of home and family.

THE ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE:

          In Islam, the male and the female have some defined roles different from each other due to their difference in anatomy and physiology. This is the basis which provides in Islam, equality of the sexes but not sameness. Thus in Islam, the fundamental role of the woman is to develop life by rearing children and maintain her family and home. The status of woman in Islam has not left anything to be desired. The status of women was taken for granted to equal that of men, it was a matter of course, a matter of fact, and no one then considered it as a problem at all.

          The Prophet Mohammed (S.A.W) was once consulted by a man who asked him which of my relative should I value most? The Prophet instantly answered “your mother”. The man asked (then who)? And repeated for the third time for both of which the Prophet repeated the same answer. When the man asked for the fourth time, then the Prophet answered “Your Father”. This shows that the mother is ranked three steps above the father only by virtue of her major role in the up-bringing of children. Therefore, brainwashing women against this important role amounts to enslavement not liberation. The woman is viewed as an independent personality, Allah (S.W.T) say “And their lord had accepted (their prayers) and answered the (saying): Never will I cause to be lost the work of any of you, be you male or female, you are members, one of another (Quran 3:195).

          The Prophet (S.A.W) has made the seeking of knowledge compulsory on every Muslim male and female. The Shariah does not limit women to particular fields of study, nor does it curb women from putting into practice what they have. The Islamic Society in fact, depends on the education of women for the up-bringing of it’s young ones in proper Islamic cultures. In short, no other religion philosophy or ideology has given to the woman that Islam has given to her. The honour and respect given to women, political rights, rights to divorce and inheritance, economic and legal rights could not be improved upon those provided in the Shariah. The condition of women in the time of the Holy Prophet (S.A.W) and in various Islamic societies throughout history is enough proof for this assertion.

          At this juncture, one could not help noticing with dismay the alarming extent to which some culture and societies vehemently abuse those religious provisions husband who are meant to be the twin halves of their wives, as some positions only comparable to the little gods. They totally disobey the concept of amicable co-existence. 

          Women liberation found base in the West because of the agnostics and hedeonistic world view of that society. In the Muslim world, women liberation is surfacing only because of the ignorance of the Muslims and the way in which they repudiate the law of Allah for a ‘little price’. It is incumbent upon Muslims to seek the knowledge of their religion so as to properly appreciate the excellence framework of Islamic society and the roles assigned to its various components and to realize the empty slogans and confused ideologies wielded by the unbelievers either out of ignorance or out of sheer malice. Only then will Muslims be in a position to practice what their Lord has prescribed for them and only then will Muslims be able to resist and repudiate un-Islamic movement such as the fallacy called “women liberation”

          Baba Ali Mustapha is with the Department of Planning and Research in the Ministry of Environment, Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria.

Reference: 

For more knowledge consult the Book , ‘AL ILM, Volume 3 Number 1.