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| By Abdessalam Yassine, 08-03-2007 |
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| As in every orderly human society, the stability and well-being of the family are aspired to in the Muslim society. The central pillar of that stability is the woman.What does the Qur’an have to say about the Muslim woman? |
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| The Qur’an sketches an ideal portrait of the faithful, man and woman, in the Surah called Al-Furqân, The Criterion. Eleven moral and spiritual qualities required by the model of the faithful are crowned and completed by the well-being of the family and the society:The model servants of God walk humbly upon earth and do not wish to lose their time in vain controversies with unbelievers. They spend part of the night prostrate before their Lord, praying that God may spare them the torment of hell; and they spend a reasonable part of their incomes on charity. They never call upon false gods; they never kill; they never fornicate; they never bear false witness; nor do they frequent people who are occupied by the frivolities of life. They listen attentively to the Word of God. (1) |
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| The final verse represents a model for faithful women and men, pious at prayer, appealing to God with the hope that He will grant their requests:Lord God! Give joy and contentment to us in our spouses and children, and make of us a model and guide for the pious to follow. (2) |
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| Such is the importance in islam of family happiness, and such is the role of the Muslim woman, namely, to be the pivot of family well-being.This “woman at the hearth” is the opposite of the insignificant and oppressed creature that one sees these days in our societies, stunted by illiteracy and weighted down by unjust macho traditions. Islam and its Law and its model for woman have already delivered the Arab woman—during the time of the Prophet—from the abyss of injustice where she suffered martyrdom. |
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| It is urgent to deliver the contemporary Muslim woman, fallen again, perhaps even lower than her pre-Islamic sister, and to draw her up from the abyss of injustice and negligence where she languishes. Our era is perhaps no more merciful towards women than one in which a depraved and inhumane father could cruelly bury his newborn infant if by misfortune it was found to be a girl! |
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| The misfortune of today’s Muslim woman is twofold. She lives torn between the unfortunate situation in which local masculine injustice has placed her, and the Western model whose apparent freedom attracts her. She will metamorphose into an imitation of the European woman as soon as she has the means to do so. She will do this if she belongs to an “evolved” social stratum fashioned by one-sided formation or school in a foreign establishment; the rest of the female population vegetates in ignorance, not daring to imagine the least bit of change. |
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| The two, the “emancipated” woman and the other, are ignorant of all the rights that true islam grants them. The veiled young women of Islam who disturb the schools and universities of France by their presence, and who shake off the yoke of injustice among us, are the vanguard of a new consciousness. |
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| Under Islamic Law, Muslim women have the right—a right that backwards traditions have confiscated from them—to choose their husbands, not to accept a suitor without conditions (including the condition of not marrying a second woman), to ask for divorce, to work and assume social and professional responsibilities, and to dispose freely and independently of their income. |
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| A woman’s right to instruction is limitless, as well as her duty to participate in society’s efforts to emancipate itself and to liberate the Muslim nation from the fetters of custom and moral depravity. In other words, she has the right to be a complete human being on her own, worthy, living in propriety! |
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| Numerous rights are prescribed to Muslim women under the Law: the foremost of them is the right to have the means and the time to worship the Lord and to participate fully in the pious work of the community in the time made available to her among her personal duties. Unlike the view of the Church, the Law does not see in her a creature without a soul in league with the devil and responsible for man’s original sin. |
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| The Muslim woman should become informed of her rights; conscious of them and well-informed, she should be able to reclaim their application. No one else need do these things for her. A solid share of material and moral rights will free her from ancestral servitude and will allow her to devote herself to her duties. The good work required to rescue Muslims is arduous; it will take the hard-working goodwill of everyone, women and men side by side, associations rivaling one another in good works. |
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| Competing in good work is one of the conditions of the Test. Do we not read in the Surah Al-Mulk (3) that God created death and life in order to test us and know which of us will do better works? An Islamic government can only clear the road and smooth out the difficulties: it is the joint effort of men and women to take to the field and act, to invest themselves and to persevere. |
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| The feminine touch is more than a complement to masculine decisiveness: her delicate sensitivity and motherly love are irreplaceable, indeed decisive in the effort of change in order to bring about “the alternation of days.” The decisive hand of an Islamic government can and should stop the hemorrhaging of a wounded society, but what else than feminine compassion can gently tend its physical and psychological wounds, soothing with healing balms the effects of so much suffering? |
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| * From the Book "Wnning the Modern World for Islam"(1) Sûrah 25 [Al-Furqân]: verses 63-8, 72-3.(2) Sûrah 25 [Al-Furqân]: verse 74.(3) Sûrah 67 [Al-Mulk]: verse 2. |
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