With regards to the scholars mentioned in Part 1, whose opinions on women come off as less than savory, we do recognize that these men were no doubt righteous Muslims and individuals who spent a great deal of their time studying the Dîn, who certainly considered themselves as seeking to live according to the Sunnah and to guide others accordingly; we pray that Allah will reward them for their good and forgive them for their mistakes.
However, this does not mean that we should acquiesce in their problematic statements and the (negative) impact that those attitudes have had on the rest of the Ummah at large. Nor should we continue to spread those teachings and perpetuate those beliefs, which are deeply harmful and bring no benefit to the Muslim Ummah, but which have indeed been used to further oppression and injustice.
It should further be noted that those who try to deny any kind of male bias in Islamic scholarship also say that the issues which Muslims have regarding gender relations are a product of corrupt outside influences, and that in the past, those issues did not exist because the Muslims had a near-utopian society. Yet when one considers some of the greatest gender- and sex-related crimes that are extant today – fornication, adultery, lack of physical modesty, homosexuality, and so on – those same issues existed even in the greatest Islamic era of all time: The Prophetic time period when he was the leader of the Islamic Empire and lived with his Companions in Madinat Al-Munawwarah.
Even then there were Sahabah, both male and female, who were convicted of adultery; slave women were bought, sold, and walked the streets dressed in not much more than what we in the West see on an average summer’s day. There were Sahabah who were known to be violent towards women and were warned against such behavior by the Prophet himself. There were Sahabah who were punished for being alcoholics, for theft, and more.
These were all human issues and impulses; even the Prophet’s society of Madinah was not free of these matters. Thus, it is absolute nonsense to say that misogyny –-or any other kind of prejudicial mentality, such as racism or classism
[*] — did not exist amongst Muslims up until recently.
Their mere acceptance of Islam, understanding its theology, and performing certain religious acts of worship does not, in and of itself, change or purify people and society radically. The embrace of Islam must be accompanied by a spiritual overhaul of mentality and behavior, which can only happen when one is willing to be honest with their own internal biases. Anything less than that results in both denial and arrogance — which is a potent and dangerous combination… and one of Shayṭân’s greatest tools.
Does this mean, however, that we are implying that Islamic scholarship was anti-women? Or that these men had a specific misogynistic agenda?
Not at all. Many of those same scholars made statements that affirmed women’s Islamic rights in various other aspects of life: We are not denying this at all. But does this mean that just because Scholar A said this good thing about women, that we will accept his other negative statements about women without question or critique? This is where we must be discerning and honest about our scholars and our scholarship: Of course, they were not all bad, they did not all hate women or consciously try to destroy women’s lives –but they were not completely perfect or infallible either.
Their bias existed –perhaps for cultural reasons– to an extent that their personal opinion regarding women’s “inherent” inferiority and lack of “commitment to the Commands of Allah” became a part of their commentary on the Divine Verses themselves. Frankly, it is dangerous and disingenuous to deny a complete lack of bias, as all of us operate under some sort of bias.
Their bias was not one where they sought to harm women, but one where what they perceived to be ‘good’ and ‘correct’ was not a perception that took into consideration what women themselves perceived to be good or correct, especially about themselves. Nor, in cases such as female circumcision, did their judgment always match up with what the Prophet ﷺ considered as good for women – such as their sexual satisfaction.
[†]
And their perception of what was ‘good’ was similarly not necessarily in line with what we know to be from the Qur’an and authentic Sunnah. While we tend to have much higher standards today in terms of what evidence we quote, there were individuals such as Al-Ghazâli who were very liberal in the use of weak and fabricated aḥâdîth, and saw no problem in using non-religiously-based proverbs and sayings to bolster the arguments of previous scholars.
One example of how female reality can oppose male (scholarly) perception is in an anecdote regarding the great scholar, Al-Shaykhah Al-Muftiyyah Fâṭimah bint ʿAbbâs Al-Baghdâdiyyah. She used to debate with the ʿulamâ’ of her time, the majority of whom were men. One such debate was with Shaykh Sadr Al-Dîn ibn Al-Wakîl, on the topic of ḥayḍ(menstruation). She won the debate, and she said to him, “You know about this only from the knowledge (of the books), but I know it from that knowledge and also in practice!”
In this anecdote there is a rare – but extremely relevant – example of how Islamic scholarship is incomplete –and potentially inaccurate– without the active involvement of female scholars themselves. Without women to speak of their own lived realities, how can one come to truly judicious rulings regarding those matters which affect their lives on an almost daily basis – whether this is with regards to menstruation or with their sex lives?
...
One example of how female reality can oppose male (scholarly) perception is in an anecdote regarding the great scholar, Al-Shaykhah Al-Muftiyyah Fâṭimah bint ʿAbbâs Al-Baghdâdiyyah. She used to debate with the ʿulamâ’ of her time, the majority of whom were men. One such debate was with Shaykh Ṣadr Al-Dîn ibn Al-Wakîl, on the topic of ḥayḍ(menstruation). She won the debate, and she said to him, “You know about this only from the knowledge (of the books), but I know it from the same knowledge and also in practice!”
Likewise, there is the example of discussion on how often a husband is obliged to be sexually intimate with his wife; while it is unanimous that a husband who desires intimacy must be responded to immediately by his wife, the reverse is not held as automatically true by the vast majority of scholars.
[*]
Instead, as Imam al-Ghazâli says in his chapter on marriage,
The husband should go to his wife once every four nights. This is fairest, because the [maximum permissible] number of wives is four. One is therefore allowed to extend the interval up to this limit. It is best that the husband should increase or decrease the amount of intercourse in accordance with his wife’s need to guard her virtue, since the preservation of her virtue is a duty of the husband. If the woman’s claim on intercourse has not been fixed [in fiqh], this is because of the difficulty of making and satisfying such a claim.
[†]
While at first glance this statement is commendable, one should note that the language is quite different in comparison to the discussion of a husband’s right to intimacy. A husband “should” go to his wife “[at least] once every four nights…” There is no “he must”; there is no, “when his wife calls to him, he is obligated fulfill her desire immediately.”
In fact, a later Hanafi jurist made the bald claim,
“After the first time [i.e. consummation of marriage], intercourse is his right, not her right.” [‡]
As well, it has been a common view of various scholars to say that a man is held liable, blameworthy, or accountable to the law [only] if he withholds sexual intimacy from his wife for longer than four months; the obligation is that he provide it at least “once in every third of the year.”
[§]
The ‘up to four months’ rule is considered to be derived from the ruling of ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab, when he consulted his daughter Umm Al-Mu’minîn Ḥafṣah Bint ʿUmar on how long a woman could withstand being separated from her husband without sexual intercourse. Ḥafṣah responded, “Four months.” Yet while this statement of hers has been taken to be a general one, applicable to all marriages, it notably ignores the context in which this statement was made – that is, in a context of war. ʿUmar asked this question not in a normative state of peace, but with regards to Muslim soldiers who were deployed in Jihad, and whose wives remained behind.
How, then, could it be that what was a ruling for clearly extenuating circumstances, became the basis of general statements regarding Muslim women’s right to sexual intercourse with their husbands? Al-Ghazâli states that it is ‘difficult to make a claim’ about how often women desire intimacy – well, why must it be specified at all in terms of times per day or month?
Why wasn’t it automatically understood that just as husbands have the (general) right to intimacy from their wives at any time, the reverse would hold true of wives with their husbands? And why was it so difficult to discover this information – couldn’t these scholars simply have spoken to women and found out what their opinions were on the topic? Why is it that codifying a wife’s right to sexual intimacy was made dependent solely upon one statement by a woman, issued regarding non-normative circumstances? This, despite the fact that there is a narration from Al-Bayhaqi that says,
Women have 99 times more desire than men…
[**]
Although it must be noted that this narration is graded as weak, there have been discussions surrounding its meaning, with the general idea being that it can best be determined by medical opinions on the topic. (Of which there are many.
[††] [‡‡] [§§])
Despite all of this, there instead appears to be a lack of interest in seeking out any additional information from women, and complacency in depending upon that one statement of ḤafṢah’s alone.
While there were scholars such as Ibn Taymiyyah who held that a husband
was obligated to fulfill his wife’s desires and that not doing so was grounds for annulment,
[***] this view is considered a minority in the vast tradition of Islamic scholars.
# # #
Going back to the point of male scholars’ biases with regards to women, it should be clear now that yes, lack of active and engaged female scholarship has led to a male-dominated perspective on Islamic legal matters that is harmful to women in more than a few ways. Whether this harm was deliberately intended or not, is beside the point.
As Shaykh Akram emphasized repeatedly in his lectures on the History of Islamic Female Scholarship, traditional Islamic scholarship does have a significant lack of female voices, input, and perspectives on fiqh matters. Outside of a handful of women, the most well-known of them having been Ṣaḥâbiyyât or Tâbiʿiyyât, it is nigh-impossible to find female scholars’ names, rulings, and contributions to fiqh in any given discourse.
Where female scholarship is noted and recognized, these cases are very often examples of
transmission of knowledge rather than
production of knowledge. One notable consequence of this is that there is a significant dearth of scholarly literature produced by female scholars themselves. Omar Kahala, the author of
Aʿ
lâm Al-Nisâ’ –which is a veritable encyclopedia of notable women in Islamic history– listed the names and biographies of around a thousand women, of whom only ten were known to be writers (excluding poetry).
[†††]
Having said all of what we have noted: Does this mean that those of us who acknowledge and point out these biases automatically believe that the corpus of Islamic scholarship should be thrown out as invalid?
No. Rather, it means that we recognize that over 1400 years of Muslim scholars worked to provide what they believed were the correct answers to religious matters; but that from their work, there is evidence that certain matters need to be re-evaluated and redressed. It must especially be stressed that we desire to do so in light of the Qur’an and Sunnah, going back to the original texts and the evidences derived therefrom… not, as it is wrongly assumed by so many, that we wish to begin from scratch and impose a 21st century Western, secular, liberal paradigm on the texts themselves.
This is not to say that we today do not have our own biases either, but rather, that we should be aware of the biases which we bring to our effort and that we should ensure as best we can to set any prejudices aside and to focus on the foundational principles of our religion and its system of law-making.
It is beyond the scope of this article, or the qualifications of this author, to lay out a specific methodology for doing so (although it should be noted that the experts of Islamic sciences have already developed numerous rigorous methodologies to ensure the authenticity, validity, and strength of Islamic knowledge that is transmitted and built upon).
One question that we should ask ourselves in relation to this, however, is: Just as we in the present must be held to those rigorous standards… how much of the scholarship of the past, including the quotes mentioned previously –as well as others on different topics and opinions– would be considered strong and authentic according to those selfsame methodologies? Again, this is not to imply that we must reject classical scholarship in general, but that we have an obligation – both scholars and laypeople – to be more discerning in what is considered acceptable to share and teach amongst the masses.
Furthermore, it is erroneous to claim that the practice of revisiting past scholarship, critiquing it, and arriving to different conclusions is a somehow new and dangerous invention. Rather, to do so has always been an integral part of the history of Islamic scholarship – scholars debated and critiqued each other’s’ opinions, or the opinions of their teachers, or of scholars from the past, or of different schools of thoughts. Books were written criticizing others, often using strong wording.
Thus, it is wrong to claim that a call to revisit our past scholarship and to make an effort to derive rulings and conclusions more in line with the now more widely available and authenticated texts of the Qur’an and Sunnah is a prohibited innovation. In fact, this flies in direct contradiction to our actual history of Islamic scholarship.
It is in the spirit of Islamic scholarship itself –the desire to seek guidance in both the technical and spiritual aspects of our religion and our lives, to embody the spirit of the Qur’an and Sunnah– that we must acknowledge the reality of biased Islamic scholarship. In fact, we must work towards improving that scholarship such that it more accurately reflects our goal to live in a manner most reflective of Divine Justice and Mercy.
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[*] In fact, there are quotes from classical Islamic scholars demonstrating what, today, would be considered abominable racism. To illustrate:
…For what his community owns exceeded the bounds of tribes both East and West, and his call (daʿwah) spread in the middle of the earth, such as the third and fourth and fifth regions; because they are more complete in intellect, and morals, and have more even temperaments, in opposition to the northern and southern climes, for those people’s brains and morals are lower/deficient, and their temperaments are deviated.
As for the southern edge/clime, for it is by the strength of the heat that their “akhlâṭ” (mixes) were burnt, and so their color blackened, and their hair curled.
Special thanks and credit to brother Omar Anchassi for his invaluable assistance in providing material regarding female literacy; and Shaykha Somaya AlZahrani for her patience with my numerous requests for translations.
[†] Book on the Etiquette of Marriage (chapter from
Ihya’ ‘Ulûm Al-Dîn)
[‡] Ibn ʿÂbidîn,
Radd Al-Muḥtâr