I have long wondered why women
would like to be Muslims. I have looked at this question at some length; and I
have learned a lot about it.
In the first place, it must be
said that women are not infrequently mistreated in every culture and under the
roof of various religions. The question in my mind is this: “Are women
mistreated by design of any particular religion; or, is the abuse of women a
cultural and personal characteristic of violent men?”
It can be said with truthfulness
that many women find the Bible somewhat obscure when it comes to the role of
women in society. The women who believe that find certainty in the words of the
Qur’an; and they find that role description freeing. At last, they have no
question of their role in marriage and in the society.
Not a few women are revolted by the gleanings
of feminism in the West. They see women as exploited in advertisements where
their bodies are put on display to gain attention in order to advertise everything
from cigarettes to automobiles. Islam officially decries such exploitation of
women. Islam openly publicizes the dictum that female modesty is a
characteristic of the true Muslim woman. (Christianity proclaims this, also.)
The following are some points in the teaching of the Qur’an with
references to some of the relevant verses: (The first number in a reference is
to the Surah [or chapter] in which the reference is found. The second number is
to the aya [verse] where the reference is found.)
If one reads the Qur’an, he will find some of the disadvantages of being a woman in Islam:
· 2:28 Men are to
have dominance over women.
· 2:282 Two women are required to equal one man in court.
· 4:15 Women
convicted of lewdness are to be confined in a house until the day of their death.
· 4:34 Men are the
protectors of women, but husbands are allowed to beat their wives “lightly” if
disobedience does not stop.
A phrase frequently included in the
religious training of women is, “If a man
calls his wife to his bed, and she refuses, and he goes to sleep angry with
her, the angels will curse her until morning."
The
feminist case has been argued strongly in recent years. A growing number of Muslim
women have tried to understand the culture of both the Muslim world and the Western
world.
Fatna
Sabah, for example, a North African sociologist, is critical of the record of traditional
Islam over its attitudes to women. This is how she explains the ideal of female
beauty in Islam:
“The
ideal of female beauty in Islam is obedience, silence and immobility, that is
inertia and passivity. These are far from being trivial characteristics, nor
are they limited to women. In fact, these three attributes of female beauty are
the three qualities of the believer vis-à-vis his God. The believer must
dedicate his life to obeying and worshipping God and abiding by his will.
“In
the Qur’an, the believer is fashioned in the image of woman, deprived of
speech
and will and committed to obedience to God. The female condition and the male
condition are not different in the end to which they are directed, but in the
pole around which they orbit. The lives of beings of the female sex revolve
around the will of believers of the male sex.”
Fatima
Mernissi, a sociologist working at the Research Institute of the
University
of Rabat in Morocco, tries to explain why some recent feminist thinking
represents such a threat to traditional ways of thinking in Islam:
“What
happens when a woman disobeys her husband, who is the representative and embodiment
of sacred authority, and of the Islamic hierarchy? A danger bell rings in the mind,
for when one element of the whole structure of polarities is threatened, the
entire system is threatened. A woman who rebels against her husband, for
instance, is also rebelling against the umma (the Muslim community),
against reason, order, and indeed, God. The rebellion of
woman
is linked to individualism, not community (umma); passion, not reason;
disorder, not order; lawlessness (fitna), not law.11(11)”
This
is how she explains the dilemma facing many Muslim women in the modern world:
“In
the struggle for survival in the Muslim world today, the Muslim community finds
itself squeezed between individualistic, innovative western capitalism on the
one hand, and individualistic, rebellious political oppositions within, among
which the most symbolically 'loaded' is that of rebellious women.
“The
common denominator between capitalism and new models of femininity is
individualism and self-affirmation. Initiative is power. Women are claiming
power - corroding and ultimately destroying the foundation of Muslim hierarchy,
whence the violence of the reaction and the rigidity of the response.
“Femininity
as a symbol of surrender has to be resisted violently if women intend to change
its meaning into energy, initiative, and creative criticism.”
Christian
readers will recognize the parallel tensions between both Christians and
Muslims when faced with the forces of feminism.
Regardless
of how academic we want to get about the pull that Islam has for women, if one
looks into this question carefully, one will come to the realization that the
most powerful influence Islam has over Western women is the acceptance and
kindness they have received in Muslim circles. That warmth and obvious
affection has not been very strong in the Christian places they have been. This
oft-repeated reason for conversion should give Christians pause to consider how
kind and accepting we are of others who visit our churches. It should also give
Christian husbands pause to think of how kind and considerate they are (or are
not) toward their wives.
It
seems obvious to me that a woman who is bullied and dominated in a “Christian”
home is likely to convert to Islam if she finds a Muslim husband who is kind to
her.
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