New Site!
Thanks to a dear friend of mine, I am now at a much better Movable Type site: http://www.secularislam.net/
All the old entries are there, and (working) comments, the ability to upload pictures, and more.
Please update your links!
Saturday, July 05, 2003
Sunday, June 29, 2003
Disaffection writ large
I've been so depressed and disillusioned with the state of Islam lately, I can hardly stand to read about it or write about it anymore. And I'll share with you one big reason for that--the local imam's attitudes. I have had a few conversations with him about Islam, and he actually is something of a moderate (he is upset about how some Wahhabis/Salafis want everybody in this American mosque to follow their ways, imported directly from Saudi Arabia, instead of taking a more "live and let live" attitude), but at the same time, that's what makes some of what he says so depressing, even though it actually is just par for the course. I should mention that he is Sunni, accepts the Shafi'i law school, comes from a "moderate" Arab country, and has even become a US citizen. Herewith a listing of what I find less than pleasant:
*Vitriolic Jew hatred (all too common among Muslims, unfortunately, so nothing out of the ordinary). He has described Jews as "monkeys" and "the worst of people," insisted that there is a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, says the US media and government are dominated by Jews in order to support Israel, refers to suicide bombings against Israelis as "martyr operations" and says that even if another Muslim is killed in one of them, "both will be rewarded" in heaven for being "martyrs." Muslims are duty-bound to drive out the "monkeys" from the third-holiest Muslim site, Jerusalem, and from the rest of "Palestine," as they have no rights to "Muslim land." It's the same old crap I read all the time in Muslim publications and on Muslim websites, but it's always a shock to me to actually hear it said out loud. But what makes it hard to take is that this imam has attended numerous interfaith meetings, and even a Thanksgiving multifaith service in a synagogue, calling for peace between religions. I'll be honest: if I were Jewish and knew what I know about Muslims' attitudes towards Jews, I'd have a hard time trusting Muslims unless I knew for sure that they were not antisemites.
*The position of women. Women should not work unless they have to, they should not leave the house "too much," and only with their husband's consent (though they should not be locked up in their houses--that's what "moderate" means in Islam), they are emotional and weak and need men to protect and provide for them, they should never be alone with a man, since that will invariably lead to illicit sex (talk about your self-fulfilling prophecies!). A wife must obey her husband in everything unless it is "against Islam," and should never refuse him sex or else the angels will curse her until morning (this is a hadith from Muhammad himself; another is that women will make up the majority of people in hell, since they are ungrateful to their husbands.). Although she is not supposed to have sex during her period, there are "other things" she can do with him, and she must not refuse him that. She should accept him taking up to three other wives without complaint, since that is his right in Islam (her permission or even acceptance is not required, but it does make it easier--otherwise he has to sneak around to visit his other wives, something that is not at all uncommon). In school, women can attend classes with men, but should sit in the back. They should wear the head scarf and long clothes, but do not have to wear the niqab (face veil). He has said that regarding the Qur'an mentioning that a man can "correct" his wife by beating her (4:34), he should not do it with anything bigger than a siwak, a tiny stick used to clean the teeth, and that Muhammad, the best of men, never hit his wives, so that's definitely a good thing (unlike the claim often made in Muslim nations that it is nobody else's business if a man beats his wife; after all, she deserves it).
Of course, I should note that Muslim women are often some of the least submissive, least shy women I have met, yelling and fighting with their husbands and other men to get what they need or want. Common is the threat to literally murder a husband who takes another wife--and they mean it, too! It's one of the reasons polygamy is dying out--women with any kind of self-confidence simply refuse to accept it.
*Jihad. This imam has never denied that "jihad" means "holy war," as against those who claim that it is an "internal struggle" (a Sufi definition with essentially no applicability in Islamic history or law). He does seem to think that eventually the armies of jihad (real armies, with real weapons) will reach American shores and conquer America for Islam, though even he seems to realize that this is an utter pipe dream (unlike many other Muslim men who pray for the day, so they can take any number of infidel sex slaves). I asked about the ruling that Muslims should not live in the land of the infidel. He didn't deny it, but said that it was OK if one had the intention to spread Islam (I suppose it might be called "jihad by the pen or mouth"). In every Friday sermon, he prays for those Muslims fighting in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, the Sudan, Iraq, or whatever Muslim country happens to be in the news. The suicide bombers in Israel are of course completely justified, as part of the jihad against Israel, though interestingly enough, he hates Arafat, saying he is working for the Israelis and that a true Islamic ruler would declare jihad. I think he was genuinely upset at 9-11, appearing at many prayers for peace and blood drives for the victims, but on the other hand, whenever a terrorist attack occurrs, he generally is only concerned about how Muslims will be treated because of it, not for the (non-Muslim) victims (though this seems to be the attitude of every Muslim I have met). He doesn't hate Shi'ites, unlike many Wahhabis or other Sunnis who do not even consider them real Muslims, and has said that Iran is a real Islamic state.
*Apostasy. Interestingly, he has said that apostates should NOT be killed but just left alone (though I don't know if he really believes this and was saying it for my benefit). However, when I asked about the murder of Rashad Khalifa in 1990 by some Islamic extremist group (since the Submitters, his "sect" of Islam, is active in my town), he said that he was "glad" it had happened, since he was preaching a "distorted" version of Islam (and maybe in the employ of the Jews to boot).
That's plenty! I have heard plenty of the same kind of stuff from other Muslims, unfortunately, and the Islamic rulings are common knowledge, but still, I guess I was hoping for something...well, maybe a bit more "Westernized." I don't know if a Western-born imam would be any better, as many converts and second or third-generation Muslims do their best to out-zeal those living in Muslim countries, though they might bring to the table some attitudes that a Middle Eastern Muslim would never have. But then I think about people like John Walker Lindh (aka Sulayman al-Faris) or the American Shariffa Carlo Al-Andalusia (her fanatical writings are widely published on Islamic websites--check out her article Unconscious Muslims, where she makes the blatantly treasonous remark that "to side with the United States against The Islamic Empire of Afghanistan is clearly a horrendous sin"--I wish I were making this up, but I'm not!) or Maryam Jameelah, who has written many anti-Western screeds, and I wonder!
Will things get better? I really don't think they will unless something big happens, and I can't even imagine what that might be.
I've been so depressed and disillusioned with the state of Islam lately, I can hardly stand to read about it or write about it anymore. And I'll share with you one big reason for that--the local imam's attitudes. I have had a few conversations with him about Islam, and he actually is something of a moderate (he is upset about how some Wahhabis/Salafis want everybody in this American mosque to follow their ways, imported directly from Saudi Arabia, instead of taking a more "live and let live" attitude), but at the same time, that's what makes some of what he says so depressing, even though it actually is just par for the course. I should mention that he is Sunni, accepts the Shafi'i law school, comes from a "moderate" Arab country, and has even become a US citizen. Herewith a listing of what I find less than pleasant:
*Vitriolic Jew hatred (all too common among Muslims, unfortunately, so nothing out of the ordinary). He has described Jews as "monkeys" and "the worst of people," insisted that there is a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, says the US media and government are dominated by Jews in order to support Israel, refers to suicide bombings against Israelis as "martyr operations" and says that even if another Muslim is killed in one of them, "both will be rewarded" in heaven for being "martyrs." Muslims are duty-bound to drive out the "monkeys" from the third-holiest Muslim site, Jerusalem, and from the rest of "Palestine," as they have no rights to "Muslim land." It's the same old crap I read all the time in Muslim publications and on Muslim websites, but it's always a shock to me to actually hear it said out loud. But what makes it hard to take is that this imam has attended numerous interfaith meetings, and even a Thanksgiving multifaith service in a synagogue, calling for peace between religions. I'll be honest: if I were Jewish and knew what I know about Muslims' attitudes towards Jews, I'd have a hard time trusting Muslims unless I knew for sure that they were not antisemites.
*The position of women. Women should not work unless they have to, they should not leave the house "too much," and only with their husband's consent (though they should not be locked up in their houses--that's what "moderate" means in Islam), they are emotional and weak and need men to protect and provide for them, they should never be alone with a man, since that will invariably lead to illicit sex (talk about your self-fulfilling prophecies!). A wife must obey her husband in everything unless it is "against Islam," and should never refuse him sex or else the angels will curse her until morning (this is a hadith from Muhammad himself; another is that women will make up the majority of people in hell, since they are ungrateful to their husbands.). Although she is not supposed to have sex during her period, there are "other things" she can do with him, and she must not refuse him that. She should accept him taking up to three other wives without complaint, since that is his right in Islam (her permission or even acceptance is not required, but it does make it easier--otherwise he has to sneak around to visit his other wives, something that is not at all uncommon). In school, women can attend classes with men, but should sit in the back. They should wear the head scarf and long clothes, but do not have to wear the niqab (face veil). He has said that regarding the Qur'an mentioning that a man can "correct" his wife by beating her (4:34), he should not do it with anything bigger than a siwak, a tiny stick used to clean the teeth, and that Muhammad, the best of men, never hit his wives, so that's definitely a good thing (unlike the claim often made in Muslim nations that it is nobody else's business if a man beats his wife; after all, she deserves it).
Of course, I should note that Muslim women are often some of the least submissive, least shy women I have met, yelling and fighting with their husbands and other men to get what they need or want. Common is the threat to literally murder a husband who takes another wife--and they mean it, too! It's one of the reasons polygamy is dying out--women with any kind of self-confidence simply refuse to accept it.
*Jihad. This imam has never denied that "jihad" means "holy war," as against those who claim that it is an "internal struggle" (a Sufi definition with essentially no applicability in Islamic history or law). He does seem to think that eventually the armies of jihad (real armies, with real weapons) will reach American shores and conquer America for Islam, though even he seems to realize that this is an utter pipe dream (unlike many other Muslim men who pray for the day, so they can take any number of infidel sex slaves). I asked about the ruling that Muslims should not live in the land of the infidel. He didn't deny it, but said that it was OK if one had the intention to spread Islam (I suppose it might be called "jihad by the pen or mouth"). In every Friday sermon, he prays for those Muslims fighting in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, the Sudan, Iraq, or whatever Muslim country happens to be in the news. The suicide bombers in Israel are of course completely justified, as part of the jihad against Israel, though interestingly enough, he hates Arafat, saying he is working for the Israelis and that a true Islamic ruler would declare jihad. I think he was genuinely upset at 9-11, appearing at many prayers for peace and blood drives for the victims, but on the other hand, whenever a terrorist attack occurrs, he generally is only concerned about how Muslims will be treated because of it, not for the (non-Muslim) victims (though this seems to be the attitude of every Muslim I have met). He doesn't hate Shi'ites, unlike many Wahhabis or other Sunnis who do not even consider them real Muslims, and has said that Iran is a real Islamic state.
*Apostasy. Interestingly, he has said that apostates should NOT be killed but just left alone (though I don't know if he really believes this and was saying it for my benefit). However, when I asked about the murder of Rashad Khalifa in 1990 by some Islamic extremist group (since the Submitters, his "sect" of Islam, is active in my town), he said that he was "glad" it had happened, since he was preaching a "distorted" version of Islam (and maybe in the employ of the Jews to boot).
That's plenty! I have heard plenty of the same kind of stuff from other Muslims, unfortunately, and the Islamic rulings are common knowledge, but still, I guess I was hoping for something...well, maybe a bit more "Westernized." I don't know if a Western-born imam would be any better, as many converts and second or third-generation Muslims do their best to out-zeal those living in Muslim countries, though they might bring to the table some attitudes that a Middle Eastern Muslim would never have. But then I think about people like John Walker Lindh (aka Sulayman al-Faris) or the American Shariffa Carlo Al-Andalusia (her fanatical writings are widely published on Islamic websites--check out her article Unconscious Muslims, where she makes the blatantly treasonous remark that "to side with the United States against The Islamic Empire of Afghanistan is clearly a horrendous sin"--I wish I were making this up, but I'm not!) or Maryam Jameelah, who has written many anti-Western screeds, and I wonder!
Will things get better? I really don't think they will unless something big happens, and I can't even imagine what that might be.
New Blogger
Ugh...Blog*spot ate the entry I spent 15 minutes typing. I'm hoping that maybe I will find a better home for my blog eventually.
Ugh...Blog*spot ate the entry I spent 15 minutes typing. I'm hoping that maybe I will find a better home for my blog eventually.
Sunday, June 22, 2003
The Qur'an and Islamic Law
There is one subject in the last entry that I think I should make very clear to anyone who may be reading it, since I constantly see it misunderstood. This is the fact that Islam and Islamic law, as practiced and lived by millions of Muslims, does NOT depend on the Qur'an as the be-all and end-all of Islam.
Islam is NOT just what is in the Qur'an; it is also what is contained in the various collections of hadiths (the records of Muhammad's words and deeds) and in the teachings of the various schools of Islamic law (for Sunnis, the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali). In addition, the Qur'an itself does not mean whatever you may think it means; there are many, many commentaries on the Qur'an (tafsir) by scholars that have to be taken into account.
Non-Muslims or Muslims who don't really know much about their religion will often claim that a certain Islamic practice is really not "true Islam" because it is unmentioned in the Qur'an, or because they interpret the words differently than Islamic scholars do. Well, sorry to say, this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Islam (specifically Sunni Islam).
Many non-Muslims of Christian background see Islam in the same way they do Christianity, specifically Protestant Christianity, in that they believe that the holy book is the be-all and end-all of the religion, and it is essentially up to the individual believer to interpret the scriptures for themselves, and these ideas have also been absorbed by some Western Muslims. Unfortunately, this is not Islam--at least, until Islam changes in a fundamental manner and is no longer recognizable as the same thing that it is today. It's more like Catholicism, which is based on "the Bible and tradition," (meaning, among other things, that the Bible means what the Church has traditionally interpreted it as saying), as I was taught in religion classes, NOT the Bible alone, which was the cry of the Protestant Reformation ("sola scriptura" and able to be interpreted by each individual believer). In the same way, Islam is not just the Qur'an, but the Qur'an and tradition (sunnah; the Qur'an means what the scholars have traditionally interpreted it as saying). But Islam is really not much like Christianity, so expecting a "reformation" along the lines of the Protestant Reformation is an exercise in futility.
One problem is that many Westerners see religion as a purely private thing, that your religion is whatever you make it out to be, and thus that whatever any individual Muslim decides is Islam, really is Islam. Suffice it to say that what may be in this context termed orthodox Islam, with its death penalties for apostasy and emphasis on tradition while excoriating "innovation" (bid'a), does not look too fondly on this concept. It is important to understand that Islam isn't just a religion to be shut away in its own little "Religion" compartment, which is the typical American concept of religion; it aims to be "a complete way of life," as countless Muslims boast, affecting every aspect of a person's life as well as society at large, and it's kind of hard to run a society on "Islam" or "Islamic principles" when everybody has their own, often contradictory, notions of what those things are. Orthodoxy in religion is required if you're going to run a whole society and legal system on it (The "Sunni" in "Sunni Islam" refers to the "sunnah," or tradition, of Muhammad). The "everyone for him/herself" view of religion only makes sense when it is a purely private thing, quite detatched from the state or laws. Imagine if a "Christian" nation wanted to rule itself according to "Christian" law; that would require some common understanding of what Christianity is, and what it requires, and what rules should follow from this understanding. Needless to say, you would never even get started, what with all the disagreements as to what Christianity really is, or what the Bible really says.
The Islamic concept of religion does not include separation of church/religion and state; instead, religion is the most important factor in the ordering of the community. The "Islamic state" is predicated on the fact that its stated goal is the spread and strengthening of Islam, which, by definition, those of other religions cannot participate in. It then follows that non-Muslims aren't really "citizens" of the state, and thus the second-class treatment of religious minorities and dhimmitude (it is to be noted that non-Muslims were not to serve in the army; non-Muslims by definition cannot engage in jihad to spread Allah's truth to the world).
And of course an Islamic state must have Islamic law, and this must be agreed on by Muslims as a group (or rather, agreed on by Islamic scholars). In this way, apostasy or heresy become treason to the state, worthy of death. The four schools of Sunni law accept each other as true, but they differ from each other generally only in small, rather unimportant ways. The substance of the law remains the same.
To sum up: Islam is not a "mere religion" like Christianity, which is mostly a set of beliefs to believe; it is really much more like Judaism, with its all-encompassing code of laws to guide every aspect of a believer's life and as a framework for the ordering of the whole society.
Now on to the Qur'an. Many people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, seriously overestimate how much of Islam and Islamic law is actually contained in the pages of the Qur'an. Typical is the following claim by an American Muslim convert (from Jan Goodwin's Price of Honor, pp.189-190 paperback): "If I want to know how late a woman can stay out, the Qur'an tells me. It says whose permission I need when I want to go out. And it tells me at what age I should discipline my child, or when youngsters should learn how to pray. The Qur'an even tells me how many miles a woman can travel from home without a mahram, a male relative chaperone. It is forty-five miles. Whatever I need about everyday life, it is there, as straightforward as a cookbook." But the truth is, not one bit of that is actually in the Qur'an--it's all in the hadiths or in the books of Islamic law! Another example is Westerners claiming that some Islamic practice or other is "un-Islamic" because it's not in the Qur'an, or because they interpret the verses differently than the Muslim scholars, thereby displaying their ignorance of what Islam and Islamic law actually consist of. To actually understand Islam, one must not just be familiar with the Qur'an but also with the collections of hadiths and the books of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence; the actual detailing of the shari'ah, or Islamic law).
But the truth of the matter is that the Qur'an itself contains rather little actual law, and much of that is either vague or contradictory (though the Qur'an constantly states that it is "clear" and "easy to understand"). Let's take as an example the matter of wine. Qur'an 2:119 says, "They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: 'In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit.'" In other words, it can be both good and bad, but mostly bad, and apparently the choice of whether to drink or not is left up to the individual. In 4:43, the believers are admonished not to come to the prayer drunk. But in 5:90-91 intoxicants are forbidden completely ("O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination, of Satan's handwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper. Satan's plan is (but) to excite enmity and hatred between you, with intoxicants and gambling, and hinder you from the remembrance of Allah, and from prayer: will ye not then abstain?"). To take another example, many verses in the Qur'an declare that Muhammad was not responsible for the unbelievers' refusal to believe, and that he should leave them in peace, that it is Allah's job to deal with them (such as 68:44: "Then leave Me alone with such as reject this Message: by degrees shall We punish them from directions they perceive not," and 73:11: "And leave Me (alone to deal with) those in possession of the good things of life, who (yet) deny the Truth; and bear with them for a little while."); other verses say to war against the unbelievers (9:5: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the agans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)," and 9:29: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued," and 9:123: "O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that God is with those who fear Him," and 8:38-39: "Say to the Unbelievers, if (now) they desist (from Unbelief), their past would be forgiven them; but if they persist, the punishment of those before them is already (a matter of warning for them). And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do."). What to do, what to do?
This is where hadiths, tafsir, and fiqh take over. They decide which verses are to be taken literally and which are to be taken more symbolically (and even which verses are to be taken as binding law and which as mere suggestions), but more importantly, they also mention the context and the time the verses were revealed to Muhammad. The guiding principle is that the later verses supercede the earlier ones; thus, wine is strictly forbidden because the verse prohibiting it was revealed later than the ones that grudgingly permit it. This is called the principle of abrogation. The context of revelation also helps to know when the law should be applied.
In the example above, the general consensus is that the earlier, more tolerant verses were given when Muhammad and his followers were weak and could not fight; the later, warlike verses were meant for when Muhammad was strong and able to war against the unbelievers, in order to "make Allah's word supreme," that is, to put the land under the rule of Islam and Islamic law (sometimes euphemistically described as "clearing all barriers to the spread of Islam" or even as "liberation from the slavery to man-made laws and institutions so that one is free to follow Allah's law," as noted Egyptian fundamentalist Syyed Qutub put it, thereby pulling off a truly Orwellian distortion of the meanings of "freedom" and "slavery."). It should also be noted that in general, the latter warlike verses calling for jihad abrogate the earlier, more lassiez-faire verses, although the verses revealed when Muhammad was weak may also apply to Muslims when they are weak. So, if you are weak in a non-Muslim country, you should try to peacefully persuade others to accept Islam and leave them alone if they do not; when you become powerful you should also invite them to Islam, but then war against them if they refuse. And note this hadith from al-Bukhari, the most respected collection of hadith:
Sahih Bukhari
Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24:
Narrated Ibn 'Umar:
Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah."
The version in the collection of Muslim, the second-most respected collection, reads:
Book 001, Number 0033:
It has been narrated on the authority of Abdullah b. 'Umar that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer, and pay Zakat and if they do it, their blood and property are guaranteed protection on my behalf except when justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah.
The point of all this is to show that the duty to wage jihad against the unbelievers is confirmed not just by what is in the Qur'an, but also by the hadiths (and since this particular hadith is reported in the two most respected collections, Sunni Muslims are bound to believe that Muhammad really said it). Islamic law concerning jihad draws directly from both the Qur'anic injunctions to wage jihad and Muhammad's own statements on the subject. You cannot just ignore it because you personally believe that Qur'an 2:256 ("Let there be no compulsion in religion") and 109:6 ("To you be your Way, and to me mine") should be the basis of Muslim dealings with non-Muslims. There is really no justification in the hadiths or in fiqh for this view (which in any case is based on verses that are early, hence abrogated). In fact, in this slightly different version of the same hadith from Muslim, one of the presumably more tolerant verses (88:22: "88:22 Thou art not one to manage (men's) affairs,") is interpreted in quite a different way:
Book 001, Number 0032:
It is narrated on the authority of Jabir that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded that I should fight against people till they declare that there is no god but Allah, and when they profess it that there is no god but Allah, their blood and riches are guaranteed protection on my behalf except where it is justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah, and then he (the Holy Prophet) recited (this verse of the Holy Qur'an):" Thou art not over them a warden" (88:22).
See? No contradiction at all between "You're not their keeper" and "Wage war on the infidels," because according to this hadith, the verse applies only to those who have already accepted Islam. In this way, the Qur'an is interpreted by means of the hadith, not by what one may want it to mean. It should be noted that verse 2:256 ("no compulsion in religion") is generally interpreted to mean that either one will not be forced to convert to Islam (but keep in mind that "forced" is a relative term--according to Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali law (but not Hanafi), unbelievers under Islamic rule who are not Christian or Jewish should be given the choice between Islam or death, and this is somehow not "compulsion" since, hey, they could have "freely chosen" to be put to death!) or else it is seen as being abrogated by later verses such as 3:85: ("And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he shall be one of the losers."). It does not mean whatever you may want it to mean. You must take the hadiths into account.
(Whether it is actually put into practice is quite another matter entirely. Muslims have always skirted the prohibition on wine-drinking, for example, as the glorification of wine and drunkenness by countless Arab and Persian poets demonstrates! And historically, Muslims have expended more time, effort and lives fighting against each other than against the infidel. Most Muslims today are not willing or able to fight the infidel in jihad, either, preferring to live with them in some kind of peace, meaning that jihadi groups have to constantly provoke and incite in order to win adherents. Even in the Qur'an, much of surah 9 consists of berating the stragglesrs among the Muslims to go out fighting instead of sitting at home, suggesting that the problem was quite widespread, and Muhammad frequently promised infinite rewards in heaven and spoils on earth for those who fought, as an incentive to get them to do so, as in this hadith from Bukhari:
Volume 9, Book 93, Number 555
Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Apostle said, "Allah guarantees (the person who carries out Jihad in His Cause and nothing compelled him to go out but Jihad in His Cause and the belief in His Word) that He will either admit him into Paradise (Martyrdom) or return him with reward or booty he has earned to his residence from where he went out."
(more hadiths extolling jihad as better than the world and what is in it here)
In one of my Qur'an translations published by the Saudi Arabian government, there is an essay at the back of the book extolling the virtues of jihad "in the way of Allah"--and it is definitely holy war, not merely an "internal struggle," as many either ignorantly or dishonestly claim--which I plan on dissecting here.)
The Qur'an cannot be understood only by itself, which is the mistake that so many non-Muslims and Muslims themselves make. For example, the Qur'an does not describe even some of the most basic practices of Islam, such as how to pray, and is somewhat vague as to exactly how many prayers there are per day and when they should be done. For that, once again, one must go to the hadiths and sunnah.
It must also be mentioned that sometimes the Qur'an is contradicted by Islamic law. For example, in 24:2, the penalty for adultery is 100 lashes, but the penalty according to all schools of Islamic law is stoning. This is based on Muhammad's sunnah recorded in hadiths, not on the words of the Qur'an itself. (It should be mentioned that there was a story that the penalty of stoning was originally part of the Qur'an, but the piece of paper it was written on was eaten by a goat. It is unknown if this is a true story or was simply made up to cover for the fact that stoning for adultery is not mentioned in the Qur'an by claiming that it was at one point.)
I should emphasize the point that Muslims (usually in the West) who reject the hadiths are considered apostates and outside Islam by Islamic religious leaders, so this avenue of reform isn't going to get very far in the Islamic world. It also means that Muslim feminists looking for a way out of the rather misogynistic shari'ah are in trouble, since the only way out is to reject or ignore many of the hadiths and completely rewrite much of Islamic law. Their big problem is that the Islamic scholars can always claim greater knowledge of Islam and Muhammad's sunnah, leaving the feminists in real danger of being labeled "apostates" or "heretics." It is also to be mentioned that, unfortunately, their work is read by Westerners, not Muslims living in Muslim lands, so it has no effect whatever on the actual practice of Islam in Muslim countries.
You simply cannot base an entire body of law on what is in the Qur'an. There just isn't enough legal material to do it. It's not like the Jewish Torah, which is mostly law; instead it has some legal verses here and there (mostly in surahs 2, 4 and 5, plus many others scattered throughout the text), but it consists mostly of admonitions by Allah to believe in Him, showing His works and divine will in nature and in tales of the prophets, many from the Bible, the rewards of heaven for the believers and the hell that will await those who reject Him and His Messenger, Muhammad. It's an extremely repetitive book, and in no logical order whatever--the surahs are merely placed in order of decreasing length, the longest first and the shortest last (generally; there are many exceptions), and any one surah does not generally have a unified subject; it often goes all over the place, often linked only by the rhyme structure (which, of course, does not show up in translation). I would describe it as "stream of consciousness," with one subject melting into another, often only minimally related, only to be taken up again later. One particular story may be told half a dozen times, and it could show up anywhere in the text. If you've ever read it all, you might have noticed that it's often hard to tell where exactly you are in the text, since it's so repetitive. It's like a fractal--no matter what the scale is, it looks and reads the same, from the longest surah to the shortest, all of which deal with the same topics in the same familiar way. Memorizing the whole of the Qur'an has a very practical side--because there isn't really any good way to find a particular verse or subject you might be looking for, so if you have the whole of the text memorized, you can then bring to mind any particular verse on any subject.
I want to add that anyone who tries to compare Judeo-Christianity with Islam by saying something like, "The Qur'an says to fight the infidels, but, hey, the Bible says that homosexuals should be stoned" has just proven they know nothing about either Judaic law or Islamic law. Jewish law is NOT based soley on the words of Torah, the same way that Islam is not based soley on Qur'an; both also depend on outside sources for much of their law, as well as for how to interpret the words of scripture themselves. In the case of Judaism, rabbis have the Talmud and many commentaries on both Torah and Talmud to define, codify, and apply halacha (Jewish law). In the case described above about stoning homosexuals, the Jewish response would be something like: Well, that law can only be applied if the Sanhedrin is in existence (it's not and hasn't been for 2,000 years), and if there are many witnesses to his guilt, and so on, the end of which is that the actual literal words will never be carried out. Add to that the Talmudic dictum that the law of the land should be followed (unlike the Muslim insistence that Muslims should always follow Allah's law wherever they might be).
There was a sect called the Karaites (People of the Scripture, more here and here in 9th century Judaism, which called for soley using the written Torah as a basis for law, rejecting all rabbinical interpretation, but it was considered heretical and eventually more or less died out. With Reform Judaism, the issue becomes moot, in the "spiritualizing away" of the letter of the law. The only way "Qur'an-only Muslims" could really make a go of it is by rejecting shari'ah (Islamic law) completely, becoming something like Reform Judaism (and this is what many of them have done), but then they would be (and are) considered outside Islam by other Muslims. Even Reform Judaism is not considered "real Judaism" by many Orthodox and Conservative rabbis, who generally come from cultures where dissent and discussion is freely allowed, so what kind of acceptance could "Reform Islam" expect, especially given the lack of freedom of speech and religion in Muslim countries?
I believe the "literalist approach" (taking the words of scripture literally without regard to their interpretation) is more of a Christian way of approaching scriptures, and a Protestant one at that. Christianity has no sacred law to be applied to all situations and in all contexts; it has generally depended on essentially secular authorities for secular law (the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the medieval kings, Parliaments), so the whole concept of "separation of church and state" came quite naturally (eventually). There does exist "Canon Law" in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but that affects matters having to do with religion in some way, and in any case is not necessarily the "Law of God Himself." But the entire concept of "the Law" was repudiated even in the letters of Paul, so there is no real concept of it in Christianity. This is all well and good (imagine trying to separate church and state when every law of the land is based on the Bible or Christian doctrine!), but it means that Westerners, from a Christian background, are going to have a tough time really coming to terms with what Islam actually is.
There is one subject in the last entry that I think I should make very clear to anyone who may be reading it, since I constantly see it misunderstood. This is the fact that Islam and Islamic law, as practiced and lived by millions of Muslims, does NOT depend on the Qur'an as the be-all and end-all of Islam.
Islam is NOT just what is in the Qur'an; it is also what is contained in the various collections of hadiths (the records of Muhammad's words and deeds) and in the teachings of the various schools of Islamic law (for Sunnis, the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali). In addition, the Qur'an itself does not mean whatever you may think it means; there are many, many commentaries on the Qur'an (tafsir) by scholars that have to be taken into account.
Non-Muslims or Muslims who don't really know much about their religion will often claim that a certain Islamic practice is really not "true Islam" because it is unmentioned in the Qur'an, or because they interpret the words differently than Islamic scholars do. Well, sorry to say, this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Islam (specifically Sunni Islam).
Many non-Muslims of Christian background see Islam in the same way they do Christianity, specifically Protestant Christianity, in that they believe that the holy book is the be-all and end-all of the religion, and it is essentially up to the individual believer to interpret the scriptures for themselves, and these ideas have also been absorbed by some Western Muslims. Unfortunately, this is not Islam--at least, until Islam changes in a fundamental manner and is no longer recognizable as the same thing that it is today. It's more like Catholicism, which is based on "the Bible and tradition," (meaning, among other things, that the Bible means what the Church has traditionally interpreted it as saying), as I was taught in religion classes, NOT the Bible alone, which was the cry of the Protestant Reformation ("sola scriptura" and able to be interpreted by each individual believer). In the same way, Islam is not just the Qur'an, but the Qur'an and tradition (sunnah; the Qur'an means what the scholars have traditionally interpreted it as saying). But Islam is really not much like Christianity, so expecting a "reformation" along the lines of the Protestant Reformation is an exercise in futility.
One problem is that many Westerners see religion as a purely private thing, that your religion is whatever you make it out to be, and thus that whatever any individual Muslim decides is Islam, really is Islam. Suffice it to say that what may be in this context termed orthodox Islam, with its death penalties for apostasy and emphasis on tradition while excoriating "innovation" (bid'a), does not look too fondly on this concept. It is important to understand that Islam isn't just a religion to be shut away in its own little "Religion" compartment, which is the typical American concept of religion; it aims to be "a complete way of life," as countless Muslims boast, affecting every aspect of a person's life as well as society at large, and it's kind of hard to run a society on "Islam" or "Islamic principles" when everybody has their own, often contradictory, notions of what those things are. Orthodoxy in religion is required if you're going to run a whole society and legal system on it (The "Sunni" in "Sunni Islam" refers to the "sunnah," or tradition, of Muhammad). The "everyone for him/herself" view of religion only makes sense when it is a purely private thing, quite detatched from the state or laws. Imagine if a "Christian" nation wanted to rule itself according to "Christian" law; that would require some common understanding of what Christianity is, and what it requires, and what rules should follow from this understanding. Needless to say, you would never even get started, what with all the disagreements as to what Christianity really is, or what the Bible really says.
The Islamic concept of religion does not include separation of church/religion and state; instead, religion is the most important factor in the ordering of the community. The "Islamic state" is predicated on the fact that its stated goal is the spread and strengthening of Islam, which, by definition, those of other religions cannot participate in. It then follows that non-Muslims aren't really "citizens" of the state, and thus the second-class treatment of religious minorities and dhimmitude (it is to be noted that non-Muslims were not to serve in the army; non-Muslims by definition cannot engage in jihad to spread Allah's truth to the world).
And of course an Islamic state must have Islamic law, and this must be agreed on by Muslims as a group (or rather, agreed on by Islamic scholars). In this way, apostasy or heresy become treason to the state, worthy of death. The four schools of Sunni law accept each other as true, but they differ from each other generally only in small, rather unimportant ways. The substance of the law remains the same.
To sum up: Islam is not a "mere religion" like Christianity, which is mostly a set of beliefs to believe; it is really much more like Judaism, with its all-encompassing code of laws to guide every aspect of a believer's life and as a framework for the ordering of the whole society.
Now on to the Qur'an. Many people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, seriously overestimate how much of Islam and Islamic law is actually contained in the pages of the Qur'an. Typical is the following claim by an American Muslim convert (from Jan Goodwin's Price of Honor, pp.189-190 paperback): "If I want to know how late a woman can stay out, the Qur'an tells me. It says whose permission I need when I want to go out. And it tells me at what age I should discipline my child, or when youngsters should learn how to pray. The Qur'an even tells me how many miles a woman can travel from home without a mahram, a male relative chaperone. It is forty-five miles. Whatever I need about everyday life, it is there, as straightforward as a cookbook." But the truth is, not one bit of that is actually in the Qur'an--it's all in the hadiths or in the books of Islamic law! Another example is Westerners claiming that some Islamic practice or other is "un-Islamic" because it's not in the Qur'an, or because they interpret the verses differently than the Muslim scholars, thereby displaying their ignorance of what Islam and Islamic law actually consist of. To actually understand Islam, one must not just be familiar with the Qur'an but also with the collections of hadiths and the books of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence; the actual detailing of the shari'ah, or Islamic law).
But the truth of the matter is that the Qur'an itself contains rather little actual law, and much of that is either vague or contradictory (though the Qur'an constantly states that it is "clear" and "easy to understand"). Let's take as an example the matter of wine. Qur'an 2:119 says, "They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: 'In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit.'" In other words, it can be both good and bad, but mostly bad, and apparently the choice of whether to drink or not is left up to the individual. In 4:43, the believers are admonished not to come to the prayer drunk. But in 5:90-91 intoxicants are forbidden completely ("O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination, of Satan's handwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper. Satan's plan is (but) to excite enmity and hatred between you, with intoxicants and gambling, and hinder you from the remembrance of Allah, and from prayer: will ye not then abstain?"). To take another example, many verses in the Qur'an declare that Muhammad was not responsible for the unbelievers' refusal to believe, and that he should leave them in peace, that it is Allah's job to deal with them (such as 68:44: "Then leave Me alone with such as reject this Message: by degrees shall We punish them from directions they perceive not," and 73:11: "And leave Me (alone to deal with) those in possession of the good things of life, who (yet) deny the Truth; and bear with them for a little while."); other verses say to war against the unbelievers (9:5: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the agans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)," and 9:29: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued," and 9:123: "O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that God is with those who fear Him," and 8:38-39: "Say to the Unbelievers, if (now) they desist (from Unbelief), their past would be forgiven them; but if they persist, the punishment of those before them is already (a matter of warning for them). And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do."). What to do, what to do?
This is where hadiths, tafsir, and fiqh take over. They decide which verses are to be taken literally and which are to be taken more symbolically (and even which verses are to be taken as binding law and which as mere suggestions), but more importantly, they also mention the context and the time the verses were revealed to Muhammad. The guiding principle is that the later verses supercede the earlier ones; thus, wine is strictly forbidden because the verse prohibiting it was revealed later than the ones that grudgingly permit it. This is called the principle of abrogation. The context of revelation also helps to know when the law should be applied.
In the example above, the general consensus is that the earlier, more tolerant verses were given when Muhammad and his followers were weak and could not fight; the later, warlike verses were meant for when Muhammad was strong and able to war against the unbelievers, in order to "make Allah's word supreme," that is, to put the land under the rule of Islam and Islamic law (sometimes euphemistically described as "clearing all barriers to the spread of Islam" or even as "liberation from the slavery to man-made laws and institutions so that one is free to follow Allah's law," as noted Egyptian fundamentalist Syyed Qutub put it, thereby pulling off a truly Orwellian distortion of the meanings of "freedom" and "slavery."). It should also be noted that in general, the latter warlike verses calling for jihad abrogate the earlier, more lassiez-faire verses, although the verses revealed when Muhammad was weak may also apply to Muslims when they are weak. So, if you are weak in a non-Muslim country, you should try to peacefully persuade others to accept Islam and leave them alone if they do not; when you become powerful you should also invite them to Islam, but then war against them if they refuse. And note this hadith from al-Bukhari, the most respected collection of hadith:
Sahih Bukhari
Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24:
Narrated Ibn 'Umar:
Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah."
The version in the collection of Muslim, the second-most respected collection, reads:
Book 001, Number 0033:
It has been narrated on the authority of Abdullah b. 'Umar that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer, and pay Zakat and if they do it, their blood and property are guaranteed protection on my behalf except when justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah.
The point of all this is to show that the duty to wage jihad against the unbelievers is confirmed not just by what is in the Qur'an, but also by the hadiths (and since this particular hadith is reported in the two most respected collections, Sunni Muslims are bound to believe that Muhammad really said it). Islamic law concerning jihad draws directly from both the Qur'anic injunctions to wage jihad and Muhammad's own statements on the subject. You cannot just ignore it because you personally believe that Qur'an 2:256 ("Let there be no compulsion in religion") and 109:6 ("To you be your Way, and to me mine") should be the basis of Muslim dealings with non-Muslims. There is really no justification in the hadiths or in fiqh for this view (which in any case is based on verses that are early, hence abrogated). In fact, in this slightly different version of the same hadith from Muslim, one of the presumably more tolerant verses (88:22: "88:22 Thou art not one to manage (men's) affairs,") is interpreted in quite a different way:
Book 001, Number 0032:
It is narrated on the authority of Jabir that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded that I should fight against people till they declare that there is no god but Allah, and when they profess it that there is no god but Allah, their blood and riches are guaranteed protection on my behalf except where it is justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah, and then he (the Holy Prophet) recited (this verse of the Holy Qur'an):" Thou art not over them a warden" (88:22).
See? No contradiction at all between "You're not their keeper" and "Wage war on the infidels," because according to this hadith, the verse applies only to those who have already accepted Islam. In this way, the Qur'an is interpreted by means of the hadith, not by what one may want it to mean. It should be noted that verse 2:256 ("no compulsion in religion") is generally interpreted to mean that either one will not be forced to convert to Islam (but keep in mind that "forced" is a relative term--according to Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali law (but not Hanafi), unbelievers under Islamic rule who are not Christian or Jewish should be given the choice between Islam or death, and this is somehow not "compulsion" since, hey, they could have "freely chosen" to be put to death!) or else it is seen as being abrogated by later verses such as 3:85: ("And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he shall be one of the losers."). It does not mean whatever you may want it to mean. You must take the hadiths into account.
(Whether it is actually put into practice is quite another matter entirely. Muslims have always skirted the prohibition on wine-drinking, for example, as the glorification of wine and drunkenness by countless Arab and Persian poets demonstrates! And historically, Muslims have expended more time, effort and lives fighting against each other than against the infidel. Most Muslims today are not willing or able to fight the infidel in jihad, either, preferring to live with them in some kind of peace, meaning that jihadi groups have to constantly provoke and incite in order to win adherents. Even in the Qur'an, much of surah 9 consists of berating the stragglesrs among the Muslims to go out fighting instead of sitting at home, suggesting that the problem was quite widespread, and Muhammad frequently promised infinite rewards in heaven and spoils on earth for those who fought, as an incentive to get them to do so, as in this hadith from Bukhari:
Volume 9, Book 93, Number 555
Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Apostle said, "Allah guarantees (the person who carries out Jihad in His Cause and nothing compelled him to go out but Jihad in His Cause and the belief in His Word) that He will either admit him into Paradise (Martyrdom) or return him with reward or booty he has earned to his residence from where he went out."
(more hadiths extolling jihad as better than the world and what is in it here)
In one of my Qur'an translations published by the Saudi Arabian government, there is an essay at the back of the book extolling the virtues of jihad "in the way of Allah"--and it is definitely holy war, not merely an "internal struggle," as many either ignorantly or dishonestly claim--which I plan on dissecting here.)
The Qur'an cannot be understood only by itself, which is the mistake that so many non-Muslims and Muslims themselves make. For example, the Qur'an does not describe even some of the most basic practices of Islam, such as how to pray, and is somewhat vague as to exactly how many prayers there are per day and when they should be done. For that, once again, one must go to the hadiths and sunnah.
It must also be mentioned that sometimes the Qur'an is contradicted by Islamic law. For example, in 24:2, the penalty for adultery is 100 lashes, but the penalty according to all schools of Islamic law is stoning. This is based on Muhammad's sunnah recorded in hadiths, not on the words of the Qur'an itself. (It should be mentioned that there was a story that the penalty of stoning was originally part of the Qur'an, but the piece of paper it was written on was eaten by a goat. It is unknown if this is a true story or was simply made up to cover for the fact that stoning for adultery is not mentioned in the Qur'an by claiming that it was at one point.)
I should emphasize the point that Muslims (usually in the West) who reject the hadiths are considered apostates and outside Islam by Islamic religious leaders, so this avenue of reform isn't going to get very far in the Islamic world. It also means that Muslim feminists looking for a way out of the rather misogynistic shari'ah are in trouble, since the only way out is to reject or ignore many of the hadiths and completely rewrite much of Islamic law. Their big problem is that the Islamic scholars can always claim greater knowledge of Islam and Muhammad's sunnah, leaving the feminists in real danger of being labeled "apostates" or "heretics." It is also to be mentioned that, unfortunately, their work is read by Westerners, not Muslims living in Muslim lands, so it has no effect whatever on the actual practice of Islam in Muslim countries.
You simply cannot base an entire body of law on what is in the Qur'an. There just isn't enough legal material to do it. It's not like the Jewish Torah, which is mostly law; instead it has some legal verses here and there (mostly in surahs 2, 4 and 5, plus many others scattered throughout the text), but it consists mostly of admonitions by Allah to believe in Him, showing His works and divine will in nature and in tales of the prophets, many from the Bible, the rewards of heaven for the believers and the hell that will await those who reject Him and His Messenger, Muhammad. It's an extremely repetitive book, and in no logical order whatever--the surahs are merely placed in order of decreasing length, the longest first and the shortest last (generally; there are many exceptions), and any one surah does not generally have a unified subject; it often goes all over the place, often linked only by the rhyme structure (which, of course, does not show up in translation). I would describe it as "stream of consciousness," with one subject melting into another, often only minimally related, only to be taken up again later. One particular story may be told half a dozen times, and it could show up anywhere in the text. If you've ever read it all, you might have noticed that it's often hard to tell where exactly you are in the text, since it's so repetitive. It's like a fractal--no matter what the scale is, it looks and reads the same, from the longest surah to the shortest, all of which deal with the same topics in the same familiar way. Memorizing the whole of the Qur'an has a very practical side--because there isn't really any good way to find a particular verse or subject you might be looking for, so if you have the whole of the text memorized, you can then bring to mind any particular verse on any subject.
I want to add that anyone who tries to compare Judeo-Christianity with Islam by saying something like, "The Qur'an says to fight the infidels, but, hey, the Bible says that homosexuals should be stoned" has just proven they know nothing about either Judaic law or Islamic law. Jewish law is NOT based soley on the words of Torah, the same way that Islam is not based soley on Qur'an; both also depend on outside sources for much of their law, as well as for how to interpret the words of scripture themselves. In the case of Judaism, rabbis have the Talmud and many commentaries on both Torah and Talmud to define, codify, and apply halacha (Jewish law). In the case described above about stoning homosexuals, the Jewish response would be something like: Well, that law can only be applied if the Sanhedrin is in existence (it's not and hasn't been for 2,000 years), and if there are many witnesses to his guilt, and so on, the end of which is that the actual literal words will never be carried out. Add to that the Talmudic dictum that the law of the land should be followed (unlike the Muslim insistence that Muslims should always follow Allah's law wherever they might be).
There was a sect called the Karaites (People of the Scripture, more here and here in 9th century Judaism, which called for soley using the written Torah as a basis for law, rejecting all rabbinical interpretation, but it was considered heretical and eventually more or less died out. With Reform Judaism, the issue becomes moot, in the "spiritualizing away" of the letter of the law. The only way "Qur'an-only Muslims" could really make a go of it is by rejecting shari'ah (Islamic law) completely, becoming something like Reform Judaism (and this is what many of them have done), but then they would be (and are) considered outside Islam by other Muslims. Even Reform Judaism is not considered "real Judaism" by many Orthodox and Conservative rabbis, who generally come from cultures where dissent and discussion is freely allowed, so what kind of acceptance could "Reform Islam" expect, especially given the lack of freedom of speech and religion in Muslim countries?
I believe the "literalist approach" (taking the words of scripture literally without regard to their interpretation) is more of a Christian way of approaching scriptures, and a Protestant one at that. Christianity has no sacred law to be applied to all situations and in all contexts; it has generally depended on essentially secular authorities for secular law (the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the medieval kings, Parliaments), so the whole concept of "separation of church and state" came quite naturally (eventually). There does exist "Canon Law" in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but that affects matters having to do with religion in some way, and in any case is not necessarily the "Law of God Himself." But the entire concept of "the Law" was repudiated even in the letters of Paul, so there is no real concept of it in Christianity. This is all well and good (imagine trying to separate church and state when every law of the land is based on the Bible or Christian doctrine!), but it means that Westerners, from a Christian background, are going to have a tough time really coming to terms with what Islam actually is.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Price of Honor and Nine Parts of Desire: Women In The Muslim World
I have to say that, right now, after reading I don’t know how many horror stories about women living under Islam, I’m at the point where I don’t know how much more I can handle. Add to that 1) the Muslim women defending Islamic rules about women as “necessary” to “protect” them because they are so “weak” and “emotional,” or at least as being “true liberation” of women—as opposed to the “slavery” of having to work, mix with men, and pretty much do and say what they like, and 2) so-called “feminists” and “liberals” also defending this crap, for whatever reason, whether because of moral relativism, tribalism, or flat-out hatred of Western values. Let’s just say that I get in a very ugly mood.
I’ve been reading Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks and Price of Honor by Jan Goodwin, as well as a book of academic essays called Faith and Freedom edited by Mahnaz Afkhami, and because of what I said above, I’ve only been able to read a little bit at a time. I shudder and start to think that Allah must not exist, if He allows His followers to do all of this in His name. This isn’t really a book review, more a collection of my thoughts on the books.
But anyway...
I’ll talk about the first two now (the third in a later entry), which are very similar: Western female journalist travels through the Middle East, speaking with women in many different countries and adding her own thoughts about the subject. Both date from the mid-1990s, so in some ways they are a bit dated. Both draw attention to the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, which is the most serious threat to women’s rights in that part of the world. While both can be quite harsh and pointed in their criticisms of Islamic culture and even Islam, both insist that this isn't the true message of Islam.
Let me discuss that last point first and get it out of the way. Both writers insist that the oppression of women is not “true Islam,” that this is a distortion from the “true message” of Muhammad. Price of Honor even has a chapter heading entitled, “Muslims: The First Feminists.” Both, to a greater or lesser extent, buy the notion that Muhammad did an incredible job in elevating the status of women. Of course, the problem is that the people doing the “distorting” just happen to be the highest religious authorities and religious scholars. Neither book seems aware just how strange it is for a non-Muslim, Western woman to proclaim what the “true Islam” is and declare the learned muftis and sheikhs “distorters” of Islam, or to state what exactly Muhammad had in mind regarding issues of women’s rights 1400 years ago.
It is very important to understand that Islamic law, Shari’ah, is not derived from the Qur’an alone, but also from the Sunnah (tradition) of Muhammad as recorded in hadiths. It displays a near-total ignorance of orthodox Sunni (or Shi’a) Islam to attempt to derive the “real Islam” from the Qur’an alone, as both Brooks and Goodwin do, and also as many Western Muslims do. Islamic law is what is written in the books of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), not necessarily what is written in the Qur’an.
It is unfortunately evident that neither Brooks nor Goodwin really “know” their Islam. For example, X mentions slave concubines, but says that the Qur’an forbids their masters from having sex with them without their consent. This is absolutely false; I have never in my life ever seen a discussion of whether the slave girl’s consent is required to have sex with her; she is her master’s property, and he can do with her as he likes. She is a thing, no more worthy of having her feelings taken into consideration than a camel or cow.
Brooks says that Muhammad “probably would have abolished slavery” “if the times had allowed”—apparently completely innocent of the many hadiths regarding Muhammad’s possession and sale of slaves, often conducting slave auctions in the mosque grounds in Medina. Also, Muhammad did ban alcohol, even though it was presumably difficult to do. One would think that the buying and selling of human beings like cattle is a lot worse than the drinking of a glass of wine, but Muhammad did not see fit to ban it, instead insuring its continuation through the practices of slave concubinage and jihad.
Brooks, to her credit, honestly describes the divorce laws under Islam (man can divorce by saying “I divorce you” three times for no reason, woman has no right to divorce without husband’s permission or court’s order), but then she says that it is only the result of the most misogynistic reading of the text possible. Well, once again, Islamic law is more than the Qur’an. This “reading” has been the orthodox position for 1400 years, and insisting that it is a “distortion” ignores the facts on the ground, where Muslim women actually live. She does critique many aspects of Muhammad's career, though, looking askance at the claim that Muhammad was simply looking out for poor or widowed women, or trying to make alliances with other tribes. If so, why so many marriages to younger, beautiful women, even if many of them did happen to be widows?
Neither author really gets into the matter of Muhammad’s many misogynous sayings and actions as recorded in the hadiths, instead portraying him as something of a medieval crusader (or should I say jihadist!) for women’s rights. This view of Muhammad can only be supported by an incredibly selective reading of his life story, his sayings, and his laws. Unfortunately for the Muslim feminists who are attempting to change Islam by insisting that the later scholars and rulers somehow “corrupted” Muhammad’s message of liberation for women, this misogyny is inseparable from the story of Muhammad as told in Muslim texts. Either one simply ignores all of it, tries to explain it away, deny its reality (but then we have the problems of denying hadiths, with can render one outside the fold of Islam). Other Muslim women simply fall back on “Islam and Shari’ah are the real liberators of women!” and other such banal inanities.
But this lack of hard info on Islam should not overshadow the real mission of the books, to portray the lives of women today in Islamic countries in the Middle East, and in this respect they both do a very good job. The stories are often harrowing and horrifying, such as Goodwin’s opening story about Maria, an Afghan refugee living in Pakistan who was often beaten and then married off to an old man at the age of 11, and pregnant before she turned 12. (Now you see why I can only read a little bit at a time!) Another story Goodwin tells is of an Egyptian taxi-driver who keeps his wife at home in their tiny, cramped apartment in Cairo “to protect her,” not allowing her to set foot outside, not to buy food, attend weddings (a big social event in the lives of most women), speak to the other women in the building, or even to visit a mosque. At the end, the wife shrugs and says, “I guess this was my fate.”
Even the stories of richer women are dreary. One Western convert lives in Abu Dhabi as a secret second wife, and her husband only comes around for a couple of hours a week. (Goodwin wonders whether other women in their 30s having trouble finding a man in the US might agree to a polygamous arrangement—but the point is not whether they might agree in a moment of weakness, but how long they would be willing to tolerate it. Not more than a week, I’d say!)
Although there are some hopeful stories, the overall tone is one of despair. Not necessarily from the author, but just from the content of the stories, in which women are cut off from the rest of the world, locked away, covered and basically not even treated as human beings. In addition, the quotes from many of the fundamentalists, and even not-so-fundamentalists, do not suggest any kind of hope for the future. A woman politician in Jordan, supposedly one of the more modern Arab states, is hounded by the fundamentalists for denouncing polygamy, accused of apostasy, and forced to undergo several trials and hearings, and is forced into poverty after being unable to find a job.
One thing that really cut deep was reading fundamentalist Muslim women’s defense of such misogyny: for example, Goodwin meets a Kuwaiti woman with a master’s degree from USC, who says, “Muhammad the Prophet gave women all the benefits they need in Islam. A woman doesn’t need to work; her husband should take care of her, provide for her. I stopped teaching for the sake of the family, and for Allah. My children need me to take of them. And I need to be rested so that I am in a good mood to receive my husband. My husband has a right. He didn’t marry so that he could come home before me. A wife is the one to receive the husband, to soothe him. Allah created men physically stronger. As a woman, I have to be sensitive, nice, and nurturing...If a woman is unmarried, she still should not work. Her father, brother, uncle, grandfather, her male relatives should support her. A woman should not have a career where she can mix with men.” A single woman should instead “pray, fast, or talk to Allah. She can learn to sew and save the family money. But it is better for all women to get married. Her role is to have children.”
There’s plenty more (clitoridectomy is another horror covered in both books), but I’ll stop here, since this blog entry is already much too long and too depressing! All I want to add is that, typically, many Muslims just can’t deal with this kind of disclosure. If you go to Amazon.com and look at the reader comments, you’ll see a lot of upset comments from Muslims whose entire content may be summed up as: “Islam liberates women! You lie! Islam respects and honors women! You are racist and bigoted! Western women are oppressed! Muslim women are happy!” How can you even begin to talk to somebody who just denies every fact, every incident you present them with? It’s a classic symptom of True Believer syndrome: fiercely holding on to a belief system even when the facts are staring you in the face. (And don’t get me started on the comments saying, “Well, it’s bad, but American/Western women are not really any better off,” which I’ll just say are beneath contempt.)
What will happen in the future is anyone’s guess, but I pray that more women will become educated and find a way to control their own lives. Now, how that will happen, I don't know, especially with the fundamentalist revival.
I have to say that, right now, after reading I don’t know how many horror stories about women living under Islam, I’m at the point where I don’t know how much more I can handle. Add to that 1) the Muslim women defending Islamic rules about women as “necessary” to “protect” them because they are so “weak” and “emotional,” or at least as being “true liberation” of women—as opposed to the “slavery” of having to work, mix with men, and pretty much do and say what they like, and 2) so-called “feminists” and “liberals” also defending this crap, for whatever reason, whether because of moral relativism, tribalism, or flat-out hatred of Western values. Let’s just say that I get in a very ugly mood.
I’ve been reading Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks and Price of Honor by Jan Goodwin, as well as a book of academic essays called Faith and Freedom edited by Mahnaz Afkhami, and because of what I said above, I’ve only been able to read a little bit at a time. I shudder and start to think that Allah must not exist, if He allows His followers to do all of this in His name. This isn’t really a book review, more a collection of my thoughts on the books.
But anyway...
I’ll talk about the first two now (the third in a later entry), which are very similar: Western female journalist travels through the Middle East, speaking with women in many different countries and adding her own thoughts about the subject. Both date from the mid-1990s, so in some ways they are a bit dated. Both draw attention to the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, which is the most serious threat to women’s rights in that part of the world. While both can be quite harsh and pointed in their criticisms of Islamic culture and even Islam, both insist that this isn't the true message of Islam.
Let me discuss that last point first and get it out of the way. Both writers insist that the oppression of women is not “true Islam,” that this is a distortion from the “true message” of Muhammad. Price of Honor even has a chapter heading entitled, “Muslims: The First Feminists.” Both, to a greater or lesser extent, buy the notion that Muhammad did an incredible job in elevating the status of women. Of course, the problem is that the people doing the “distorting” just happen to be the highest religious authorities and religious scholars. Neither book seems aware just how strange it is for a non-Muslim, Western woman to proclaim what the “true Islam” is and declare the learned muftis and sheikhs “distorters” of Islam, or to state what exactly Muhammad had in mind regarding issues of women’s rights 1400 years ago.
It is very important to understand that Islamic law, Shari’ah, is not derived from the Qur’an alone, but also from the Sunnah (tradition) of Muhammad as recorded in hadiths. It displays a near-total ignorance of orthodox Sunni (or Shi’a) Islam to attempt to derive the “real Islam” from the Qur’an alone, as both Brooks and Goodwin do, and also as many Western Muslims do. Islamic law is what is written in the books of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), not necessarily what is written in the Qur’an.
It is unfortunately evident that neither Brooks nor Goodwin really “know” their Islam. For example, X mentions slave concubines, but says that the Qur’an forbids their masters from having sex with them without their consent. This is absolutely false; I have never in my life ever seen a discussion of whether the slave girl’s consent is required to have sex with her; she is her master’s property, and he can do with her as he likes. She is a thing, no more worthy of having her feelings taken into consideration than a camel or cow.
Brooks says that Muhammad “probably would have abolished slavery” “if the times had allowed”—apparently completely innocent of the many hadiths regarding Muhammad’s possession and sale of slaves, often conducting slave auctions in the mosque grounds in Medina. Also, Muhammad did ban alcohol, even though it was presumably difficult to do. One would think that the buying and selling of human beings like cattle is a lot worse than the drinking of a glass of wine, but Muhammad did not see fit to ban it, instead insuring its continuation through the practices of slave concubinage and jihad.
Brooks, to her credit, honestly describes the divorce laws under Islam (man can divorce by saying “I divorce you” three times for no reason, woman has no right to divorce without husband’s permission or court’s order), but then she says that it is only the result of the most misogynistic reading of the text possible. Well, once again, Islamic law is more than the Qur’an. This “reading” has been the orthodox position for 1400 years, and insisting that it is a “distortion” ignores the facts on the ground, where Muslim women actually live. She does critique many aspects of Muhammad's career, though, looking askance at the claim that Muhammad was simply looking out for poor or widowed women, or trying to make alliances with other tribes. If so, why so many marriages to younger, beautiful women, even if many of them did happen to be widows?
Neither author really gets into the matter of Muhammad’s many misogynous sayings and actions as recorded in the hadiths, instead portraying him as something of a medieval crusader (or should I say jihadist!) for women’s rights. This view of Muhammad can only be supported by an incredibly selective reading of his life story, his sayings, and his laws. Unfortunately for the Muslim feminists who are attempting to change Islam by insisting that the later scholars and rulers somehow “corrupted” Muhammad’s message of liberation for women, this misogyny is inseparable from the story of Muhammad as told in Muslim texts. Either one simply ignores all of it, tries to explain it away, deny its reality (but then we have the problems of denying hadiths, with can render one outside the fold of Islam). Other Muslim women simply fall back on “Islam and Shari’ah are the real liberators of women!” and other such banal inanities.
But this lack of hard info on Islam should not overshadow the real mission of the books, to portray the lives of women today in Islamic countries in the Middle East, and in this respect they both do a very good job. The stories are often harrowing and horrifying, such as Goodwin’s opening story about Maria, an Afghan refugee living in Pakistan who was often beaten and then married off to an old man at the age of 11, and pregnant before she turned 12. (Now you see why I can only read a little bit at a time!) Another story Goodwin tells is of an Egyptian taxi-driver who keeps his wife at home in their tiny, cramped apartment in Cairo “to protect her,” not allowing her to set foot outside, not to buy food, attend weddings (a big social event in the lives of most women), speak to the other women in the building, or even to visit a mosque. At the end, the wife shrugs and says, “I guess this was my fate.”
Even the stories of richer women are dreary. One Western convert lives in Abu Dhabi as a secret second wife, and her husband only comes around for a couple of hours a week. (Goodwin wonders whether other women in their 30s having trouble finding a man in the US might agree to a polygamous arrangement—but the point is not whether they might agree in a moment of weakness, but how long they would be willing to tolerate it. Not more than a week, I’d say!)
Although there are some hopeful stories, the overall tone is one of despair. Not necessarily from the author, but just from the content of the stories, in which women are cut off from the rest of the world, locked away, covered and basically not even treated as human beings. In addition, the quotes from many of the fundamentalists, and even not-so-fundamentalists, do not suggest any kind of hope for the future. A woman politician in Jordan, supposedly one of the more modern Arab states, is hounded by the fundamentalists for denouncing polygamy, accused of apostasy, and forced to undergo several trials and hearings, and is forced into poverty after being unable to find a job.
One thing that really cut deep was reading fundamentalist Muslim women’s defense of such misogyny: for example, Goodwin meets a Kuwaiti woman with a master’s degree from USC, who says, “Muhammad the Prophet gave women all the benefits they need in Islam. A woman doesn’t need to work; her husband should take care of her, provide for her. I stopped teaching for the sake of the family, and for Allah. My children need me to take of them. And I need to be rested so that I am in a good mood to receive my husband. My husband has a right. He didn’t marry so that he could come home before me. A wife is the one to receive the husband, to soothe him. Allah created men physically stronger. As a woman, I have to be sensitive, nice, and nurturing...If a woman is unmarried, she still should not work. Her father, brother, uncle, grandfather, her male relatives should support her. A woman should not have a career where she can mix with men.” A single woman should instead “pray, fast, or talk to Allah. She can learn to sew and save the family money. But it is better for all women to get married. Her role is to have children.”
There’s plenty more (clitoridectomy is another horror covered in both books), but I’ll stop here, since this blog entry is already much too long and too depressing! All I want to add is that, typically, many Muslims just can’t deal with this kind of disclosure. If you go to Amazon.com and look at the reader comments, you’ll see a lot of upset comments from Muslims whose entire content may be summed up as: “Islam liberates women! You lie! Islam respects and honors women! You are racist and bigoted! Western women are oppressed! Muslim women are happy!” How can you even begin to talk to somebody who just denies every fact, every incident you present them with? It’s a classic symptom of True Believer syndrome: fiercely holding on to a belief system even when the facts are staring you in the face. (And don’t get me started on the comments saying, “Well, it’s bad, but American/Western women are not really any better off,” which I’ll just say are beneath contempt.)
What will happen in the future is anyone’s guess, but I pray that more women will become educated and find a way to control their own lives. Now, how that will happen, I don't know, especially with the fundamentalist revival.
Saturday, June 14, 2003
Banu Qurayzah and Jewish Law
I admit I don't know very much about Jewish Law (Halaka), so I would like to ask my readers who do a question.
The Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayzah who lived in Medina was accused by Muhammad and the Muslims of treachery and breaking their treaty with the Muslims during the siege of Medina and the ensuing Battle of the Trench (so called because Medina was defended from the invading Meccan enemies of Muhammad by a large trench around the town). The Banu Qurayzah had supposedly intrigued with the Meccans and betrayed the Muslims, and so had to be punished. It must be admitted that the actual evidence for this betrayal, even in the Muslim sources, isn't very clear or consistent--it is said that they had made an alliance of some sort with the Meccans, leaving the eastern flank of the city exposed, but what this alliance actually consisted of is never made clear. Even if we do accept that Banu Qurayzah was involved in rather shady dealings with the Meccans, the sheer brutality of what happened next, especially considering Muhammad's treatment of the other Jewish tribes, who were merely exiled after their defeat, may lead one to suspect that perhaps Muhammad just wanted the Banu Qurayzah gone, since they were the last Jewish tribe left in Medina.
After the Meccans finally gave up the siege, Muhammad and his men went after the Banu Qurayzah, who locked themselves up in their houses a little to the east of Medina, and besieged them for 25 days. They finally surrendered, (supposedly) agreeing to abide by the decision of Sa'd ibn Mu'az, chief of one of the main tribes of Medina and selected by Muhammad, as to what would happen to them. It must be noted that Sa'd had already been mortally wounded in the fighting and would die soon after, and Muhammad must have known what he would decide.
Sa'd decided that the men of Banu Qurayzah would be slaughtered, the women and children sold into slavery, and the spoils divided among the Muslims. Muhammad's comment was, "You have given the judgement of Allah above the seven heavens," according to Ibn Ishaq's Sirat (life of Muhammad).
All 600-700 (the figure may have been as high as 900) men of the tribe were beheaded in the marketplace of Medina in a single day, their bodies dumped into a pit. Prepubescent boys were spared from death. The women and children were sold as slaves (no doubt of a sexual nature, so we can safely assume mass rape), and Muhammad chose for himself Rayhana, the wife of one of the slaughtered men, to be his concubine.
Before going any farther, I'd like to present to the reader these articles about the event:
Muhammad, the Qurayza Massacre, and PBS, by Andrew G. Bostom
A lengthy discussion of the Sirat of Ibn Ishaq's report of this event
Some hadiths from al-Bukhari's collection, considered the most trustworthy by Sunni Muslims
According to Yusuf Ali's notes to his translation of the Qur'an, (and I chose this because it reflects the view of quite a few Muslims):
Notes 3703, 3704 on Qur'an 33:26
Now, my question is, Is this correct? Did the Banu Qurayzah get what they deserved according to Jewish Law? Or is this just an excuse?
It must be noted that many Muslims today point to this story as proof that the Jews are treacherous and cannot be trusted, as well as being eternal enemies of Islam. It also may be seen as a prototypical pogrom, a massacre of the Jews, reflected in other such pogroms by both Christians and Muslims over the centuries, as well as an unnerving precursor to both the Holocaust and to current calls by far too many Muslims to eliminate both Israel and the Jews living therein. The story makes Muhammad look like a prototype of Hitler. For this reason...
Some Muslims (and others) uncomfortable with the story say that it never happened, pointing to articles like this one. This is similar to how some Muslims deal with Muhammad's wife Aisha being nine years old at the consummation of her marriage--they simply reject the hadiths, some narrated by Aisha herself (or at least said to be), that say she was. The problem is, though, that denying the Banu Qurayzah incident requires rejecting the Sira of Ibn Ishaq, the earliest extant biography of Muhammad (though only as preserved by many later writers), as well as seriously questioning the veracity of the hadiths. This is no problem if one is a critical Western scholar, but for a Muslim it raises insuperable difficulties. Hadith-rejecters are invariably considered to be heretics or apostates by orthodox Muslims, so needless to say you wouldn't get very far with this attitude at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Also, if Ibn Ishaq and al-Bukhari were telling a bunch of stories that weren't true about Muhammad, how can we know that anything they said about him was true? How then can we know anything about Muhammad's life or what he was like, if such forgeries and false stories so easily made their way into the Prophet's biography? How can you simultaneously extol Muhammad's generosity and good nature by telling a pleasant story from his life preserved in the Sirat of Ibn Ishaq, while rejecting the unpleasant parts dutifully recorded by the same writer? It is possible that nobody really knows what happened, but in that case, nobody really knows anything about Muhammad or the earliest Muslims either, or where the Qur'an came from, or what Islamic law consists of or even how to pray, as all these things are taken straight from the hadiths and biographies of Muhammad. True, Islamic law is supposed to be derived from both the Qur'an and Muhammad's Sunna (tradition) as recorded in hadiths, but in fact the legal content of the Qur'an is actually rather sparse and the wording frequently vague and open to question, needing some sort of explaination--you cannot build a whole legal system on the Qur'an alone. The vast majority of Islamic Law draws on the hadiths, including ones that explain the Qur'an's verses, both legal and otherwise.
Discussing the veracity of the Islamic sources is not what I meant to get into, but I guess it's inevitable. But it must be said that without them, there isn't much to discuss, as we have no independent account of Islam's origins and Muhammad's life. Anyway...
Was the treatment of Banu Qurayzah in accordance with Jewish Law? Especially as it was understood and applied by Jews in the 7th century CE/AD? It seems odd to apply Jewish Law applying to Jews fighting the Caananites in the 1200s BC/BCE to a situation in which Muslims are fighting the Jews in the 600s CE/AD. Also, I imagine that, considering the exacting standards of proof required for death sentences by rabbis in the Talmud, which said that a Sanhedrin that condemned someone to death once every 70 years was much too cruel, the "proof" offered in the Muslim sources wouldn't be considered anywhere close to convincing.
What do you think?
UPDATE:
Reader Tara sends along these thoughts, with the caveat that she isn't necessarily an expert on the subject, but I think it explains a lot about Jewish law and the many misunderstandings thereof:
I admit I don't know very much about Jewish Law (Halaka), so I would like to ask my readers who do a question.
The Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayzah who lived in Medina was accused by Muhammad and the Muslims of treachery and breaking their treaty with the Muslims during the siege of Medina and the ensuing Battle of the Trench (so called because Medina was defended from the invading Meccan enemies of Muhammad by a large trench around the town). The Banu Qurayzah had supposedly intrigued with the Meccans and betrayed the Muslims, and so had to be punished. It must be admitted that the actual evidence for this betrayal, even in the Muslim sources, isn't very clear or consistent--it is said that they had made an alliance of some sort with the Meccans, leaving the eastern flank of the city exposed, but what this alliance actually consisted of is never made clear. Even if we do accept that Banu Qurayzah was involved in rather shady dealings with the Meccans, the sheer brutality of what happened next, especially considering Muhammad's treatment of the other Jewish tribes, who were merely exiled after their defeat, may lead one to suspect that perhaps Muhammad just wanted the Banu Qurayzah gone, since they were the last Jewish tribe left in Medina.
After the Meccans finally gave up the siege, Muhammad and his men went after the Banu Qurayzah, who locked themselves up in their houses a little to the east of Medina, and besieged them for 25 days. They finally surrendered, (supposedly) agreeing to abide by the decision of Sa'd ibn Mu'az, chief of one of the main tribes of Medina and selected by Muhammad, as to what would happen to them. It must be noted that Sa'd had already been mortally wounded in the fighting and would die soon after, and Muhammad must have known what he would decide.
Sa'd decided that the men of Banu Qurayzah would be slaughtered, the women and children sold into slavery, and the spoils divided among the Muslims. Muhammad's comment was, "You have given the judgement of Allah above the seven heavens," according to Ibn Ishaq's Sirat (life of Muhammad).
All 600-700 (the figure may have been as high as 900) men of the tribe were beheaded in the marketplace of Medina in a single day, their bodies dumped into a pit. Prepubescent boys were spared from death. The women and children were sold as slaves (no doubt of a sexual nature, so we can safely assume mass rape), and Muhammad chose for himself Rayhana, the wife of one of the slaughtered men, to be his concubine.
Before going any farther, I'd like to present to the reader these articles about the event:
Muhammad, the Qurayza Massacre, and PBS, by Andrew G. Bostom
A lengthy discussion of the Sirat of Ibn Ishaq's report of this event
Some hadiths from al-Bukhari's collection, considered the most trustworthy by Sunni Muslims
According to Yusuf Ali's notes to his translation of the Qur'an, (and I chose this because it reflects the view of quite a few Muslims):
Notes 3703, 3704 on Qur'an 33:26
Sa'd applied to them the Jewish Law of the Old Testament, not as strictly as the case warranted. In Deuteronomy 20:10-18, the treatment of a city "which is very far off from thee" is prescribed to be comparatively more lenient than the treatment of a city "of those people, which the Lord thy God does give thee for an inheritance," i.e., which is near enough to corrupt the religion of the Jewish people. The punishment for these is total annihilation: "thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth" (Deuteronomy 20:16). The more lenient treatment for far-off cities is described in the next note. According to the Jewish standard, then, the Banu Quraiza deserved total extermination--of men, women, and children. They were in the territory of Madinah itself, and further they had broken their engagements and helped the enemy.
Sa'd adjudged them the milder treatment of the "far-off" cities which is thus described in the Jewish Law: "Thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: but the women and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself, and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee" (Deuteronomy 20:13-14). The men of the Quraiza were slain: the women were sold as captives of war; and their lands and properties were divided among the Muhajirs [those who had made the hijra, or flight, from Mecca with Muhammad--ed.].
Now, my question is, Is this correct? Did the Banu Qurayzah get what they deserved according to Jewish Law? Or is this just an excuse?
It must be noted that many Muslims today point to this story as proof that the Jews are treacherous and cannot be trusted, as well as being eternal enemies of Islam. It also may be seen as a prototypical pogrom, a massacre of the Jews, reflected in other such pogroms by both Christians and Muslims over the centuries, as well as an unnerving precursor to both the Holocaust and to current calls by far too many Muslims to eliminate both Israel and the Jews living therein. The story makes Muhammad look like a prototype of Hitler. For this reason...
Some Muslims (and others) uncomfortable with the story say that it never happened, pointing to articles like this one. This is similar to how some Muslims deal with Muhammad's wife Aisha being nine years old at the consummation of her marriage--they simply reject the hadiths, some narrated by Aisha herself (or at least said to be), that say she was. The problem is, though, that denying the Banu Qurayzah incident requires rejecting the Sira of Ibn Ishaq, the earliest extant biography of Muhammad (though only as preserved by many later writers), as well as seriously questioning the veracity of the hadiths. This is no problem if one is a critical Western scholar, but for a Muslim it raises insuperable difficulties. Hadith-rejecters are invariably considered to be heretics or apostates by orthodox Muslims, so needless to say you wouldn't get very far with this attitude at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Also, if Ibn Ishaq and al-Bukhari were telling a bunch of stories that weren't true about Muhammad, how can we know that anything they said about him was true? How then can we know anything about Muhammad's life or what he was like, if such forgeries and false stories so easily made their way into the Prophet's biography? How can you simultaneously extol Muhammad's generosity and good nature by telling a pleasant story from his life preserved in the Sirat of Ibn Ishaq, while rejecting the unpleasant parts dutifully recorded by the same writer? It is possible that nobody really knows what happened, but in that case, nobody really knows anything about Muhammad or the earliest Muslims either, or where the Qur'an came from, or what Islamic law consists of or even how to pray, as all these things are taken straight from the hadiths and biographies of Muhammad. True, Islamic law is supposed to be derived from both the Qur'an and Muhammad's Sunna (tradition) as recorded in hadiths, but in fact the legal content of the Qur'an is actually rather sparse and the wording frequently vague and open to question, needing some sort of explaination--you cannot build a whole legal system on the Qur'an alone. The vast majority of Islamic Law draws on the hadiths, including ones that explain the Qur'an's verses, both legal and otherwise.
Discussing the veracity of the Islamic sources is not what I meant to get into, but I guess it's inevitable. But it must be said that without them, there isn't much to discuss, as we have no independent account of Islam's origins and Muhammad's life. Anyway...
Was the treatment of Banu Qurayzah in accordance with Jewish Law? Especially as it was understood and applied by Jews in the 7th century CE/AD? It seems odd to apply Jewish Law applying to Jews fighting the Caananites in the 1200s BC/BCE to a situation in which Muslims are fighting the Jews in the 600s CE/AD. Also, I imagine that, considering the exacting standards of proof required for death sentences by rabbis in the Talmud, which said that a Sanhedrin that condemned someone to death once every 70 years was much too cruel, the "proof" offered in the Muslim sources wouldn't be considered anywhere close to convincing.
What do you think?
UPDATE:
Reader Tara sends along these thoughts, with the caveat that she isn't necessarily an expert on the subject, but I think it explains a lot about Jewish law and the many misunderstandings thereof:
I'm not an expert but I'll do my best with what I know!
You can't get Jewish law from the Torah. You just can't. You need the oral Torah, the Mishnah and the Talmud, to have Jewish law. Example - the Rebellious son whom the parents can take out and kill (according to the Bible). According to the Talmud: A son can be a rebellious son only between the time of the first spouting of pubic hairs and the filling out of the pubic hairs, or until thirteen, whichever time is shorter. In order to qualify as a rebellious son, he must eat a certain amound of meat in a certain way. If he is a rebellious son, his parents can only kill him if they are exactly the same size and speak with the same voice. etc etc. Basically, parents can never actually kill a rebellious son.
So, EVEN if this were Jewish law, the statement "Jewish Law of the Old Testament" is... meaningless, absurd, nonsense. You cannot rule halacha from the written Torah.
It also seems like Yusuf Ali is saying that it is the "law" for close cities that was applied. That makes no sense either because in the Torah it is specified that this applies only to certain nations "in the land that God has given you for an inheritance." The Hitti, the Emori, the Kena'ani, the Perizzi, the Hivvi, and the Yevusi. Also, this is to be done so that "they teach you not to do after all their abominations."
I see no way this can be applied to the Banu Qurayzah. They (obviously) do not beong to any of those peoples, they did not live in the land that 'God gave to the Jewish people as an inheritance,' and their crime had nothing to do with teaching abominations, and, as I understand Islam, could not, because Islam itself says that the Jewish religion does not practice abominations and that's why it should be tolerated.
This is a command that applies to a specific place at a specific time, it is not "Jewish Law," any more than God's telling the people to stay around the base of the mountain during the revelation at Sinai is "Jewish Law."
It should also be noted that if you take seriously the Biblical account of Israel's conquering the land, you don't see this actually being carried out.
In any case there is no way that the Bana Qurayza could have deserved this under any kind of Jewish thinking, since ultimately the loyalty of the Jewish people must lie not with either one of any other fighting factions, but with God.
Of course, if you believe that God was with the Muslims and that by betraying them, the Jews were betraying God, you could start to make a case that they deserved punishment. But by then you're already COMPLETELY out of the scope of Judaism.
Anyway, considering that it was considered appropriate for the Jews to launch an attack against the Romans in the first century, I have a difficult time believing that any rabbi would have believed that an attack and betrayal against the Muslims would have even been illegal, let alone deserving of slaughter. In any case,
Sometimes Judaism understands that God would allow another nation to defeat or oppress the Jews as a punishment for our sins, but that nation will also someday be punished by God for its mistreatment of us.
There is a concept in Jewish law that the law of the land is the law - at least as far as forbidding what is prohibited. Like, if the USA says you have to pay taxes, you have to pay taxes. If it says you can only marry one person, you can only marry one person, etc. But in that case you are being ruled according to the law of the land and definitely not according to Jewish law.
Friday, June 13, 2003
New entries coming later tonight...
I've hardly been at home and haven't had much time to read my email, so if I haven't gotten to yours, please be patient! I have a couple of entries that I've been working on and will post later tonight.
I've hardly been at home and haven't had much time to read my email, so if I haven't gotten to yours, please be patient! I have a couple of entries that I've been working on and will post later tonight.
Saturday, June 07, 2003
"Why should we worry about Muslim law, it only applies to Muslims"
While glancing at India: From Midnight to the Millennium by Shashi Tharoor in the library, I came across a line that really got to me. I don't have the book in front of me, but to the best of my memory there was a brief discussion of the Shah Bano case where the Indian government (or more specifically Rajiv Ghandi) passed a law overturning an Indian Supreme Court decision that after a divorce a Muslim husband had to pay his ex-wife a certain amount of alimony; the new law exempted Muslim husbands from paying it, since according to Shari'ah, the husband only has to pay back the dowry and give her three months' maintenance. It also gave Shari'ah a much greater role in the personal law of Muslims. It is generally agreed that Rajiv Ghandi did this to appease the Islamic fundamentalists; Tharoor accepts that, saying that it was a horrible decision made to appease the fundamentalists, but then he follows it with this line: "Muslim personal law only affects Muslims," and brushes it off completely in the next couple of lines as something that only affected Muslims' personal lives and not of his concern. In other words, it doesn't affect anyone who isn't Muslim, why should I care?
This attitude is unfortunately all too common, and I'll try to explain what about it really frosts me on so many levels. It doesn't just affect India; it has implications for the whole West, and its tradition of liberal democracy and individual human rights.
I have to say that my first thought was something along the lines of "Well, the Nuremberg laws only concerned the Jews; why should anyone else have cared?" This isn't really that far off the mark; it has been said that "Muslims are the first victims of Islam," and to a large extent that is true, especially for Muslim women. The imposition of Muslim Personal Law forces the interpretation of the conservative/fundamentalist Islamic scholars (ulema) on all Muslims, no matter what they themselves may want, whether they believe in it or not. I know if I lived in India, I would be hopping mad that my rights as a Muslim woman under Indian law were being abrogated at the whim of the Islamists.
First of all, take the phrase "only applies to Muslims." All Muslims? Who defines "Muslim"? What if the said Muslims don't want to live under Islamic law? Can they opt out, or are they stuck? To take a hypothetical example, would Salman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen, both outspoken apostates from Islam, be covered under Islamic law--especially since Shari'ah prescribes the death penalty to apostates from Islam? And what if some Muslims have a different interpretation of Islam and Islamic law than the one embodied in Muslim Personal Law? Are their views to be considered, or simply ignored as they happen to fall under the category "Muslim" and so have to live under Muslim law?
The claim that the imposition of Islamic law is an expression of "religious freedom" for Muslims is a sad joke and points out the incompatibility between "group rights" and "individual rights." If Muslims as a whole get the right to live according to Islamic law, the right to religious freedom of the individual Muslim is completely ignored. There is no provision that one can opt out of Islamic law in favor of secular law, or interpret it in a different way. No, the Muslims simply have to accept the decisions of the ulema, whether they like it or not. The Muslim, under Shari'ah, is denied religious freedom and freedom of expression: he or she cannot convert to another religion or renounce Islam on pain of death; is forbidden to utter any "blasphemous" statement (however that may be defined); may be forced to fast during Ramadan (in many Muslim countries, it is forbidden to sell food or eat or drink in public during daytime hours in Ramadan); and made to live according to Islamic personal law.
In addition, Islamic law, in this case Muslim Personal Law, denies women the same rights that other Indian women have, so the government is openly countenancing discrimination against women and misogynistic practices in the name of religion, which I should think "liberals" and "secularists" would be against, but often they have actually been in favor of. Suppose that Catholic women, because of their religion, were barred from getting divorced or having abortions. I doubt that many of the same people who insist that Muslims should be able to establish Islamic law in their countries or minority regions in the name of religious freedom would be so accepting of such a law for Catholic women. Instead, we would get an earful about how religion has no place in government, and how Catholicism cannot force its will on Catholic women, especially if that means violating their rights under secular law. I suspect that many do not know or care about what Islamic law actually entails. In inheritance, Muslim women get only half of what men do; the man can divorce his wife at any time and for any reason by saying "I divorce you" three times (though it's not supposed to be said all at once but divided over three occasions; all at once is "strongly disapproved of" in Shari'ah--but at the same time, the divorce is accepted as valid); Muslim women's right to divorce is much more limited and more difficult to exercise, as she must go to the court, have a "good reason," and pay back the dowry to the husband; the children can be permanently taken away from the mother if the father so desires, especially if he thinks she is raising them "inappropriately"; there is no provision for ongoing alimony; polygamy is allowed, even without the knowledge or permission of the wife, and so on--and all of this would be considered "personal law"! Why would "liberals" or "secularists" countenance these gross violations of women's rights, just because they happen to be Muslim? What happened to the feminist idea that the violation of the rights of women was everyone's concern?
The establishment of Islamic law for Muslim minorities can be bitterly divisive, as other groups feel that the Muslims are being given special treatment, and often Muslims respond in kind by feeling themselves discriminated against. What is lost is any sense of unity between Muslims and non-Muslims, since the two are not even covered by the same law. Allowing any group special rights and dispensation is disastrous to the entire concept of a liberal democratic state with separation of religion and state; it cuts the foundations right out from under it, since it is based fundamentally on the basic rights of the individual, not the group. The individual should not be seen as a mere member of a group but as a unique individual, a fellow citizen of the country with the same rights as anyone else. Islamic law preserves a view of the state as composed of groups, Muslims and others, in which the concept of the rights of the individual have not even been thought of and have no importance. One only has rights depending on which group one belongs to: Muslims have these rights, others have less. Non-Muslims are not even really members of the Islamic state, but exist only as "tolerated" minorities; the honor of "citizenship" (including serving in the Army and ruling the state) only goes to Muslims. Muslims see themselves first and foremost as Muslims, only incidentally as citizens or subjects of the state they happen to live in. These two views are incompatible, as India is finding out.
It must be noted that it is absolutely false that Islamic law only affects Muslims, not non-Muslims. Here are some examples:
1) Muslim women are prohibited by Islamic law from marrying non-Muslim men, while men are allowed to marry Christian and Jewish women. This can lead to some pretty ugly situations if a Muslim girl should fall in love with a non-Muslim boy. Either she has to brave the wrath and basically leave the community, or risk death, both hers and his, from his family (or the state, if Islamic law is the law of the land--death is the penalty for a non-Muslim man marrying a Muslim woman).
2) In case of divorce or death, a non-Muslim wife has no rights to the children; according to Islamic law, they must be under the charge of a Muslim and raised as Muslim. Ask any of the foreign non-Muslim women whose children have been held in Islamic countries against their will (such as Betty Mahmoody and Patricia Roush) if Islamic law did not apply to them.
3) According to Islamic law, a non-Muslim cannot inherit from a Muslim. If, for example, your father converts to Islam on his deathbed, and neither you nor the rest of the family are Muslim, you and the rest of the family will receive nothing. If, however, your father's cousin has also converted to Islam, he gets everything. There was a case in Jordan where a man claimed that his uncle had converted to Islam on his deathbed; his word was trusted, since it was, after all, the word of a Muslim, and he got the inheritance, cutting out the entire rest of the family.
4) There is the unpleasant fact that when Muslims are the majority and have an Islamic state run according to Islamic law, Shari'ah is invariably applied to non-Muslims, at least in some ways, since, after all, it is the law of the land. For example, the testimony of non-Muslims is not accepted in Islamic courts, certainly not against Muslims. A Muslim may not be executed for killing a non-Muslim. Non-Muslims are second-class citizens, who must pay jizya for the right to even draw breath in the Islamic State. They are discriminated against and must not show any disrespect to Islam. They may not offend Muslim sensibilities. And so on.
In addition, the application of Islamic law may lead to problems for the state. Divorced Muslim women may end up on welfare because of lack of alimony. Polygamous marriages and the traditional Islamic emphasis on having many children may result in large numbers of children that the state is obliged to help support through schools, health care, and the like. And it may affect the country in less tangible ways. Poor education may lead to less productivity and prosperity. Lack of rights leads to some parts of the population feeling disenfranchised, even if Islamic law was enacted to placate Muslim sensibilities, leading to instability. And there are other things that we haven't even thought of.
After all this, would you consider the imposition of Islamic law to be "only the concern of Muslims," not anyone else?
While glancing at India: From Midnight to the Millennium by Shashi Tharoor in the library, I came across a line that really got to me. I don't have the book in front of me, but to the best of my memory there was a brief discussion of the Shah Bano case where the Indian government (or more specifically Rajiv Ghandi) passed a law overturning an Indian Supreme Court decision that after a divorce a Muslim husband had to pay his ex-wife a certain amount of alimony; the new law exempted Muslim husbands from paying it, since according to Shari'ah, the husband only has to pay back the dowry and give her three months' maintenance. It also gave Shari'ah a much greater role in the personal law of Muslims. It is generally agreed that Rajiv Ghandi did this to appease the Islamic fundamentalists; Tharoor accepts that, saying that it was a horrible decision made to appease the fundamentalists, but then he follows it with this line: "Muslim personal law only affects Muslims," and brushes it off completely in the next couple of lines as something that only affected Muslims' personal lives and not of his concern. In other words, it doesn't affect anyone who isn't Muslim, why should I care?
This attitude is unfortunately all too common, and I'll try to explain what about it really frosts me on so many levels. It doesn't just affect India; it has implications for the whole West, and its tradition of liberal democracy and individual human rights.
I have to say that my first thought was something along the lines of "Well, the Nuremberg laws only concerned the Jews; why should anyone else have cared?" This isn't really that far off the mark; it has been said that "Muslims are the first victims of Islam," and to a large extent that is true, especially for Muslim women. The imposition of Muslim Personal Law forces the interpretation of the conservative/fundamentalist Islamic scholars (ulema) on all Muslims, no matter what they themselves may want, whether they believe in it or not. I know if I lived in India, I would be hopping mad that my rights as a Muslim woman under Indian law were being abrogated at the whim of the Islamists.
First of all, take the phrase "only applies to Muslims." All Muslims? Who defines "Muslim"? What if the said Muslims don't want to live under Islamic law? Can they opt out, or are they stuck? To take a hypothetical example, would Salman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen, both outspoken apostates from Islam, be covered under Islamic law--especially since Shari'ah prescribes the death penalty to apostates from Islam? And what if some Muslims have a different interpretation of Islam and Islamic law than the one embodied in Muslim Personal Law? Are their views to be considered, or simply ignored as they happen to fall under the category "Muslim" and so have to live under Muslim law?
The claim that the imposition of Islamic law is an expression of "religious freedom" for Muslims is a sad joke and points out the incompatibility between "group rights" and "individual rights." If Muslims as a whole get the right to live according to Islamic law, the right to religious freedom of the individual Muslim is completely ignored. There is no provision that one can opt out of Islamic law in favor of secular law, or interpret it in a different way. No, the Muslims simply have to accept the decisions of the ulema, whether they like it or not. The Muslim, under Shari'ah, is denied religious freedom and freedom of expression: he or she cannot convert to another religion or renounce Islam on pain of death; is forbidden to utter any "blasphemous" statement (however that may be defined); may be forced to fast during Ramadan (in many Muslim countries, it is forbidden to sell food or eat or drink in public during daytime hours in Ramadan); and made to live according to Islamic personal law.
In addition, Islamic law, in this case Muslim Personal Law, denies women the same rights that other Indian women have, so the government is openly countenancing discrimination against women and misogynistic practices in the name of religion, which I should think "liberals" and "secularists" would be against, but often they have actually been in favor of. Suppose that Catholic women, because of their religion, were barred from getting divorced or having abortions. I doubt that many of the same people who insist that Muslims should be able to establish Islamic law in their countries or minority regions in the name of religious freedom would be so accepting of such a law for Catholic women. Instead, we would get an earful about how religion has no place in government, and how Catholicism cannot force its will on Catholic women, especially if that means violating their rights under secular law. I suspect that many do not know or care about what Islamic law actually entails. In inheritance, Muslim women get only half of what men do; the man can divorce his wife at any time and for any reason by saying "I divorce you" three times (though it's not supposed to be said all at once but divided over three occasions; all at once is "strongly disapproved of" in Shari'ah--but at the same time, the divorce is accepted as valid); Muslim women's right to divorce is much more limited and more difficult to exercise, as she must go to the court, have a "good reason," and pay back the dowry to the husband; the children can be permanently taken away from the mother if the father so desires, especially if he thinks she is raising them "inappropriately"; there is no provision for ongoing alimony; polygamy is allowed, even without the knowledge or permission of the wife, and so on--and all of this would be considered "personal law"! Why would "liberals" or "secularists" countenance these gross violations of women's rights, just because they happen to be Muslim? What happened to the feminist idea that the violation of the rights of women was everyone's concern?
The establishment of Islamic law for Muslim minorities can be bitterly divisive, as other groups feel that the Muslims are being given special treatment, and often Muslims respond in kind by feeling themselves discriminated against. What is lost is any sense of unity between Muslims and non-Muslims, since the two are not even covered by the same law. Allowing any group special rights and dispensation is disastrous to the entire concept of a liberal democratic state with separation of religion and state; it cuts the foundations right out from under it, since it is based fundamentally on the basic rights of the individual, not the group. The individual should not be seen as a mere member of a group but as a unique individual, a fellow citizen of the country with the same rights as anyone else. Islamic law preserves a view of the state as composed of groups, Muslims and others, in which the concept of the rights of the individual have not even been thought of and have no importance. One only has rights depending on which group one belongs to: Muslims have these rights, others have less. Non-Muslims are not even really members of the Islamic state, but exist only as "tolerated" minorities; the honor of "citizenship" (including serving in the Army and ruling the state) only goes to Muslims. Muslims see themselves first and foremost as Muslims, only incidentally as citizens or subjects of the state they happen to live in. These two views are incompatible, as India is finding out.
It must be noted that it is absolutely false that Islamic law only affects Muslims, not non-Muslims. Here are some examples:
1) Muslim women are prohibited by Islamic law from marrying non-Muslim men, while men are allowed to marry Christian and Jewish women. This can lead to some pretty ugly situations if a Muslim girl should fall in love with a non-Muslim boy. Either she has to brave the wrath and basically leave the community, or risk death, both hers and his, from his family (or the state, if Islamic law is the law of the land--death is the penalty for a non-Muslim man marrying a Muslim woman).
2) In case of divorce or death, a non-Muslim wife has no rights to the children; according to Islamic law, they must be under the charge of a Muslim and raised as Muslim. Ask any of the foreign non-Muslim women whose children have been held in Islamic countries against their will (such as Betty Mahmoody and Patricia Roush) if Islamic law did not apply to them.
3) According to Islamic law, a non-Muslim cannot inherit from a Muslim. If, for example, your father converts to Islam on his deathbed, and neither you nor the rest of the family are Muslim, you and the rest of the family will receive nothing. If, however, your father's cousin has also converted to Islam, he gets everything. There was a case in Jordan where a man claimed that his uncle had converted to Islam on his deathbed; his word was trusted, since it was, after all, the word of a Muslim, and he got the inheritance, cutting out the entire rest of the family.
4) There is the unpleasant fact that when Muslims are the majority and have an Islamic state run according to Islamic law, Shari'ah is invariably applied to non-Muslims, at least in some ways, since, after all, it is the law of the land. For example, the testimony of non-Muslims is not accepted in Islamic courts, certainly not against Muslims. A Muslim may not be executed for killing a non-Muslim. Non-Muslims are second-class citizens, who must pay jizya for the right to even draw breath in the Islamic State. They are discriminated against and must not show any disrespect to Islam. They may not offend Muslim sensibilities. And so on.
In addition, the application of Islamic law may lead to problems for the state. Divorced Muslim women may end up on welfare because of lack of alimony. Polygamous marriages and the traditional Islamic emphasis on having many children may result in large numbers of children that the state is obliged to help support through schools, health care, and the like. And it may affect the country in less tangible ways. Poor education may lead to less productivity and prosperity. Lack of rights leads to some parts of the population feeling disenfranchised, even if Islamic law was enacted to placate Muslim sensibilities, leading to instability. And there are other things that we haven't even thought of.
After all this, would you consider the imposition of Islamic law to be "only the concern of Muslims," not anyone else?
Thursday, June 05, 2003
Bible vs Qur'an: Part 1
Abraham Bargains With God
In this entry, I will compare and contrast the Bible and Qur'anic stories of one incident: when Abraham pleads for the lives of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. In both versions, messengers from God have been sent to him and his wife Sarah to inform them of the birth of Isaac, and then Abraham is told (by the messengers in the Qur'an, but by God himself in the Bible) that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah will be destroyed for their horrific sins.
Here is the passage from the Bible (NIV translation): Genesis 18:16-33, but I will also include the first part of of the chapter because it is an integral part of the story, and shows up in the Qur'anic version(s).
1 The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.
2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
3 He said, "If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by.
4 Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree.
5 Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way, now that you have come to your servant."
"Very well," they answered, "do as you say."
6 So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. "Quick," he said, "get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread."
7 Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it.
8 He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.
9 "Where is your wife Sarah?" they asked him. "There, in the tent," he said.
10 Then the LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him.
11 Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing.
12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?"
13 Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?'
14 Is anything too hard for the LORD ? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son."
15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh." But he said, "Yes, you did laugh."
16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way.
17 Then the LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?
18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.
19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him."
20 Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous
21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."
22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the LORD.
23 Then Abraham approached him and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?
25 Far be it from you to do such a thing-to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
26 The LORD said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake."
27 Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes,
28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?"
"If I find forty-five there," he said, "I will not destroy it."
29 Once again he spoke to him, "What if only forty are found there?"
He said, "For the sake of forty, I will not do it."
30 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?"
He answered, "I will not do it if I find thirty there."
31 Abraham said, "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?"
He said, "For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it."
32 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?"
He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it."
33 When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
Now here is the first Qur'anic version, which, like most Biblical stories told in the Qur'an, is very compressed. I should recount briefly how the Qur'an tells the story of Lot (Lut in this translation). It holds that Lot was the prophet of Sodom, who was sent to make the people stop their despicable homosexual practices (Lot says, "Ye do commit lewdness, such as no people in Creation (ever) committed before you. Do ye indeed approach men, and cut off the highway? And practice wickedness (even) in your councils?" (Qur'an 29-28-29) When the people refused to change their ways, Lot called for help on Allah, who sent him messengers to destroy the city and save him and those who believed with him, but Lot's wife was evil, for what reason we are not told, and she was apparently destroyed with the city, though there are references to her as one who "lags behind," perhaps a relic of the story of Lot's wife looking back and turned into a pillar of salt, which is not explicitly told. There is also nothing of the tale of Lot's incestuous antics with his daughters in Genesis 19:30-38.
Anyway, here, without further ado, is the story from the Qur'an (Surah Hud, 11:69-76; Yusuf Ali translation):
11:69 There came Our messengers to Abraham with glad tidings. They said, "Peace!" He answered, "Peace!" and hastened to entertain them with a roasted calf.
11:70 But when he saw their hands went not towards the (meal), he felt some mistrust of them, and conceived a fear of them. They said: "Fear not: We have been sent against the people of Lut."
11:71 And his wife was standing (there), and she laughed: But we gave her glad tidings of Isaac, and after him, of Jacob.
11:72 She said: "Alas for me! shall I bear a child, seeing I am an old woman, and my husband here is an old man? That would indeed be a wonderful thing!"
11:73 They said: "Dost thou wonder at Allah's decree? The grace of Allah and His blessings on you, O ye people of the house! for He is indeed worthy of all praise, full of all glory!"
11:74 When fear had passed from (the mind of) Abraham and the glad tidings had reached him, he began to plead with Us for Lut's people.
11:75 For Abraham was, without doubt, forbearing (of faults), compassionate, and given to look to Allah.
11:76 O Abraham! Seek not this. The decree of thy Lord hath gone forth: for them there cometh a penalty that cannot be turned back!
Another, somewhat different, version appears in Surah 29, Al-Ankabut, verses 31-35 (it is very, very common for the same story to be told multiple times in the Qur'an, with some differences). This incorporates the destruction itself:
29:31 When Our Messengers came to Abraham with the good news, they said: "We are indeed going to destroy the people of this township: for truly they are (addicted to) crime."
29:32 He said: "But there is Lut there." They said: "Well do we know who is there : we will certainly save him and his following, except his wife: she is of those who lag behind!"
29:33 And when Our Messengers came to Lut, he was grieved on their account, and felt himself powerless (to protect) them, but they said: "Fear thou not, nor grieve: we are (here) to save thee and thy following, except thy wife: she is of those who lag behind.
29:34 "For we are going to bring down on the people of this township a Punishment from heaven, because they have been wickedly rebellious."
29:35 And We have left thereof an evident Sign, for any people who (care to) understand.
The arguing isn't mentioned, except in an oblique way in 29:32, where Abraham shows concern for Lot.
This story is also told in a somewhat different way in Surah 51, Ad-Dhariyat, verses 24-37 (it is very, very common for the same story to be told multiple times in the Qur'an, with some differences):
51:24 Has the story reached thee, of the honoured guests of Abraham?
51:25 Behold, they entered his presence, and said: "Peace!" He said, "Peace!" (and thought, "These seem) unusual people."
51:26 Then he turned quickly to his household, brought out a fatted calf,
51:27 And placed it before them. He said, "Will ye not eat?"
51:28 (When they did not eat), He conceived a fear of them. They said, "Fear not," and they gave him glad tidings of a son endowed with knowledge.
51:29 But his wife came forward (laughing) aloud: she smote her forehead and said: "A barren old woman!"
51:30 They said, "Even so has thy Lord spoken: and He is full of Wisdom and Knowledge."
51:31 (Abraham) said: "And what, O ye Messengers, is your errand (now)?"
51:32 They said, "We have been sent to a people (deep) in sin;-
51:33 "To bring on, on them, (a shower of) stones of clay (brimstone),
51:34 "Marked as from thy Lord for those who trespass beyond bounds."
51:35 Then We evacuated those of the Believers who were there,
51:36 But We found not there any just (Muslim) persons except in one house:
51:37 And We left there a Sign for such as fear the Grievous Penalty.
In this version, Abraham's arguing with Allah for the people of Sodom isn't even mentioned, though it seems to be obliquely referred to in 51:36, about not finding any just people except for Lot's family (or more accurately, those who were in his home who believed in Lot's message).
You will notice that while Abraham is directly speaking to God and being answered by him in the Bible story, the Qur'an simply says that Abraham was "pleading with Us" for Lot's people. It doesn't say that he was directly answered, or that any bargaining took place; it might have just been a simple prayer for all we know. The words of Allah that follow that verse ("For Abraham was, without doubt, forbearing (of faults), compassionate, and given to look to Allah. O Abraham! Seek not this. The decree of thy Lord hath gone forth: for them there cometh a penalty that cannot be turned back!") seem to be more of a later commentary on Abraham's acts than actual words addressed to him. Allah does not converse with mere mortals; instead he sends an angel or a prophet or a vision (42:51: "It is not fitting for a man that Allah should speak to him except by inspiration, or from behind a veil, or by the sending of a messenger to reveal, with Allah's permission, what Allah wills: for He is Most High, Most Wise.") In Genesis and Exodus, God speaks personally with Abraham and Moses, and even addresses the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, who shudder in fear and ask not to hear the voice of God anymore, with which God acquiesces, but he does continue to speak directly to Moses. By contrast Muhammad had to receive his sacred scriptures, which are supposed to be the speech of Allah himself, through the angel Gabriel.
More importantly, the whole concept of Abraham bargaining with God, the spectacle of a mere man telling God Almighty that he is being unjust, is fundamentally against the entire nature of Islam, which after all means "submission" and whose most salient trait is total submission to the decrees of Allah, instead of rebelling against them or trying to bargain out with them. This is why Abraham's request for pity is followed by an "excuse" that Abraham was very tender-hearted, perhaps too much so, and a reproach and an insistence that Abraham must accept the decree of Allah for the destruction of Lot's people. Abraham's kindness and tender-heartedness, which seem to be exceed even that of Allah the All-Merciful, is also referred to in 9:113-114: "It is not fitting, for the Prophet and those who believe, that they should pray for forgiveness for Pagans, even though they be of kin, after it is clear to them that they are companions of the Fire. And Abraham prayed for his father's forgiveness only because of a promise he had made to him. But when it became clear to him that he was an enemy to Allah, he dissociated himself from him: for Abraham was most tender-hearted, forbearing."
The figure of YHWH (God, the LORD) in the Pentateuch is very close to his chosen people (the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Israelites, and so on), who is very much a part of the action and susceptible to many quite human traits, such as being bargained with, "regretting" and "repenting" (as in the case of the Flood and threatening to leave the Israelites out in the desert for their disobedience; what this means has been hotly debated by Jewish and Christian scholars). He takes a personal interest in the Israelites, vowing to never abandon them and to admonish them with punishments for the sake of correcting them. The figure of Allah in the Qur'an is much more distant, one who will utterly destroy a people that have rejected his message without a second though, and replace them with a new people, who will be destroyed in their turn if they don't believe, the Qur'an warns. By contrast, God as portrayed in the Prophetic books of the Bible feels a great deal of sorrow about how his people Israel have turned their backs on him and that he has to punish them for their misdeeds, and with the promise that they will eventually be redeemed, that he will always be there waiting for their repentance. In the Qur'an, they would have just been wiped out and that would be that. (44:29: "And neither heaven nor earth shed a tear over them: nor were they given a respite.") In the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures; Tanakh) Israel is God's son (Hosea 11:1 "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."). In the New Testament, humans are the children of God (Romans 8:16: "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."); in the Qur'an they are the slaves of Allah (51:56: "I have only created Jinns and men that they may serve Me."). In the Bible are many references to loving God (Deuteronomy 6:4-5: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."--the opening of the Jewish Shema or profession of faith); in the Qur'an are constant references to serving Allah (20:14: "Verily, I am Allah: There is no god but I: So serve thou Me (only), and establish regular prayer for celebrating My praise." 29:56: "O My slaves who believe! truly spacious is My Earth: therefore serve ye Me!")
This topic is also discussed in the essay I wrote called "The Distance of Allah from His Creatures," and I find it a fascinating topic. It really throws into relief one of the major differences between Islam and Judaism and Christianity.
Abraham Bargains With God
In this entry, I will compare and contrast the Bible and Qur'anic stories of one incident: when Abraham pleads for the lives of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. In both versions, messengers from God have been sent to him and his wife Sarah to inform them of the birth of Isaac, and then Abraham is told (by the messengers in the Qur'an, but by God himself in the Bible) that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah will be destroyed for their horrific sins.
Here is the passage from the Bible (NIV translation): Genesis 18:16-33, but I will also include the first part of of the chapter because it is an integral part of the story, and shows up in the Qur'anic version(s).
1 The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.
2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
3 He said, "If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by.
4 Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree.
5 Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way, now that you have come to your servant."
"Very well," they answered, "do as you say."
6 So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. "Quick," he said, "get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread."
7 Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it.
8 He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.
9 "Where is your wife Sarah?" they asked him. "There, in the tent," he said.
10 Then the LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son." Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him.
11 Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing.
12 So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?"
13 Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Will I really have a child, now that I am old?'
14 Is anything too hard for the LORD ? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son."
15 Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh." But he said, "Yes, you did laugh."
16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way.
17 Then the LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?
18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.
19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him."
20 Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous
21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."
22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the LORD.
23 Then Abraham approached him and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?
25 Far be it from you to do such a thing-to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
26 The LORD said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake."
27 Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes,
28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?"
"If I find forty-five there," he said, "I will not destroy it."
29 Once again he spoke to him, "What if only forty are found there?"
He said, "For the sake of forty, I will not do it."
30 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?"
He answered, "I will not do it if I find thirty there."
31 Abraham said, "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?"
He said, "For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it."
32 Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?"
He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it."
33 When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
Now here is the first Qur'anic version, which, like most Biblical stories told in the Qur'an, is very compressed. I should recount briefly how the Qur'an tells the story of Lot (Lut in this translation). It holds that Lot was the prophet of Sodom, who was sent to make the people stop their despicable homosexual practices (Lot says, "Ye do commit lewdness, such as no people in Creation (ever) committed before you. Do ye indeed approach men, and cut off the highway? And practice wickedness (even) in your councils?" (Qur'an 29-28-29) When the people refused to change their ways, Lot called for help on Allah, who sent him messengers to destroy the city and save him and those who believed with him, but Lot's wife was evil, for what reason we are not told, and she was apparently destroyed with the city, though there are references to her as one who "lags behind," perhaps a relic of the story of Lot's wife looking back and turned into a pillar of salt, which is not explicitly told. There is also nothing of the tale of Lot's incestuous antics with his daughters in Genesis 19:30-38.
Anyway, here, without further ado, is the story from the Qur'an (Surah Hud, 11:69-76; Yusuf Ali translation):
11:69 There came Our messengers to Abraham with glad tidings. They said, "Peace!" He answered, "Peace!" and hastened to entertain them with a roasted calf.
11:70 But when he saw their hands went not towards the (meal), he felt some mistrust of them, and conceived a fear of them. They said: "Fear not: We have been sent against the people of Lut."
11:71 And his wife was standing (there), and she laughed: But we gave her glad tidings of Isaac, and after him, of Jacob.
11:72 She said: "Alas for me! shall I bear a child, seeing I am an old woman, and my husband here is an old man? That would indeed be a wonderful thing!"
11:73 They said: "Dost thou wonder at Allah's decree? The grace of Allah and His blessings on you, O ye people of the house! for He is indeed worthy of all praise, full of all glory!"
11:74 When fear had passed from (the mind of) Abraham and the glad tidings had reached him, he began to plead with Us for Lut's people.
11:75 For Abraham was, without doubt, forbearing (of faults), compassionate, and given to look to Allah.
11:76 O Abraham! Seek not this. The decree of thy Lord hath gone forth: for them there cometh a penalty that cannot be turned back!
Another, somewhat different, version appears in Surah 29, Al-Ankabut, verses 31-35 (it is very, very common for the same story to be told multiple times in the Qur'an, with some differences). This incorporates the destruction itself:
29:31 When Our Messengers came to Abraham with the good news, they said: "We are indeed going to destroy the people of this township: for truly they are (addicted to) crime."
29:32 He said: "But there is Lut there." They said: "Well do we know who is there : we will certainly save him and his following, except his wife: she is of those who lag behind!"
29:33 And when Our Messengers came to Lut, he was grieved on their account, and felt himself powerless (to protect) them, but they said: "Fear thou not, nor grieve: we are (here) to save thee and thy following, except thy wife: she is of those who lag behind.
29:34 "For we are going to bring down on the people of this township a Punishment from heaven, because they have been wickedly rebellious."
29:35 And We have left thereof an evident Sign, for any people who (care to) understand.
The arguing isn't mentioned, except in an oblique way in 29:32, where Abraham shows concern for Lot.
This story is also told in a somewhat different way in Surah 51, Ad-Dhariyat, verses 24-37 (it is very, very common for the same story to be told multiple times in the Qur'an, with some differences):
51:24 Has the story reached thee, of the honoured guests of Abraham?
51:25 Behold, they entered his presence, and said: "Peace!" He said, "Peace!" (and thought, "These seem) unusual people."
51:26 Then he turned quickly to his household, brought out a fatted calf,
51:27 And placed it before them. He said, "Will ye not eat?"
51:28 (When they did not eat), He conceived a fear of them. They said, "Fear not," and they gave him glad tidings of a son endowed with knowledge.
51:29 But his wife came forward (laughing) aloud: she smote her forehead and said: "A barren old woman!"
51:30 They said, "Even so has thy Lord spoken: and He is full of Wisdom and Knowledge."
51:31 (Abraham) said: "And what, O ye Messengers, is your errand (now)?"
51:32 They said, "We have been sent to a people (deep) in sin;-
51:33 "To bring on, on them, (a shower of) stones of clay (brimstone),
51:34 "Marked as from thy Lord for those who trespass beyond bounds."
51:35 Then We evacuated those of the Believers who were there,
51:36 But We found not there any just (Muslim) persons except in one house:
51:37 And We left there a Sign for such as fear the Grievous Penalty.
In this version, Abraham's arguing with Allah for the people of Sodom isn't even mentioned, though it seems to be obliquely referred to in 51:36, about not finding any just people except for Lot's family (or more accurately, those who were in his home who believed in Lot's message).
You will notice that while Abraham is directly speaking to God and being answered by him in the Bible story, the Qur'an simply says that Abraham was "pleading with Us" for Lot's people. It doesn't say that he was directly answered, or that any bargaining took place; it might have just been a simple prayer for all we know. The words of Allah that follow that verse ("For Abraham was, without doubt, forbearing (of faults), compassionate, and given to look to Allah. O Abraham! Seek not this. The decree of thy Lord hath gone forth: for them there cometh a penalty that cannot be turned back!") seem to be more of a later commentary on Abraham's acts than actual words addressed to him. Allah does not converse with mere mortals; instead he sends an angel or a prophet or a vision (42:51: "It is not fitting for a man that Allah should speak to him except by inspiration, or from behind a veil, or by the sending of a messenger to reveal, with Allah's permission, what Allah wills: for He is Most High, Most Wise.") In Genesis and Exodus, God speaks personally with Abraham and Moses, and even addresses the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, who shudder in fear and ask not to hear the voice of God anymore, with which God acquiesces, but he does continue to speak directly to Moses. By contrast Muhammad had to receive his sacred scriptures, which are supposed to be the speech of Allah himself, through the angel Gabriel.
More importantly, the whole concept of Abraham bargaining with God, the spectacle of a mere man telling God Almighty that he is being unjust, is fundamentally against the entire nature of Islam, which after all means "submission" and whose most salient trait is total submission to the decrees of Allah, instead of rebelling against them or trying to bargain out with them. This is why Abraham's request for pity is followed by an "excuse" that Abraham was very tender-hearted, perhaps too much so, and a reproach and an insistence that Abraham must accept the decree of Allah for the destruction of Lot's people. Abraham's kindness and tender-heartedness, which seem to be exceed even that of Allah the All-Merciful, is also referred to in 9:113-114: "It is not fitting, for the Prophet and those who believe, that they should pray for forgiveness for Pagans, even though they be of kin, after it is clear to them that they are companions of the Fire. And Abraham prayed for his father's forgiveness only because of a promise he had made to him. But when it became clear to him that he was an enemy to Allah, he dissociated himself from him: for Abraham was most tender-hearted, forbearing."
The figure of YHWH (God, the LORD) in the Pentateuch is very close to his chosen people (the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Israelites, and so on), who is very much a part of the action and susceptible to many quite human traits, such as being bargained with, "regretting" and "repenting" (as in the case of the Flood and threatening to leave the Israelites out in the desert for their disobedience; what this means has been hotly debated by Jewish and Christian scholars). He takes a personal interest in the Israelites, vowing to never abandon them and to admonish them with punishments for the sake of correcting them. The figure of Allah in the Qur'an is much more distant, one who will utterly destroy a people that have rejected his message without a second though, and replace them with a new people, who will be destroyed in their turn if they don't believe, the Qur'an warns. By contrast, God as portrayed in the Prophetic books of the Bible feels a great deal of sorrow about how his people Israel have turned their backs on him and that he has to punish them for their misdeeds, and with the promise that they will eventually be redeemed, that he will always be there waiting for their repentance. In the Qur'an, they would have just been wiped out and that would be that. (44:29: "And neither heaven nor earth shed a tear over them: nor were they given a respite.") In the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures; Tanakh) Israel is God's son (Hosea 11:1 "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."). In the New Testament, humans are the children of God (Romans 8:16: "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."); in the Qur'an they are the slaves of Allah (51:56: "I have only created Jinns and men that they may serve Me."). In the Bible are many references to loving God (Deuteronomy 6:4-5: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."--the opening of the Jewish Shema or profession of faith); in the Qur'an are constant references to serving Allah (20:14: "Verily, I am Allah: There is no god but I: So serve thou Me (only), and establish regular prayer for celebrating My praise." 29:56: "O My slaves who believe! truly spacious is My Earth: therefore serve ye Me!")
This topic is also discussed in the essay I wrote called "The Distance of Allah from His Creatures," and I find it a fascinating topic. It really throws into relief one of the major differences between Islam and Judaism and Christianity.
Monday, June 02, 2003
Islamic Women's Clothing and Heatstroke
I've often wondered how on earth Muslim women in such frying hot locales as Saudi Arabia, Libya, the Sahara and much of the Middle East, deal with having to wear such horribly inappropriate clothing such as black abayas, black chadors, black headscarves, black veils, and the like. And I really feel for those Muslim women in countries that are not just boiling hot but humid as well, such as India, the subtropical or tropical climes of Malaysia and Indonesia, and so on. I shudder to think of Muslim women in the past, who had no air-conditioning and often had much thicker clothing and veils.
This point was really brought home to me today after suffering heat exhaustion caused by spending too long in the sun with "inappropriate clothes," namely long pants, long sleeved shirt and scarf covering the hair. I suppose that's what I get for 1) living in a hot climate, 2) not having a car (much of this was brought on by waiting in the scorching heat for the bus) and 3) being so stupid as to think that it was a good idea to go out like that. (Speaking of which, I wonder how veiled4allah, aka Al-Muhajabah, gets along in her black abaya and veil, since I know she rides the bus--at least as far as I know. Maybe she lives in a cooler climate. As for Sultana Freeman, who wears the same outfit in hot, humid Florida, I can't even imagine it. Maybe it's the heat that drives her crazy!)
Muslim women, when asked, "Isn't it hot to wear that?" will often say, "The fire of Hell is hotter." Well, at some point during this ordeal I was cursing all the Muslim 'ulama (religious scholars) who insist or insisted that women must wear this stuff, thinking that hell couldn't possibly be any hotter! (Yeah, it was probably the disorientation caused by heat exhaustion, other symptoms of which include: dizziness, paleness, nausea, quick and shallow breathing.) Eventually I managed to get myself to an air-conditioned house and took about two hours to get back to normal, during which I wished that I would just pass out to escape the dizziness and nausea.
In Saudi Arabia and other richer Muslim countries, women seem to deal with this problem by 1) not leaving home (which is usually air-conditioned) very often; 2) when they do have to leave, riding in an air-conditioned car, enroute to 3) air-conditioned buildings, shopping malls, hospitals, schools, and so on. In many poorer countries, such as Egypt, many women simply don't wear Islamic dress, instead opting for Western clothing and keeping the hair uncovered. Others only wear a simple head scarf and some kind of loose dress. (This reminds me that throughout history, it was usually only the "idle rich" and middle classes that could afford to veil and seclude women at home; poorer women had to work for a living and typically wore less-constricting clothing, perhaps only a simple head scarf as opposed to the whole abaya and niqab outfit, which doesn't lend itself to doing work, driving, or much of anything, really.) In India and Africa, women often wear some kind of loose, light cloth over their bodies, lightly covering the head. Also, it must be said that the abaya is actually an overgarment; you could be wearing only shorts and a T-shirt underneath, or even nothing! They are very loose, which helps immensely (tight clothes are the absolute worst for the heat; traditional Arab men's clothes are also very loose--but are usually white) and many are made of thin fabric, though it must be said that the very common polyester ones are horrible in this regard--cotton is better. Nevertheless, they still cover the whole body, and are usually BLACK, or at least some dark color, which, as we all should know, absorbs heat like nothing else! Even worse, some of the more pious women wear veils that even cover the eyes, or veils made of thicker cloth, and gloves, not leaving a single square inch of skin visible (and also leaving nowhere for the sweat to evaporate).
I can't help but suspect that one reason for Islamic women's dress is to make it less tempting for women to go outside. If they have to walk around in hot, constricting clothes in 120-degree Saudi Arabian or Egyptian heat, most women will just stay at home. The jelbab, which is basically a long coat, and pants or skirt combo, worn in somewhat more liberal countries like Jordan, Syria and Egypt, also is mighty uncomfortable in hot weather. Most of the traditional women's outfits in the Islamic nations are the equivalent of wearing long pants or jeans and a sweater, or at the very least a long-sleeved shirt. And the hijab, or headscarf, absorbs even more heat, since so much bodily heat escapes through the top of the head. In addition, the face veil tends to make breathing difficult, so sometimes it seems to me that many pious Muslim women are already living in the fires of hell, quite literally!
Muslim women are not supposed to wear perfume outside the home, which the Prophet has said is as bad as if she committed adultery, so you can imagine how good a bus packed with devout Muslim women would smell. I don't know how they manage in humid tropical countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, especially considering that Islamic women's dress was first conceived with the arid Middle East in mind. I am looking at a picture of Malaysian Muslim women waiting at a bus stop, with their thick head scarves and long sleeves, and I feel like I'm going to faint myself! Another image that sticks out in my mind is one I remember seeing in National Geographic where women were working out in the fields somewhere in Yemen, wearing black clothes and veils, gloves, and topped with a big straw hat (which I doubt compensated very much for the black clothes!)
I don't know how they manage it without all collapsing from the heat (and I have no idea of what the statistics are for death from heatstroke in Muslim countries during the summer; they're probably pretty bad if 430 people have died in one state alone in India from the heat during the past 11 days (here's the sad story). How long before the World Health Orgainization (WHO) denounces women's Islamic clothing for causing heatstroke?!?
UPDATE: It also occurs to me that these clothes may also lead to other health problems. Since they inhibit movement and are hot, they tend to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to exercise or even walk very far, which may lead to weight gain and obesity. And this lack of activity may lead to weakness and overall poor health. In addition, sunlight is a source of some vitamins, and of course not getting any means being deprived of them.
So much for "the benefits of Islamic dress being scientifically proven," as some Muslim propagandists insist.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Alifa sends these comments about the subject, which I found very interesting:
I've often wondered how on earth Muslim women in such frying hot locales as Saudi Arabia, Libya, the Sahara and much of the Middle East, deal with having to wear such horribly inappropriate clothing such as black abayas, black chadors, black headscarves, black veils, and the like. And I really feel for those Muslim women in countries that are not just boiling hot but humid as well, such as India, the subtropical or tropical climes of Malaysia and Indonesia, and so on. I shudder to think of Muslim women in the past, who had no air-conditioning and often had much thicker clothing and veils.
This point was really brought home to me today after suffering heat exhaustion caused by spending too long in the sun with "inappropriate clothes," namely long pants, long sleeved shirt and scarf covering the hair. I suppose that's what I get for 1) living in a hot climate, 2) not having a car (much of this was brought on by waiting in the scorching heat for the bus) and 3) being so stupid as to think that it was a good idea to go out like that. (Speaking of which, I wonder how veiled4allah, aka Al-Muhajabah, gets along in her black abaya and veil, since I know she rides the bus--at least as far as I know. Maybe she lives in a cooler climate. As for Sultana Freeman, who wears the same outfit in hot, humid Florida, I can't even imagine it. Maybe it's the heat that drives her crazy!)
Muslim women, when asked, "Isn't it hot to wear that?" will often say, "The fire of Hell is hotter." Well, at some point during this ordeal I was cursing all the Muslim 'ulama (religious scholars) who insist or insisted that women must wear this stuff, thinking that hell couldn't possibly be any hotter! (Yeah, it was probably the disorientation caused by heat exhaustion, other symptoms of which include: dizziness, paleness, nausea, quick and shallow breathing.) Eventually I managed to get myself to an air-conditioned house and took about two hours to get back to normal, during which I wished that I would just pass out to escape the dizziness and nausea.
In Saudi Arabia and other richer Muslim countries, women seem to deal with this problem by 1) not leaving home (which is usually air-conditioned) very often; 2) when they do have to leave, riding in an air-conditioned car, enroute to 3) air-conditioned buildings, shopping malls, hospitals, schools, and so on. In many poorer countries, such as Egypt, many women simply don't wear Islamic dress, instead opting for Western clothing and keeping the hair uncovered. Others only wear a simple head scarf and some kind of loose dress. (This reminds me that throughout history, it was usually only the "idle rich" and middle classes that could afford to veil and seclude women at home; poorer women had to work for a living and typically wore less-constricting clothing, perhaps only a simple head scarf as opposed to the whole abaya and niqab outfit, which doesn't lend itself to doing work, driving, or much of anything, really.) In India and Africa, women often wear some kind of loose, light cloth over their bodies, lightly covering the head. Also, it must be said that the abaya is actually an overgarment; you could be wearing only shorts and a T-shirt underneath, or even nothing! They are very loose, which helps immensely (tight clothes are the absolute worst for the heat; traditional Arab men's clothes are also very loose--but are usually white) and many are made of thin fabric, though it must be said that the very common polyester ones are horrible in this regard--cotton is better. Nevertheless, they still cover the whole body, and are usually BLACK, or at least some dark color, which, as we all should know, absorbs heat like nothing else! Even worse, some of the more pious women wear veils that even cover the eyes, or veils made of thicker cloth, and gloves, not leaving a single square inch of skin visible (and also leaving nowhere for the sweat to evaporate).
I can't help but suspect that one reason for Islamic women's dress is to make it less tempting for women to go outside. If they have to walk around in hot, constricting clothes in 120-degree Saudi Arabian or Egyptian heat, most women will just stay at home. The jelbab, which is basically a long coat, and pants or skirt combo, worn in somewhat more liberal countries like Jordan, Syria and Egypt, also is mighty uncomfortable in hot weather. Most of the traditional women's outfits in the Islamic nations are the equivalent of wearing long pants or jeans and a sweater, or at the very least a long-sleeved shirt. And the hijab, or headscarf, absorbs even more heat, since so much bodily heat escapes through the top of the head. In addition, the face veil tends to make breathing difficult, so sometimes it seems to me that many pious Muslim women are already living in the fires of hell, quite literally!
Muslim women are not supposed to wear perfume outside the home, which the Prophet has said is as bad as if she committed adultery, so you can imagine how good a bus packed with devout Muslim women would smell. I don't know how they manage in humid tropical countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, especially considering that Islamic women's dress was first conceived with the arid Middle East in mind. I am looking at a picture of Malaysian Muslim women waiting at a bus stop, with their thick head scarves and long sleeves, and I feel like I'm going to faint myself! Another image that sticks out in my mind is one I remember seeing in National Geographic where women were working out in the fields somewhere in Yemen, wearing black clothes and veils, gloves, and topped with a big straw hat (which I doubt compensated very much for the black clothes!)
I don't know how they manage it without all collapsing from the heat (and I have no idea of what the statistics are for death from heatstroke in Muslim countries during the summer; they're probably pretty bad if 430 people have died in one state alone in India from the heat during the past 11 days (here's the sad story). How long before the World Health Orgainization (WHO) denounces women's Islamic clothing for causing heatstroke?!?
UPDATE: It also occurs to me that these clothes may also lead to other health problems. Since they inhibit movement and are hot, they tend to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to exercise or even walk very far, which may lead to weight gain and obesity. And this lack of activity may lead to weakness and overall poor health. In addition, sunlight is a source of some vitamins, and of course not getting any means being deprived of them.
So much for "the benefits of Islamic dress being scientifically proven," as some Muslim propagandists insist.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Alifa sends these comments about the subject, which I found very interesting:
A few years ago, some enterprising researcher decided to try to understand why Bedouin men in the Negev wear a skirt-like black robe, and discovered that black in this case actually helped cool the body. Part of the experiment involved comparing light white robes with black ones. I think the reasoning was that the skirt-like robe acted as a kind of chiimney pulling cooler air nearer the ground up through the clothing, and black was more efficient for doing this.
One other problem you didn't mention with the full Islamic dress is that all of us need a certain amount of sun on our skin every day (at least face and forearms) in order to manufacture vitamin D. I think lack of vitamin D and consequent bone problems is a known health risk for women in Muslim countries. Perhaps you could ask someone involved in public health issues.
Around Jerusalem you can still find a few examples of Ottoman-era "air-conditioning" --- in the walls surrounding the flat roofs, you see a kind of pyramid of clay pipes set into the wall. People used to splash these with water to catch the late afternoon breeze and it did lower the temperature on the roof somewhat, as did regular whitewashing.
Saturday, May 31, 2003
Family Life in Islam, Extended vs. Nuclear Families, Patrilineal vs. Matrilineal Societies, Etc.
After spending some time reading Fatima Mernissi's Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society, it occurred to me just how much Islamic law, as well as Arab and other Muslim cultures, depend on the extended family, as opposed to the nuclear family. Islamic law depends so much on this that Shari'ah often just isn't practicable in societies not based extended families. I've never really seen this topic discussed anywhere, so I'll try to take a stab at it.
The primary unit in the US and much of the West is the nuclear family, which is generally Mom/Dad and children (yes, there are variations, but let's keep this simple!). Islamic societies are generally based on the extended family, which stretches over three or more generations, and usually has a male head (patriarch) that everybody defers to, even other men with their own families. These families function as a safety net in societies where social programs are inadequate or nonexistent. Instead of the aged getting Social Security, for example, the younger members of the family are supposed to support and care for the respected elders. The various members usually work together and often help each other out, whether with money, time, or effort. They have also often been the source of prospective spouses for children (the frequent practice of marriage to cousins or more distant relatives), which keeps the wealth in the family, even in case of divorce.
But it isn't all positive: the negative is that this kind of societal organization in which the extended family or tribe is paramount is generally not very conductive to individual freedom. One stays where one's family is all one's life, usually, and one has to know one's place in the family. The family can be very "persuasive" by threatening to "disown" someone, since that takes away both family connectios and the safety net, in effect leaving the person naked to the cruel blows of fate, especially women, who are usually very much dependent on their families.
It also means that arranged marriages are the order of the day, since the main purpose of such unions is making alliances between families, or within the same family (the lack of freedom again). Love, which so often disregards societal barriers ("love conquers all") is discouraged, since it would destroy the carefully-planned marriage alliances and strict societal rules. And since the family or tribe is paramount, holding together nuclear families does not seem to be quite as high a priority, since individual marriages are not the bedrock of society. Contrary to Muslim propaganda, which points disapprovingly at high Western divorce rates while insinuating that divorce is very uncommon in Muslim lands (not stating actual statistics, mind you!), divorce is not at all uncommon in Muslim lands, especially when the husband can divorce his wife at will, without giving any reason, just by saying "I divorce you" three times. Contrast this with the lengthy legal proceedings in an American divorce. In addition, consider that if the rates are lower, one big reason is that while most divorces in the US are initiated by women, in Islam the ability of the woman to divorce is considerably more difficult than that of the man; she has to have an acceptable reason to do so and she must give back the dowry her husband gave her, which makes the claim by Muslim writers that the dowry is purely the property of the woman to do with as she wills something of a cruel joke; she will in fact have to hold on to it in case she wants a divorce.
Muslim family law implicitly requires an extended family. The many rules about women presuppose that she has a family that will support her. In the case of divorce, women are supposed to be given a small amount of maintenance (usually for a year, sometimes only three months) from the husband, as well as some child support until the child comes of age (or is taken by the father), but there is nothing like the American concept of alimony. In addition, as mentioned, if the woman initiated the divorce, she is generally obliged to give back the dowry that her husband gave her, so she may be left with nothing. She is supposed to go back to her extended family, who will take care of her and perhaps her children. Since Muslim women are often unemployed and/or poorly educated, if she doesn't have a family she is basically being thrown out onto the street! And since in the West the extended family often doesn't exist, or is unable or unwilling to help, this law would in practice be unbelievably cruel without the cushioning provided by the extended family.
Another case is inheritance. Women, according to the Qur'an, receive half the amout of men (4:11-12; the verses are at the end of this entry). This is justified by claiming that it is the man who supports the family, while the woman's money is her own, to do with as she pleases. However, this already presupposes that every woman will have a man or men to support her, whether a husband, brother, father, uncle, or son. If she has nobody to depend on, this law condemns her to poverty. If a woman's husband dies and she has children, she is only entitled to one-eighth of the inheritance (the husband would get one-fourth of his wife's estate in this situation); if there are no children she gets a quarter. If there are other wives, this eighth must be shared between them. Other members of the family, such as parents and siblings, are also entitled to a slice. Since the estate is unlikely to be very big to begin with (the Qur'an requires all debts to be paid before splitting up what's left), a widow with no family would likely be condemned to poverty, forced to rely on charity. Naturally this is unworkable in a nuclear family oriented society where the woman cannot depend on anybody else to support her and if she does not have a job. Again, it is the extended family that is supposed to protect and support her.
Women in Islam often keep their maiden names after marriage. This is touted as a great boon for women by Muslim writers, but in fact I suspect it reflects the fact that the family a woman comes from is more important to her identity than the family she marries into. As mentioned above, divorce is not at all uncommon in Muslim societies, and one reason is that the nuclear family is not the basis of society. It's who you're related to, not who you marry, that is most important.
Women have little legal recourse against abusive husbands in most Muslim countries, as the Qur'an explicitly gives the husband the right to "discipline" her (4:34: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great."). Instead she is supposed to depend on the members of her own family to make her concerns known by, for example, having her father or brother give her husband a good talking-to, or even to take her home if things are bad enough. Well, if there is no family to do this on her behalf, what is she supposed to do? She may be completely at his mercy, with no support except from domestic-violence organizations (if they exist).
There is of course no use for a single, unmarried woman living by herself in Islamic law, which presupposes that she is under the control and guardianship of some male relative. She is not supposed to travel by herself, marry herself, or even to support herself--that's the job of her husband or father. In the West, the problem has developed of single Western women converting to Islam, which renders them without an "acceptable" male guardian, who must be Muslim, and there is no Islamic government to act as their guardian. In such cases, the imam of the mosque will often become her guardian, at least for the purpose of marriage, which is strongly encouraged, as it integrates them into the Muslim community.
A society in which women support themselves and do not depend on a husband or father to do so is contrary to Muslim law, which explicitly requires the husband to support his wife (which makes him the undisputed ruler of his household). A somewhat less patriarchal system is hard for Islamic law to really accept, since the whole structure of Islamic society is predicated on such a system.
Knowing the paternity of children is absolutely essential in Islamic law, since children in Islamic law belong to the father, and any opportunity for the birth of children outside marriage (in which paternity may be in doubt) is very strictly controlled. The penalties for sex outside of marriage are very harsh, and usually the females bear the brunt of what may be an outrageous double standard, where boys may do pretty much whatever they like with prostitutes and foreign women, but girls absolutely must remain virgin until marriage, or risk an honor killing or some other such horrific fate. Women are often strictly separated from men in Islamic societies, which prevents undesirable sexual contact with males other than the husband or family. After divorce or the death of her husband, a woman must wait three menstrual periods to make sure that she is not pregnant (the 'iddah) before she can marry again, so she will not be able to pass off the other husband's child as the new husband's. A mother who bears a child out of wedlock is typically treated very harshly, and in such a case the father does not assume paternity of the child under any circumstances; he or she belongs only to the mother's family, since the father is in doubt. Since the child belongs to the father and belongs to his family or tribe, it is absolutely imperative that the father be known for certain. Adoption is banned in Islamic law; if a man wants to bring up a child not his own, the child must retain the name of his or her biological father and does not count as a child of the man; if the child is a boy, the women of the family are supposed to start covering themselves in his presence when he reaches manhood, since he is not an immediate family member that they cannot marry, such as a brother, uncle or son; if a girl, it would be acceptable for the men of the family to marry her.
Fatima Mernissi discusses accounts of pre-Islamic Arab society in her book (Chapter 3, "Sex and Marriage Before Islam"), which seems to have been at least partially matriarchal and matrilineal. Children often belonged to the mother, which made paternity far less important; women usually depended on their own families for support, not her husband; women could easily divorce husbands (for example, one way was to make the tent face the opposite direction; when the husband came back and saw the back of the tent facing him, he knew he was divorced). There are accounts in the Muslim sources of pre-Islamic Arab women having more than one husband, and when a child was born, she would decide which man most looked like the child and declare him to be the father. Polygyny (a man having more than one wife) seems to have been rare, even nonexistent among the Arabs before Islam (when Muhammad was married to Khadija, his first wife, who was older and much wealthier than he, he took no other wife; after she died, and he had made the hijra to Medina to found the first Islamic community, he married at least eleven times, mostly to women far younger than he). Islam seems to have taken away many rights that Arab women were used to having, as the following story seems to show.
Fascinatingly, it is said that when Muhammad died, six women from the Yemen, upon hearing the news, began to celebrate, singing and dancing and painting their hands with henna, and were joined by twenty others. The Muslim authorities denounced them as "harlots" and "prostitutes," although in fact they seem to have came from all walks of life, and they demanded that the revolt be put down with no mercy. So much for Muhammad's "liberation" of women in Islam!
Muslims often complain that things that seem unjust in Islam, such as honor killings and the like, are really just Arab or Persian or some other ethnic tradition with no basis in Islam itself. The problem is, much of it is in fact codified by the Shari'ah, such as the patriarchal family, and it presupposes a certain societal structure and attitudes that directly lead to such atrocities, such as the absolute insistence on female virginity, to the point where women and girls are killed by their families if even suspected of being alone with a man. Also, if Islam is a "complete way of life," as so many Muslims boast, not just a "mere religion" separated from the rest of life, how can anything that takes place in Islamic society have no basis in Islam, which, as mentioned, encompasses every element of life and is the very basis of the society? Who decides what is Islam and what is tradition?
It would be nice if Muslims could really and honestly look at Shari'ah as something open to change, to be looked at with fresh eyes and reinterpreted according to societal needs, instead of proclaiming it the absolute Will of Allah, which must not be changed in any way, regardless of how things have changed from the 7th century. This leads to stagnation, which leads to death. Change is life.
Qur'anic Verses on Inheritance (somewhat dry and confusing, but important):
4:11
Allah enjoins you concerning your children: The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females; then if they
are more than two females, they shall have two-thirds of what the deceased has left, and if there is one, she shall have the half;
and as for his parents, each of them shall have the sixth of what he has left if he has a child, but if he has no child and (only) his
two parents inherit him, then his mother shall have the third; but if he has brothers, then his mother shall have the sixth after (the
payment of) a bequest he may have bequeathed or a debt; your parents and your children, you know not which of them is the
nearer to you in usefulness; this is an ordinance from Allah: Surely Allah is Knowing, Wise.
4:12
And you shall have half of what your wives leave if they have no child, but if they have a child, then you shall have a
fourth of what they leave after (payment of) any bequest they may have bequeathed or a debt; and they shall have the fourth of
what you leave if you have no child, but if you have a child then they shall have the eighth of what you leave after (payment of) a
bequest you may have bequeathed or a debt; and if a man or a woman leaves property to be inherited by neither parents nor
offspring, and he (or she) has a brother or a sister, then each of them two shall have the sixth, but if they are more than that,
they shall be sharers in the third after (payment of) any bequest that may have been bequeathed or a debt that does not harm
(others); this is an ordinance from Allah: and Allah is Knowing, Forbearing.
4:176
They ask you for a decision of the law. Say: Allah gives you a decision concerning the person who has neither
parents nor offspring; if a man dies (and) he has no son and he has a sister, she shall have half of what he leaves, and he shall be
her heir she has no son; but if there be two (sisters), they shall have two-thirds of what he leaves; and if there are brethren, men
and women, then the male shall have the like of the portion of two females; Allah makes clear to you, lest you err; and Allah
knows all things.
After spending some time reading Fatima Mernissi's Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society, it occurred to me just how much Islamic law, as well as Arab and other Muslim cultures, depend on the extended family, as opposed to the nuclear family. Islamic law depends so much on this that Shari'ah often just isn't practicable in societies not based extended families. I've never really seen this topic discussed anywhere, so I'll try to take a stab at it.
The primary unit in the US and much of the West is the nuclear family, which is generally Mom/Dad and children (yes, there are variations, but let's keep this simple!). Islamic societies are generally based on the extended family, which stretches over three or more generations, and usually has a male head (patriarch) that everybody defers to, even other men with their own families. These families function as a safety net in societies where social programs are inadequate or nonexistent. Instead of the aged getting Social Security, for example, the younger members of the family are supposed to support and care for the respected elders. The various members usually work together and often help each other out, whether with money, time, or effort. They have also often been the source of prospective spouses for children (the frequent practice of marriage to cousins or more distant relatives), which keeps the wealth in the family, even in case of divorce.
But it isn't all positive: the negative is that this kind of societal organization in which the extended family or tribe is paramount is generally not very conductive to individual freedom. One stays where one's family is all one's life, usually, and one has to know one's place in the family. The family can be very "persuasive" by threatening to "disown" someone, since that takes away both family connectios and the safety net, in effect leaving the person naked to the cruel blows of fate, especially women, who are usually very much dependent on their families.
It also means that arranged marriages are the order of the day, since the main purpose of such unions is making alliances between families, or within the same family (the lack of freedom again). Love, which so often disregards societal barriers ("love conquers all") is discouraged, since it would destroy the carefully-planned marriage alliances and strict societal rules. And since the family or tribe is paramount, holding together nuclear families does not seem to be quite as high a priority, since individual marriages are not the bedrock of society. Contrary to Muslim propaganda, which points disapprovingly at high Western divorce rates while insinuating that divorce is very uncommon in Muslim lands (not stating actual statistics, mind you!), divorce is not at all uncommon in Muslim lands, especially when the husband can divorce his wife at will, without giving any reason, just by saying "I divorce you" three times. Contrast this with the lengthy legal proceedings in an American divorce. In addition, consider that if the rates are lower, one big reason is that while most divorces in the US are initiated by women, in Islam the ability of the woman to divorce is considerably more difficult than that of the man; she has to have an acceptable reason to do so and she must give back the dowry her husband gave her, which makes the claim by Muslim writers that the dowry is purely the property of the woman to do with as she wills something of a cruel joke; she will in fact have to hold on to it in case she wants a divorce.
Muslim family law implicitly requires an extended family. The many rules about women presuppose that she has a family that will support her. In the case of divorce, women are supposed to be given a small amount of maintenance (usually for a year, sometimes only three months) from the husband, as well as some child support until the child comes of age (or is taken by the father), but there is nothing like the American concept of alimony. In addition, as mentioned, if the woman initiated the divorce, she is generally obliged to give back the dowry that her husband gave her, so she may be left with nothing. She is supposed to go back to her extended family, who will take care of her and perhaps her children. Since Muslim women are often unemployed and/or poorly educated, if she doesn't have a family she is basically being thrown out onto the street! And since in the West the extended family often doesn't exist, or is unable or unwilling to help, this law would in practice be unbelievably cruel without the cushioning provided by the extended family.
Another case is inheritance. Women, according to the Qur'an, receive half the amout of men (4:11-12; the verses are at the end of this entry). This is justified by claiming that it is the man who supports the family, while the woman's money is her own, to do with as she pleases. However, this already presupposes that every woman will have a man or men to support her, whether a husband, brother, father, uncle, or son. If she has nobody to depend on, this law condemns her to poverty. If a woman's husband dies and she has children, she is only entitled to one-eighth of the inheritance (the husband would get one-fourth of his wife's estate in this situation); if there are no children she gets a quarter. If there are other wives, this eighth must be shared between them. Other members of the family, such as parents and siblings, are also entitled to a slice. Since the estate is unlikely to be very big to begin with (the Qur'an requires all debts to be paid before splitting up what's left), a widow with no family would likely be condemned to poverty, forced to rely on charity. Naturally this is unworkable in a nuclear family oriented society where the woman cannot depend on anybody else to support her and if she does not have a job. Again, it is the extended family that is supposed to protect and support her.
Women in Islam often keep their maiden names after marriage. This is touted as a great boon for women by Muslim writers, but in fact I suspect it reflects the fact that the family a woman comes from is more important to her identity than the family she marries into. As mentioned above, divorce is not at all uncommon in Muslim societies, and one reason is that the nuclear family is not the basis of society. It's who you're related to, not who you marry, that is most important.
Women have little legal recourse against abusive husbands in most Muslim countries, as the Qur'an explicitly gives the husband the right to "discipline" her (4:34: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great."). Instead she is supposed to depend on the members of her own family to make her concerns known by, for example, having her father or brother give her husband a good talking-to, or even to take her home if things are bad enough. Well, if there is no family to do this on her behalf, what is she supposed to do? She may be completely at his mercy, with no support except from domestic-violence organizations (if they exist).
There is of course no use for a single, unmarried woman living by herself in Islamic law, which presupposes that she is under the control and guardianship of some male relative. She is not supposed to travel by herself, marry herself, or even to support herself--that's the job of her husband or father. In the West, the problem has developed of single Western women converting to Islam, which renders them without an "acceptable" male guardian, who must be Muslim, and there is no Islamic government to act as their guardian. In such cases, the imam of the mosque will often become her guardian, at least for the purpose of marriage, which is strongly encouraged, as it integrates them into the Muslim community.
A society in which women support themselves and do not depend on a husband or father to do so is contrary to Muslim law, which explicitly requires the husband to support his wife (which makes him the undisputed ruler of his household). A somewhat less patriarchal system is hard for Islamic law to really accept, since the whole structure of Islamic society is predicated on such a system.
Knowing the paternity of children is absolutely essential in Islamic law, since children in Islamic law belong to the father, and any opportunity for the birth of children outside marriage (in which paternity may be in doubt) is very strictly controlled. The penalties for sex outside of marriage are very harsh, and usually the females bear the brunt of what may be an outrageous double standard, where boys may do pretty much whatever they like with prostitutes and foreign women, but girls absolutely must remain virgin until marriage, or risk an honor killing or some other such horrific fate. Women are often strictly separated from men in Islamic societies, which prevents undesirable sexual contact with males other than the husband or family. After divorce or the death of her husband, a woman must wait three menstrual periods to make sure that she is not pregnant (the 'iddah) before she can marry again, so she will not be able to pass off the other husband's child as the new husband's. A mother who bears a child out of wedlock is typically treated very harshly, and in such a case the father does not assume paternity of the child under any circumstances; he or she belongs only to the mother's family, since the father is in doubt. Since the child belongs to the father and belongs to his family or tribe, it is absolutely imperative that the father be known for certain. Adoption is banned in Islamic law; if a man wants to bring up a child not his own, the child must retain the name of his or her biological father and does not count as a child of the man; if the child is a boy, the women of the family are supposed to start covering themselves in his presence when he reaches manhood, since he is not an immediate family member that they cannot marry, such as a brother, uncle or son; if a girl, it would be acceptable for the men of the family to marry her.
Fatima Mernissi discusses accounts of pre-Islamic Arab society in her book (Chapter 3, "Sex and Marriage Before Islam"), which seems to have been at least partially matriarchal and matrilineal. Children often belonged to the mother, which made paternity far less important; women usually depended on their own families for support, not her husband; women could easily divorce husbands (for example, one way was to make the tent face the opposite direction; when the husband came back and saw the back of the tent facing him, he knew he was divorced). There are accounts in the Muslim sources of pre-Islamic Arab women having more than one husband, and when a child was born, she would decide which man most looked like the child and declare him to be the father. Polygyny (a man having more than one wife) seems to have been rare, even nonexistent among the Arabs before Islam (when Muhammad was married to Khadija, his first wife, who was older and much wealthier than he, he took no other wife; after she died, and he had made the hijra to Medina to found the first Islamic community, he married at least eleven times, mostly to women far younger than he). Islam seems to have taken away many rights that Arab women were used to having, as the following story seems to show.
Fascinatingly, it is said that when Muhammad died, six women from the Yemen, upon hearing the news, began to celebrate, singing and dancing and painting their hands with henna, and were joined by twenty others. The Muslim authorities denounced them as "harlots" and "prostitutes," although in fact they seem to have came from all walks of life, and they demanded that the revolt be put down with no mercy. So much for Muhammad's "liberation" of women in Islam!
Muslims often complain that things that seem unjust in Islam, such as honor killings and the like, are really just Arab or Persian or some other ethnic tradition with no basis in Islam itself. The problem is, much of it is in fact codified by the Shari'ah, such as the patriarchal family, and it presupposes a certain societal structure and attitudes that directly lead to such atrocities, such as the absolute insistence on female virginity, to the point where women and girls are killed by their families if even suspected of being alone with a man. Also, if Islam is a "complete way of life," as so many Muslims boast, not just a "mere religion" separated from the rest of life, how can anything that takes place in Islamic society have no basis in Islam, which, as mentioned, encompasses every element of life and is the very basis of the society? Who decides what is Islam and what is tradition?
It would be nice if Muslims could really and honestly look at Shari'ah as something open to change, to be looked at with fresh eyes and reinterpreted according to societal needs, instead of proclaiming it the absolute Will of Allah, which must not be changed in any way, regardless of how things have changed from the 7th century. This leads to stagnation, which leads to death. Change is life.
Qur'anic Verses on Inheritance (somewhat dry and confusing, but important):
4:11
Allah enjoins you concerning your children: The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females; then if they
are more than two females, they shall have two-thirds of what the deceased has left, and if there is one, she shall have the half;
and as for his parents, each of them shall have the sixth of what he has left if he has a child, but if he has no child and (only) his
two parents inherit him, then his mother shall have the third; but if he has brothers, then his mother shall have the sixth after (the
payment of) a bequest he may have bequeathed or a debt; your parents and your children, you know not which of them is the
nearer to you in usefulness; this is an ordinance from Allah: Surely Allah is Knowing, Wise.
4:12
And you shall have half of what your wives leave if they have no child, but if they have a child, then you shall have a
fourth of what they leave after (payment of) any bequest they may have bequeathed or a debt; and they shall have the fourth of
what you leave if you have no child, but if you have a child then they shall have the eighth of what you leave after (payment of) a
bequest you may have bequeathed or a debt; and if a man or a woman leaves property to be inherited by neither parents nor
offspring, and he (or she) has a brother or a sister, then each of them two shall have the sixth, but if they are more than that,
they shall be sharers in the third after (payment of) any bequest that may have been bequeathed or a debt that does not harm
(others); this is an ordinance from Allah: and Allah is Knowing, Forbearing.
4:176
They ask you for a decision of the law. Say: Allah gives you a decision concerning the person who has neither
parents nor offspring; if a man dies (and) he has no son and he has a sister, she shall have half of what he leaves, and he shall be
her heir she has no son; but if there be two (sisters), they shall have two-thirds of what he leaves; and if there are brethren, men
and women, then the male shall have the like of the portion of two females; Allah makes clear to you, lest you err; and Allah
knows all things.