Women & Gender in Islam: Price of Honor; Nine Parts of Desire

• Published in: On the issues 1995, Vol.4 (2), p.45
• Main Author: Shelley, Martha
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Islam; Muslims; Religion
• ISSN: 0895-6014

[Leila Ahmed] begins with evidence that ancient Middle Eastern women held favored, even privileged positions in society and that the dominant pre-Islamic religions involved worship of a mother goddess. The long, slow decline in women's status paralleled the rise of urban states and warrior cultures. Women's reproductive capacity became an asset that enabled communities to increase their population and augment the labor force. As a result, competing tribes often "stole" women from each other. Ahmed then advances to the rise of Islam in the seventh century. Many Muslims and non-Muslims credit early Islam with improving the status of women, singling out the Prophet Muhammad's abolition of female infanticide. Yet women in some Middle Eastern cultures, Ahmed asserts, had been considerably better off before Islam. Unlike their sisters in adjacent empires, Arab women could occupy a variety of roles. Muhammad's first wife was a wealthy merchant who spent her money to support his contemplative life; women participated in battle; priestesses served the pagan deities of Arabia; free women married and divorced at will, sometimes polyandrously. Ahmed acknowledges the misogynist brutality of modern fundamentalist regimes (e.g., Iran, Afghanistan), but instead of scrapping Islam, she demands that it be reinterpreted. She points out that the patriarchal fundamentalist position is not the only legitimate one, any more than it is for Christianity, and discerns two voices in Islam's religious texts. Islam's popular appeal, she argues, lies in the ethical and spiritual message expressed in many Koranic verses: "Lo! Men who surrender unto Allah, and women who surrender, and men who believe and women who believe... and men who guard their modesty and women who guard their modesty... Allah hath prepared for them forgiveness and a vast reward." This egalitarian voice is heard by people who look to their religious tradition for social justice. But there's another voice - a patriarchal, legalistic one: "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)... As for those from who 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." Ahmed calls for a grassroots, native Islamic feminism that acknowledges and accepts the influence of Western ideas - in particular, the genies of democracy and human right