Foreword

An anthology of the Quran, prepared by English Orientalist Edward William Lane (1801-1876), was published in 1843. It carried a foreword by way of introduction to Islamic teaching, which, inter alia, stated that “the fatal point in Islam is the degradation of woman.”¹

This ill-considered observation gained such currency that it was commonly repeated as if it were an established fact. Almost a century and a half has elapsed since then, and, with the passage of time, this conviction has, if anything, deepened. It has even been quoted as if it were gospel truth in a judgement passed in the Supreme Court of India by the Chief Justice of India, Mr. Chandra Chud, in the now notorious Muhammad Ahmad-Shah Bano divorce case.

To interpret the Islamic concept of woman as “degradation” of woman is to distort the actual issue. Islam has never asserted that woman is inferior to man: it has only made the point that woman is differently constituted.

Let us suppose that a doctor tells his patient that his eye is a very delicate organ of the body, to be treated gently and with great care, unlike his fingernails, which can be cut and filed, if necessary. The doctor’s instruction does not mean that he is degrading the eye vis-à-vis the nail. He is only pointing out the difference between the nail and the eye.

If all the laws relating to men and women in Islam are based on this fundamental reality that men and women are of two different sexes, it is because distinctive differences between man and woman are established biological facts.

This being so, male and female spheres of activity cannot be one and the same, whether in family or in social life. There must necessarily be differences in the kind of work that they do, and also in their places of work.

All the revealed scriptures have held the same concept of woman, and thousands of years have passed without its ever having been doubted. It is only in Modern times that it has been challenged by the women’s liberation movement, which holds that men and women are alike in every respect and that both should, therefore, be given equal opportunities.

This movement first reared its head in Britain in the 18th century, later spreading across the whole of Europe and America. In 1772, a certain impetus was given to the movement by the publication of a book by Mary Wollstonecraft, entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Women. The gist of this book was that women should receive the same treatment as men in education, work opportunities and politics, and the same moral standards should be applied to both sexes.² Such was the zeal and fervour with which this movement was launched that it spread far and wide. Both men and women participated in it, and even talking about the differences between man and woman was brushed aside as being a sign of backwardness. By the beginning of the 20th century, this trend of thought had established its hold all over the world, and laws came to be made or modified accordingly. All doors were to be thrown open to men and women alike.

In practice, however, this experiment has met with utter failure. Even after a struggle of almost 200 years, women have failed to achieve a status equal to that of men. They are almost as backward today as they were before the launching of the “women’s lib” movement. The only practical result has been that women have come out of the home and are to be seen everywhere in the company of men. By degrees they have lost their femininity without having achieved the goal of equal status with men in every domain for which they paid this very high price.

The failure of women’s liberation has led to wide-ranging research being carried out on this topic, employing strictly scientific methods. Finally, the patent biological differences between men and women have been scientifically proved. These differences have all along been a reason for women’s failure to find an equal place in every department of life. Where philosophers had cast doubts upon the religious concept of women—quite erroneously as it turned out—scientific findings have now reestablished this concept’s veracity.

Now the question arises as to why it is that once science has supported the religious concept of man and woman as being the right one, the allegation continues to be made that Islam has ‘degraded’ woman. For instance, the Indian freedom fighter, S.M. Joshi, who was interviewed in connection with a government-sponsored scheme to record the voices of freedom fighters for posterity, stated that “the Shariat of the Muslims and the Manusmruti of the Hindus—followed by both Communities for centuries—were equally socially reactionary.”³

Such remarks are made so indiscriminately and so frequently that it is high time we concerned ourselves less with our own sense of injury and more with the possible root causes. The main reason is that the results of research on the differences between man and woman have remained only an academic finding and have not yet formed the basis of a popular intellectual revolution. The social penetration of these ideas will have to take place in the same way as monotheism replaced polytheism, that is, through the kind of intellectual revolution set in motion by the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions with the special succour of God.

Such an intellectual revolution in our own times is certainly not far-fetched, since modern science has provided all the arguments in its favour. It is only a question now of sufficient number of believers engaging themselves wholeheartedly in the dissemination of those findings for a popular, intellectual revolution to take place. It is my earnest desire that the following chapters should provide the inspiration for this history-making task.

Wahiduddin Khan
May 19, 1994

The Islamic Centre
C29, Nizamuddin West
New Delhi

Notes

1. Edward William Lane, Selections from Kuran (London 1982), p. XC.

2. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984), Vol. 10, p. 733.

3. The Times of India, April 6, 1986.