Jeffrey Lang – Men and Womens Relations in Islam
AI: Summary ©
The Islam program is being hosted by professor Jeffrey Lang, who will answer questions and dedicate his time to his two children. The program will be answered by viewers and will be addressed by the host. The speakers discuss the historical context of Islam, including the use of words like "has been revealed" and "will" in the context of men and women roles, the importance of faith in the future, and the importance of multiple marriages. They also mention the importance of divorce and the need for family representatives to represent their views.
AI: Summary ©
In Islam.
My name is Wahid Bushan,
and I'll be your host for tonight's program.
We have with us here, professor Jeffrey Lang.
Doctor Lang is a professor of math at
the University of Kansas.
He's also has been a Muslim for since
1982,
and he has been active
in introducing Islam to non Muslims for many
years.
Before we start tonight's program,
we would like
to congratulate
all Muslims for the coming of the month
of Ramadan.
During this month Muslims,
first fast for 30 to for 30 days
from sun from dawn to sunset.
This means that they don't
eat or drink or even smoke cigarettes for
this period of time.
Doctor Lang will speak for about 30 minutes,
and
he will have questions from our viewers.
Please prepare your questions,
and,
and please call in. Thank you. Doctor?
Well,
primarily, a Muslim
is supposed to dedicate really all of his
efforts, however insignificant, to to God.
But, if I may, I would like to
at least secondarily,
dedicate this effort to my 2 children, my
2 daughters, Jamila and Sarah.
When I
first became a Muslim,
I was
bubbling with excitement
about my newfound faith, like most people that
convert to almost any religion.
I was filled with a great sense of
power and joy and peace that I had
never experienced before.
And so I decided to
celebrate my newfound faith with people that I
knew would understand.
And so I decided to venture to the
mosque or the masjid,
the place where Muslims gather to pray. I
thought I would venture there for my first
time.
And so I prepared myself
meticulously.
I made sure I looked right, that I
had rehearsed the prayers carefully. I had
paid great attention to every single detail, make
sure I was just right. I was so
excited about going.
And on my way to the Islamic Center
in my community, I I thought of how
many times I had gone to the church
and had never really experienced such a feeling.
And this one time when I'm going to
the place where Muslims pray, I'm filled with
this anticipation
and this
and a little bit of apprehension because it
was a new experience for me.
When I,
got to the Islamic Center and walked in
the mosque,
a single room mosque,
I received a strange reaction. The congregation
at first looked at me with,
just quickly glanced at me and glanced away.
And they seemed to me to be obviously
uncomfortable with my being there.
So I made my way towards the back
of the room,
so that I wouldn't really be stand out
in the front and make people feel uncomfortable.
As the congregation continued to filter in, I
noticed that all of the congregation consisted of
men.
And I,
also noticed that as they came in, they
would shake each other's hands and embrace each
other and and tell jokes and laugh and
discuss politics.
But while I sat in the back, no
one seemed to really notice I was there.
If they did, they quickly made an effort
not to notice me. They sort of glanced
and looked away, and I felt as if
I had some sort
of disease or something.
In any case, we quickly prayed. The prayer
only last 4 or 5 minutes, and the
congregation began to leave. And on my way
out, I tried to make eye contact with
somebody on my way out, just so that
I could get a conversation going and break
the ice.
But it didn't happen.
But I still felt that I should go
back another time or 2 just so that
I could break the ice and and, maybe
being a stranger in a very tight community,
that was the reason why that happened.
And so I
returned a time again and a time after
that. But each time, the experience was almost
exactly the same. And so I finally decided
never to go back again.
Now this experience I've just told you about
was not mine at all. It was my
experience on entering the Muslim community. It was
almost a 180 degree turn on the one
I just described.
But this is an experience of a good
friend of mine, a a Muslim lady in,
California,
who converted when she was near 50 years
old.
She, was divorced for many years, has 2
Christian children,
became a Muslim because she was thoroughly convinced
that the Quran was the word of God
and that she had to follow it.
But the essential question is, the essential question
is, was this woman's experience
necessary from a religious standpoint, from the standpoint
of faith?
That's sort of the type of question I'm
raising today. So keep that in mind as
I
go through take today's discussion, today's lecture.
Among the last words,
on the prophet's
lips, may God's peace be upon him, prophet
Mohammed's lips, was that in his farewell pilgrimage,
he told his congregation, a huge congregation, that
among the things they had to be very
careful to do was to protect the rights
of women,
as well as men.
And many people today are asking whether how
well we as a community have heeded that
command.
Islam insists on unifying man's temporal and spiritual
lives.
So therefore, it is and always has been
a culture producing force.
Perhaps more so than any other religion.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that
non Muslims, as well as Muslims, have often
identified
various Muslim cultures
with the religion Islam itself.
But this, I feel, is a mistake.
For one cannot equate God's will
with a man's or man's interpretation and understanding
of it.
Islam professes itself to be a guidance to
men and women for all times and places,
transcending historical and racial boundaries.
If this is indeed the case, and almost
every Muslim will swear that it is, then
Islam could never be a a call to
return to the past, or to simply duplicate
cultural forms that are centuries old.
The Muslim is fully confident that as long
as he remains
within the very broad guidelines of the Quran
and the prophet's explicit commands concerning it,
he is completely free to exercise his god
given gift of rational thought to adapt to
life's ever changing challenges and problems.
In the lifetime of Muhammad,
may God bless him, he was about to
send one of his companions to assume the
governorship of Yemen.
And so he asked him, how will you
judge on matters? And the companion replied,
I will judge by the Quran.
And then the prophet asked, well, if you
cannot find the matter in the Quran.
And his companion again replied, then I'll judge
by your and the Arabic word he used
was sunnah. I'll judge by your way, your
example.
And the prophet said, then if you cannot
can't find the matter there.
Then he finally said, then I will use
my rational judgment, my irrational thought, the companion
replied.
And the prophet then praised him and commended
him,
and was pleased with him, and sent him
on his task of assuming assuming the governorship.
This is exactly the way Muslims are to
attack life's problems.
They consult the Quran, the life example of
the prophet,
And then they,
use their God given gift of rational thought
to attack life's daily problems and adapt to
life's
constant changes.
Keeping this in mind, the purpose of this
lecture is to begin to discuss the prospects
for Muslim communities of today and in the
future, in terms of male and female relations.
At times, giving special attention that's why on
the speaker. At times, giving special attention to
the situation of Muslims living in the western
nations.
In the process, I will attempt to avoid
discussing any particular culture's application or misapplication of
the message of the Quran, however you feel
about it. Or for that matter, any particular
scholar's opinion, however great a figure he or
she was.
Because human endeavor is always subject to limitation,
And so I will refer for the most
part only to the Quran and the life
example of the prophet.
Also,
I will avoid a long discussion, as is
often the case in these type of lectures,
concerning the state of women in Christian, Jewish,
Persian, and Roman communities at the time of
this revelation, the revelation of the Quran.
Let me just say, we of the West
know only too well that women have struggled
a very long way, often painfully,
since those times.
And we, our societies, may have some way
to go yet.
But I will draw parallels with other cultures
when I'm talking about Islam,
but only when an obvious one exists, an
immediate and obvious one exists.
Today's historians and cultural anthropologists
agree that for the 7th cent and I
underline the word today, agree that for the
7th century at least, the message of Islam
was extremely progressive,
and that many rights guaranteed Muslim women by
Islam have been lost through centuries of pre
Islamic and foreign cultural invasion.
2 good references on this are Women in
Contemporary Muslim Society by Jane I Smith. Get
that in most libraries. And Middle Eastern Muslim
Women Speak by Franayah and Birzegon.
In terms of Islam's position on the equality
of men and women, the Arabian Peninsula was
perhaps the ideal location for the birthplace of
this message 14 centuries ago.
For Arab women in Mohammed's Arabia, even before
Islam, were relatively liberated, especially compared to the
cultures around them.
Men and women both, in pre Islamic Arabia,
were able to to propose marriage.
Both were able to divorce, to own property,
and participate in battle. And both men and
women often took part in the politics of
their day. But many of these privileges
depended
on a tribe and social position.
So it was not these privileges were not
universal. But these rights and many more were
extended to all men and women and crystallized
into law by the Quran and the sayings
of the prophet.
Oftentimes I'm asked, exactly what is the position
of the Quran on the role of women?
And the question always baffles me because it's
very difficult
to
differentiate between male and female roles based only
on the Quran,
or solely on the Quran.
Verses like the following, rather, are,
typical in the Quran, in which they address
men and women equally.
Consider the following verse.
Says, lo, men who surrender themselves to God,
and women who surrender, and men who believe,
and women who believe,
and men who obey, and women who obey
God, and men who speak the truth, and
women who speak the truth, and men who
are humble, and women who are humble, and
men who give in charity, and women who
give in charity. Notice, it's just saying that
exactly the same requirements are necessary for men
and women. Same privileges and requirements.
And men who fast, and women who fast,
and men who guard their modesty, and women
who guard their modesty, and men who remember
God much, and women who remember,
God has prepared for them forgiveness and a
vast reward.
That verse makes it
perfectly clear for anyone that may have doubted
it, that Islam believes or the Quran tells
us that men and women are spiritually equal
and that they have the same duties and
responsibilities
and reward awaiting them in the hereafter if
they do their best to live by God's
will.
Note that this verse states that heaven awaits
both sexes. Heaven as we come to think
of it in
in the states. I mention this because a
century
just before this, church conferences were being held
in Rome to decide if women were human
beings or if they possessed a soul.
So
this for this just shows you that Islam
really was,
at least this message was ahead of its
time.
Almost always, when the Quran
does order men to act in a certain
way,
it explicitly calls on women to do the
same. Sometimes with slight modifications because of obvious
differences.
But more often than not, the Quran simply
addresses all believers with the words, oh you
who believe, in this message and in God.
Some examples of the former, where the Quran
addresses men in one way and then addresses
women in a similar way,
acknowledging slight differences.
Let me begin with 1. In the 24th
Surah, or chapter in the Quran,
that's a rough translation.
In the 30th verse it says, and tell
the believing men to lower something of their
gaze and guard their chastity.
This will be purer for them, for God
is aware of the things they work. And
in the very next verse, it says, and
tell the believing woman that they lower something
of their gaze and guard their private parts.
And goes on from there.
The interesting thing I found about this verse
when I first read through the Quran, when
I was first considering Islam, is that,
when the prophet, peace be upon him, interpreted
this verse, what does he mean by lowering
something of your gaze and to guard your
chastity?
The lowering of something of your gaze refers
to the fact that you should not take
the other * as a * object, to
guide the to regard them only as objects
of lust.
What I found
interesting, being a person from the West, about
this verse, that the 2 verses combined tell
you that both men and women have a
tendency to take the opposite * as an
object of lust, to look at the opposite
* in a lustful way. They sometimes consider
the opposite * as * objects.
Now that may not seem striking in light
of today's ideas, but you have to remember
that through many periods in Western history, women
were not considered to have any sexual desire
at all. They were considered to be asexual
for throughout many,
long periods of our history. Even when I
was a undergraduate student at the University of
Connecticut in in courses on psychology and sociology,
this issue of whether men and women had
equal or or compact or similar sexual desires
was being addressed.
But this verse makes it perfectly clear that
men and women both have a tendency to
lust for each other and to look at
each other in a sexual way.
Even, in terms of some of the prophet's
sayings on this issue,
he said one time to his community,
referring to the men, he said, your wives
have a right over you.
Your wives have a right over you. And
he was addressing the issue of sexual rights
and sexual privileges. And on this issue, he
said, your wives have a right over you.
And it's well known that most Western commentators,
when they comment on Islam, they oftentimes say
that
your the men have these rights, sexual rights
over women. They very seldom also refer to
the fact that in Islam, women have sexual
rights over men.
In another verse, in the 4th chapter of
the Quran, the 34th verse, it says, and
if you fear rebellion on the part of
your wives,
then it tells men to go on and
how to deal with that situation. The rebellion
being referred to is, is,
in terms of suppose your spouse is about
to commit a serious crime,
a very serious crime. How do you go
about dealing with that? And actually, in the
last lecture, I talked about this verse in
detail.
Surprisingly enough, some people felt that this meant
that a woman had to submit herself to
the dictatorial commands of her husband from this
verse. Because it says, if you fear rebellion
on the part of your wives, husbands deal
with it this way. And they felt the
rebellion was a rebellion against your husband.
But actually, that's not what the Quran could
possibly mean because in verse,
128 of the same surah, it tells the
wives in exactly the same word words. And
And if a woman fears rebellion on the
part of your husband,
or that he may turn away from her.
And then it says how she should deal
with it among the past among some of
the things she could do. She might have
to divorce him. But in any case, the
Quran says that,
if a man fears rebellion on the part
of his wife, and if a woman fears
rebellion on the part of your husband, this
is the way you deal with it. So
it can possibly be just rebellion against your
spouse, or you'd have total chaos in the
family relationship.
The rebellion being referred to is obviously rebellion
against God. And from the prophet's sayings on
in this regard, refers to if either spouse
is potentially going to commit a serious criminal
act.
But notice it addresses both sexes here. Another
interesting verse is in Quran,
the 9th chapter verse 71.
It says, and the believing men and the
believing women,
they are guardians of each other. Guardians or
protectors
of each other.
It's an interesting verse because pre Islamic Arabian
society, although women were somewhat liberated,
was still very much
a chivalrous society.
And if you said to men that they
were the guardians and protectors of women, I
think they would accept this rather easily.
But if you said to them that women
were also their guardians and protectors,
I think that would be difficult to swallow.
It's even a little bit difficult to swallow
today, even in Western society. We always think
of the man as being the protector and
guardian, and not the woman.
And it's very apparent just from watching
movies and TV shows.
But in this verse, it tells men and
women both that they are guardians and protectors
of each other. Another interesting verse, this is
the last one I'll cite in this regard,
says in, in the Quran, we have created
you, oh mankind.
We have created you of a single spirit,
and from it created its mate.
And notice it doesn't say which is created
first or gets into the issue of who
came first, who came last. This verse
isolates a single topic, that both men and
women are created
from a single
spirit. That they are spiritually equal, made of
the same spiritual essence.
It's beautiful because Quran will often do this.
It'll take away all those other issues that
people sometimes get themselves into a long debate
about who came first, how did they how
did it happen exactly. And isolates the really
important issue that men and women are spiritually
equal.
In their tendencies to do wrong, no differentiation
is made between the sexes in the Quran.
The Quran in the well known allegory of
the first man and first woman,
says that both were equally responsible for the
first sin.
When the Quran does address either * singularly,
in the context of men's and women's roles,
it's often to put an end to to
obviously unjust cultural practices
that had existed in some Arabian
communities.
Tribes.
For example, female insanticide,
infanticide.
The custom of ending marital relations with a
wife and not allowing her to divorce. The
practice of excluding female relatives from inheritance.
These were practiced in some of the tribes
in pre Islamic Arabia, but these were, ended.
This practice was ended and stopped by the
Quran.
Although the Quran and sayings of Mohammed,
may God bless him, did not exclude women
from any career,
It must be
said that both of these sources do mention
the importance of motherhood
and the respect that society should give that
position. Hazam really does put a very strong,
stress on parenthood,
and especially,
gives great admiration to the role of the
mother in that regard.
There are numerous sayings of the prophet in
this regard.
Rather than just repeat them here, I'll tell
you that they appear in a book that's
easily obtainable from any Islamic center in your
community. The book is the status of women
in Islam by Jamal Bedawi, doctor Jamal Bedawi.
And you could look up many sayings of
the prophet in that regard. I'll isolate my
intention on the Quran.
In the Quran,
chapter 46 verse 15, after telling men that
they men and women that they must surrender
themselves to God
and that he should be there, there's only
one God, then goes on with the next
command. It says, and we have commended unto
mankind
that he be kind to his parents.
And which parent does it single out? This
is invariably the way the Quran approaches this
sort of issue. And we have commended unto
mankind that he be kind to his parents.
And which parents roll does a single out?
For his mother bore him painfully, and painfully
she gave birth to him.
In the Quran 3114,
again, almost a verse of the same type.
It says, and we have enjoined upon mankind
kindness towards his parents.
And which parent does, again, single out for
respect and admiration? And this is typical of,
Quran and the sayings of the prophet. Says
in the very next verse, for his mother
bore him by bearing strain upon
strain, and his other dependence on her
lasted 2 years. So be grateful towards me
and towards your parents. And remember that with
me, that is with God, is all journeys
end.
The interesting thing about these verses and the
sayings of the prophet
is that it reminds mankind
of his utter dependence on God by drawing
a parallel to his utter dependence on his
mother.
Why is that, striking?
Well, if and also, I'd like just like
to say that the prophet, many times, compared
the love of God to mankind to the
love of a mother for her little baby.
It's interesting for those of us who grew
up in Western societies in the Jewish Christian
tradition, because invariably we always think of God,
God's love as the love of the father
for his creation. We think of it as
the love of the father,
male figure rather than a female figure. And
although in Islam, God has no *, he
is transcendent, nothing can be compared to him
from the Muslim standpoint.
Nonetheless,
it's interesting that on many occasions, the love
of God for his creation was compared to
the love of a woman, a love of
a mother for her children.
Many early scholars of Islam, based on the
life example of the prophet, felt that it
was a husband's duty
to supply his family with a housekeeper, if
at all financially possible. And if not, to
share in the housework, and certainly the childcare.
In appreciation of the fact that raising children
is an exhausting and extremely important job, and
should be shared by both parents.
It's interesting that, when one of the prophet's
wives, Ayesha, was asked what was her husband's
behavior, what was the prophet's behavior in his
in her house,
she responded by saying, he served his wife.
And she meant that he did housework for
her. She said that that means he did
housework at home.
I wonder how many of us do that
today.
In the United States,
my wife is often referred to incorrectly
as Mrs. Lang.
I say incorrectly because Muslim women do not
take the name of their husbands,
but keep their family names after marriage.
Part of the reason for this is that
Muslim women are to maintain their own economic
identity and independence.
As I already stated, Islam guarantees all men
and women the right to own property
and the right to own businesses.
Rights that were not extended to Western women
until the last century.
A verse from the Quran that very briefly
describes the economics of the family is the
following.
It appears in the 4th surah or chapter
verse 34.
It says men are responsible
for the full maintenance of women.
Actually, it says men are to maintain
women, but the verb isn't in an intensive
form, linguists tell me. So it's best translated
as men are responsible for the full maintenance
of women. For god has given of his
bounty more to one than the other.
So they spend of their wealth on their
families.
I'll go back to the verse in a
minute, but
curiously, this verse has been used by orientalists,
and surprisingly by some Muslims, to argue that
the Quran states that men are somehow innately
superior
to women.
But this verse just sum summarizes a well
known Islamic arrangement,
marriage arrangement.
For in marriage, the entire responsibility
for the economic needs of the family falls
upon the husband.
Any money his wife earns, any money his
wife inherits or obtains as part of her
marriage contract,
remains entirely hers, and she is not encouraged
to share it with her family. I mean,
she can if she so desires, but she's
not encouraged to do it.
She's encouraged to remain economically independent. While it
is true that woman will usually receive 1
half the inheritance of her brother,
For example, if my father dies and I
was in a Muslim family, I would usually
receive twice the inheritance of my sister.
The man must share his portion of his
inheritance with his wife, his family, and any
needy near relatives, especially needy woman relatives, women
relatives.
So if one rereads this verse, it is
obvious that there is no indication that one
* is superior to another. It's talking about
family economics.
Again, I'll just read it. It says men
are fully responsible for the maintenance of women,
for God has given of his bounty more
to one than the other, especially in this
inheritance issue. So men spend of their wealth
on their family. So they spend of their
wealth on their families.
Just to let you know for sure that
this is referring to inheritance, maybe I should
have began with the 32nd verse that says,
don't envy the fact. It says, do not
covet the bounties which god has bestowed more
abundantly
on some of you than on others. And
then it goes on to tell you because,
well, men it's true that men inherit twice
what women it refers to inheritance relations, right,
inheritance,
arrangements right after that.
In the very next verse, it tells you
why people shouldn't covet the bounties that God
has bestowed more than one on the other,
because it says, because men are charged with
the full care of their families, and women
remain economically
independent. The beauty of this verse, and I've
always found this when I first went through
the Quran, was it doesn't really state which
one God has bestowed more bounties on one
than the other. If you read the sequence,
that in the balance of things, yes, God
has bestowed some bounties more on men than
on women. For example, inheritance.
But on the other hand, since men become
women have a much greater degree of economic
independence, he has bestowed more bound more bounties
on women than on men. And many of
the early companions of the prophet used to
protest that this verse favored women economically
rather than men.
But yet, the Quran tells both sexes,
at least as I understand it, that they
should not feel jealous because one has certain
advantages over over the other.
Because in the balance, as the Quran invariably
does in the issues of men and women's
relations and roles, it it balances it all.
It makes it all come out equal in
the end.
The purpose of this economic arrangement is to
ensure that a married woman is not entirely
dependent financially
on her husband,
and to truly balance the economic
Islam emphasizes the universe unity of purpose in
man's physical and spiritual lives. This is a
consistent theme in this religion. And so it
is not surprising
that this faith encourages men and women both
to involve themselves in the political life of
the Muslim community.
In the time of
in the time of,
the prophet, peace be upon him, and 1st
century after his
death, the nearest thing to voting for or
endorsing a potential political leader of the Islamic
State was a vote of confidence one would
give to a potential candidate. And I say,
candidate in quotes
because, it's not a candidate in the Western
sense of of the term. They don't go
around kissing babies and
well, it's just different.
The Arabic word for this act is to
give one's ba'yah.
I have a difficult time pronouncing it. There's
letters in there that I'm not accustomed to.
But it's to give one's vote, or vote
of confidence, or vote of allegiance.
For example,
when Mohammed died, the Muslim state had to
determine his successor.
At a community meeting to disc to decide
this, Omar, one of the prophet's nearest companions,
rose up and nominated another one of his,
nearest companions, Abu Bakr, with the words, I
give my vote of allegiance or my baia
to Abu
Bakr. And then, various members of the community
did so in kind, giving their vote of
allegiance to him, and some didn't. But he
obtained the majority, and so he became the
leader, the next leader of the Muslim state.
This giving of a bayah, or oath of
allegiance, was given by both men and women.
When the Quran refers to this act of
giving this vote, it refers to it in
relation to women in the 60th Sura 12th
verse.
In this verse, the prophet is told to
accept women's oath of allegiance as long as
they satisfy when they come into the community,
as long as they satisfy certain minimal, requirements.
Muslim women were much involved in the political
life of their community in the 1st century
of Islam, and less so in the centuries
after that.
During but then,
during certain times, they became more involved, and
then in and out, in and out in
this involvement.
During the reign of Omar, there was a
legislative body called the Committee to Tie and
Untie.
And this legislative body consisted of both men
and women.
During the reign of Uthman,
there was some question as to his assignment
of government posts, as to his assignment of
people to government positions in posts.
So he vowed that he would not appoint
anyone new to office unless he first received
approval from, among others,
the prophet's wives.
He wouldn't appoint anyone else to office unless
he first received approval from,
some members of the community, and in particular,
the prophet's wives.
The brilliant Aisha, the prophet's youngest wife, who
is famous for her bold political endeavors,
especially after the reign of Omar.
She even led an army into battle, the
famous battle of the camel. And although she
later regretted fighting against Ali, she felt that
that she had made a mistake in that
regard, She never regretted assuming a position of
leadership.
All Muslims are compelled by the Quran and
by the prophet's sayings to seek knowledge and
learning. And throughout the history of Islam, women
have certainly made their mark.
One must again mention Aisha, the prophet's wife
and daughter of Abu Bakr, who is renowned
for her knowledge of the sayings of Mohammed,
and was taken during her lifetime to be
an expert on pre Islamic Arabic poetry, and
an authority
on medicine and
on Islamic law.
But in general, women did not, in the
early years
of Islam, play that great a part in
the development of the natural sciences. But in
the extremely important science of hadith,
the sayings in history of, Mohammed,
from which much of Islamic law is derived,
women played a very prominent role. The number
of great women traditionists,
as they were called, are too many for
me to list here. Great women scholars in
this regard. But their names could be found
in many works on the and the word
in Arabic is Asma'a'arajal,
which officially means names of the men, traditionists,
but it includes in its in these works
the names of women as well. And a
good,
English reference for this is Hadith literature by
doctor Mohammad Zubair Siddiqui.
And both of these well, let me just
talk about this for a little while. These
women scholars, and their numbers were many, took
seats as students as well as teachers in
public educational
institutions. Large public educational institutions that were attended
by both men and women,
especially during the 1st 9 centuries of Islam.
They attended general classes
jointly with men traditionists.
And in turn, delivered lectures to large classes,
which were attended by men as well as
women students in these large public educational institutions.
The colophons of many manuscripts, which are still
preserved in many libraries today,
show them both as students and teachers of
some of the most eminent male experts on
this subject. Let me explain that last statement.
What do I mean by the colophons?
After, in those days, through the first through
the first many centuries of Islam, when you,
sufficiently learned or passed a subject being taught
by a particular teacher,
then he took your book, which covered that
subject, and he signed not only his name
to prove that you passed according to his
standards, but he assigned
his name, the name of his teacher, the
name of his teacher's teacher, the name of
his teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher, all the way
back perhaps into the very first generations of
the Muslim community. And these colophons, these,
signatures exist today.
And if you look at them today, you'll
see among those names, you'll oftentimes see something
like this. A name of a man, a
name of a man, then a name of
a woman, then a name of a man,
then a name of a woman, then a
woman, then a man. Proving without beyond the
shadow of a doubt that men and women
played a very,
strong part in the development of this very
essential science to his to the Islam Muslim
community.
And that men and women were both teachers
and students
at these institutions.
Well, what I have attempted to do today,
I'm running out of time, is not so
much to define
Muslim female and male roles.
Because in fact, I don't really feel that
Islam does this so much. But I have
tried to demonstrate that within the broad guidelines
of this faith and the spirit of this
revelation, there are infinite possibilities for the progress
and development of the Muslim community. Certainly, man's
intellectual growth throughout the century has endorsed Islam.
The fundamental rights that we've come to recognize
that all men and women do and must
possess, and even some we have not yet
realized,
were emphasized and insisted on 14 centuries ago
in the revelation received and communicated by prophet
Mohammed.
But we Muslims have, in many ways, lost
the spirit of this message. And so we
must fully commit ourselves to the future. We
must offer our perspective
and add our voices to the effort of
solving the many problems that exist inside and
outside our community today.
This is an essential aspect of faith, and
we have neglected it for too long.
We have to strive towards the Quran's descriptions
of those who truly surrender themselves to God.
It says in the
Quran, you are the best of people ever
created for your fellow man.
For you insist on that which is right,
and you forbid that which is wrong. And
why do you do that? You do that
out of a highest moral standard, because you
believe in 1 God.
And, thank you. Wahid.
Thank you very much, doctor.
Now
we are going to go,
and take a break for a couple of
minutes, and we'll be back with your questions.
So please I urge you to prepare your
questions,
and call in with those two numbers.
Thank you.
Do we have a break now?
Let's get a question from the studio
audience.
Thank you.
Well, now, we'll be waiting for the phone
calls, and, it's like I said, I urge
you please to call in call in those
numbers.
And first of all, I will have a
question for doctor Lang.
Doctor, as far as the woman's divorce situation
and the man,
can women divorce
a man? Oh, can women divorce a man?
Well, just about every
book on Islamic law states that women can
divorce a man. The terminology for it is
a little bit different than the terminology,
for when a man divorces a woman. I
guess the Arabic word for it is
khul or something like this. I have a
difficult time pronouncing it. They often spell it
phonetically as khul.
K h u l. Sort of like a
khul. But in any case, it refers to
the fact that, women do have the right
to divorce their husbands. In the lifetime of
the prophet, a woman came to the prophet,
peace be upon him, and said,
said to him, I'd like to
divorce my husband, because I don't think I
could stay within the bounds of this religion
if I'm to stay married to
him. And his response was, well, has he
done anything wrong?
Is there is there in some way he's
deficient as a husband? She said, no. He's
has excellent character. It's just that I don't
love him. I don't I don't feel that
I can remain married to him and remain
a good
person, good Muslim.
And he said, fine. Then return to him
the,
marriage gift that he had given you, and,
you are then divorced. And this is really
the the model that all jurors have followed.
There's other traditions almost to the same effect
that all jurors have followed, up until now.
And they agree that Muslim women do have
a full right of divorce.
The
the terrible thing is is that in some
Muslim communities around the world, this right is
denied
women or extra
qualifications. A very difficult and strenuous
standards are imposed before they would will allow
a Muslim woman to get a divorce. Many
Muslim people feel that a Muslim woman does
not have the right to divorce unless her
husband grants her that right, which means she
doesn't have a right at all. But in
fact,
virtually all jurists, Muslim jurists, and all and
it's very clear from the Quran that women
have this right. As a matter of fact,
the one verse I referred to, if women
fear rebellion
on the part of their husband, what should
they do? 1 of the one of the
options she has is to divorce him. And
there's another verse too in chapter
2 of the Quran, approximately 2/28,
thereabouts.
Again, it talks about how a woman could
obtain her divorce. So it's very clear from
the Quran and the sayings of the prophet,
peace be upon him, that this is a
fundamental right of women, at least from my
perspective.
And, I guess, I also understand that, this,
the divorce itself
from, between a man and a woman that
there has to be some
reason or a good reason or a good
cause to do so. Right? I mean, it's
not just because,
she's tired of him or something like that,
that she has to Well, it depends.
See,
certainly in Islam,
the prophet, peace be upon him, one time
said, of all the things that God has
permitted, the one that he hates the most
is is divorce. So Muslims are not encouraged
to get a divorce or to just when
things aren't working out so well, they get
a divorce.
Islam really has
set many
ways in which a person many procedures a
person should go through before just jumping out
of divorce. Try to get, go see marriage
counseling.
Try to
get family representatives
to represent your view, to to his family's
represent to a representative from his family.
So every effort is made to try to
keep the marriage together, especially for the sake
of the children. Not so much the sake
of the adults, but for the sake of
the children. But nonetheless, like I was saying,
if a woman really or a man really
feels that this
marriage is not working out, and that it's
really destroying him or herself as a person,
then they do have the right to divorce.
So, you know,
there has to be a compelling reason, but
there could be a reason as simple as
that. I'm gonna shift you a little bit
doctor on, one of the most
common questions being asked to asked to Muslims,
and, especially the Muslims in Islam, which is,
when the Quran,
basically,
the, the,
the, the idea of a woman, a man
can marry, 4 women,
which is a polygamy, I assume. Yes. Yes.
And, what do you think of that? And,
what do you think this
Well, we must have just liked to have
a good time. No.
I'm joking.
It's it's not that we just like to
have a good time.
I always begin by the question he raised
was the issue of polygamy, the marriage of
more than one wife, the marriage of up
to as many as 4 by a man.
And strangely enough, as I read books about
this issue, men's and women's roles, and I
attended lectures by great speakers on this subject,
I always whenever a person in the audience
raised this question, how can a Muslim man
marry 4 women?
The response is almost always something like this.
Well, maybe the husband will get,
maybe, he can't satisfy himself with 1 wife,
Or maybe his wife will become sick, and
he needs to have a woman in his
life. Or he his wife can't have children,
and he needs wants to have a child.
Of course, these reasons
aren't really that,
compelling, these explanations, because if you just switch
the genders of the words you're using there,
you get obvious counterexamples.
Like, well, what if a woman can't get
satisfied with 1 man, etcetera.
This is not the issue,
that the Quran this really shows you the
power of the Qurans
of the Quran over the thought processes of
men and and women, of human beings. Because
when the Quran addresses this issue
of the marriage of more than one,
wife,
the crown begins by not addressing the needs
of men. It doesn't even address the needs
of women. It begins by addressing the needs
of children. It's an important point. The Muslim
community had just suffered a very very severe
losses in a battle. Their numbers were not
that great to begin with. And after this
battle, the number of men as compared to
the number of women was extremely small.
There were many widows and many orphaned children
that the Muslim state had to do something
about.
So this verse was revealed in this way.
It said,
and if you fear for the orphan
doesn't say if you fear for the needs
of men or women. If you fear for
the orphan children, then marry, then it next
mentions the needs of women. Then marry from
among their women.
2, 3, or 4. But if you feel
that you will not be just, then marry
only 1.
See. So the verse
is not really concerned with the needs of
men or women. It's concerned with the needs
of children,
and the potential for those children growing up
without a father, and without a family environment,
throughout the rest of their lives. It's also
concerned secondarily with the needs of women, because
there's gonna be a huge number of women
in situations like that, that are gonna have
to go for their entire lives without a
husband or without a mate.
And there doesn't seem to be any other
conceivable solution to that problem. So Islam, the
beauty of the Quran is this,
especially in and it does this in many
places, but not just this. It takes an
institution
that existed in pre Islamic Arabia that actually
had some very many bad sides. Sides. The
issue of multiple marriages like this, multiple wives.
It takes that institution, and rather than obliterate
it entirely,
redirects it, keeps the institution, but redirects it
to a
good end.
How to deal with the needs of,
women,
widows,
and orphan children, in a situation where there
are few men to marry
marry from among them. And the Quran, in
in its typical fashion, and this is true
of many other aspects of Islam, it takes
a pre Islamic Arabian institution
that was actually, it's sometimes evil, and turns
it into something that is really quite good.
It should also be noted too that no
other scripture, at least to my knowledge,
forbids the marriage of more than one
wife. If you take, for example, the Old
Testament,
all of Solomon had, what, 700 wives, 300
concubines.
The New Testament,
though it's Jesus is very hard on, the
the
on divorce.
I know of no statement where he prohibited,
more a marriage of more than one wife.
But,
the beauty of, like I said, of Islam
is it deals with a very real problem
that faces many societies. For example, Germany after
World War 2. Some people say Californian society
today, where the number of eligible men as
compared to the number of eligible women is
there's a great difference in how to deal
with the potential of all these people going
without husbands, and more importantly, these children going
without fathers.
This is the way the Quran deals with
it. And I can't think of any other
conceivable
solution.
Just quickly, and to follow-up on that, is
that, is there any basis as far as,
Judaism or Christianity? I think you mentioned something
in here. But as far as,
this is happening before,
that did happen in Christianity, and Jesus had
really nothing said about it. Well, polygamy had
existed in both Christian and Jewish communities for
centuries, even,
after the after the time of Jesus. And
little by little, it came to be ruled
out.
Paul, in the in the gospel not in
the gospel, in the letters, said that it's
actually better not to marry at all if
you can avoid it.
And,
so people felt, for one reason or another,
little by little, gradually, the marriage of 1
man and one wife became to be came
to be the rule.
Even in Islam, one might argue that it's
certainly preferable to marry just one wife.
And it's also common sense that that's preferable.
In the verse in the Quran
that I just mentioned to you, it begins
with a conditional statement. If you fear for
the orphan, then do this. But make sure
you are just. The very fact that the
verse is so conditional and adds so many
conditions to this,
to this,
stipulate so many conditions in this regard,
makes you know immediately that under normal circumstances,
one man, one wife is perhaps the ideal.
There's another verse in Surah Al Noor that
was revealed, oh, a few years after this
one that tells both men and women in
the community that they should marry the single
in their community.
And in the very next verse, it says,
not even let financial matters sway you from
that. So under normal circumstances,
the marriage of 1 man and 1 wife
is, even from an Islamic standpoint, at least
as I understand it, is is certainly
preferable.
And and nobody is dying to get widows
and children underneath their roof.
But the fact of the matter is, is
that this is a way of dealing with,
illness that a society or a tragedy,
or a pain that the society is suffering.
And of course, at least from my standpoint,
if if you don't
if you're not sick, then don't take the
medicine. But if you
are, you know, use the cure. And this
is how
you know, it's not like a picnic for
men. Many people think of it that way.
But the way this verse was revealed, the
men were told to take orphans. Maybe I'm
going too long about this verse. But they
were told to take orphans and chill and
and widows underneath their roof, and start providing
for them. In actuality, in those days, men
weren't jumping at that idea. Many of them
tried to find their way out of that.
And then shortly after that, a verse was
they felt, well, I can't truly love them
all equally.
And then a verse was revealed, well, you
will never be truly just, no matter how
much that is your heart's desire, but at
least you must be equitable.
So it told men that, although they would
probably like to get out of this situation,
they really can't. This was considered a burden
for men, not a
big pleasure thing. I went too long with
that anyway. I'm sorry. Well, let's go ahead
and try.