Minute with a Muslim #333 – Men and Women Are Submissive To Allah

I was at one of the local colleges recently and a non Muslim asked if Muslim women are submissive.

And my first response was, Well, what do you mean mean women are different, like some have different personalities, and etc, etc. But there is this perception that Muslim women might, you know, be kind of

inferior or subordinate to their husbands. And while that might be true, and in the sense that

we believe that both men and women are complementary, and each of them, you know, we are given marriage as kind of like a, a realm of worship, right to strive in our marriages to serve a lot. I don't think that it's very accurate or useful to think about it in terms of submissive or not submissive, you go to the Hadith and you see, you know, the Hadith where Aisha Madiha Han has he slaps the prophets hand sallallahu alayhi wa sallam knocks food out of his hand actually hits the hand of the prophets of Allah all of a sudden. And she herself confesses and another Hadith that the Prophet either he says a Saddam never ever laid his hand on any woman, or child or anybody except on

the battlefield. Right. So, you know,

I thought that was interesting. And then you have other narrations that, that show that there was a certain culture in Mecca, that maybe the Meccan Muslims were used to it. And then when they move to Medina, they found that some of the cultural things that they were used to had changed. For example, they found that the women of Medina were, you know, much more willing to talk back to their husbands. And this was, if it had been something that we're, you know, everybody was striving for a lot. You know, that's what we don't want to. We don't want to falsely characterize it. It wasn't like people were being crude or people we're being

problematic. But we also want to note that the Prophet alayhi, salatu salam didn't stop, you know, certain cultural differences. He didn't, you know, at one point, stop everybody and say, hey, look, this is something everybody's doing and it's wrong. Right? Yes. For marriage, a husband is supposed to try to be in the service of his wife, and he pleases a lot by that. And the wife is supposed to be in the service of her husband, and she pleases a lot by that. And if both of them are able to capture that kind of ethic, then the whole marriage flourishes. Right? Instead of what we have today and a lot of marriage counseling that comes to my desk. When every party is trying to squeeze or

grab, you know, everything they can from the other person. Well, why aren't you doing this for me? Well, why aren't you doing this for me? Well, what about my mind my mind? If both parties have that orientation towards it, then it's just kind of like a race to the bottom. Okay, you've squeezed out from your other from your other half like you got what you wanted. But at what cost now they hate your guts. Right? So in Islam, yeah. So I mean, I would definitely reject the the idea that women are submissive in Islam, but at the same sense, we're submissive to Allah. Everybody's submissive to Allah and the men are supposed to be submissive to Allah. The women are supposed to be submissive to

Allah. And our relationships are something that are actually there for us to worship our Creator by and improve ourselves.