Women are like Captives in Salafists’ Doctrine
By Reina Faraj
(Translated from Arabic by Ghulam Rasool, New Age Islam)
Salafists’ misogynist
discourses are on the rise in the wake of the political changes going on
in the Arab countries. In fact, they drive their exclusionary vision
from the male-biased Fiqh (jurisprudence) established by their
imams.
The Salafist ideology
seeks to isolate women from public life and restrict their role to the
family matters. It considers women to be a bone of contention depriving
them of all political rights including the right to vote. As far women’s
right to hold public office, it is deemed unacceptable in Salafists’
ideology because they endorse the concept of “stewardship” over the
concept of the state. Today’s Salafists hold basic premises that seek to
impose restrictions on the full citizenship of women.
One of the pioneers of
Salafism and the 14th century jurist Ibn-e- Taymiyyah is the biggest
example of how Salafis tend to victimize and marginalize women. He has
left his influence on the present day Salafists. Expressing his views
about various issues related to women, such as alimony, menstruation,
prayer and dowry, he was so greatly worried about the growing influence
of women in his time that he decreed whoever obeys women destroys his
country. Another Salafi Sheik Ibn-e Uthaymeen quotes a similar statement
made by Sheik Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab (1703–1791) from his book
“Kitab al-Tauheed”. He writes interpreting a Qaul (statement) of the
pioneer of Wahabism, Sheik Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab as follows: “Some
people use the term Syeda [feminine of Sayed meaning: mister] when
referring to a woman. For instance, they say that some things are
specific to men and other things to Syedas. But this is a distortion of
the reality because only a man is deemed a Sayed. Because the Prophet
said, “The women are your helpers,” which means that they are captives
and the prophet also said that a man is the ‘‘shepherd of his family and
responsible for his flock.’’ So the singular form should be imra’a
[woman] and the plural form should be nisa’ (women) because only a man
is a Syed and women are men’s captives. So calling a woman Sayeda is a
distortion of reality.”
Of Late, during the
Arab Spring movements, today’s Salafists went beyond the early
Salafists’ misogynist teachings. They tried hard to marginalize women
socially and politically. To further this nefarious end, Some Salafi
Muftis like the Egyptian Salafi sheikh Abu Islam issued strange Fatwas
justifying the rape of the women in Tahrir Square under the pretext that
it was punishment for their unveiling themselves. Another Salafist
cleric Abu Ishak al-Hawini went to the extent of likening a woman’s face
to her genitals, in his bid to impose on women the Niqab [full face
veil]. In fact, these Salafists consider women to be nothing short of
sex objects that are a permanent threat to society in their view.
But the question
arises: does this Salafist discourse reflect the growing female public
presence? And why can’t the Salafists put up with women’s changing role
in society?
It is pretty
self-evident that the Salafist ideology is not an Islamic ideology
prevailing in the Arab world, although it controls many satellite
channels that shape their followers’ minds. We cannot forget the Islamic
interpretive battles that were fought by Islamic revivalists such as
Imam Muhammad Abduhu, Rifa’a Rafi al-Tahtawi, Tahir al-Haddad and other
Muslim reformists.
Muslim women played a
great part throughout the Islamic history and never lived in complete
isolation. If we trace back the forgotten Islamic history, we will find
that women had pivotal roles to play in various fields, including
religious knowledge. A female Muslim jurist Fatima al-Samarqandi, who
lived in Aleppo in the second century AH, studied the Islamic Hanafi
fiqh (jurisprudence) from her father and memorized all the Hadiths that
her father had collected. They issued religious rulings and edicts
together.
If we go much deeper
in Islamic history, we will come across many more enlightened Muslim
ladies. Women who lived in the 16th century had great deal of knowledge
about Islamic law. One of them reached even the rank of Faqeeha (Islamic
jurist). Similarly, the Sufi woman of Damascus Aisha al-Ba’oniyyah bint
Yusuf (d. 1516) went to Cairo, where she got permission to issue
jurisprudential opinions and teach. Another female scholar Hajima bint
Hayyi al-Awsabiyyah (d. 701) was considered to be one of the most
important jurists in Damascus. She taught many men and won the trust of
Caliph Abdul Malik bin Marwan, whom she regularly met in a mosque of
Damascus. (Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures: Methodologies,
Paradigms and Sources, Brill Academic 2003)
Despite such
historical evidences confirming the role of women as Islamic scholars,
jurists, mystics and rulers, Salafis seem to be hell bent on their
male-biased doctrine, simply ignoring the fact that women’s conditions
have changed. They are turning more and more towards their patriarchal
jurisprudence in a bid to control women, perhaps because they threaten
their masculinity. It is not easy for the Salafists to change their
ideology. Because they are obsessed with the supposed sedition present
within the female body and seek to reduce and control it by issuing
Fatwas.
The remarkable thing
in the Egyptian Salafist scene following the January 2011 revolution was
a controversy over the running of veiled women for parliament. Some
Salafist parties nominated women on their electoral lists based on a
fatwa issued by Yasser Burhami, the head of Salafists in Alexandria. He
stated in his fatwa that: “Even though nominating women is an evil, but
it is less harmful than allowing into parliament those who want to
change Article 2 of the constitution, especially now when the election
law requires every electoral list to include at least one woman.” He
added saying, “In principle, this is not allowed. But Fatwas in our
times are not absolute. We have said that it is not forbidden for
Islamist parties, including the Al-Nour party, to nominate women with a
view to prevent the evil of leaving parliament for liberals and
secularists, who will make a constitution that would fight Islam,
restrict the Islamic Dawah work, and even stop it and punish people for
it.”
Being extremely
obsessed with women, Salafists are trying hard to keep them away from
public arena because women have been increasingly active and engaged in
the Arab revolutions, especially in the revolts of Egypt and Tunisia. It
is this “phobia” against active women that pushes Salafists to tighten
their control over them by misusing the Islamic terms of Halal and Haram
(permissible and forbidden). It is worth mentioning that most Fatwas
issued in Arab countries are directly related to women’s body, something
that constitutes fertile ground for Salafist imagination.
The Salafists’
doctrine is quite antithetical to the notion of equality enunciated in
the Holy Quran. They have gone away far from the objectives of Islamic
religious texts and are clashing with the enlightened reformist
jurisprudence regarding women. Their “Bedouin Islam,” as described by
Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali, is incapable to deal with historical
transformations because it is occupied by an exclusionary ideology.
URL for Arabic article:
http://www.newageislam.com/arabic-section/reina-faraj-رينا-فرج/women-are-like-captives-in-salafists’-doctrine-السلفيون--النساء-بمنزلة-الأسير/d/11198
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