Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 2, No. 3 | QUR’ANIC VERSES* And Some Contemporary Commentaries (low bandwidth)

This verse deals only with “certain types of financial contracts” and was “not meant to be applied as a general rule.” Also, the circumstances it originally addressed are obsolete because Muslim women are now familiar with finances and contracts.

Amina Wadud, Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1999).

“Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females.” Qur’an 4:11-12

“The inheritance system follows the distribution of responsibilities within the [extended] family cell” and “would have been an abusive system if it had denied women their right to property and to ownership as Western law did until the twentieth century...[But Muslim] women did have a right to inheritance and to property...That, of course, constitutes the ultimate form of independence.”

Maysam J. al-Faruqi, in Windows of Faith: Muslim Women Scholar-Activists in North America (Syracuse University Press, 2000; Gisela Webb, ed).

“Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means...As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next), refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them.” Qur’an 4:34

This verse “seems to hang like a black cloud over the status of women in Islam.” But the male responsibility here is only financial (because he gets more inheritance) and does not mean that men are “teacher/disciplinarians” of women, which would “imply that women are dingbats who don’t have the sense to know right from wrong unless their husband beats them.”

Uzma Mazhar, See the Big Picture: 4:34-35, http://www.crescentlife.com/thisthat/see%20the%20big%20picture4_34.htm

The Arabic word translated here as “beat” has many other meanings and the more appropriate one here is “separate” or “part.” Otherwise, the verse contradicts the next verse, which advises couples experiencing marital problems to attempt reconciliation with the help of family relatives.

Mohammed Abdul Malek, A Study of the Qur’an, http://members.aol.com/Mamalek2/

References to Women Outside The Qur’an

“Women should not travel more than three days without a muhrim.”

Hadith reported by Abdullah Ibn Omar in the Bukhari collection, Book #1024

[Ed. Note: The Sahih Al-Bukhari collection is a compilation of the sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad.]

For a woman, a muhrim is her husband or a male family member she cannot marry, such as her father or brother. This hadith was written at a time when traveling long distances “could be very dangerous since roads were full of bandits...Today a woman can travel halfway across the world by airplane in 19 hours, and remain safely among large groups of people at all times. Yet this hadith continues to be used, even by a few Muslim leaders in large U.S. cities, to prevent Muslim women from going from one city to another...or from leaving the doorways of their apartments, alone.”

Sharifa Alkhateeb, Ending Domestic Violence in Muslim Families,
http://www.crescentlife.com/psychissues/ending_domestic_violence_in_muslim_families.htm

Additional Commentary

Writing about the universality of the Qur’an, the scholar Mohamed Talbi refers to a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that the Qur’an is “God’s Banquet,” to which everyone is invited, but not obligated to attend—people should come to him out of love, not compulsion. Talbi also writes that unlike some other religions, Islam does not blame Eve for Adam’s alienation from God. There was no temptress, no concept of original sin—hence, a woman did not cause the fall of humanity. There were no serpents dividing men and women. In the Qur’an, Talbi points out, God created man and woman as zawjaha, a couple, one entity with the same soul. Talbi questions the interpretation of a line in the Qur’an that is often used to justify men having authority over women…The Qur’an asks that both men and women live decent, virtuous lives and that both enjoy the same justice.

Vartan Gregorian, Islam: A Mosaic, Not A Monolith (Brookings Institution Press, 2003).

*Qur’anic verses are from an edition based on a translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (King Fahd Printing Complex, Saudi Arabia).