Women and Islam

Women and Islam: An Historical and Theological Inquiry is a book by Fatima Mernissi that discussed the patriarchal and elite corruption of Islam that turned into into an exemplar of the suppression of women.

Notes

"Ample historical evidence portrays women in the Prophet's Medina raising their heads from slavery and violence to claim their right to join, as equal participants, in the making, of their Arab history. Women fled aristocratic tribal Mecca by the thousands to enter Medina, the Prophet's city in the seventh century, because Islam promised equality and dignity for all, for men and women, masters and servants. Every woman who came to Medina when the Prophet was the political leader of Muslims could gain access to full citizenship. the status of sahabi, Companion of the Prophet, Muslims can take pride that in their language they have the feminine of that word, sahabiyat, women who enjoyed the right to enter into the councils of the Muslim umma, to speak freely to its Prophet-leader, to dispute with the men: to fight for their happiness, and to be involved in the management of military and political affairs. The evidence is there in the works of religious history, in the biographical details of sahabiyat by the thousand who bui]t Muslim society side by side with their male counterparts."

"When I finished writing this book I had come to understand one thing: if women's rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men, it is neither because of the Koran nor the Prophet, nor the Islamic tradition, but simply because those rights conflict with the interests of a male eHte. The elite faction is trying to convince us that their egotistic, highly subjective, and mediocre view of culture and society has a sacred basis. But if there is one thing that the women and men of the late twentieth century who have an awareness and enjoyment of history can be sure of, it is that Islam was not sent from heaven to foster egotism and mediocrity. It came to sustain the people of the Arabian desert lands, to encourage them to achieve higher spiritual goals and equality for all, in spite of poverty and the daily conflict between the weak and the powerful. "

"In the essays in his most recent book, Taqwin al-'aql al-'arabi (The Process of the Formation of Arab Thought), he demonstrates with scathing elegance that the most important heritage our ancestors bequeathed us is a system of censorship which is so omniscient and efficacious, in which politics and religion collaborate so closely, that reason (al-'aql) comes to be confused with this censorship itself. 3 Al-Jabiri clarifies for us one of the mysteries of the contemporary scene: the incredible presence of religion and the imams in the domain of the production of ideas. Why is it not, one may ask, the scientists who dominate this field and are seen as authoritative by the .. politicians"?- since our most urgent problem is mastery of that technology that has fatally turned us into consumers in a state of the most total passivity. Al-Jabiri gives copious historical examples to prove that in IsJam the po1iticians quickly realized that they could only authoritatively manage the present by using the past as a sacred standard. According to him. the famous asr al-tadwi? {the era of putting the religious texts into writing) was the begmning of an institutionalization of censorship. "

"The Prophet...preached in AD 610 a message so revolutionary that the aristocracy forced him into exile."

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