ISLAM AND THE "EMANCIPATION" OF THE MUSLIM WOMAN

Today no Muslim country is uncontaminated with a fierce propaganda campaign against Purdah as “reactionary obscurantism” and insisting upon female “emancipation” as essential for the economic and social development of our community.

As Dr. Muhammad Muqqadam, Vice Chancellor of Tehran University was reported to have stated in The Pakistan Times, Lahore, October 19, 1967: “No country can be modernized unless its women gain complete emancipation.” He said that in the Orient where modernization had come late, the people were still reluctant to liberate themselves from outdated and traditional modes of thought.

“Unless we are willing to go along with the rest of the world, we will not survive as living nations,” he said. The role of women in the developing countries of Asia and Africa, he said, was clear.

They must participate in the social, cultural and political life of the country. The evils attendant upon modernization, he insisted, were less than some people were inclined to imagine.

The symposium held in Lahore on August 1967 on “Female Emancipation in the Two Decades of Pakistan’s Existence,” organized by the Pakistan Council for National Integration was an outstanding example of this same viewpoint.

92 If we claim to be Muslims and insist that Islam is the foundation of the ideology of our country, is it not our duty to know what our faith teaches us on this subject?

Regarding the notion of female “equality,” verse 34 in Surah an-Nisa tells us that men are in charge of women because God has made the former to excel the latter and because they spend of their property for the support of women.

This means that no Muslim woman should be obliged to earn her livelihood unless she possesses no property, has lost her husband through death or divorce and has no other male relative to provide for her. The Quran teaches that the husband is both master and friend to his wife; his duty is to treat her with justice, love and kindness and in turn the wife must be loyal and obedient and owe him her implicit trust unless he happens to be of bad character. The Quran describes the husband to be a degree above the wife not to make him a cruel tyrant but for the preservation of the family.

In families where the wife is economically independent, the husband automatically loses his role as head of the household. Consequently, when the mother dominates, the children lose all respect for the father.

Surah an-Nur, verses 30-31, forbid Muslim men to look at strange women or Muslim women at strange men and commands men and women alike to cast their gaze down. Women must wear head veils and draw them over their bosoms and not display their beauty to anyone except their husband and close family relations within the prohibited degrees of marriage. This verse by implication bans painting the face with cosmetics or any kind of dress designed for sex-appeal.

103 ed for sex-appeal. The Hadith tell us that when Asma, the sister of Hazrat Ayesha, once appeared wearing transparent clothes, the Holy Prophet rebuked her saying that once a woman reaches puberty, nothing of her should be exposed except her face, and hands.

In Surah al-Ahzab, verse 59, Allah admonishes the wives of the Holy Prophet to stay in their homes and forbade Muslim women to go out for pleasure adorned in finery and dress or behave in public in any manner that attracts attention to themselves.

They can converse freely only with close family relations within the prohibited degrees of marriage, their husbands, their servants or their slaves.

Verse 53 of this same Surah orders the believers to show due respect for the wives of the Prophet by requesting of them from behind a curtain.

Verse 59 says that when Muslim women find it necessary to go out, they should wear an outergarment enveloping the entire body so that they may be recognized as virtuous believers and not be molested. The Quran orders the wives of the Holy Prophet, and by implication all Muslim women, when they find it necessary to meet strange men, not to behave in a flirtatious manner as would arouse amorous desire but to utter straight-forward and customary speech. The Hadith forbid Muslim women to be alone with any man not her husband or within the prohibited degrees of marriage, to live alone apart from her family or to undertake any long journey without escort by her close male relations. If the most authentic Hadith strongly discourage women from participating in the public congregational prayers in the mosque and urge them to perform their devotions in the privacy of their own homes 94 as most pleasing in the sight of Allah, how then can a Muslim tolerate women as secretaries, bank clerks, air hostesses, waitresses in restaurants, models, singers, dancers or actresses over the radio, television and in films? Surah an-Nur, verses 1-24 threatens the most severe penalties both in this world and the Hereafter to those who indulge in any sexual relations outside of marriage. In Islam there is no such thing as a “double-standard” for the Quran and Hadith make no distinction between men and women who indulge in illicit sex and threaten both with equally severe punishment. What then, could be more irrefutable evidence of Islam’s support of Purdah than this testimony from the Quran and Sunnah? The restrictions Islamic injunctions place upon the movements of Muslim women are intended solely for their own benefit to prevent and restrain men from taking unfair advantage. Islam is unique among the religions of the world in that it not only condemns immorality but also forbids the believers to engage in any of the social practices leading to it.

The first champions of the movement for women’s “emancipation” were none else than Marx and Engels, the founders of Communism who preached in their Communist Manifesto (1848) that marriage, home and family were nothing but a curse which kept women in perpetual slavery. Therefore they insisted that the woman must be “liberated” from domestic servitude and achieve full economic independence through whole-time employment in industry. The subsequent champions of feminism insisted that women must be granted as much freedom to 95 indulge in illicit sex as the men through co-education, employment outside the home alongside men, mixed social functions and courtship before marriage in semi-nude fashions, mixed social functions which include drinking, drug-taking and dancing with contraceptives, sterilization and abortion to prevent unwanted pregnancies and state-controlled nurseries and public boarding schools assuming the responsibility for the rearing of the children, many of whom would be illegitimate.

This is in essence what the modern concept of “women’s rights” amounts to.

The Vice-Chancellor of Tehran University tried to assure his audience at the Gulberg School of Home Economics in Lahore that the evils attendant upon modernization were less than some over-anxious conservatives and reactionaries were inclined to imagine. But are these fears really unfounded? Let us look at the result of “female emancipation” in the West.

“We are living in a Babylonian society,” says American historian and columnist, Max Lerner.

“The emphasis is on the senses and the release of sexuality. All the old codes have been broken down.” Until recently, the Church, the Government, the family and the community have dictated what can and cannot be expressed in public. However, now these institutions have been over-run by the demands of a mass society that demands to see and hear everything.

Across the United States of America, audiences pack houses and neighbourhood theatres to watch the multiple orgasms of a seldom-clothed young Swedish actress in I, a Woman. Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni breaks the taboo against head-on, total nudity in Blow-up. In Barbarella a film built around the endless seductions of a French comic-strip heroine, Jane Fonda hops from one nude scene to the next in celebration of the erotic life. Portrait of Jason, a 106 remarkable voyage into the twisted soul of a black, male prostitute, compresses in less than two hours all the raw language and candid corners of life that today find free expression in almost every independent American film. The Jesuit theologian, Father Walter J. Ong, says: “We are going to have to live with a degree of freedom much greater than anything we’ve known in the past…”1

And what has been the effect of this decadence upon the Muslim countries? One of the most potent sources of both female “emancipation” and moral corruption is the cinema industry:

Every girl in Hira-Mandi (the red-light district in Lahore) has histrionic ambitions.

All of them want to become movie queens. Towards the realization of this ambition, they are prepared to offer any sacrifice. A large number of them end up having arrived nowhere after having allowed themselves to be subjected to the lust of the so-called producers and directors. The easiest and most commonly exploited women in the movie game are these.

Most of them never go beyond itsy-bitsy walk-on parts.

A large number of extra girls in the films come from this source.

A few, of course, have risen high. Most of the city’s hotels are used for purposes of a “good time”. Some hotel waiters act as procurers. Many of the restaurants are used as places of assignation. These women can be found at the city’s bus-stops.

The city’s cinema houses are also well-known hunting-grounds. Cinema boxes are not infrequently used for purposes other than watching a movie. Police surveillance of these activities is lax.2

Is producing an army of women like Christine Keeler or Marilyn Monroe part of our “national development programme”?