Oppressive Practices and Views
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In a climate of ignoring the divine rules of individual and social rights and
obligations, one usually finds small despots beside the big ones, and despotism
becomes the pattern of social relations at different levels. The standard concepts
and practices of Muslims through centuries in their mutual relation, including
husbands-wives and parents-children, cannot be separated from what is dominant
in the cultural and social environment.
However, not all our intellectual heritage of social practices represented a deprived
status of women. Al-Tabari and Ibn Hazm, as has been repeatedly mentioned,
stated that a women can be a judge – a very distinguished position from the
religious and social angles in those times. Women had their place in the history of
Islamic civilization in various field, such as: religion, literature, medicine, art…etc.
Although one may agree that Muslim history – the same as of any other people –
does not include only glories and positives, many Muslims men and women both
in the early history of Islam represented an admirable model in fulfilling the
responsibilities of their faith however difficult it might be. They immigrated
together to Abyssinia and later to Medina and afterward to several countries where
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they lived together under geographic and cultural circumstances that were
absolutely different from which they had been used to. Muslim women
accompanied men in the battlefields and had their responsibilities there that did not
exclude fighting when it was necessary. The Sunna and the early history of Islam
revealed how Muslims- males and females- met together in the mosques, farms,
markets or battlefields in a highly respectable manner.
Stories of some drinking wealthy men and female slave-singers, and anecdotes of
some sexual misbehavior, could not represent the whole Muslim society in all
times. Even in times of social deterioration, one can find positive examples. No
one could claim – on grounds of the Qur’an and the authentic Sunna – that women
are a liability in relation to religion and morality nor that they are the allies of the
devil by nature! This has been the outcome of certain historical circumstances,
under which the Muslim women were not the only oppressed women in the world,
nor the only oppressed person in the society.
Islam can help people to develop their potential and resist deterioration when they
observe its teachings. However, it does not provide a “privileged” community that
is immune from the physical and social laws that are created by God to control this
world, on the grounds of a claimed belief, while the practices of this community
contradict God’s message and common sense: “Verily, God does not change
men’s condition unless they change their inner selves” (13:11)
