A study of Islamic herstory: Or how did we ever get into this mess?: To the memory of my mother, Yusra Mīdāni, who was an active, independent, and capable Muslim woman

Abstract

To write about ‘Women and Islam’ is to write about a host of issues only one of which is ‘the Status of Women in Islam’. For Islam and Women have shared an enduring though often turbulent relationship throughout the patriarchal upheavals of the past 1400 years in the Arab World. To comprehend this relationship fully, we must comprehend first the socio-political conditions affecting women in the Arab peninsula before the rise of Islam, and the subsequent impact of Islam upon the lives of these women, as well as upon society as a whole. We also need to comprehend the dynamics of rising Patriarchy in the Arab World during the era of Jahiliyyah, and the ensuing power struggles among various patriarchal factions. These struggles raged for many centuries destroying most notably the original Khilf for, as the word of God, it transcends all ideology. Among these, we can distinguish two groups: those who believe that Islam as it is today is fair and just to women, and those who believe that Islam as it is pructised today is utterly patriarchal, but that true Islam is not. This latter group upholds the position that Islam is not only different from Patriarchy, but that through an historical process of cooptation, Patriarchy was able to devour Islam and quickly make it its own after the death of Prophet Muhammad.’ I should like to lend some credence to this last view regardless of whether one believes that Islam transcends all ideology. I shall not attempt to provide in this article a detailed and profound study of the relation of Women to Islam, or of Patriarchy to Islam, simply because such a study requires nothing less than rewriting Arab history from a feminist perspective. However, I do intend to provide some preliminary data to that end. It is best to approach this rich and complicated topic by focusing first on the relation between Islam and Patriarchy.