The “rights” of women Islam (according to Qur’an and ahadith)
An older essay of mine started going viral recently in which I shared my reasons for leaving Islam (you can read it here). I had never intended to create much content about Islam or leaving it. In fact, I only wrote about it all to announce to my circle of friends and family that I no longer consider it a part of my identity or worldview, and I posted it on Medium in January because I post some random writing here now and then. In the last week, though, it has started to go viral, and people are asking for citations and proof. So here it is. In that essay I wasn’t trying to convince people I was right, I was just sharing my reasons so that my friends and family understood. However, since that essay has started going viral, I’ve been asked for sources and citations dozens of times so I feel it’s time to provide them. It could take a book to share it all, but here is part 1.
It’s important to understand that I don’t hate Muslims or Islam. I don’t conflate the two. Muslims are people, and people are people. Islam is a religious philosophy that makes claims based on what it calls evidence. I just no longer believe the claims. That’s not to say that Islam has no value. I do think there is a lot of value in some of the aspects of its philosophy and practices, but anyway, this article is about providing evidence that Islam’s claims are false.
I also don’t support Israel in the genocide against Palestinians. My telling of my story is in no way political or intended to be used against Muslims. However, I noticed many Western women supporting Palestinians on social media reading the Qur’an to get closer to them and these women started converting to Islam based on the same lies and obfuscations that convinced me 11 years ago. I did feel a need to share the information I’ve learned since then because people who are critical of Islam are usually people who hate Muslims (absolutely NOT me, I still have many Muslim friends and support Palestinians) or are ex-Muslims who are silenced and attacked, and often risk execution or murder in their own countries, so their voices are few and far between.
All of the evidence I use is either widely accepted historical record or Islam’s own documents and rulings, including the Quran, sahih (authentic) ahadith (the reported sayings and doings of Muhammad, the “sunnah,” that Sunni Islam is based on), and official rulings by one or all of the 4 schools of jurisprudence that Sunni Islam considers the ultimate authority on their creed and practices.
Also, it should be noted that most of the problems I have with Islam, such as the permissibility of wife beating, child marriage, sex slavery, and spousal rape, have never been controversial in Islam in the past. They were always permitted without any qualms from Muslims. It hasn’t been until the modern era and the advent of modern Western values, including the autonomy and rights of women, the inherent evil of slavery, and the sanctity of children, that Muslims have had to create justifications and refutations to defend their faith and practices. This is where the cognitive dissonance comes in for many Western or Westernized Muslims.
This first essay (there will be more) focuses on some opinions, rulings, and positions that I believe are indefensible, no matter what the source (i.e. “god,” a prophet, etc.) is claimed to be. In future essays, I’ll logically disprove aspects of the Qur’an and the logical or evidential claims that the legitimacy of Islam’s arguments rest on. Unlike future essays, this essay doesn’t disprove claims by Islam. It proves unanimous, unambiguous positions of Islam that most modern, moral, ethical, and loving people can’t support.
This essay is different. I assume that women are fully complete, autonomous, independent human beings who do not require men in positions of authority over them. I reject the idea of male supremacy. I reject slavery. I reject violence against women. I reject rape. So, if you also reject these things, then you must reject Islam, because I will prove, but its own sources, that it unequivocally permits these things. Modern scholars have plenty of flowery, obfuscating explanations to soothe the cognitive dissonance in the faithful Muslim’s mind, but at the end of the day, you have to choose between rejecting male supremacy and Islam.
This essay requires the sincere believer to ask himself or herself:
- Do I believe that wife beating, marital rape, women’s subservience to men, slavery, and child marriage are wrong?
- If I do, then does this essay prove that Islam permits and cannot forbid these things— despite the flowery language and obfuscations, when we cut to the chase of what the texts actually say.
If you are a believer and you answer yes to either of these questions, you need to do a serious inquiry about whether you can live with the cognitive dissonance of holy, “perfect” texts permitting them.
Because if God is all-knowing and perfect and compassionate, why allow it? Why not forbid it? Why make it confusing and why is the literal interpretation wrong? Why not use different language? If this is the perfect manual for all of humanity in all times and places in the entire universe, why make it so that people who believe these terrible things are ok can’t be disproved by this perfect, holy text?
You either have to be ok with them, or you have to question the legitimacy of the Qur’an.
So let’s look at some of the evidence for some of the claims of my first essay and my evidence for them:
1. Wife Beating
Quran Verse 4:34: “Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband’s] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance — [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.” (Sahih International, but you can read 7 different translations side by side here)1
Wife beating is expressly permitted by the Qur’an.1 Muslims try to say that “well, he can only beat her if he doesn’t leave a mark, or actually, he can only beat her with an instrument no wider than a toothbrush.”2 The problem is that people who can’t approach their intellectual tradition objectively (like me before I was willing to accept that maybe it wasn’t true and I was more devoted to seeking truth than following dogma) will cling to these flowery interpretations by ultimately concluding “ok, well he can beat her but he can’t hurt her, so look at how noble, just, and humane Islam is!” But why would a noble, humane, and just “god” even say it at all? I know this is how they think, because I was one of those people. I wanted to believe so badly, and I was terrified of losing my faith, which is part of the mental straightjacket of Islam, which I explain in another essay (I have to break it into parts because it’s a LOT of work).
There are different schools of thought within Islam and some are more harsh than others. For example, Wahhabis and those influenced by Wahhabism (most Muslims around the world) would interpret the Qur’an literally and directly to mean that men are superior to women and are in charge of them, so if a woman disobeys, he can discipline up to and including beating her (but “lightly”).
Westernized and Sufi Muslims (this is the school I followed) will be less direct about it and try to couch it in more gentle terms, and this is what I followed for a long time. They’ll say the same thing (i.e. men are in charge, women must obey, and husbands can hit their wives), but it’s so drowned in beautiful and compassionate language that you almost can’t see it, but it’s still there.
However, at the end of the day, I had to ask myself: “why would a gentle loving god who believes men and women are of equal intellect and value explicitly say that men are in charge women because men are superior and they have the authority to beat women who disobey them?” I know that men are not superior to me in intellect (this is proven by science and by society), and it is not my duty to blindly obey my husband just because he is a man. One’s genitals aren’t sufficient grounds to qualify one’s ability to have the most wisdom and authority on a subject.
Why permit men to beat their wives, at all? Why? What good does that serve? Why do women need to be beaten, and why do we entrust men to decide when and how much to beat women? When has beating women ever been good? Good men never, ever feel a need to beat their wives. How is this a product of a perfect “god”? And who is to stop a bad husband, especially if women are generally unable to work and have no financial means and therefore can’t leave a bad husband? Who is to determine whether a woman has been hurt? Why let abusive men have wives at all? The only restriction is that he can’t beat her with something wider than a toothbrush, and even that stipulation isn’t in the Quran. The Quran doesn’t mention any limitations to the beating. The only limitation comes from the hadith tradition. If the Quran is perfect, then A. Why allow violence toward women, and B. Why not provide a limitation, if a limitation is necessary?
2. Marital Rape
In Islam, sex is considered the right of a husband, so if she refuses him (and he doesn’t take it by force, which is, again, his right), then he may beat her (because she is being disobedient according to verse 4:34 that we just saw above), divorce her, or take another wife.3
In the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, a woman may not refuse sex with her husband unless her refusal is based on her menses, fasting, or some other time when she is already Islamically forbidden to him.4 and 5 While Hanafis specifically allow it, the other 3 schools of thought neither expressly permit it nor do they punish it. According to these schools “In Islam, ’marital rape’ is an oxymoron; rape (ightisab) is a property crime that by definition cannot be committed by a husband.”6
Other, more gentle, rulings say that while he can’t force her, she is sinning by refusing him (because his sexual pleasure is his divine right), that her prayers will not be accepted, that the angels are cursing her, etc. Furthermore, if he forces her to have sex with him, it’s not a crime according to Islam, but it is still considered a sin. When a couple is married, consent is assumed, so it can’t be called “rape,” per se, and there is no real concept of marital “rape” in Islam. However, if he is violent toward her and harms her, then she can seek recourse, and forced sex in these cases is considered a form of abuse and violence, according to the more gentle interpretations of Islam. These scholars cite the verses in the Qur’an that say to be kind to your wives, etc.
Other Islamic scholars claim that the concept of consent is a product of corrupt modern societies.
The sanctification of personal sexual autonomy is itself a very modern concept that arose with the advent of irreligious political ideologies based upon individual fulfillment, which means such an idea of consent simply did not exist in pre-modern societies at all.7
Overall in Islam, women’s sexual consent is assumed by marriage or through being the slave of their owner, and the only restrictions explicitly placed on the man are mostly around causing bodily harm. Some scholars may say it is sinful to take a wife without her acceptance, but it’s not a crime in Islam. It’s just a sin. Likewise, it’s a sin for her to refuse him, and the texts are very explicit that she should not refuse him. There is nothing in the texts that says that a woman, whether she is a man’s wife or concubine, has the right to refuse sex, because she is, after all, his property and under his authority, so sexual access to her body is his right.
Furthermore, a man’s slave is his sexual property and she can’t refuse him sexual access. I’ll talk more about sex slavery in Islam in a future essay.
The above explanations may be good enough for some people that Islam is a beautiful religion that respects and honors women, but not for me. I don’t believe that husbands have a right to a woman’s body, consent is never assumed or considered a given (unless she expressly states her consent), because women are not property. I believe in women’s total and complete personal autonomy at all times, no matter what relationships they have with men. If this makes me a “corrupt, liberal Westerner,” so be it. I don’t believe in male supremacy over women. Period.
3. Women are second-class
Another issue that I brought up in my recent essay about why I left Islam is that women are considered second-class citizens in Islam and that men are considered superior to women. It’s a male-supremacist religion, and I just don’t agree that it male-supremacy is intrinsically true or that a perfect and all-knowing “god” would create such a system. In the more gentle schools of Islamic thought (which are more recent and Westernized), scholars take great pains to show that there is a balance of power and honor in the gender dynamic, but as far as I’m concerned, there just isn’t. This is nowhere in practice in the current Muslim world, and it never existed in practice in the past anywhere in the Muslim world. So you can say all you want about the ideals of Islam, but if the things you claim don’t exist anywhere and have never existed, I just can’t take you seriously, no matter how good your heart and intentions may be.
The Qur’an and hadith explicitly claim that men are the natural authority over women (see quotes below, taken from IslamQA.info6). If someone wants to believe this, then go ahead. I don’t. I don’t see any evidence for men’s superior capacity in any regard except physical strength and tendency toward selfishness and violence, which does not provide sufficient justification for a mandate for moral, intellectual, and social authority over women. “Might makes right” is a bestial and irrational justification and doesn’t represent the highest human values and intellect. No philosophical or religious tradition that relies on this kind of evidence can convince me that it is from a perfect and all-knowing “god” and is the perfect and universal model that all of humanity should emulate at all times and in all places.
What the Qur’an says about men’s “natural right and authority over women”:
“And they (women) have rights (over their husbands as regards living expenses) similar (to those of their husbands) over them (as regards obedience and respect) to what is reasonable, but men have a degree (of responsibility) over them. And Allah is All-Mighty, All-Wise” [al-Baqarah 2:228]
“Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend (to support them) from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient (to Allah and to their husbands), and guard in the husband’s absence what Allah orders them to guard (e.g. their chastity and their husband’s property). As to those women on whose part you see ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next) refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance). Surely, Allah is Ever Most High, Most Great” [al-Nisa’ 4:34]
According to tafsir (the interpretation of the Qur’an):
Ibn Kathir: “The phrase ‘but men have a degree (of responsibility) over them’ means that they are superior in physical nature, attitude, status, obedience to the commands of Allah, spending, taking care of interests, and virtue, in this world and in the Hereafter, as Allah says (interpretation of the meaning):
‘Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend (to support them) from their means’ [al-Nisa’4:34].” (1/363)
Ibn Kathir: “Allah says (interpretation of the meaning): ‘Men are the protectors and maintainers of women’ meaning that men are in charge of women, i.e., they are their leaders, who rule over them and discipline them if they go astray. ‘because Allah has made one of them to excel the other’ means, because men are superior to women, and men are better than women. Hence Prophethood was given to men only, as is the highest position of authority (i.e., khilaafah or the position of caliph), because the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “No people will ever succeed who appoint a woman as their ruler.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari from the hadeeth of ‘Abd al-Rahmaan ibn Abi Bakr from his father. The same applies to the position of judge etc. ‘and because they spend (to support them) from their means’ means, because of the mahr, spending and maintenance that Allah has enjoined upon men with regard to women in His Book and in the Sunnah of His Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). So men are better than women in and of themselves, and they have the responsibility to spend on them and maintain them, so it is appropriate that the man should be the protector and maintainer of the woman, as Allah says (interpretation of the meaning): ‘but men have a degree (of responsibility) over them’, i.e., they are in charge of them. She should obey him in that which he commands her to do, and obeying him means treating his family well and protecting his wealth.” (1/653)
Al-Baghawi: “ ‘because Allah has made one of them to excel the other’ means, men excel women because they have more powers of reason and religious commitment and they are in charge of affairs. And it was said that this refers to giving testimony, because Allah says (interpretation of the meaning): ‘And if there are not two men (available), then a man and two women’ [al-Baqarah 2:282]. And it was said that it refers to jihad, or to worship i.e., Jumu’ah and prayers in congregation, or that it refers to the fact that a man may marry four wives, but a woman is not permitted more than one husband; or the fact that divorce is in the man’s hand; or that it refers to inheritance, or to diyah (blood money), or to Prophethood.” (2/206)
Al-Baydaawi: “ ‘Men are the protectors and maintainers of women’ means that they are in charge of them and take care of them. He gave two reasons for that, one that is inherent in them and one that is acquired subsequently, and said: ‘because Allah has made one of them to excel the other’, because Allah has favoured men over women by making men more perfect in reasoning and running affairs, and has given them more strength with regard to work and acts of worship. Hence men are singled out when it comes to Prophethood, leadership, guardianship, establishing rituals, giving testimony in legal matters, the obligation to engage in jihad and pray Jumu’ah, and so on, and they are given a greater share of inheritance, and divorce is in the man’s hand. ‘and because they spend (to support them) from their means’ refers to what they spend with regard to marriage, such as the mahr and maintenance, etc.” (2/184)
According to hadith:
And the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “If I were to command anyone to prostrate to anyone other than Allah, I would have commanded women to prostrate to their husbands. By the One in Whose hand is the soul of Muhammad, no woman can fulfil her duty towards Allah until she fulfils her duty towards her husband. If he asks her (for intimacy) even if she is on her camel saddle, she should not refuse.”
Narrated by Ibn Maajah, 1853; classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh Ibn Maajah.
The difference between Islam and Christianity, though, is that in Islam, women are considered human, albeit inferior humans, and do have rights. This is certainly a step in the right direction, but it just doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t resonate with my understanding and experience of human nature according to the evidence of my eyes and my reason. A book written 1400 years ago saying men are superior isn’t enough evidence for me to believe that men are superior. I haven’t met a single man who would be better at determining my life and choices, and my own father never, ever, not even once tried to tell me how to live my life. According to my father, I am a fully autonomous human being with my own desires, needs, wants, and destiny, and he knows I have the intellect and wisdom to make my own decisions and make my own way through the world, just as he has his own. He never once presumed to be better able to make decisions for me than I can for myself. There is nothing in the intellect or capacity of women to justify us not having equal ability and rights toward self-determination in all areas of life.
Muslims will argue that, according to their religion, men need to be in charge of women to protect women from other men, but why doesn’t their “perfect religion” just tell men to control themselves and teach men to honor the autonomy and intellect of women as complete and independent human beings? Women in Western societies are able to self-determine with full autonomy and there isn’t an increase in violence towards us in our societies. Muslim women experience as much violence (or more, because it’s not reported as much) in Muslim societies. So why force women into the guardianship of men, who are known to be violent? It just doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t bear out in practical terms when implemented in society. What protects women from men’s violence is a culture that honors women and laws that make violence and abuse towards us illegal.
Maybe in the past such laws were necessary, but they aren’t now, and we know now how to create societies that better protect and honor women. So if protecting women is what Islam and Muslims actually want to do then they will emulate that behavior, instead of enforcing the second-class status of women.
Conclusion
I used to believe the flowery versions depicted by modern, Westernized scholars who want to defend their faith and convince people to join it, but as I researched deeper into it and even lived in or visited Muslim countries, I just never found that version to exist or to have ever existed. Ultimately, I just don’t believe that men are superior to women and that we exist to serve them. If that makes me a “corrupt, liberal woman,” then so be it. I don’t want to live in a world modeled on Islamic values or rules. I’ve seen enough to know what that brings, and I would prefer to live in a world where women are autonomous, fully human beings with authority over own lives and choices.
Stay tuned for future essays where I explain more of the claims I made in my first essay, including about sex slavery, child marriage and Muhammad’s child marriage, the problem of forced modesty, the alteration of the Hijri calendar, the problem of Ramadan, changes in the Qur’an, factual errors in the Qur’an, Muhammad’s child marriage, and the mental straightjacket of the Qur’an.
- https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=4&verse=34
- https://islamqa.info/en/answers/41199/beating-wife-in-islam
- https://islamqa.info/en/answers/2006/can-a-wife-refuse-intimacy
- Ali, Kecia (2017). “Concubinage and Consent”. International Journal of Middle East Studies. 49. Cambridge University Press (published January 20, 2017): 148–152. doi:10.1017/S0020743816001203. S2CID 159722666
- Al-jaziri, abd Al-rahman; Roberts, Nancy (2009). Islamic Jurisprudence According To The Four Sunni Schools Al Fiqh ‘ala Al Madhahib Al Arba’ah. Fons Vitae. ISBN 978–1887752978. The followers of Imam Abu Hanifah said: “The right of the sexual pleasure belongs to the man, not the woman, by that it is meant that the man has the right to force the woman to gratify himself sexually. https://search.worldcat.org/title/919857798
- Kecia Ali (30 October 2010). Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam. Harvard University Press. pp. 120–. ISBN 978–0–674–05059–4. Non-Hanafis do not penalize a husband for forcing sex on his wife, but neither do they explicitly authorize it in the way that al-Khassaf does. For all, marital rape is an oxymoron; rape (ightisab) is a property crime that by definition cannot be committed by a husband.
- https://islamcompass.com/sexual-consent-marriage-and-concubines-in-islam/
- https://islamqa.info/en/answers/43252/the-reason-why-the-husband-is-regarded-as-superior-and-is-given-the-role-of-qawwaam-protector-and-maintainer
