Women’s Roles in Islamic History

While reading about Khadijah and Aysha, both wives of the Prophet Muhammad, I learned the stark differences between the rights they held and the roles they played in society before and after the rise of Islam. This paper explores the origins of the role of Muslim women in context of the patriarchal society that emerged with the rise of Islam. Using Khadijah and Aysha as models, I will discuss the position of Muslim women across three different time periods relevant to Islamic history in pre-Islamic Arabia, the rise of Islam during the Prophet’s life, and the Abbasid Dynasty. I will explore how Muslim women’s roles became more constricted during the Abbasid Dynasty, a time when shari’ah law was formulated, and how that relates to the status of Muslim women today. I will argue that women’s lives have become more limited through the emergence of the new faith and its religious sanction of the constriction of their role in society.

To achieve this goal, I have organized my paper into three sections, relating to the areas of exploration of women’s role in Islamic history. The first section will discuss women’s position in pre-Islamic Arabia up to approximately 600 C.E. I will specifically refer to Khadijah’s lifestyle to fortify my discussion. In the second section, I delineate the life of women during the rise of Islam throughout Arabia within the Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime. I will also allude to Aysha’s life and marriage to the Prophet. The third part will examine the transition of increasing patriarchy in Islamic society after the Prophet’s death and after Islamic Arabs conquered its neighbor, the Persian Zoroastrians. I will offer an exploration of the concept of a ‘woman’ during the Abbasid Dynasty and its impact on the development of the laws that make up the political structure of Islamic society to this day.

PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

Life for women in Pre-Islamic Arabia up until the seventh century was not dictated by law but rather by traditional customs and the authority of the women’s husbands. This allowed Bedouin women to enjoy more power compared to women living in the Persian Sasanian Empire and Byzantine Empire. For example, Bedouin women could become poets; some became highly successful and were considered the most excellent poets of their tribe. They were held in high esteem and were thought to be intellectual and trustworthy (Nashat and Tucker 37). Bedouin women also contributed to taking care of their family and community, participating in activities such as milking and child care. Though they were still deemed less useful than men to the overall survival of the tribe (Nashat and Tucker 37). This proved that prior to the introduction of Islam, the power relation between the sexes preferred men.

As the economy became more prosperous and urbanization emerged in Mecca, women’s role within the social stratosphere further declined, though some parts of their lives improved. This is prevalent in Khadijah’s life: she took the economic opportunity to engage in trade, accumulate wealth and property, and propose to a man. She most likely enjoyed greater sexual freedom, especially with polyandrous marriage permissible by many tribes (Nashat and Tucker 38). However, women’s social power declined as Arabian society became patrilineal. The ‘nuclear family’ grew more prominent as the roles of gender became more defined; women undertook the predominant responsibility of taking care of the children and looking after the household.

PROPHET’S LIFETIME

The refinement of women’s gendered roles remain a continuity through the first few decades of the rise of Islam. This is marked by revelations professed by the Prophet Muhammad who first revealed them in 610 C.E. These revelations of the word of God were recorded in a book called the Qur’an which delineated many aspects of women’s role in society, responsibilities as a wife and mother, and rights as a woman. This included the banning of female infanticide and adultery only by women.

The Qur’an

The Qur’an reflected the solutions in response to the new changes of society in Mecca and Medina. Adultery was banned with the purpose of strengthening familial bonds (Nashat and Tucker 41). Polyandrous marriage was banned, though polygynous marriage remained with religious sanction. This law was fortified by the life of the Prophet Muhammad who had many wives and served as an example of the most proper Muslim. Divorce, however, was more difficult for men than the Qur’an made it out to be. The suras noted that men cannot divorce lightly nor take back gifts already gifted to his wife. All in all, supported by the inscription of the Qur’an described the power relations between the sexes, men were still considered “a degree higher than women” (Nashat and Tucker 43).

Hind bint ’Utbah. Becoming a Muslim during the Prophet’s lifetime and its early years of Islam

did not call for radical changes in lifestyle for the women. For example, Hind bint ’Utbah, a

prominent woman from the Quraysh tribe, married and divorced multiple prominent men, actively opposed Islamic forces, and became involved in economics in the Syrian trade (Nashat and Tucker 39-40). The life of Hind bint ’Utbah proved that not all women drastically adjusted their lives after the introduction of Islam. However, this phenomena eventually changed as Islamic Arabs began conquering their neighboring empires in the east, the Sassanids, after the Prophet’s death.

ABBASID DYNASTY

The impact of the limiting of women’s roles emerged from the exposure to indigenous culture and population during the formation of the Abbasid Dynasty in 750 C.E. When Muslim Arabs began to settle in the conquered territories, they did not present new modifications to Persian Sasanian society and way of life. Instead, they reacted to their indigenous lifestyles, including preserving the power structure between sexes and certain assumptions about women (Nashat and Tucker, 49-50). The practices that they adopted ultimately become religiously sanctioned under Shari’ah law which set the laws in stone, impacting Muslim women to this day.

Persian Zoroastrians

The concept of “women” as objects derived from Persian Zoroastrians who inhabited the area before Islamic Arabic forces conquered the region. The Arab conquerors, now with a newfound sense of upper-class wealth that could not exist in the egalitarian lifestyle of the Arabian deserts, adopted customs that the Sasanian nobility practiced, modeling their wealthy and extravagant lifestyle. This led to religious sanction of their practices, including the subjection of women to life in seclusion and concealment under ‘veiling.’

Women became concubines under the practice of owning harems and collecting women to ostentatiously display wealth. The caliph al-Mutawakkil was famous for owning four thousand concubines, and this custom was also practiced to a lesser degree by men who were relatively

wealthy as well (Ahmed 83). By becoming likened with property that serves as one of the rites to

being a wealthy man, women essentially became indistinguishable with the terms ‘object’ and

‘slave’ (Ahmed 86). Equated with ‘objects,’ they become ‘slaves’ in their treatment from men,

emotionally, psychologically and sometimes, physically. Having to obsess about their safety and

child’s safety within the harem, they are stuck in limbo over their insecurity. The seclusion of these women, under the overseeing eyes of the men who possess them and the eunuchs who guard them, stripped the women of power and control over their own lives. The blurring of the distinctions between women and objects marked the main difference of the treatment of women between the pre-Islamic era and Abbasid Dynasty.

Veils had been worn by women in the Middle Eastern region prior to the dissemination of Islam, and weren’t dictated to be worn by law. After the introduction of Islam was when veiling became religiously sanctioned and deemed necessary. The Qur’an deems the veil necessary to cover their sexual parts and maintain modesty, especially among men outside of your family. The veil serves as an example in how practices that were indigenous to the region prevails and becomes necessary by religious law.

Shari’ah Law

Those practices existed prior to the introduction of Islam to the Persian region, but most importantly, they were given religious sanction by shari’ah. During the Abbasid Dynasty when Islam was formed, scholars were greatly influenced by their biased views when forming Shari’ah laws. These scholars were men who were raised within a society that inherited the Sasanian power structure between men and women. They internalized their society’s standards to be reality as they were a part of everyday life, and the men perpetuate them through the laws they formed (Ahmed 82-83).

Shari’ah law was seen as “unalterable and unquestionable” (Nashat and Tucker 51). As Muslim Arabs disseminate their religion across the areas they conquered, syncretism of Islam and the indigenous practices were formed and sanctioned. In reaction to this, Islamic law was demanded to only be derived from the Qur’an and the hadith, but they also included few adopted traditions that were indigenous to the conquered regions, including Persia, that the scholars could not reverse (Nashat and Tucker 51). By promoting a strict interpretation and less adaptive state of Islamic law, shari’ah laws ultimately led to the severe restriction of women’s role and status in Islamic society.

MUSLIM WOMEN TODAY

The implication of the power structure between men and women formed during the

Abbasid Dynasty is powerful upon the role and status of Muslim women today. Women’s

actions and activities are still defined by gender roles and as reaction to the religiously

sanctioned interpretation of being a woman that was set in stone in shari’ah. By allowing the

limitation of their role in society to be religiously sanctioned, it provided license and

endorsement to the “polygamy, concubinage, and easy divorce for men” (Ahmed 87). This

ultimate justified the poor treatment and abuse towards women, under the guise of religion. It

provided the message that one of the fundamentals of Islam is this stratified power structure and

assumption of women’s inferiority. Though in reality, it is the society, not the religion, and the

circumstances in which that society was victim under, that determined the constriction of

women’s power in Islamic history.

CONCLUSION

From what I have researched, women’s roles have been limited increasingly throughout the

timeline of Islamic history. From pre-Islamic Arabia, time of the Prophet Muhammad’s life, and

Abbasid Dynasty, women’s roles shifted as they continued to give up authority over their own

lives and decisions to the men around them. By allowing religious sanction to this phenomena,

Islam promotes the endorsement and licensing the sexism and misogyny that has legally prevail

to this day. In actually, it is the societal conventions in which shari’ah law was formulated. Just

as they have always been doing throughout Islamic history, Muslim women will have to continue

to define their role in a male-dominated society.

Bibliography

Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Nashat, G., & Tucker, J. (1999). Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Restoring Women

to History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.