The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists (32 page)

I started the chapter with this painfully tragic story because it is revealing at so many levels. There are no words to de- scribe the morally abhorrent depravity of this incident. The
mutawwa’un,
acting under the influence of puritan theology as the school burned, were concerned with one thing and one thing only: that the girls’ hair and faces would not be seen in public. In the minds of the
mutawwa’un,
the horror and of- fense of that transgression was more compelling than the idea of fourteen-year-old girls being burned alive. At the time this incident occurred, many justifiably asked what type of theol- ogy—what type of law or insanity—would support such be- havior. Others disgustedly waved it away as yet another manifestation of the barbaric religion of Islam.

Although Saudi influence managed to limit the amount of media coverage this incident received in the Arab press, mod- erate Muslims tried to bring attention to the entirely depraved and base social ethics underlying this event. Sadly, however, al- though moderate Muslims were appalled by what took place in this most ominous event, they were not surprised by the pu- ritanical logic that led to this tragedy.

I don’t think there
is
a theology or law behind the kind of attitude that led to the death of these girls. This morally re- pugnant incident represents an emotive attitude that trumps

theology, law, and even logic. This is so because any of these three—theology, law, or logic—if used would have resulted in saving the lives of these girls. In Islam, the lives of human be- ings are sacrosanct—the Qur’an clearly proclaims that who- ever kills a human being, it is as if he has killed all of humanity.
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Furthermore, there is no religious obligation that takes priority over the preservation of life. Therefore, at the most basic level, even if one assumes that Islamic law does command strict adherence to rules of seclusion and veiling ac- cording to Islamic law and theology, the necessity of preserv- ing human life would clearly override any such rule. The well-established Islamic legal maxim provides: Necessities will render the forbidden permissible (
al-darurat tubih al-mahzu- rat
)—and the preservation of human life is considered in Is- lamic jurisprudence to be the most basic and fundamental necessity of all. Preservation of human life, in the order of Is- lamic values, is a greater priority than even the safeguarding of God’s rights (
huquq Allah
).
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But even more, the Qur’an itself clearly states that whatever rules of seclusion might have been commanded at one time or another for women, these rules had one and only one justifica- tion, and that is the safeguarding of women from molestation or harm.
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The very objective and logic behind these laws is the
protection
of the welfare and well-being of women. Therefore, the death of these girls was contrary to the raison d’être and every possible rational basis for the laws of seclusion.

Logically, one even wonders why the police did not do something as simple as unlock the gates of the burning school and withdraw all the men from the area so that the girls could escape to safety without being seen by men. If the religious po- lice were sufficiently concerned, they could have even removed their own headgear (known as the
ghutra
) and placed it on the heads of the escaping girls, thus helping them to survive. Not

even the puritanical Saudi religious police believe that men are commanded to cover the hair on their head. The custom of Saudi men, including the religious police, however, is to wear a piece of cloth that covers a part of their heads. They could have easily lent this cloth to the girls to save their lives.

But the point is not the Saudi religious police’s lack of cre- ative problem-solving; the point is the puritans’ abnormal ob- session with the seductive powers of women, and their callous disregard for the value of human life—especially the lives of women. The puritan attitude toward women is diffi- cult to make sense of solely on the basis of the textual anal- ysis of religious sources. The puritan attitude is marked with such vehement hostility and disregard that it appears to be aimed at achieving complete dominance, a dominance that is bound to bring on their social death. As far as the puritans and women are concerned, I do not believe that the issue is the sexual lures of women—the issue is power. Puritans pro- mote an aggressive form of patriarchy in which they respond to feelings of political and social defeatism by engaging in symbolic displays of power that are systematically degrading to women. The power exercised over women is so aggressive and total that it leads to their complete marginalization and exclusion from public life. This amounts to the social death of the women living in puritan societies—meaning that as far as the moral consciousness of society is concerned, women are as if dead.

Whether it is the girls who died in Mecca or any of the women who suffer daily from oppressive puritanical laws, all of these women are direct victims of the sense of frustration and disempowerment felt by puritan men over their sense of humiliation and defeat in various political and social contexts. In my experience studying puritan orientations in modern Islam, one finds that women are not targeted and degraded

simply because of certain textual interpretations. Rather, there is a certain undeniable vehemence and anger in the treatment of women, as if the more women are made to suffer, the more the political future of Islam is made secure. This is manifested in the puritans’ tendency to look at Muslim women as a con- sistent source of danger and vulnerability for Islam, and to go so far as to brand women as the main source of social corrup- tion and evil. This vehemence and anger is often expressed in terms of describing women as the worst
fitna
(source of en- ticement and social discord). Furthermore, they claim that women will constitute the vast majority of the residents of Hell, and that most men in Hell will be there because of women.
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Consider, for example, the recent truly ominous and dis- turbing development by one of the highest-ranking puritan ju- rists. Shaykh Saleh al-Fawzan,
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a Saudi jurist, issued a
fatwa
(a legal opinion) in which he claimed that not only is slavery lawful in Islam, but that it ought to be legalized in Saudi Ara- bia. Al-Fawzan went further in accusing Muslim scholars who condemned and outlawed slavery of being ignorant and infi- dels.
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This
fatwa
is particularly disturbing and dangerous be- cause it effectively legitimates the trafficking in and sexual exploitation of so-called domestic workers in the Gulf region
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and especially Saudi Arabia.

The position of slavery had been resolved for most of the twentieth century: slavery was considered unlawful and im- moral, and all Muslim countries without exception had made the practice illegal. Importantly, most Muslim scholars had reached the reasonable conclusion that slavery is inconsistent with Qur’anic morality and the ethical objectives of the Is- lamic faith. In short, the prohibition of slavery was considered a closed matter. So why would a puritan jurist reopen this issue? Even more importantly, why would this jurist accuse the

numerous jurists who considered slavery an ungodly abomi- nation of being heretics and blind imitators of the West? I think two points need to be considered. First, as a matter of regular practice, puritans always accuse all theological argu- ments aimed at honoring women through the augmentation of their autonomy and social mobility, as a part of the Western conspiracy designed to destroy Islam. According to puritans, any position that is remotely respectful toward women is al- ways treated as foreign and particularly Western. Second, the timing of this
fatwa
was peculiar; it was issued during the re- cent American invasion of Iraq.

It is as if the puritans compensate for the loss of autonomy at the national level by asserting greater male autonomy over Muslim women. Since puritans believe that the empowerment of women is part of the Western cultural invasion of Muslim lands, they seem to act as if political defeat can be compen- sated by a cultural victory—a supposed victory that comes at a great expense for women. There ought to be no doubt that the attempt at reinstituting slavery is a poorly veiled attempt at formally legalizing the sexual exploitation of women—or, more specifically, an authorization for puritan men to deal in the market of trafficking women. The reinstitution of slavery has nothing to do with the safeguarding of Islam or Islamic law, and it also has nothing to do with protecting the integrity of Arab or Saudi cultures, but in the puritan mind, this is a slap in the West’s face. Because puritans believe that the West pioneered the abolition of slavery and invented the idea that the practice of slavery is a violation of human rights, they sim- plistically think that championing the cause of slavery is a snub to Western moral standards.
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But since in the puritan consciousness women are socially dead, the fact that women would bear the cost of this snub directed at the West is of little real consequence.

There is one word that sums up the puritan attitude toward women:
fitna
.
Fitna
is a vast term that has many connotations, all of which are decidedly negative.
Fitna
means sexual entice- ment, a source of danger, civic and social discord, a sense of instability and impending evil. Although puritans often praise and celebrate the role of women as mothers, in every other role women are portrayed as deficient and subservient. There- fore, as a wife, she is completely under the tutelage of her hus- band; as a daughter, she is under the tutelage of her father; as a member of society, she is under the tutelage of all men. She is never an independent and autonomous being who shares in equal measure the obligation of fulfilling the Divine covenant. She is never an equal partner who shares fully in the burden of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil, strug- gling to bring the earth closer to Godliness. In the puritan paradigm, she is cast in a role in which she fulfills her obliga- tions only through men—whether as husbands, fathers, or men who control the public space. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that puritans often claim that women will not enter Heaven unless they subserviently obey men on this earth.

The consistent practice of puritans is to collect, publish, and disperse traditions, attributed to the Prophet or the Compan- ions, that are demeaning to women. Such collections act as a foundation for issuing deprecating determinations in regard to women. Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab himself, the founder of the Wahhabi movement, set the precedent by collecting a group of these women-deprecating traditions and listing them under the subheading “Living with Women.”
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But these women-deprecating traditions, without exception, are of weak authenticity, if not pure fabrications. As I discussed earlier, moderates will rely on traditions attributed to the Prophet, but such traditions must be reliable in the sense that if we can be reasonably sure that the Prophet actually uttered the words

attributed to him. The traditions utilized by the puritans in- variably are of a single transmission, which means that the possibility exists that the Prophet actually authored them, but the possibility is remote and far-fetched.

The impact of this difference over which traditions to rely upon and which to discard is enormous. By picking and choosing the traditions that appear demeaning to women, pu- ritans are able to impose limitations on women that can only be described as suffocating. For instance, recently I picked up a short book, published in Lebanon, authoritatively titled
Re- sponsa
(
fatawa
)
for Women,
written by a Ph.D.-carrying pur- ported scholar. The author’s
responsa
reproduces the same misogynist determinations that have become commonplace in contemporary puritan culture. The following is a partial list of the determinations of this puritan author, listed in the order in which they appear in his book. According to the author,

• A Muslim wife may not worship God by fasting without the permission of her husband because her husband may want to have sex with her during the day.
  

• A woman may not speak with her fiancé over the tele- phone because she may seduce him.
  

• A woman engaged to a man may not go out with him in public because she may seduce him.
  

• A bride seated with her groom in a car driven by a rela- tive must make sure not to wear perfume because she may seduce the relative driver.
  

• A woman who wishes to go to the mosque to learn the Qur’an must obey her father if he forbids her from going, and the father need not express any reason for his opposition.
  

  • A man who marries a woman with the intention of di- vorcing her after having his pleasure with her, but fails to inform her of his intention, does not commit a sin, and the marriage is valid.
    

  • A woman may not refuse her husband sex, except if she is ill. Refusing a husband sex without compelling justifi- cation is a grave sin (
    kabira
    ). On the other hand, a hus- band may refuse his wife sex for any reason or no reason at all.
    

  • As a legal matter, the voice of a woman is not an
    ‘awra
    (a privacy that must be concealed from all except
    mahrams
    —
    mahrams
    are men of a close blood relation that a woman may not marry them, such as a father or brother). Nonetheless, because of its seductive powers, the voice of women should not be heard in public, or in a private setting where it might cause sexual enticement.
    

  • Women should not mix with men in public ways or fo- rums even if women are wearing the
    hijab
    (covering their hair).
    

  • Even if wearing the
    hijab
    women should not travel unac- companied by a male
    mahram
    .
    

  • Women may not chew gum because it is seductive.
    

  • Women may not dance in front of other women in a wedding even if there are no men around because it might be sexually arousing to other women.
    

  • Women may not shorten their head hair because doing so is considered imitating men. However, women
    must
    remove any facial hair, such as a beard or mustache, be- cause it is more feminine to do so, and because a woman
    

    must be sexually appealing to her husband (i.e., facial hair on a woman is not sexually appealing).
    

• Women should not attend funerals or gravesites or con- vey their condolences to foreign men so as to avoid sex- ual enticement.
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