Muhammad and Woman

By the nature of their land and the makeup of their temperaments, the Arabs saw in woman their happiness and the repose of their souls; so they loved her and all but worshiped her. Yet by the nature of their society and the system of raids and captive-taking customary among them, they saw in woman a cause of their humiliation and of the disgrace that might attach to them; so they took her for an ill omen, to the point of burying her alive. Thus the Arabs were caught between two pulls: the pull of their region's nature and their temperaments drawing them toward woman, and the pull of their social order and their wars driving them away from her.

Muhammad (peace be upon him) was born in the Arabian Peninsula while its people were in the two conditions we have described. He confirmed the first condition — the condition of loving woman — and blessed it, proclaiming among His signs: "that He created for you, from yourselves, mates that you might find repose in them, and He set between you affection and mercy." And he condemned the second condition — the condition of seeing an ill omen in woman: he raised her worth, restored her to the throne of her sovereignty, and called out that woman is mistress of her house. ("The woman is mistress in her husband's house, and she is responsible for her flock.")

The purpose of Muhammad's prophethood, then, was not the proclamation of God's oneness alone, but glad tidings concerning woman, and the celebration of her restoration to the throne of her sovereignty.

Umar ibn al-Khattab said: "By God, in the Jahiliyya we counted women as nothing, until God revealed concerning them what He revealed and apportioned to them what He apportioned." Whoever follows the Prophet's biography through the stages of his life will perceive the causes that made his noble soul ready to receive the revelation concerning women.

His father died, and then his mother, when he was but a few years old, and his care was taken up by an Abyssinian girl named Baraka, known as Umm Ayman. This girl devoted herself to his service and upbringing until he reached the age of twenty-five. He was content and glad in the tenderness and care he saw in his nurse; and he felt the first of woman's functions in this existence — woman insofar as she is a woman, even though she was Abyssinian, a bondwoman, belonging to no Arab stock. Then divine Providence willed to bring Muhammad to live close to the noblest woman of Quraysh, and he married Lady Khadija bint Khuwaylid — something new in Muhammad's life. He passed into another stage in his knowledge of woman and his experience of her functions: he was no longer the youth served by a humble nurse whom he honored, but the youth whom a noble woman loved and who loved her.

He a youth of twenty-five, she a matron of forty — as though divine Providence saw that he was still a young man in need of the tenderness of a woman of years, experience, and wealth, and so made his union with her easy.

Muhammad (peace be upon him) had no portion of wealth or lineage, and the means of comfortable living were not at his disposal; now they became plentiful, from the time he married Khadija. Did he make of his wife's wealth a means to amusement, idleness, and luxury? No. The young Muhammad made of his wife's wealth a means of freeing his heart from the cares of the family, just as he made of her love and her obedience to him a means of devoting himself to the worship of his Creator and to the great work that filled his mind. Here is Muhammad withdrawing from men and taking refuge in the cave of Hira, communing with his Lord and asking Him to guide his people; and here is Khadija his wife, encouraging him and instilling confidence, patience, and steadfastness in his soul. Here she is preparing provisions for him to live on during his long seclusion; here she is at the foot of the mountain, craning her gaze up toward the cave where her husband has withdrawn, her heart brimming with hope, faith, and confidence in the future.

Thus you see that prophethood was born at the hands of a woman — Khadija — while not one man witnessed its birth.

Then Khadija died, and Abu Bakr — the greatest of his companions — desired the honor of kinship with him, and gave him his daughter Aisha in marriage. Aisha was not a wife only, but a pupil as well. And this is the third of Muhammad's stages with woman: Baraka the Abyssinian watches over him in his childhood; Khadija the Great shelters and encourages him in his youth; Aisha the Truthful gladdens him and becomes his pupil in his ripe years.

Muhammad (peace be upon him) experienced woman in every period of his life, and his feeling mingled with hers as child, as youth, and as mature man. Her influence on his life was such that he raised her station, proclaimed her freedom, and made her the equal of men. He would always say: "Women are but the full sisters of men." Indeed, he said to the men: Are you not eager to enter Paradise? This Paradise lies beneath the feet of mothers — and every woman is a mother, if not in act then in potentiality. No one has ever spoken in honor of woman a word like this word of Muhammad's. If some people reckon woman a devil, Muhammad saw in her a charm against the devil: the bachelor, in his eyes, was one of the brethren of devils, because he had not sought refuge in a woman by marrying her. In honoring woman and raising her standing in the eyes of men, Muhammad intended a work after the manner of the great world renaissances. And when the Arab women saw this renaissance that Muhammad had raised up for them, they rejoiced in it and bestirred themselves to gain still more of it — so much so that when they saw themselves wronged in some of their rights, they held a meeting and resolved to lay their demands before the Prophet through a delegate named Asma bint Yazid al-Ansariyya. The Prophet answered her to her satisfaction and declared his pleasure at her speech and her boldness; and that word of his was itself enough to hearten woman and to proclaim her worth. The Prophet liked that no one should lord it over a woman in the matter of her marriage: he gives her the right to marry the man she chooses, on condition that this marriage not lower the dignity of her clan. The Prophet acknowledged woman's right to manage her own private interests independently, and he held that she had the right, too, to share with man in the service of the public interest.

Muhammad knew the psychology of woman and her particular instincts, and treated her according to what he knew of her, showing her abundant patience and gentleness. Yes, the Prophet loved women, because they rear men, as Baraka reared him in his house; because they aid men in the great renaissances, as Khadija aided him in his renaissance; and because they spread culture and learning received from men, as Aisha did from the time she carried his culture from him and conveyed to his nation the ways of his law.