In the Worldwide Women's Procession

We see in the histories of nations — which are living pictures of the beliefs and thoughts that stirred in the depths of the human soul, and a permanent exhibition of the deeds that issued from them — that with certain customs, the inclination to practice them takes such firm root in souls that they become like a second instinct, harsh and insistent in its demands; they endure long and live on, until volley upon volley of rational criticism assails them, and then they evolve, if they are capable of it, or crumble, wear away, and vanish once their corruption becomes plain and their evil results appear.

It is impossible to remove these customs before souls have been made ready for the change. For until then they are sacred, bound to a belief whose roots stretch into the distant past and whose branches soar into the skies of the future.

And when ignorance reigns in a nation, we see that many of these customs spring from a passion in souls that masters them; the man then goes seeking a justification for them in his religious creed, according to his desire, so that his conscience may rest. Often he errs; often he commits savage deeds in the name of religion; then zeal drives him to rigidity and partisanship for his illusions, and he stirs up superstitions around his original creed — illusion gives them body for him — and then he becomes their slave, fanatical for them in his deeds, unable to turn from them, seeking no substitute for them and possessing no power to push them away.

Thus we have seen, in the past ages of decline that passed over the Arab lands, that certain superstitions enslaved their peoples and justified for them the creation of certain customs that conflict with the spirit of the existing religions and differ from their true texts.

I will cite here as an example only what befell the Muslim woman through the superstitions which the ignorant took for a religious warrant.

The Islamic religion, whose Prophet Muhammad — God's blessings and peace be upon him — said: "Paradise lies beneath the feet of mothers," decreed that winning God's favor comes through obedience and good treatment toward the mother.

And he said: "Take half of your religion from this fair one," meaning that Muslims should take, in the matters of their law, from a woman — the Lady Aisha.

And he said: "The pursuit of knowledge is a duty upon every Muslim man and every Muslim woman" — that is, he made woman's learning one of the religious obligations.

This is the Islamic religion which decreed in its glorious Quran: "And they have rights similar to those over them, according to what is just."

And which gave woman a standing equal to that legislated by the most modern codes — indeed one surpassing them in some respects, in granting woman certain rights of which the Western woman was deprived until recently.

It recognized in her a legal capacity in no way less than a man's in all civil matters — sale, purchase, gift, and bequest; she has freedom of contract and of disposing of her property, whether she be married or not. It made her man's equal in the matter of release from the bond of marriage by legal means. It legislated the wife's right of inheritance, and the right of custody, and favored woman over man in matters of maintenance.

And yet there spread among the Muslims in the past certain customs that conflict with the Law and run counter to its intent, and which wronged woman to a far degree, as in consequence they wronged man — indeed the whole nation. The chief of these customs:

1 — Constraining woman with a veiling that has no warrant in the Law.

2 — Divorce for trivial causes that do not permit it (the divorcer paying no heed to the noble hadith: "The most hateful of permitted things to God is divorce") — a thing which caused a breach in the pillar of the family and a decline in the dealings and conduct of its members.

3 — Plural marriage, for which the Islamic religion laid down conditions so severe as to amount almost to prohibition.

4 — Barring the girl from learning, and regarding learning as a corruption for her.

All these and others are things which the ignorant did in the past, giving themselves leave to act by their own rulings without rational restraint or comprehension of the spirit of the Law; and so they wronged themselves and their countries, until many — of those who have not read the texts of the Islamic Law — supposed that it helps to abase woman and hold her back.

When a people reaches this condition, its mental powers lulled asleep by the sorcery of its illusions and superstitions — in this condition it needs a violent shock, to shake off its sorry burden and return, with its mind and its thought, to the open space of freedom and release.

These violent shocks usually follow upon unruly revolutions in human thought, which fill the hearts of reformers with boldness to declare the inclination toward development and reform that lies within souls.

And just as humanity passes away with its old generations and lives anew in its new generations, so the old, barren ideas die — but so that what is of value among them may endure, and what is true may remain luminous in spirits, thriving in hearts, joined to all the goodness and righteousness that issues from man.

And thus the customs of the Muslims that grew from superstitions which the ignorant wove around their religion have passed away, and the Muslim woman now walks like others at man's side up the ladder of higher learning, and strives in the various associations of charity and reform, and in the fields of work that demand a conscious, unfettered mind.

And she shares with the worldwide women's procession in progress and in demanding her political rights, so as to attain the ideal social standing she deserves in the general renaissance and in modern civilization.