Woman and the March of the World

“The seed of peace lies in the heart of woman. Had she been allowed a say in the world's problems, she would have helped avert many a calamity.”

“Man makes the law, and woman shares its consequences with him. Man declares wars, and woman bends with him beneath their heavy burden...”

The eternal Creator performed His mighty work and stood contemplating it; and behold, He saw a wondrous universe, bounded only by His vast knowledge, and a creation of every kind, numbered only by its all-knowing Maker — all of it glorifying His power, most high, and proclaiming the majesty of His works.

But what has troubled the God? Anxiety is a cloud shimmering across His comely face, perplexity breaks over His radiant features, and displeasure shows in His most holy eyes?...

Come with me to a corner of Paradise, and let us learn the secret. Look!... Do you not see the wondrous creature whom the Creator stamped with the most beautiful and most sacred of all He possessed, in image and in likeness, and whom He willed to be master of all creatures — master in every sense of the word? He armed him with radiant beauty — and is there a weapon deadlier than beauty? — and adorned him with sound reason — and is there a force more potent than reason? — and handed him the keys of Paradise — and is there a treasure richer than that green garden “beneath which the rivers flow”?

Yet this being, who was meant to be master, throws himself down, drained of strength, in this corner of his azure kingdom, sad and despondent, feeling in himself no power to bear the burdens of mastery; and he falls — the fall of the broken-winged eagle — aching and wounded.

O ungrateful one, is this the return for the gifts I have lavished on you? I give, and you deny; I bestow favor, and you are wretched. What ails you, that you should grieve on the day the crown of kingship is raised upon your brow?...

The human stirred, and gathered himself: My Lord, I am not ungrateful for the favor, nor do I deny the blessing; only I feel a lack in my being with which I cannot be equal to that for which You created me. Paradise with solitude is hell, and happiness misery. May I not have one more blessing, to crown the blessings You have given me, to awaken in me the sense of delight in beauty, and to open before me the secrets of knowledge?...

“Arab civilization is indebted to the freedom that Muhammad gave to woman.”

From that minute woman existed, and to her were handed the keys of her companion's gifts: if she willed, she kindled in him the powers of the mind with which he had been armed, and he delivered his message in life complete; and if she refused, he went back the way he came and offered life nothing new.

As time advanced, behold, brute force lorded it over weakness; woman was subdued for her weakness and robbed of the blessing of the enjoyment of the spirit, and the legend of her creation was recalled only now and then among humanity's great men and its reformers. These men, to whom was opened what was opened to no others, knew that force had conquered nothing but itself on the day it conquered woman, and that the humbling of the weak creature traced the line of disgrace in letters of blood across the brow of the strong companion. So the Redeemer rises with his humane teachings against the darkness of the generations, raises the divine legend from its grave, and champions the strivings of mankind, restoring to them the leaping spirituality; and behold, woman is once more the breather of genius into minds and the kindler of ardor in breasts; behold, she takes back the role for which she was created and mounts the throne that is set for her.

This universe is wide, and the desert far away, and there is no path by which the new ideas can seep into its sands. So the poor woman remains among the folds of its dunes, degraded — save rarely: now buried alive, now taken captive, and at times denied the right of a free life; a female whose very right to live is subject to the power of arms, while she is too weak to carry arms.

But no!... For here are the sands of the desert trembling at the momentous event; here is the son of Abdullah vanishing from the earth, his spirit borne on the wings of angels, to return carrying to women in his palm a manifest victory, in clear verses, calling them “the comforters, the providers, the rearers,” proclaiming that theirs are rights, in kindness, corresponding to their duties, and quickening in them soul and body together.

These steps of reform were raising humanity from its stumble and carrying it forward — but only for a time; for the lust of worshiping force soon makes the strong forget the role that rests upon respect for woman's right, and forget that this respect is their own essential desire, and that in it lies their true victory. For what great man have we seen in history who did not owe his greatness to woman, and what genius did not draw his genius from the folds of her garment? Napoleon pointed to this when he said: “I have never seen a man of genius without discovering that behind his genius stood a woman.”

If we look out today at the various nations of the world and review them state by state, we see that they differ in strength and advancement according as the strengthening and advancement of woman among them differ. One of the Frankish historians, speaking of the Arabs, said: “Arab civilization is indebted to the freedom that Muhammad gave woman; when they robbed her of that freedom, their civilization was robbed from them.”

Yet all these nations together still agree upon erasing woman from the page of justice, which is the foundation of social stability. The monopoly of force in the making of laws will leave humanity, for long generations yet, floundering in wars and their calamities, tasting of their evils the flavor of bitterness and privation, and bereaved, because of them, of the dearest offspring that human thought has begotten in its long history of development — with all the injustice and usurpation this involves. How should he alone make the law, when she shares its consequences with him, good or bad? He declares wars, and she crawls beside him under their heavy burdens; he lays down the statutes, and she bears with him the penalties of whatever in them is unsound. So long as force — which knows no law but conquest and worldly ambition — keeps this matter to itself, opening no way for a mother's tenderness to soften a father's greed, paying no heed to a sister's tear to temper a brother's rashness, and caring nothing for a wife's anxious love to blunt a husband's sting — yes, so long as this force takes no account of these good human feelings, how can it be fit to lead the way to contentment, in which is riches, and to tranquillity, in which is happiness? And how shall it bring the human ship into the safe harbors of peace?...

I recall the story of a woman to whom it fell to give the decisive word in just such a situation. A letter from Solomon had been delivered to her, and behold, the men around her bristled at this challenge and raced to offer their arms in her defense, crying with the most ardent voices: We are the Queen's ransom! “We are possessed of strength and possessed of mighty valor; but the command is yours — consider, then, what you will command.” Her answer was a smile, a soothing of tempers, the sending of a gift, and the words: “Kings, when they enter a town, lay it waste and make the mightiest of its people the most abased; even so do they.”

Thus did Bilqis, Queen of Sheba, prefer the exercise of reason — for man was armed with reason, and not for the devising of evils. Yes, she preferred the exercise of reason and deliberation, and submission to the truth once she found truth in the summons, over taking up force, though force she had in abundance. She did not resort to it, knowing well what befalls the land whether the issue be victory or defeat. And so it was that she tasted the sweetness of yielding to the truth, and by it turned back from error — and what a mighty glory is the glory of turning back from error! — and she saved her people from slaughter, spared her country ruin and her villages destruction, and came away with her head held high.

The seed of peace — by the truth I swear it — lies in the heart of every woman. And how should it not, when she is the sensitive creature who sees her happiness as incomplete without the safety of those around her? Were she allowed a say in resolving the knots of the world's problems, or in some part of them at least, she would help to avert many of the world's calamities, and the edifice of civilization might reach its summit — that edifice on which, through the long generations, the brains of the gifted, kneaded with the blood of reform's martyrs, join to lay the courses higher and higher; and then a few short hours of the arrogance of force and the rashness of anger knock down what was built, and mankind wakes from the floods of blood to find itself standing frozen in place, or fallen behind — advancing a step only to fall back steps, as the poet said:

When shall the building one day reach completion,
if you are building it while another tears it down?

Where, then, is the tender hand stretched out beside the almighty hand to curb its tyranny? Where is the compassionate heart in which the pulse of love rises above the roar of the cannon and the clash of swords? Where the watchful eye that teaches the ambitious how a tear of pity is shed over civilization as it collapses and slides backward for the sake of ambitions that will be buried with them on the day they are buried?

As for how woman is to attain this good influence, and what her practical means to it may be — that is her affair, on the day she is permitted to take part in the conduct of these matters.