with its cause, whether present or absent; and second, when custom and usage change.
The Muslims Avail Themselves of These Dispensations
On this basis the Muslims have not scrupled to carry out reforms in civil affairs consonant with the age: the state of the Caliphate — by which I mean the Ottoman Sultanate — availed itself of these dispensations when it drew up the civil codes, when it made males and females equal in the inheritance of uncultivated lands, and when it accepted the testimony of woman.
The Turkish Republic went further, when President Atatürk issued the family law that made males and females equal in political and social rights — among them inheritance and testimony — forbade polygamy, and forbade divorce except under special conditions.
Then Egypt did not hesitate to set bounds to divorce and polygamy, drawing its reforms from the foundations of the religion.
The Reality Facing the Muslims
Now that woman obtains the school certificates just as man does, and takes the higher degrees — when she then comes to give testimony, she has no need for one woman to remind the other.
Now that the wife has come to feel that she must share with the man in the expenses of the family, on the consideration that there is no true equality so long as she remains a dependent upon him
— for that reason she needs her inheritance in full.
Now that there has settled in the souls of husband and wife alike the duty of giving the children an upbringing in keeping with the times and with their contemporaries — a thing that cannot be managed if offspring multiply through polygamy, given the costs of living.
Now that the purpose of marriage has come to go beyond animal pleasure, and divorce — as Islam itself declared — has become the most hateful of lawful things, save in special cases.
The wise among the Muslims thus find themselves facing duties of reform that do not conflict with the dispensations of the religion. Religion is ease, not hardship. Did it not speak of the changing of rulings with the changing of the times? And that necessities make forbidden things lawful? And that the legal ruling founded upon a cause turns with its cause, whether present or absent?
And did not some of the jurists hold it permissible to alter even the explicit rulings when custom and usage change?
