The Woman's Word

Our generous friend Mrs. Amina al-Said — and who does not know the sincere zeal and the pure, devoted courage in Amina al-Said? — has raised a cry that without doubt finds an answering echo in the soul of every Muslim woman in the world. But this response does not move in one direction, nor does it converge upon a single goal. For we find among Muslim women themselves — and among them are thinkers and social reformers — those who do not believe, for example, that equality between male and female in inheritance is in their interest. They see in it what may become a cause for depriving woman of the rights she enjoys, rights imposed upon the man toward her and toward her family. And she often resorts to availing herself of this right if she is struck by hardship in life and her strength proves too weak to face it, or her capacity falls short of supporting herself and shielding her family from the evil of want and exhaustion. They hold that the Muslim woman has not yet been qualified, nor sufficiently prepared, to bear her own burden and her family's on any wide scale.

And there is the party of the enthusiasts, who prefer to expose themselves to harm for the sake of their dignity, which is wounded by the feeling that they are a burden upon the man in the hour of trial; they hold that his aid to them must inevitably be attended by a certain condescension that touches their pride.

Yet the matter, between these and those, does not rest upon opinion alone, nor upon sheer feeling: it is legislation at the very core of the Islamic religion, which must be examined by the deeply versed scholars whom nothing in the affairs of the religious law escapes, great or small. Often they find openings for interpretation on which to rest, as the scholars of the age of Sultan Abdul Hamid found an opening whereby the Sultan had the right to assign distribution in his lands — which comprised the greater part of the kingdom's territory — on a footing of equality between man and woman, in what is known as the law of the emiri lands. And as the masters among the Jaafari scholars found the opening that guarantees the daughters' right to their father's inheritance in full, even if he leaves no male offspring. Therefore the important thing in this matter is that the verifying (specialist) scholars study it. As for us, however far our enthusiasm may carry us and however good intentions may drive us, our capacity will always have a limit that halts at the door of religious and scholarly ijtihad. I do not doubt for a moment that among the Muslim scholars of today, in all countries, there are those who have combined religious learning and civil learning enough to qualify them to examine matters such as these, and they know better than we how to apply the principle that "rulings change with the changing of the times." And I believe it is best for us all to leave these matters to them, to set them down for us on strong, sound foundations without crookedness and without wounding; nor is there any harm in our voices reaching them, asking of them mature opinion and upright, reforming work.