The Woman's Word — On Divorce and Polygamy

Whenever a voice escapes from among us saying that woman has rights, there appear on many faces signs of some displeasure and a great deal of vexation and annoyance.

But if we leave woman to her own affairs, and leave her to taste alone the bitterness of the wrong she suffers and the burdens under which her shoulders bow, and then apply ourselves to reforming the affairs of this society — and by society I mean here our Islamic society and the societies that follow its pattern — do we not see that the first thing deserving of care, the first thing calling for the expenditure of effort, is to mend the condition of this fundamental pillar among its pillars and to straighten this crookedness that has come upon its structure? And is it in society's interest that woman should walk through it uncertain of herself, and face life with a spirit as far as can be from self-confidence and as close as can be to abject surrender?

And if we say that woman has rights, we confine this word for now to woman's right as a wife; and in this we are not asking for the invention of rights, nor seeking to diminish the rights of others. Rather we call for making use of the scope that Islamic law has opened to her, and of the freedom it has granted her at the drawing up of the marriage contract, to stipulate in it whatever she wishes and to frame the contract on the basis she wants.

She was given rights under the Sharia which she was slow to exercise; she yielded to a weakness the days bequeathed her, and submitted to a condition whose bitterness, if she tasted it in the past, it is not just that she should remain bowed beneath to the end of time.

Before us now stand two social problems: divorce and polygamy. In both of them woman can turn her freedom to account to the furthest limits if she sets down in her marriage contract whatever guarantees and conditions she wishes. But we do not call for excess in the misuse of the freedom granted, nor do we want the matter to turn from overbearing despotism into absolute chaos. Rather we call for legislation that protects the happiness of the family, guarantees woman a dignified life, and keeps pace with the march of the age and the progress of time.

I call for woman to exercise her right to divorce, by having it set down as a fundamental condition in the marriage contract that neither man nor woman may resort to it except through the court, which alone shall have the final word in this matter.

And I call for the enactment of a law that punishes polygamy and permits it only in special, exceptional cases whose assessment is left to the competent courts.

These are two problems in which, I believe, the time has come for us to move on from moral boasting — from producing conclusive proofs that Islamic law granted woman noble rights, guaranteed her an honored life, and set her in an excellent position — to a plane on which they are exercised under the authority of a law drawing on the spirit of that very Sharia, a law possessing the power of enforcement and the ability to punish.

Issue Four — Eleventh Year — April 1955