CHAPTER 8 Islamic Political M

CITATION:
Mernissi, Fatima. “Moroccan Femini
or.

st Fatima Mernissi
Argues That Islam Has Been Misint
erpreted on the
ey

Subject of the Position of Women, 1988.”

In Sources in
Sw

the History of the Modern Middle

East, edited by Akram
Khater, 1st ed., 345-52. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
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we
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1 t+
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4. Moroccan Feminist Fatima Mernissi Argues That Islam Has Been

Misinterpreted on the Subject of the Position of Women, 1988
Be

ms

Fatima Mernissi, born in Morocco in 1940, is widely recognized—by supporters and

_detractors—as a leading Muslim feminist. Trained as a psychologist, she became fa-
mous because of her radio show, on which she dealt openly and critically with the
position of women in Moroccan society. Later, she proceeded to critically analyze
the sources of women’s oppression in Arab and Islamic societies. While painting at
times with a far too broad. scholarly brush, she nonetheless presented one of the
first systematic critiques of Islamic practices from within the religion. Other femi-
nists, such as the Egyptian Nawal al-Saadawi, had come to the conclusion that re-
ligion is at the root of Arab patriarchy. Mernissi, in contrast, contended from the ‘
beginning that misunderstanding or misapplication of the true meaning and intent
of Islam and its Prophet had led to the rise of patriarchy. Thus, she argued, there is
no inherent conflict between Islam and modernity, but rather between modernity
and conservative interpreters of the religion.

Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, ed.
Mary Jo Lakeland (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1991). This document may also be found in Charles
Kurzman, Liberal Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 112-114, 119-121, 126.
Reprinted by permission of Perseus Books Publishers, a member of Perseus Books, L.L.C.° -
 346 PARTIV_ The Middle East Today

“Can a woman be a leader of Muslims?” I asked my grocer, who, like most gro-
cers in Morocco, is a true “barometer” of public opinion.
“I take refuge in God!” he exclaimed, shocked, despite the friendly rela-
tions between us. Aghast at the idea, he almost dropped the half-dozen eggs |
had come to buy.
“May God protect us from the catastrophes of the times!” mumbled a cus-
tomer who was buying olives, as he made as if to spit. My grocer is a fanatic
about cleanliness, and not even denouncing a heresy justifies dirtying the floor
in his view. _ .
A second customer, a schoolteacher whom I vaguely knew from the news-
stand, stood slowly caressing his wet mint leaves, and then hit me with a hadith
[tradition of the Prophet] that he knew would be fatal: “Those who entrust
their affaits to a woman will never know prosperity!” Silence fell on the scene.
There was nothing I could’say. In a Muslim theocracy, a hadith is no small mat-
ter. The hadith collections are works that récord in minute detail what the
Prophet said and did. They constitute, along with the Qur’an (the book re-
vealed by God), both the source of law and the standard for distinguishing the
true from the false, the permitted from the forbidden—they have shaped Mus-
lim ethics and values.
I discreetly left the grocery store without another word. What could I have
said to counterbalance the force of that political aphorism, which is as implaca-
ble as it is popular? . |
Silenced, defeated, and furious, I suddenly felt the urgent need to inform
myself about this hadith and to search out the texts where it is mentioned, to_
understand better its extraordinary power over the ordinary citizens of a mod-
ern state. _ <
_, Aglance at the latest Moroccan election statistics supports the “predic-
tion” uttered in the grocery store. Although the constitution gives, women the
right to vote and be elected, political reality grants them only the fornier. In the
legislative elections of 1977, the eight women who stood for election found
no favor with the six and a half million voters, of whom three million were
women. At the opening of Parliament, there was not one woman present, and
the men were settled among their male peers as usual, just as in the cafes. Six
years later, in the municipal elections of 1983, 307 women were bold enough to
stand as candidates, and almost three and a half million women voters went
to the polls. Only 36 women won election, as against 65,502 men!!
To interpret the relationship between the massive participation of women
voters and the small number of women elected as a sign of stagnation and back-
watdness would be in accordance with the usual stereotypes applied to the
Arab world. However, it would be more insightful to see it as a refleétion of
changing times and the intensity of the conflicts between the aspirations
of women, who take the constitution of their country seriously, and the

‘Morocco, Ministére de l’Artisanat et des Affaires Sociales, Les Femmes marocaines dans le
développement économique et social, décennie 1975-1985 [Moroccan Women in Social and
Economic Development, the Decade 1975-1985].
3
 ‘CHAPTER 8 _ Islamic Political Movem

resistance of men, who imagine, despite the laws in force, that power is nec-
essarily male. This makes me ‘want to shed light on those obscure zones of
resistance, those entrenched attitudes, in order to understand the symbolic—
even explosive—significance of that act which elsewhere in the world is an
ordinary event: a woman’s vote. For this reason, my misadventure in a
neighborhood grocery store had more than symbolic importance for me. Re-
vealing the misogynistic attitude of my neighbors, it indicated to me the path I
should follow to better understand it—a study of the religious texts that
everybody knows but no one really probes, with the exception:of the authori-
ties on the subject: the mullas [religious scholars] and imams [prayer leaders].
Going through the religious literature is no small task. First of all, one is
overwhelmed by the number of volumes, and one immediately understands
why the average Muslim can never know as much as an imam. [Muhammad ibn
Isma‘il] Al-Bukhari’s [810-870] prestigious collection of traditions, Al-Sabih
(The Authentic), is in four volumes with an abstruse commentary by one
[Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Hadi] al-Sindi [died 1726], who is extremely sparing
with his comments.2 Now, without a very good commentary a non-expert will
have difficulty reading a religious text of the ninth century. . .. This is because,
for each hadith, it is necessary to check the identity of the Companion of the
Prophet who uttered it, and in what circumstances and with what objective in’
mind, as well as the chain of people who passed it along—and there are more
fraudulent traditions than authentic ones. For each hadith, al-Bukhari gives the
results of his investigation. If he speaks of X or Y, you have to check which
Companion is being referred to, what battle is being discussed, in order to
make sense of the dialogue or scene that is being transcribed. In addition, al-
Bukhari doesn’t use just one informant; there are dozens of them in the dozens
of volumes. You must be careful not to go astray. The smallest mistake about
the informant can cost you months of work. ~ a
oO

What is the best way of making this check? First of all, you should make
contact with the experts in religious science (fagibs) in your city. According to
LO

moral teaching and the traditional conventions, if you contact a fagih for in-
formation about the sources of a hadith or a Qur’anic verse, he must assist you.
LO

Knowledge is to be shared, according to ‘the promise of the Prophet himself.

Fath al-bari by (Ibn Hajar] al-‘Asqalani (he died in year 852 of the hejira
OM

[1372-1449 .p.]) was recommended to me by several people I consulted. It

+

consists of 17 volumes that one can consult in libraries during their opening
hours. But the vastness of the task and the rather limited reading time is enough
»

to discourage most researchers. _

The schoolteacher in the grocery store was right: the hadith “those who
MH, OD

entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity” was there in al-
‘Asqalani’s 13th volume, where he quotes al-Bulhari’s Sahih, that is, those
A
mM

2A]-Bukhari. AL-Sabib (Collection of Authentic Hadiths), with commentary by al-Sindi

rr

- (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Ma‘rifa, 1978). The hadith quoted by the schoolteacher [Link] vol-
ume 4, p. 226. a "
348 PART IV The Middle East Today

traditions that al-Bukhari classified as authentic after a rigorous process of se-

lection, verifications, and counter-verifications.? Al-Bukhari’s work has been
one of the most highly respected references for 12 centuries. This hadith is the
sledgehammer argument used by those who want to exclude women from pol-
itics. One also finds it in the work of other authorities known for their schol-
arly rigor, such as Ahmad ibn Hanbal [780-855], the author of the Musnad and
founder of the Hanbali school, one of the four great schools of jurisprudence
of the Sunni Muslim world.‘
- This hadith is so important that it is practically impossible to discuss the
question of women’s political rights without referring to it, debating it, and
taking a position on it.... /
According to al-Bukhari, it is supposed to have been Abu Baka [died citca
671] who heard the Prophet say: “Those who entrust their affairs to a woman’
will never know prosperity.” Since this hadith is included in the Sahih—those
thousands of authentic hadith accepted by the meticulous al-Bukhari—it is a
priori considered true and therefore unassailable without proof to the contrary,
since we are here in scientific terrain. So nothing bars me, as a Muslim woman,
from making a double investigation—historical and methodological—of this
hadith and its author, and especially of the conditions in which it was first put
to use. Who uttered this hadith, where, when, why, and to whom?

__ If one follows the principles of Malik for figh [Islamic jurisprudence]. Abu
Bakra must be rejected as a source of hadith by every good, well-informed Ma-
likite Muslim.
To close this investigation, let us take a brief look at the-attitude of the re-
ligious scholars of the first centuries toward that misogynistic hadith that is
presented to us today as sacred, unassailable truth. Even though it was col-
lected as shih (authentic) by al-Bukhari and others, that hadith was hotly con-
tested and debated by many. The scholars did not agree on the weight to give
that hadith on women and politics. Assuredly there were some who used it as
an argument for excluding women from decision making. But there were oth-
ers who found that argument unfounded and unconvincing. Al-Tabari was one

“Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani, Huda al-sari, muqaddimat Fath al-bari [The Traveller’s Guide, In-
troduction to “The Creator’s Conquest”}, commonly known as Fath al-bari [The Creator’s
Conquest]. It comprises al-Bukhari’s text with a commentary by al-‘Asqalani. The hadith —
that concerns us here, on the necessity of excluding women from power, is found on p. 46
of volume 13 of the edition of Al-Matba‘a al-Bahiya al-Misriya (1928) and on p. 166 of vol-
ume 16 of the edition of Maktaba Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi fi Misr (1963). (Future page
references are to the 1928 edition.)
*The Muslim world is divided into two parts: the Sunnis (orthodox) and the Shi‘ites (liter-
ally, schismatics). Each group has its own specific texts of figh (religious knowledge), espe-
cially as regards sources of the shari‘a (legislation and laws). The Sunnis are split between
four madbahib (schools).... The differences between them most frequently relate to de-
tails of juridical procedures.
 CHAPTER 8 _ Islamic Political Movements Since 1964 349

of those réligious authorities who took a position against it, not finding it a suf-
ficient basis. for depriving women of their power of decision making and for
justifying their exclusion from politics.>
After having tried to set straight the historical record—the line of trans-
mitters and witnesses who gave their account of a troubled historical epoch—I
can only advise redoubled vigilance when, taking the sacred as an argument,
someone hurls at the believer as basic truth a political axiom so terrible and
with such grave historical consequences as the one we have been investigating.
Nevertheless, we will see that this “misogynistic” hadith, although it is exem-
plary, is not a unique case. .
Throughout my childhood I had a very ambivalent relationship with the
Qur'an. It was taught to us in a Qur’anic school in a particularly ferocious
manner. But to my childish mind only the highly fanciful Islam of my illiterate
grandmother, Lalla Yasmina, opened the door for me to a poetic religion. ...
This dual attitude that I had toward the sacred text was going to remain with
me. Depending on how it is used, the sacred text can be a threshold for escape
or aii insurmountable barrier. It can be that rare music that leads to dreaming
or simply a dispiriting routine. It all depends on the person who invokes it.
However, for me, the older I grew, the fainter the music became. In secondary
school the history of religion course was studded with traditions. Many of
them from appropriate pages of al-Bukhari, which the teacher recited to us,
made me feel extremely ill at ease: “I'he Prophet said that the dog, the ass, and
‘woman interrupt prayer if they pass in front of the believer, interposing them-
selves between him and the gibla [the direction of Mecca].”®... :
By lumping [woman] in with two familiar animals, the author of the hadith
inevitably makes her a being who belongs to the animal kingdom. It is enough
for a woman to appear in the field of vision for contact with the gibla—that is,
the divine—to be disturbed. Like the dog and the ass, she destroys the sym-
bolic relation with the divine by her presence. One has to interrupt one’s
prayer and begin again.
Arab civilization being a civilization of the written word, the only point of
view we [Link] this question is-that of Abu Hurayra [died 678]. According to
[Shams al-Din] Ibn Marzuq [1311-1379], when someone invoked in front of
‘Aisha the hadith that said that the three causes of interruption of prayer were
dogs, asses, and women, she answered them: “You compare us now to asses
and dogs. In the name of God, I have seen the Prophet saying his prayers while
I was there, lying on the bed between him and the gibla. And in order not to
disturb him, I didn’t move.”” The believers used to come to ‘A’isha for verifi-
cation of what they had heard, confident of her judgment, not only because of
her closeness to the Prophet, but because of her own abilities:

*Asqalani, Fath al-bart, volume 13, p. 47.

*Bukhari, Sahih, volume 1, p. 99.
"Bukhari, Sahib, volume 1, p. 199.
 ‘350. PARTIV__ The Middle East Today

Ihave seen groups of the most eminent companions of the Prophet ask _
her questions concerning the fara’id [the daily duties of the Muslim,
the rituals, etc.], and Ibn ‘Ata’ said: “‘A’isha was, among all the people, .
the one who had the most knowledge of figh, the one who was the
most educated and, compared to those who surrounded her, the one
whose judgment was the best.”®
Despite her words of caution, the influence of Abu Hurayra has nevertheless
infiltrated the most prestigious religious texts, among them the Sabih of al-
Bukhari, who apparently did not always feel obliged to insert the corrections
provided by ‘A’isha. The subject of many of these hadith is the “polluting”
essence of femaleness. , _—
\ ‘To understand the importance for Islam of that aspect of femaleness, evok-
ing disturbance and sullying, we would do well to look at the personality of
Abu Hurayra, who, as it were, gave it legal force. Without wanting to play the
role of psychoanalytical detective, I can say that the fate of Abu Hurayra and
his ambivalence toward women are wrapped up in the story of his name. Abu
. Hurayra, meaning literally “Father of the Little Female Cat,” had previously
been called “Servant of the Sun” (‘Abd al-Shams).? The Prophet decided to
change that name, which had a very strong sense of idolatry about it. “Servant
of the Sun” was originally from Yemen, that part of Arabia where not only the
sun, a female star in Arabic, was worshipped, but where women also ruled in
public and private life. Yeren was the land of the Queen of Sheba, Bilqis [tenth
century B.C,], that queen who fascinated King Solomon [reigned 962-922 8.c.],
who ruled over a happy kingdom, and who put her mark on Arab memory,
since she appears in the Qur’an: >
\

[Hud-hud] said:.“I have found (a thing) that thou apprehendest not,

and I come unto thee from Sheba with sure tidings.”
‘Lo! I found a woman ruling over them, and she hath been given
(abundance) of all things, and hers is a mighty throne. .
- +I found her and her people worshipping the sun instead of
God.... (Sura 27, Verses 22-24)
| Abu Hurayra came from the Yemeni tribe of the Daws.'° At the age of 30
the man named “Servant of the Sun” was converted to Islam. The Prophet gave
him the name ‘Abdallah (Servant of God) and nicknamed hini Abu Hurayra
(Father of the Little Female Cat) because he used to walk around with a little

"Ibn Hajar al~‘Asqalani, Al-Isaba fi tamyiz al-sahaba [A Biographical Dictionary of the

Companions of the Prophet] (Cairo: Maktaba al-Dirasa al-Islamiya Dar al-Nahda, no date),
volume 8, p. 18.
*Asqalani, Al-Isaba, volume 7, p. 427. .
‘Abd al-Mun‘im Salih al-Ali al-‘Uzzi, Difa‘ ‘an Abi Hurayra [In Defense of Abu
Hurayra], second edition (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Qalam; Baghdad: Maktaba al-Nahda,
1981), p.13. ; |
 CHAPTER8 Islamic Politic

female cat that he adored."! But Abu Hurayra was not happy with this
name, for he did not like the trace of femininity in it: “Abu Hurayr
‘Don’t call me Abu Hurayra. The Prophet nicknamed me Abu Hirr [Father of
the Male Cat], and the [Link] better than the female.’”? He had another rea-
son to feet sensitive about this subject of femininity—he did not have avery
masculine job. In a Medina that was in a state of full-blown economic develop-
ment, where the Medinese, especially the Jews, made an art of agriculture, and
the immigrant Meccans continued their commercial activities and managed to
combine them with military expeditions, Abu Hurayra preferred, according to
his own comments, to be in the company of the Prophet. He served him and
sometimes “helped out in the women’s apartments.” This fact might clear up
the mystery about his hatred of women, and also of female cats, the two seem-
ing to be strangely linked in his mind.
He had such a fixation about female cats and women that he recalled that
the Prophet had pronounced a hadith concerning the two creatures—and in
which the female cat comes off much better than the woman. But ‘A’isha con-
tradicted him, a Companion recounted:
| We were with ‘A’isha, and Abu ‘Hurayra was with us. ‘A’isha said tto
him: “Father of the Little Cat, 1s it you who said that you heard the
Prophet declare that a woman went to hell because she starved a-little
female cat and didn’t give it anything to drink?”
“T did hear the Prophet say that,” responded Father of the ‘Lit-
tle Cat.
“A believer is too valuable in the eyes of God,” retorted ‘A’isha,
“for Him to torture that person because of a cat.... Father of the Lit-
tle Cat, the next time you undertake to repeat the words of the
\ Prophet, watch out what you recount.”"*.
é

It is not surprising t that Abu Hurayra attacked ‘Aisha in return for that.
She might be “The Mother. of [Link]” and “The Lover of the Lover of
God,” but she contradicted him too ‘often. One day he lost patience and de-
fended himself against an attack by ‘A’isha. When she said to him, “Abu Hu-
rayra, you relate hadith that you never heard,” he replied sharply, “O Mother,
all I did was collect hadith, while you were too busy with make-up and your’
mirror.”
[oe] = : - .

it “Asqalank AL-Isaba, volume 7, p. 426.

12 Asqalani, AL-Isaba, volume 7, p. 434.
13°Asqalani, Al-Isaba, volume 7, p. 441.
M4Tmam [Muhammad ibn Bahadur al-] Zarkashi [circa 1344-1392]. Al-Ijaba li-irad ma is-
tadrakathu ‘Nisha’ala alsahaba [Collection of ‘A’isha’s Corrections to the Statements of the
Companions], second edition (Beirut, Lebanon: Al-Maktab al-Islam, 1980), p. 118.
15° Asqalani, Al-Isaba, volume 7, p. 440.
352 PART IV The Middle East Today

With this anecdote we come back to our poitit of departure, the relation-
ship of “Father of the Little Female Cat” to femaleness and to the very myste-
-rious and dangerous link between the sacred and women. All the monotheistic
religions are shot through by the conflict between the divine and the feminine,
but none more so than Islam, which has opted for the occultation of the femi-
nine, at least symbolically, by trying to veil it, to hide it, to mask it. Islam as
sexual practice unfolds with a very special theatricality since it is acted out ina
scene where the hijab [veil] occupies a central position. This almost phobic at-
titude toward women is all the more-surprisinig since we have seen that the
Prophet has encouraged his adherents to renounce it as representative of
thé jabiliya and its superstitions. This leads me to ask: Is it possible that Islam’s
message had only a limited and superficial effect on deeply superstitious
seventh-centuty Arabs who failed to integrate its novel approaches to the
world aid to women? Is it possible that the hijab, the attempt to veil women,
that is claimed today to be basic to Muslim identity, is nothing but the expres-
sion of the persistence of the prelslamic mentality, the jahilzya mentality that
Islam was supposed to annihilate?