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A habit of violence grown ordinary : constraints on Muslim women's participation in war - 1
Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, Spring, 2002 by Maria Holt
According to the Qur'an, men and women are equal in terms of religious obligations. Their relationship is meant to be "one of equality, mutuality, and cordiality", (16) and in society, they have been allotted different but equally important roles. Problems arise in translating the Qur'an's broad ideals into practice. Although women and the family are said to be "the foundation of the Islamic community, the heart of Muslim society", the word of God has been "interpreted and applied in sociohistorical contexts by human beings. Using reason and influenced by geographic locations and customs, early jurists developed a body of laws which, while somewhat uniform in its essentials, reflected the differences of juristic reasoning and social customs of a patriarchal society". (17)
While the Qur'an provides what appears to be an admirable blueprint for a more egalitarian society, it has encountered difficulties in changing entrenched attitudes and patterns of behaviour. It is important, therefore, when discussing women and Islam, to distinguish between three separate strands: the words of the Qur'an, the conventions and codified laws which emerged in the first few centuries of Islam, and the recent phenomenon, usually referred to as Islamic "resurgence" or "fundamentalism". In Ahmed's view, the crucial factor has been the interpretation of the religious texts. In the Middle East of the early Islamic empires, "with already well articulated misogynist attitudes and practices, by licensing polygamy, concubinage, and easy divorce for men, originally allowed under different circumstances in a different society, Islam lent itself to being interpreted as endorsing and giving religious sanction to a deeply negative and debased conception of women". (18)
It is possible to identify two competing forces at work in the early seventh century CE when the Qur'an was revealed in Arabia to the Prophet Muhammad: on one side, the prevalent climate of misogyny and the determination of men to maintain their dominant position at the expense of women and, on the other, the explosive growth of Islam as a socially-enlightened force. Historical evidence, suggests Mernissi, "portrays women in the Prophet's Medina raising their heads from slavery and violence to claim their right to join, as equal participants in the making of their Arab history". (19) The reality is that, despite the success of the Islamic message in many areas of life, men continued to exercise control and to manipulate it in their own interests. Even today, "if women's rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men, it is neither because of the Koran nor the Prophet nor the Islamic tradition, but simply because those fights conflict with the interests of a male elite". (20)
Qur'anic verse IV:34 has been interpreted by some as giving a husband the right to use physical violence against his wife, if he feels she is disrespecting his authority. Obedience, it is argued, is a wife's "primary and most important responsibility. [It] is so much part of the fabric of Islam that it is said that she will be punished on the day of judgment for the failure of such obedience. (21) However, the precise meanings of "disobedience" and "rebellion" are not made clear in the Qur'an and, therefore, interpretations of them by men, including male scholars, are likely to be subjective.
