Authors: Wafa Sultan
I never met my father’s first wife—even my mother never saw her—and so I don’t know why her memory wrings my heart. I don’t know where she is buried, nor do I recall any of her children ever visiting her. Neither my father nor any of her children ever talked about her. But I used to hear my paternal uncle’s wife telling my mother her story and recounting how she had spent her two final years in isolation far from her children in a hospital in the capital, a long way away from the town where we lived.
At an early age I read the story of the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to one of his wives and how he was on the point of going to bed with her when he discovered white marks on the skin of her abdomen and dismissed her. In my young mind this story of the Prophet’s marriage became connected with my father’s abandonment of his ailing wife, who died alone after two years during which she never saw her children. I harbored feelings of hatred toward my father, though not toward the Prophet, because—you see—the ogre had taken me prisoner, as well.
The boulders continue to descend centuries after Muhammad’s death. It is now Saudi sheikhs who bombard us every day with hundreds of fatwas. A large number of Koranic verses deal with women, yet not one of them moderates the severity of the crisis caused by the verses and stories we’ve talked about already. One verse reads: “Your women are your fields: go, then, into your fields as you please” (2:223). According to Al-Jalalayn’s commentary on the Koran,
*
this expression means that woman is where you plant your children and do so, as you please. According to this same commentary this verse means that a man can sow his sperm in any position he may wish the woman to assume during the “planting process.” A woman, therefore, is like the land—the dirt—while the man is the farmer who plows that land and casts his seed into it. The dirt cannot protest as the farmer furrows it, nor can it determine the time or place of planting. The whole operation takes place under the man’s control and is carried out in accordance with his wishes. Can the dirt protest? Can the dirt decide how it is plowed and planted? For fourteen centuries Muslim women have been the dirt of Islam that Muslim men have trod on and “planted” in their role as the farmer.
A woman may not step beyond the limitations of her role while the man permits no infringement of his. This stilted relationship has created untold generations born without the benefit of a loving relationship between the men and women who created them. A healthy and loving relationship between a man and a woman in no way resembles the relationship between a farmer and his land. Relationships that are not based on an equal respect for each other’s feelings cannot produce a generation sound in mind, spirit, and emotion. A woman is not just a plot of land for a man to cleave with his plow. A woman is a human being with a mind, a soul, and feelings and a man should not be modeled as a sort of farmer who uses a woman as he pleases.
What kind of deity is it whose limited powers of imagination dictates that the relationship between a man and a woman should be similar to that between a farmer and his land? For me, that deity is nothing but a failed poet whose verses we can well do without. That deity is nothing but a puny village ogre who puts men and women on unequal footing as far as their rights and obligations are concerned. Why? The men of the Arabian Desert created their ogre as a way of dealing with their fears. And so this ogre rejected equality in order to punish women for being one of the sources of his fear of failure and disgrace.
When I began to learn to read, the Koran was the first book I opened. I can never remember anyone explaining these verses to me in a more merciful and tolerant way than I understand them today. Today most Muslims attack me unmercifully. They accuse me of picking out from the Koran those verses which serve my purposes, just as I would pick the best cherries out of a boxful. Naturally, I like this simile, and cannot see anything in it that reflects badly on my reliability. The box that God reveals is not supposed to have any spoiled cherries in it. If God does exist, then the most basic moral principle is that this God should be utter perfection. As far as I am concerned, any impairment of perfection diminishes the authenticity of a God. A God who subjugates women in the ugliest ways possible cannot possibly possess the necessary quality of perfection. If I can pick out spoiled cherries from a box that is supposed to have come down from God, then I have every right to cause you to doubt the authenticity of that God.
The status of women in Muslim countries is a human catastrophe that the world has ignored for centuries and for which it is now paying a high price for ignoring. An oppressed and subjugated woman cannot give birth to an emotionally and mentally well-balanced man. The invisible Muslim woman has been and continues to be the hen who incubates the eggs of terrorism and provides them with the necessary warmth to hatch the terrorists. The woman who stands before the television camera and tells the world, “Three of my sons were martyrs and I hope the fourth becomes one, too,” is a woman who has been deprived of her motherhood. And when she continues, “My sons are now celebrating their marriage with their virgins in paradise,” we must conclude that she has been deprived of sense and conscience, too! Who has deprived this woman of her motherhood, her mind, and her conscience? People, both men and women, fall into the trap laid for them by those who educate them in the first years of their lives. People are what they are told to be. A person takes on an identity and defines the characteristics of that identity in accordance with the beliefs that prevail in the environment into which he or she has been born. Unconsciously he or she tries to establish the validity of this identity and these characteristics.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to change one’s beliefs about oneself later in life, especially if one continues to live in the environment that helped form those beliefs. I read of a curious experiment conducted by a psychologist who adopted a female chimpanzee from the moment she was born and took her to live at home with his wife and children as one of the family. The chimpanzee did the same things that the rest of the family did, and everyone treated her as if she was one of them. When she reached maturity, the psychologist gave her a collection of pictures and asked her to classify them into two groups, the first of which would contain only pictures of nonhumans—such as a book, a cap, a flower, or a bird—while the second would contain pictures of human beings. The pictures the psychologist gave her included one of the chimp herself. The chimpanzee began to sort through the pictures, and she placed the photograph of herself in the group that contained pictures of human beings, for she considered herself to be human. Why? Because she had been treated like a human being since she was born. Women in Muslim countries have fallen into the same trap as that chimpanzee, and can no longer perceive themselves other than as society treats them: as inferior to men and lacking men’s mental capacities. They have become convinced that they are inferior beings, and even begin to defend their classification as such.
Muslim education has stunted women to the point of depriving them of their mind and their conscience. This education has had a profound effect on the minds of Muslim men and women alike. It is no longer just men who are responsible for the situation women are in; women themselves have begun to defend the situation. Women have seen themselves relegated to the status of men’s animals. They accepted this status and can now no longer escape it.
The Koranic verses and prophetic traditions we’ve talked about—together with the fatwas, interpretations, and exegeses that accrued to them—were enough to distort women’s self-image and persuade them that this distorted image was sacred. Islam views women as defective beings, and, because of the education they have received, women have become convinced of their defectiveness and have indeed sanctified that defectiveness as divine decree. The problem is no longer simply one of Islamic education. It is being perpetuated by women who defend this education. No situation can be changed unless those living within it are aware of its shortcomings and strive for change.
A worm lives out its life glued to the ground, frequently crushed underfoot. As it is unaware of the reality it lives in, it does not rebel. Women in Muslim countries live like worms, trampled under men’s feet. They believe that they were created to follow that way of life, and so cannot be expected to reject it. The prophetic traditions I have quoted stigmatized women as intellectually and morally defective. Muhammad in a hadith told his followers: “Oh ye women, you are the majority of those who dwell in hell, for when you receive you express no thanks, when afflicted you show no patience, and when I keep aloof from you, you complain.” Just imagine for a moment how it must feel to hear this over and over again, having it drummed into your head until it becomes part of your very being. According to Muslim belief, women are incapable of gratitude or patience and like to grumble and complain. What kind of woman is this brainwashed female who agrees to descend to the level of these accusations?
Women in Islam have not just become the hostages of their own debilitating beliefs about themselves. They are also at men’s beck and call and, thus, their hostages, as well. Muhammad said in another hadith: “A woman must not feed anyone without her husband’s permission, unless the food is about to spoil. If she feeds anyone with his consent, her recompense is the same as his, but if she feeds anyone without his permission, he receives the recompense, while she will bear the responsibility for the sin.” What kind of woman is this brainwashed female who does not have the right to dispose of so much as a loaf of bread in her own home, and who, if she gives it to a destitute person with her husband’s permission, only then gets her recompense from his God? These teachings have not just helped to canonize women’s bondage, they have enshrined male arrogance.
The Muslim male is conceited. His ogre has appointed him as his deputy and has conferred absolute power upon him. This power knows no bounds and has no respect for women’s intelligence or emotions. Even where something as private and personal as having sex with one’s spouse is concerned, Islam gives women no choice in the matter. Muhammad: says in another hadith “If a man summons his wife to his bed and she refuses, the angels will curse her until the morning.” Who is this God who asks his angels to devote their attention to cursing women who refuse to go to bed with their husbands? Is he not an ogre? When there is a conflict between obeying her husband and obeying God, a woman owes her first obedience to her husband. This means that she is not allowed to fast or pray unless her husband agrees, as laid down by the words of the Prophet of Islam in a hadith: “A woman shall neither fast nor pray without her husband’s authorization.”
Muslim women live as men’s slaves and will remain so until they release themselves from this mistaken conviction. Can you imagine how enslaved a woman must be if she believes this hadith from her Prophet: “A man has the right to expect his wife, if his nose runs with blood, mucus or pus, to lick it up with her tongue.” Can you imagine the conceit of a man who believes that his God has entitled him to such a position that his wife must lick up the filth that comes out of his nose?
During my last visit to Syria in 2005, a childhood friend of mine invited me to lunch at her home in a Damascus suburb. Around the table with me were my friend and her family and a friend of hers called Halima. My friend’s friend was a woman in her forties. The story of her life was eloquently and clearly expressed in her face, a face filled with sorrow. “When I heard you’d been invited to Reema’s,” she said, “I called her and asked her to arrange for me to meet you at any cost. I’ve read you, and I know perfectly well who you are and what you can and can’t do. I don’t want anything from you. I ask only that you listen to my story because no one else here seems to believe that I have a story worth telling.”
And so, she told me her story, one that has unfortunately become part of the social fabric of the place, a story also heard in other cultures of a woman who is used by a man; but one that, here, has a different Koranic twist to it. It’s a story that people have grown used to hearing and no longer, unfortunately, find a cause for concern… .
Halima has three children. She spent her childhood and early youth in the house of her father, who never accorded her a single day’s respect either as a woman or a human being. She escaped into marriage to a man named Omar while still an adolescent, seeking refuge from a bad situation in one that turned out to be even worse. After her marriage, Omar came home drunk every night and beat her. She became accustomed to these daily beatings, just as he was accustomed to drinking.
But Halima is no ordinary woman. She is a teacher, poised yet noticeably wary. Her tragedy came to a head when her drunken husband began to put pressure on her to arrange a bank loan for him on the strength of her salary to pay off his accumulated debts, to creditors whose patience was running out. Halima tried to find out whether or not what Omar said was true, in order to discover the names of his creditors and pay off the debt herself so that her husband would have no need of the loan—but without success.
Women, in Omar’s view, were supposed to carry out their husband’s orders without protest and had no right to interfere in a man’s affairs. He used to tell her from time to time, over the sound of his belt ripping into her body, “You damned woman, have you forgotten the words of God’s Prophet—may God bless him and grant him salvation: ‘If I had ordered anyone to bow down to anyone [other than God], I would have ordered a woman to bow down before her husband because of his rights over her.’ I haven’t ordered you to kneel down in front of me, but I am ordering you to take out a loan on the strength of your salary!” Halima secured the loan and Omar pocketed the money, leaving the house reassured that Halima had obeyed her Prophet and her husband, earning the approval of her Lord.
After Omar had taken Halima’s money, he was repeatedly and inexplicably absent from home and Halima became suspicious. One morning their neighbor, Salim, knocked at their door. “How are you, Halima? Listen, there’s something I want to tell you. Before Omar leaves home tomorrow morning, make sure he hasn’t got his passport in his pocket.” Then he turned on his heel and hurried away before Halima could ask why.