“ Fatima Mernissi has done an epoch making and scholarly exploration of the Suras (original Quranic verses) and the Hadits (accounts by the Companions of the Prophet about how the Messenger of God responded to challenging moments in the lives of first generation of believers,methodically cross checked and compiled by religious scholars who lived in the first two centuries of Islam) along with the interpretations since then. The major findings of the author are the following: 1. The Prophet undoubtedly wanted no separation between the public and private realms of life. 2. His vision of a monotheistic universal faith is absolutely egalitarian and that is a world in which women could shoulder equal roles with that of men in political, social and economic realms with a view to creating a new world that would assure peace and happiness to all humans. 3. While Islam would not sanction the practice of slavery within and among the believers, continuation of that institution for several centuries was possible in the lived history of Islam thanks to the denial of option (to the new religion )to the prisoners of wars, who were mostly women from the pre Islamic kingdoms. However,their children were considered free persons. These women were treated as slaves and they were traded off or exchanged as booty. 4.The descent of Hijab,the physical as well as the symbolic separation of private and public spaces happened as a response to the grave crisis in the Medina period,which corresponded to the later phase in the life of the Prophet. Years between Hejra 3-8 (AD 625- 630) were critical periods of crisis characterized by severe losses and uncertainty both on the side of military expeditions and on the socio-economic life of people. 5. Even while the Prophet together with his wives and many of the articulate women in the Medinese city continued adherence to the principle of equality( between men and women) , they encountered lot of social abuses on account of this. 6. The prominent ones of the male Companions led by his father in law Umer continuously pressed on the Prophet to impose decisive restrictions on women confining them to private spheres. They persisted on the view that solution to the above crisis of credibility and above all the insecurity, was in the separation of the Muslim space for ever into two- public space was to be preserved as exclusive domain of men, and the private space as the secluded space for women- both these spaces were to be separated by a Hijab- 7. The Hijab ultimately descented from the Heaven as revealed to the Prophet during the night of a wedding dinner in connection with his first night with Zynab in the year Hejra 5 (AD 627). The immediate provocation of the incident, according to a Hadith, was boorish behaviour of three male guests who continued to linger there chatting, sitting in the room without leaving the place even after they had the dinner; Prophet was eagerly waiting to be left alone in the company of Zynab,his new bride sitting in the same room. The author has devoted several pages to give the historical accounts of the delicate socio-political situation that put to test the viability of Islam as an egalitarian society in the period just prior to the triumphant coming back of the prophet to Mecca.The division of the Muslim space into a male (public ) and a secluded female space(family) corresponded to that period, and it happened completely against the will of a Prophet who had to respond to challenges from men from within as well as from those waiting outside to see his dreams spoilt for ever. While the aristocratic women were policed and pushed to seclusion for ostensible security, slave women caused to be left at the mercy of their male owners to be pushed into prostitution or to be traded off as guarantors of generations of female slaves. Fatima points out that the continuation of slavery for one section of women was just the mirror image of the politically and socially secluded(veiled) status of the aristocratic women.” kmvenuannur wrote this review Wednesday, April 22, 2009. ( reply | permalink ) shelfari/books/1306922/The-Veil-and-the-Male-Elite/readers-reviews
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 14:47:50 +0000
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