The Hijab
Religion, History or Political Statement? (Part
3)
By Professor Nazeer
Ahmed
CA
The unitary concept of the Caliphate as the central
focus of political, religious, judicial and administrative
space was shattered in the ninth century and in
its place sprang up separate spaces occupied by
the sultan and his hired professionals. Certainly,
there were exceptional rulers, such as Omar bin
Abdul Aziz (d. 719) and Sulaiman the Magnificent
(d. 1565) who sought to reverse this trend and
made concerted attempts to live up to the ideals
of a caliph. But such cases were few and far between.
Through most of Islamic history, the Caliphate
survived as a fossilized replica of its pristine
self.
The threat of assassination, the fossilization
of the caliphate and the rise of the sultanates,
the emergence of the viziers, the hiring of professional
khatibs and the appointment of hajibs, all contributed
to the isolation of the ruler from the ruled.
Within the isolated political and social space
of the common folk, women found themselves even
more isolated. The process was slow and subtle.
It was a requirement that a caliph lead the congregational
prayers. The qualifications for this function
were addressed in all the major schools of Fiqh,
which developed between the years 765-950. This
was a period of global expansion of Muslim political
power. Accompanying this expansion there was an
influx of ideas from Greece, India, China and
Africa. Islam was faced with the challenge of
defining its interfaces with other civilizations
while strengthening its own ideational structure
in the face of alien ideas. Fiqh (jurisprudence)
was the doctrinal response of the Islamic civilization
to the challenge of these older civilizations.
The five major schools of Fiqh (Hanafi, Maliki,
Shafi’i, Hanbali and Ja’afariya) came
up with different answers as to whether a woman
was qualified to lead a congregational prayer.
In the opinion of the Hanafi, Shafi’i and
Ja’afariya Schools, a woman may lead a congregation
of other women and children but not of men. The
Maliki and Hanbali Schools were stricter. Since
a woman could not lead juma’a prayers, this
automatically barred her from aspiring to be a
caliph or imam. However, the spiritual and religious
space remained open to women during the early
Caliphate. During the Caliphate of Omar ibn al
Khattab (r), women prayed behind the men, took
part in the discussions in the mosque and on many
an occasion, questioned the caliph about affairs
of state.
This openness received a jolt in the eighth century
with the influx of Greek rational thought and
Greek culture into the courts of Baghdad. The
Mu’tazilites emerged as champions of rational
thought and were embraced with open arms by the
caliphs. But then the Mu’tazilites overstepped
their bounds and applied their methods to Divine
revelation. They claimed that the Qur’an
was created in time. This position drew a determined
and persistent reaction from the ulema and the
Mu’tazilites were repudiated. What emerged
triumphant from this caldron of ideas was a doctrinal
Islam that was even more conservative in its approach
to social and cultural matters. This was the period
when Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal codified the Hanbali
School of Fiqh, which is the most conservative
of the four major Sunni schools of jurisprudence.
The infusion of Hellenist culture had brought
dancing girls into the palaces of Baghdad and
Muslim jurists, fearing an assault on the order
and stability of society, took a hard stance against
the intermingling of men and women. This was done
presumably for the protection of women. With time,
however, the position hardened and women were
precluded from social and political life altogether.
Legal opinions were offered that would even bar
a woman from the mosque. The universal brotherhood
and sisterhood that was created by the Prophet
was shattered and in its place emerged class distinctions
between the ruler and the ruled and sex distinctions
between men and women. The masses were secluded
from political life and among the masses, women
were even more secluded.
In the 9th century, as the Turks entered the fold
of Islam in large numbers and the sultanate became
the mechanism of temporal power, it was the sultan,
not the caliph, who defended the ummah from its
enemies, appointed executive functionaries and
implemented the tenets of the law. Following their
own cultural traditions, the Turks were more open
to the entry of women into the political, judicial
and military space. Turkish women rode into battle
with men, took part in the affairs of state and
sat next to sultans and jurists advising them
in the dispensation of justice. This pattern of
women’s participation in public affairs
continued in later centuries in the courts of
the Turkomans, the Great Moguls of South Asia,
the Africans of the western Sudan and the Indonesians.
In the great mosques built during the fifteenth
to nineteenth centuries, provision was made for
a separate section for women. In the mosque built
next to the Taj Mahal in Agra, for instance, the
emperor Shah Jehan built a separate section for
women, separated from that of the men by latticed
marble.
It is a tribute to the inexorable spirit of humankind
that the masses never give up. Those who are excluded
continue to challenge the status quo and it is
through these tensions that human progress ensues.
With the introduction of Turkish and African blood
into Islam and the later infusion of Mongol, Indian
and Indonesian elements, the rigid separation
of women from politics and culture was challenged.
And it was from among these “newcomers”
that the great queens of Islam emerged, women
such as Razia Sultana of Delhi, Shajarat al Durr
of Cairo and Noor Jehan of the Great Moguls, who
distinguished themselves in the political space
and left their indelible mark on history.
The triumph of Wahhabism in Arabia had a regressive
impact on the position of women in Islamic societies.
Shaikh Abdel Wahhab (d 1787) of Najd based his
movement on the Hanbali fiqh. The Saudi family
adopted the teachings of Shaikh Abdel Wahab as
their own. When the Saudis consolidated their
hold on Mecca and Medina (1927) they were in a
commanding position to propagate their brand of
Islam. Muslims performing their hajj observed
the practices of the Saudis in these cities, assumed
that the Islam that was practiced in the birthplace
of Islam was the true Islam and took back their
impressions to their native lands. The strict
orthodoxy of the Saudis was exported to the far
corners of the Islamic world.
It is worth noting that in Saudi Arabia, a woman
is not even allowed to drive a car even to this
day. A woman, on her way to shopping, if not accompanied
by a male relative, can be beaten with a broomstick
wielded by women who belong to “the department
for promulgation of virtue and prevention of vice”.
(To be continued)
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