Those who support abortion rights in some form should be prepared to argue their case on the terrain that pro-lifers have traditionally claimed as their own: the apparent right to life (or lack thereof) of a human fetus during pregnancy. Continuing to assert a woman’s bodily autonomy is unlikely to progress the abortion debate, because very few people dispute that women should be in charge of their bodies. 1

The question should be, what is the right to life of a fetus during the mother’s painful, injurious, and potentially fatal process of pregnancy and birthing? It is usually implicit that after a certain point the life of the fetus is more important than any pain or suffering the woman might suffer, but leaving this unexamined is unsatisfactory. To compel a woman to go through this process demands some serious explaining, even if we take the preservation of life argument to be correct.

From an Islamic perspective, it seems to me the principle of preserving life isn’t applied consistently. Consider something like donating blood, which is not compulsory:

“From a Shariah perspective, it will not be permissible for one to sell his/her blood to the [blood] bank; rather it must be donated freely.”

A situation where there are no blood donations will certainly lead to avoidable deaths. Why then is it left to be donated freely? Surely the shariah must compel a man to surrender his insides, in this case his blood supply, to save the life of another, in the same way it compels a woman to surrender her insides for the life of another.

That’s not exactly a like-for-like, but the point is about what we are prepared to demand of each other. The consequences of what is demanded of women should be addressed explicitly when arguing for the rights of the fetus. Although it is largely ignored, the pain and suffering of women is morally significant. Society owes itself to women who steel themselves to get through pregnancy and birthing. And this should guide us in how we treat women who feel they can’t go through with it.

๏ …And take guard of God with whom you ask, and the wombs. Indeed God is over you, watchful. ๏ — al-nisāa/1

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Tagged: #abortion #women

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According to the paper Out of Sight and Therefore Out of Mind: Early Sunnī Islamic Modesty Regulations and the Creation of Spheres of Privacy, [^1] the fitna principle was not the primary concern of scholars who sought to regulate women’s dress. Rather, “by regulating physical and visual access to women’s bodies and by restricting the flow of sensitive information about them, Islamic law allowed people (primarily the male members of a woman’s family) to protect and control their social image and public reputation.” This was because:

“In classical Islamic society, as in many other societies, the reputation of a person and his or her family was a valuable and crucial asset in various areas of life. Thus, for example, a person’s reputation would affect his or her ability to forge economic and social relations and would determine a person’s trustworthiness for the purpose of testifying in court. Damage to a person’s good name could result in social ostracism and economic destruction. In early Islamic society, as in later periods, a family’s honor and reputation were linked to, among other things, the chastity of its women.”

The essay points to the fact that slave women were allowed to expose much of their bodies in public spaces because their chastity had no bearing on the reputation of their masters. This is noteworthy since “bodies of slave girls were not, by definition, less arousing than those of free women.”

Aside from challenging the view that women’s bodies are pudendal, hence sexually corrupting to those who see them, this also challenges the common belief that female veiling is obligatory by divine decree, and never up for interpretation. If it is a compulsory act of ʿibādat, why was it dependent on social status?

Historically, modesty regulations were subject to change:

“Moreover, modesty regulations suggest that scholars throughout the classical period were practical, and not completely doctrinaire, in determining what constitutes appropriate exposure of a person. They adjusted the modesty restrictions they imposed in accordance with what their society defined as a) each gender’s daily tasks and b) what constituted normal exposure between men and women.”

So what would Islamic modesty regulations look like today were this process to continue? The emphasis on female veiling would perhaps change significantly in a society which rejects the culture of placing undue focus on the chastity of a woman and linking the reputation of her family to her appearance.

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Tagged: #tradition #women #veiling #modesty

Notes:

[^1]: Alshech, E. (2007). Out of Sight and Therefore Out of Mind: Early Sunnī Islamic Modesty Regulations and the Creation of Spheres of Privacy. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 66(4), 267-290. doi:10.1086/524180.

“Slave ownership was not only for the filthy rich, though, and the jurists identified with slaveholders rather than with slaves. Some owned at least one enslaved concubine; both Shāfiʿī and Ibn Ḥanbal died leaving concubines who had borne them children (umm walads). One report declares that Mālik ibn Anas “purchased three hundred sarārī [concubines] and would spend one night a year with each of them.” Even if, as is likely, this report exaggerates, it makes clear that concubinage was a normal part of the sociosexual patterns of life in this era, as was domestic servitude more generally. Shāfiʿī – by no means a wealthy man – apparently had in his household two adolescent male slaves as well as an Andalusian wet nurse, who nursed the child born to his slave concubine. Stories about Mālik refer to a black female slave who answered knocks at his gate. In addition to illustrating the widespread nature of slaveholding, these anecdotes help us remember that their own status as slaveholders cannot help but have influenced the jurists’ rulings.”

— Kecia Ali, (Marriage and slavery in early Islam, 2010, p. 22)

The Quran opposes the subjugation of people in plain terms. al-aʿrāf, 7/157 mentions the nabiy who “lift[s] from them their burdens and the shackles that were upon them.” al-nisāa, 4/19 forbids the believers to “inherit the nisā against their will.” al-nisāa, 4/75 says: “And how could you refuse to fight in the cause of God and of the utterly helpless men and women and children who are crying, “O our Sustainer! Lead us forth [to freedom] out of this land whose people are oppressors...”” In spite of this, slavery persisted throughout Islamic history. Dr. Ali also quotes the Hanafi jurist Muhammad ‘Ala al-Din Haskafi saying, “A free man may marry four free women and female slaves, not more, and he may take as many concubines as he wishes from among his female slaves.” (Sexual Ethics and Islam, 2006, p. 39) Haskafi lived in the seventeenth century, which suggests the view of many Muslims today – that Islam came to phase out slavery – wasn’t one shared by the scholars of the past. They were still justifying and regulating the practice hundreds of years after the Prophet passed away.

I do mention this from time to time, but not to hang over the heads of Muslims or to make people uncomfortable. There is no moral justification for sex-slavery, so I think the legitimate status of concubinage in Islam’s past has far reaching consequences for how we view the role of tradition in actualising Islam today. While few Muslims today would condone sex-slavery, many do insist that the role of women must be defined by the same classical sources which allowed concubinage. Pro-concubine rulings of the classical scholars are divorced from their other rulings regarding women, essentially keeping the overall fiqh of women intact.

The problem with this is that the classical scholars would have viewed their legal thinking as unified, each ruling in sync with other rulings, each being in harmony with a wider Islamic ethic. The world-view which informed their views of concubinage also informed their views of hierarchies and women in general. Of course, it’s possible to isolate one particular practice from a tradition and discard it without the whole thing collapsing; the Sunnah didn’t die along with the institution of slavery. But if the classical jurists believed slave women could be used for sex, while free women must be covered from head to toe, it’s reasonable to examine what the relationship between these two rulings are. Did the moral arguments used to arrive at the former feature in the latter? If yes, is the latter morally questionable like the former?

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Tagged: #sunnah #women #tradition #slavery