The Veil And The Male Elite

This week’s reading was saturated with so much interesting information. It is really intriguing that a false Hadith brought about sexual inequality in Islam. The story of Abu Bakra who recounted the false Hadith supposedly spoken by the Prophet Muhammed is quite corrupt and convoluted. Abu Bakra was born a slave in Ta’if. The prophet Muhammed had already taken over Mecca and was about to besiege Ta’if. This was during the time of Hejeira in year 8, (ad 630). Muhammed sent messages to the fort saying he would liberate all of the slaves if they would join him and practice Islam. Abu Bakra became very close to the Prophet Muhammed and began to retell Hadiths that the Prophet had told him. 

In Islam there are certain requirements to allow someone to be respected enough to recount Hadiths from the Prophet. According to Malik Ibn Anas “it was not enough to have lived at the time of the Prophet in order to become a source of the Hadith. It was also necessary to have a certain background that permitted you to speak: Ignorant persons must be disregarded…the most important criteria was moral” (Menissa  59). If someone had committed a crime then they were not respected in recounting Hadiths. 

Abu Bakra was convicted of false testimony about a man who committed “fitna” (sex outside of marriage). People seem to have overlooked his untrustworthy history because 25 years after Muhammed died he seemed to remember a Hadith which plagued women eternally. The hadith read, “Those who entrust their affairs to a woman  will never know prosperity.” This was supposedly spoken by Muhammed at the time of the Battle of the Camel which was a civil war with Ali versus a woman named A’isha. After this Hadith was spoken women were excluded from most areas of public life and were not considered equal to men. 

Women got the right to vote but out of all the women who ran for government in Morocco, “only 36 won versus 65,000 men” (Menissa 2). These results reflect a similar attitude in the United States today. Women have had the vote for many generations now, yet all parts of public life are dominated by men, in every single arena. Women still do not earn the same income as men. Even though countries are becoming more aware of civil rights and they are becoming more technologically advanced, women continue to be treated as second class citizens. 

What are ways we can support Muslim women without assuming they are oppressed by Islam?

Youtube Video On The Battle Of Camel

Yours, Brooke Bachman