HIJAAB IN THE LIGHT OF QUR'AN AND HADITH

QUESTION: I would like to know about Hijab in the light of Qur'an & Hadith as how our Muslim women should cover their body? Some people are saying that covering of face is not necessary and also not prescribed through our religion and thus only body can be covered. What are the opinions of most prominent Islamic scholars or four Imams?

HIJAAB IN THE LIGHT OF QUR'AN AND HADITH

FEMALE ISLAMIC DRESS-CODE

QUESTION: Many women, who wear the Niqab, also wear such clothing which clearly shows their waistline. Is this permissible? Also, what are the Principles in general with regards to a woman’s dress?

ANSWER:

In the name of Allah, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful

The Qur’an and Sunnah have laid down certain principles with regards to the dress code of both males and females. A Muslim and a Muslima are both required to adhere to the Islamic teachings both internally and externally.

Allah Most High says:

“And abstain from all sins, internal or external.” (Surah al-An’am, 120)

Regarding dressing, Allah Almighty says:
“O children of Adam! Surely we have bestowed upon you a garment to cover your shame, as well as to be an adornment to you, and the garment of piety is the best.” (al-A’raf, 26)
In view of the above-mentioned verse of the Holy Qur’an, other verses and sayings of our beloved Prophet (Allah bless him & give him peace), the Jurists (fuqaha) have deduced certain rules and principles with regards to the dress of males and females

FEMALE ISLAMIC DRESS-CODE

Rights of Women in Islam

By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

Progress and evolution of society depends upon the two basic factors: i) proper human relationship and ii)  inter connection of rights and duties. Oppression, exploitation and injustice are detrimental to a progressive society. It then begins to degenerate and tumble headlong towards destruction. In a just and balanced society, it is necessary that both men and women work together for the betterment and upliftment of society - that they work in coherence, completing and complementing each other. It is as much necessary that all members of the society are granted their due share of rights, and their duties too are well defined. In a just society, the weaker sections are looked after properly and compassionately while full care is taken to ensure that they are not deprived of their rights or oppressed in any way.

Rights of Women in Islam

The status of woman in Islam

 The status of woman in Islam

The status of woman in Islam constitutes no problem. The attitude of the Qur'an and the early Muslims bear witness to the fact that woman is, at least, as vital to life as man himself, and that she is not inferior to him nor is she one of the lower species. Had it not been for the impact of foreign cultures and alien influences, this question would have never arisen among the Muslims. The status of woman was taken for granted to be equal to that of man. It was a matter of course, a matter of fact, and no one, then, considered it as a problem at all.

In order to understand what Islam has established for woman, there is no need to deplore her plight in the pre-Islamic era or in the modern world of today. Islam has given woman rights and privileges which she has never enjoyed under other religious or constitutional systems.

The status of woman in Islam

Islam, Culture and Women

Islam, Culture and Women
by Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood

How can anyone justify Islam's treatment of women, when it imprisons Afghans under blue shuttlecock burqas and makes Pakistani girls marry strangers against their will?

How can you respect a religion that forces women into polygamous marriages, mutilates their genitals, forbids them to drive cars and subjects them to the humiliation of "instant" divorce? In fact, none of these practices are Islamic at all.

Islam, Culture and Women

Position and the Value of Woman in Islam

An Iranian female student who was born into a Muslim family and attended the University of Tehran in Iran, wrote the following research thesis, and called it.The Position & the Value of Women in Islam. She openly documented the verses from Koran regarding the Position and Value of Woman in Koran.  She wrote in her thesis:

1. In Islam: men have the authority to take several wives, but women are denied any such right.  Koran, Al-Nisa IV: 24.

Position and the Value of Woman in Islam

Translation of Sahih Bukhari, Book 63:

Divorce

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Volume 7, Book 63, Number 178:

Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar:
that he had divorced his wife while she was menstruating during the lifetime of Allah's Apostle . 'Umar bin Al-Khattab asked Allah's Apostle about that. Allah's Apostle said, "Order him (your son) to take her back and keep her till she is clean and then to wait till she gets her next period and becomes clean again, whereupon, if he wishes to keep her, he can do so, and if he wishes to divorce her he can divorce her before having sexual intercourse with her; and that is the prescribed period which Allah has fixed for the women meant to be divorced."

Divorce

Does Islam oppress women?

Does Islam oppress women?

No. On the contrary, Islam elevated the status of women 1400 years ago by giving them the right to divorce, the right to have financial independence and support, and the right to be identified as dignified women (Hijab) when in the rest of the world, including Europe, women had no such rights. Women are equal to men in all acts of piety (Quran 33:32). Islam allows women to keep their maiden name after marriage, their earned money, and spend it as they wish, and ask men to be their protector. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) told Muslim men, "the best among you is the one who is best to his family." Not Islam, but some Muslim men, do oppress women today. This is because of non-Islamic cultural habits or their ignorance towards their religion.

Does Islam oppress women?

Women And Islam

Women And Islam

By Tyseer Aboulnasr, Ph.D.

IMAGE OF MUSLIM WOMEN
As a Muslim woman, I found myself thrown right into the controversy of women's role in today's society. Over and over I had to explain that what you see in a Hollywood movie about Islam has nothing to do with Islam. For years and years, the average western person has been subjected to one image of a Muslim woman: mysteriously veiled, heavily guarded, living in a harem with a brutal sex maniac for a husband. One can't really blame this person if he or she accepts this image as true especially if he or she never saw Muslim women in any other light.

Women And Islam

The Relation of the Sexes

The Relation of the Sexes

1925 lecture on the "pitiful condition of Muslim womanhood"  by English convert to Islam and Quran translator Mohammad Marmaduke Pickthall.

Today I have to speak to you about a delicate subject -- the Islamic position of women -- a subject which is delicate, and to me painful, only because at every turn while examining it I am reminded that I am in a country [India] where, among the Muslims, a woman is emphatically not in her Islamic position, and where men are generally indifferent to the wrongs done to her. The state to which the great majority of Muslim women in India are reduced today is a libel on Islam, a crime for which the Muslim community as a whole will have to suffer in increasing social degradation, in the weak and the sickly, in increasing child mortality, so long as that crime is perpetuated.

The Relation of the Sexes

Women in Mosques

Women in Mosques
Banished to basement rooms or banned from the mosque entirely.  American convert to Islam, Yahya M tells it how it is... and how it should be.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: If any among your women asks permission to go to the mosque, don't stop her from going. But in some Muslim societies overseas, they don't let women in the mosques. They've turned the mosques into men-only clubs, contrary to what the Prophet ordered.

In North America and Britain, hard as it is to believe, too many Muslims have brought over this ignorant attitude and many mosques here don't allow women in. It's hard to understand why anybody would perpetuate such un-Islamic injustice.

Women in Mosques

Denying women access to the ‘Main Space’ -
A Betrayal of the Prophet (pbuh)

Presented to the Jamaat Khanna Committee of the University of the Witwatersrand - 1995. Shamima was a 'community member' of the committee which was negotiating with the university administration for a new Mosque complex and participating in decisions regarding the design of the complex. She argued for women to be accommodated in the 'main space' of the mosque.

An ‘Ignorance’ that's frightening

I was prompted to put together these few thoughts after a meeting with a group of architects (who are also popular mosque designers in South Africa) and students who presented their proposals for the WITS mosque. The architects expressed their certainty as to where a woman may be located in a mosque, saying that any other accommodation was bid'ah (innovation). A young student presenting his design said women and men reading alongside was unacceptable; they had to be completely separated (he said that women should be accommodated in a gallery). His other assumption was that men at WITS could not control their libidos.

Denying women access to the ‘Main Space’ - A Betrayal of the Prophet (pbuh)

Women in mosques

Women in mosques - No curtains, no walls, no partitions!
"It is perfectly Islamic to hold meetings of men and women inside the Masjid, whether for prayers or for any other Islamic purpose, without separating them with a curtain, partition or wall".  An emphatic ruling from Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi.

Question: We have a big controversy going on in our Masjid. Some brothers want to build a wall in the Musalla to separate men from women. Is it required in Islam? What are the basic rules of Shari’ah in this matter?

Women in mosques

Women's Rights and Equality in Islam

Women's Rights and Equality in Islam
By American convert to Islam, Yahya M.
At the beginning Islam was the most revolutionary liberalization of women's rights the civilized world has ever seen. But afterwards Muslims became ignorant of this and now Muslim countries are the scene of some of the worst abuses of women's rights. As the Latin proverb says, "Corruptio optimi pessima" (When the best is corrupted, it becomes the worst). The Qur’ân expresses the same theme in Sûrat al-Tîn: "We created man in the best pattern, and later reduced him to the lowest of the low."

Women's Rights and Equality in Islam

Turning Sex Into Sadaqa

Turning Sex Into Sadaqa
[an act of voluntary kindness pleasing to God]
An excerpt from 'The Muslim Marriage Guide', By Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood.

"Women shall have rights similar to the rights upon them; according to what is equitable and just; and men have a degree of advantage over them." (Quran, 2:216)

They do indeed! This passage of the Holy Quran was revealed in connection with the rights of women following a divorce, but it also has a general sense. One basic right of every person taking on a contract never to have sex other than with their own legitimate partner is that each spouse should therefore provide sexual fulfillment (imta') to the other, as part of the bargain.

Turning Sex Into Sadaqa

The Status of Woman in Islamic Law

The Status of Woman in Islamic Law
"The Islamic extremists are imposing the infallibility of the basic Quranic text on interpretations of the text. In effect a human interpretation is being made infallible."
English Translation of the Lecture held by Dr. Jur., Ph.D. Christina Jones on June 14th, 1998 in Göttingen, Germany.

 

Jurisprudential questions

From the start I want to make clear that I speak not as an historian, or a linguist, or a philosopher or theologian, rather as a sociological jurist and lawyer, with practical and academic experience. This means that I regard Islamic  law as I would any other legal system. A legal approach involves the following: It accords first of all primacy to the word of the text. The text serves as what is commonly called the source of the law that is pronounced in the form of a legislature enacted law or a  judgment. If as in many Islamicized countries the legislated law -- including the constitution -- has in its text a further reference to the Quranic text, then the Quran is also made part of the legal text which constitutes the basic tool of the lawyer and jurist.

The Status of Woman in Islamic Law

Rights of Women in Islam

A Collection of References from the Quran and Hadeeth about the Rights of Women guaranteed by Islam

Spiritual Equality of Women and Men
Allah has got ready forgiveness and tremendous rewards for the Muslim men and women; the believing men and women; the devout men and women; the truthful men and women; the patiently suffering men and women; the humble men and women; the almsgiving men and women; the fasting men and women, the men and women who guard their chastity; and the men and women who are exceedingly mindful of Allah. (Al-Ahzab 33:35)

Rights of Women in Islam

Shattering Illusions - Western Conceptions of Muslim Women

Shattering Illusions - Western Conceptions of Muslim Women "Islam in its original state gave women privileges and imposed no harsh restrictions or double standards upon them.," says Saimah Ashraf,  a 1997-98 winner of the Stanford University Boothe Prize for Excellence in Writing. "Rose Hamid is as American as they come. She drives a Ford station wagon, leads a local Girl Scout troop, shops at the Gap and just attended her 20-year high school reunion" writes Laurie Goodstein in a recent New York Times article (A1). From this brief description of Rose, readers may have formed a particular picture of her in their minds. If they were told, however, that "Rose Hamid wears a head scarf in keeping with her Muslim faith,'" that picture might take a drastic turn (Goodstein A1).

Shattering Illusions - Western Conceptions of Muslim Women

Can Islam liberate womem?

Muslim women and scholars think it does - spiritually and sexually.

We're sitting in a stylish club, ArRum, in Clerkenwell, central London. Firelight is flickering on the leather sofas, there is contemporary art on the walls and delicious "fusion" food on the table, but what distinguishes this club from its many neighbours is that it is Muslim, there is no alcohol on the menu and downstairs there's a prayer room. The stylish place conveys a complex ethos - modern, yet true to its Muslim identity.

Can Islam liberate womem?

Women Scholars of Hadith

Women Scholars of Hadith Dr. Muhammad Zubayr Siddiqi History records few scholarly enterprises, at least before modern times, in which women have played an important and active role side by side with men. The science of hadith forms an outstanding exception in this respect. Islam, as a religion which (unlike Christianity) refused to attribute gender to the Godhead,1 and never appointed a male priestly elite to serve as an intermediary between creature and Creator, started life with the assurance that while men and women are equipped by nature for complementary rather than identical roles, no spiritual superiority inheres in the masculine principle.

Women Scholars of Hadith