Term paper
moly89
ReadingsandLecture-201812182.zipLecture PowerPoint_Week 3_Women in Islam.pptx
Pre-Islamic Civilizations in the region
Pre-Islamic Civilizations in the Mesopotamian regions and surrounding areas
Leila Ahmed Discusses the status of women Before Islam and the Prophet Muhammad
Male dominance and the function of women for increasing the population and providing labor power in early societies can be correlated.
“Gerda Lerner puts forth the idea, “the importance of increasing the population and providing labor power in early societies led to the theft of women, whose sexuality and reproductive capacity became the first “property” that tribes competed for. Warrior cultures favoring male dominance consequently emerged.” (Leila Ahmed, 12)
The first urban centers of the Middle East arose in Mesopotamia between 3500-3000 BCE.
The growth of complex urban societies and the increasing importance of military competitiveness further entrenched male dominance and gave rise to a class-based society in which military and temple elites made up the propertied classes. The patriarchal family, designed to guarantee the paternity of property-heirs and vesting in men the control of sexuality, became institutionalized, codified, and upheld by the state. P. 12
Women’s sexuality became the property of men, first to father’s then to husbands.
Female sexual purity (virginity) became negotiable and economically valuable property.
Two Important Takeaways
Hence, women would be categorized in terms of their ability to maintain a lineage. The purer the woman, the more she can maintain an authentic lineage that is true to the husband or the father.
Second, in order to keep her pure, seclusion away from men would become dominant.
Laws and Codes
“As different city-states successively dominated the Mesopotamian region, laws governing the patriarchal family changed, tending to become progressively harsher and more restrictive toward women.
The Code Hammurabi (1752 BCE)
Code of Hammurabi--See Codes from about 120 to 180 (Control + Click Link to go to webpage)
Assyrian Law (1200BCE)
Assyrian Law Code, An Excerpt (Control + Click Link to go to webpage)
Veiling was a part of life before Islam
The veil was part of ancient civilizations, Assyrian, as well as Jewish and Christian civilizations.
Veiling was a way to elevate women. Those who veiled were not open to men as prostitutes or for sexual assault.
“…the veil served not merely to mark the upper classes but, more fundamentally, to differentiate between “respectable” women and those who were publicly available. That is, use of the veil classified women according to their sexual activity and signaled to men which women were under male protection and which were fair game.” p. 15.
Seclusion of Women
Many battles would take place and by the time 500-600BCE the status of women would decline even more. We see the practice of:
Large harems and concubines
The seclusion of women
Limited mobility in trade and work, which she may have enjoyed under previous laws.
“Veiling and the confinement of women spread throughout the region and became the ordinary social practices as did the attitudes to women and to the human body (such as a sense of the shamefulness of the body and sexuality)that accompanied such practices. During the first Christian centuries the notion of women’s seclusion…together with veiling and attitudes about the proper invisibilty of women, became features of upper-class life in the Mediterranean Middle East, Iraq, and Persia.” 18
Cultural Exchange on the attitude towards women
Cultures exchanged mores and attitudes as they came into contact with each other and exchanged how they treated women. Mesopotamian, Persian, Hellenic, Christian, and later Islamic societies would exchange views on the role and function of women in society.
“The spread of reductive and controlling practices and misogynist ideas at this time and this region is striking. “ 19
Leila Ahmed points to the Sasanian society as particularly important to what later Muslims will inherit in terms of their views towards women. 19
See also, Zoroastrian socieities. Pages 19-22.
Female Christian martyrs—an elevation beyond reproduction and sexuality
Christian ideas that women could have spiritual and moral authority elevated their status and challenged the rulings of Zoroastrian mores that saw females as reproductive members of society. Her virginity was a hindrance to a “fruitful” society. If a woman kept her virginity, then she was in essence not serving her people because she was not having babies to strengthen society.
Christian female martyrs would keep their virginity as an act of defiance.
Christian martyrs would take vows of chastity:
“The issues of chastity and of resistance to marriage were the central conflict in the battle of wills between the prosecuting Zoroastrian priests and each woman. To Martha, martyred in the fourth century, a Zoroastrian priest even declared that she might continue to be a Christian; all that he required was that she renounce her virginity—a condition “particularly abhorrent to Zoroastrian mores.” p. 22
Although taking a vow of chastity and living a spiritual and elevated life may have won some Christian woman a higher status than merely a sexual reproductive being, most Christian women could not commit to this ideal.
“For the majority of women such paths were not available…the mores determining the lives of Byzantine and other women of the eastern Mediterranean in the early Christian era, at least on the level of the normative ideal, were thoroughly restrictive.” p. 26.
We will find throughout the Greek or Hellenistic, Jewish, and Christian cultures many practices that were oppressive to women. Such practices would later be transferred to Islamic societies by Muslims who would come to interact with the cultures they conquered.
Practices that
Privileged male heirs and children over females.
Oversexualized women
Considered women half or lesser than men.
Aristotle’s theories conceptualized women not merely as subordinate by social necessity but also as innately and biologically inferior in both mental and physical capacities and thus as intended for their subservient position by “nature.” He likened the rule of men over women to the rule of the “soul over the body, and of the mind and the rational element over the passionate.” The male, he said, “is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules and the other is ruled.” Man’s nature “is the most rounded off and complete”; woman is more compassionate but also ?more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and strike…more void of shame and self respect, more false of speech, more deceptive.”
As Aristotle’s work reached and was highly influential in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim circles. He not only affected theologies but also ethical codes and religious laws.
An exception??
Egyptian women enjoyed more freedom and higher status than the greeks. See pages 29-31
Less misogynistic
Liberal
Egalitarian
Laws governing marriage, rights to inherit, own, and manage property were pronouncedly egalitarian.
Although there was egalitarianism, there was still male dominance.
“Women, though equal in some areas, were also excluded from others. Still, male dominance was apparently not accompanied by misogyny or by laws systematically comprehensively privileging men and oppressing women. That is, misogyny and the systematic oppression of women do not “naturally” result from male dominance once urban societies develop…” 32
Greeks would come to conquer Egypt and the conquerors would be shocked by the egalitarian and liberal society of Egypt.
Important points regarding Arabia which Egypt is a part of
For the greater thesis of Leila Ahmed’s book, she wants to point out that:
The decline of Egypt’s egalitarianism took place because of the Greek influence, not because later Muslims would come to rule Egypt.
This decline took place long before Egypt would be ruled by Muslims.
For Ahmed, Muslims would continue the decline of Egypt, not start it, as earlier Christians did as well.
A question to consider
In a book on Women and gender in Islam, why do you think Leila Ahmed starts her book with a 5000 year history? Islam is only 1400 years old? What do you think she is trying to accomplish with these two chapters you read for this week?
and is she justified to do so?
What evidence would you use to support your answer to the above question?
This seems like it would be a good question on a midterm!!
