Contemporary Islamic apologists such as Georgetown University Professor John Esposito, his protégé Dahlia Mogahed, and political activist Linda Sarsour constantly whitewash sharia as benign and pro-women. In this context, Georgetown University law Professor Lama Abu-Odeh provides a refreshingly critical outlook on sharia and women, as shown by her June 21 discussion of sharia at Washington, DC’s Middle East Institute (MEI).
Following a screening of The Judge, a film about the first female sharia court judge in the Palestinian Authority, Abu-Odeh analyzed a gradual “historic defeat of Islamic law” among Muslim countries. Sharia “used to just regulate practically everything, and then every other field of law, civil, commercial, criminal, started to be influenced by European codes and became secularized,” she noted. Yet beginning in the 19th century, a “shrinkage of the historic jurisdiction of Islamic law” had relegated sharia in these countries to family law issues such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance.
Abu-Odeh elaborated upon this family law and its understanding of a marriage contract whose “Islamicity,” she has previously written, “came to symbolize the last bastion of a dismantled legal system.” As stipulated in numerous Muslim personal status codes with their references to “obedience,” she stated at MEI, the “marriage of contract is a marriage of sexual access for the husband in return for financial obligations for the woman.” According to this arrangement, for a wife “there is no such notion as marital rape. You basically have to sleep with you husband to earn your maintenance,” or nafaqah.
Abu-Odeh delineated the limited ability women have to negotiate provisions in such Islamic marriage contracts. A woman could contract to use contraception during the marriage for a certain period, such as when she is pursuing a degree, or to receive a weekly quota of meat, but her contract cannot violate the Islamic definition of marriage. Thus a prospective wife “cannot say we will only have sex once a week”; nor can she forbid her husband from practicing Islamic polygamy, although she can demand a right to divorce in case her husband takes another wife. Abu-Odeh added the caveat that in reality, during Islamic prenuptials “most women don’t bargain, in fact you will have a bad reputation if you bargain.”
Abu-Odeh further explained Islamic marriage’s proprietary nature; wives “retain their own juridical personality; they don’t merge with that of their husbands.” Thus a wife retains her personal property vis-à-vis her husband; that forms a “circle around her that he cannot touch.” She has written that wives “are under no obligation to maintain the marital household except under limited circumstances when the husband is in need.”
On the flip side, Abu-Odeh noted, a divorced husband must only support his children; his former wife receives “no alimony in the system,” so that many Palestinian wives will avoid divorce and an impoverishing loss of nafaqah. Yet Muslim Palestinian husbands with multiple wives will often try to avoid maintenance and have, she has written, the sole right of talaq, a kind of no-fault divorce. She also noted at MEI that Palestinian husbands “have many privileges,” such as a right of approval over their daughters’ marriages, and choices in education and healthcare.
Most disturbingly, Abu-Odeh discussed Islamic doctrine sanctioning a husband’s wife-beating. She has written that this abusive power is among the “conspicuously brutal aspects of husband and father power typical of the Hanafi doctrine,” the most widespread Sunni Islamic school of jurisprudence. In this madhhab, “[i]f the husband beats his wife, her only resort is to go to a judge and request that he be reprimanded, in the case that the judge determines his exercise of his disciplinary powers is in excess, meaning he beats her too hard.”
Based upon her prior research, Abu-Odeh at MEI explained that Egyptian case law is conflicted over whether husbands may beat their wives in order to enforce obedience, an analysis that is often class-based. Many judges have ruled that “peasant women they are used to more beating than rich women, and therefore what you would consider intolerable for a rich woman you would actually tolerate for a peasant woman.” Additionally, Esposito himself has written that in Egypt a runaway wife “might be forcibly returned by the police and confined until she became more obedient.”
Abu-Odeh analyzed wife-beating within the wider context of Muslim culture, in which Islamic orthodoxy is the “overarching dominant group, and liberals are few in between.” She noted feminism’s poor prospects under Islamic law, as the film’s profiled female sharia judge was an exception, given a canonical saying (hadith) from Islam’s prophet Muhammad that “women have no reason.” This justified orthodox Muslims in rejecting female judges, for, Abu-Odeh asked rhetorically, “how can you leave a woman who is irrational by biology adjudicate your affairs?”
Abu-Odeh likewise has previously written about how Islamic norms have contributed to the so-called “honor killings” of sexually transgressive females. For some Muslims, Islamic “law excuses the man who finds himself in uncontrollable rage in the presence of his female relative’s sexual transgression.” Additionally, “killing one who has transgressed, amounts to exercising the religious duty of ‘fending off sin.’”
On the positive side, Abu-Odeh discussed various legal reforms. An Egyptian measure obliged a husband to inform a wife of any subsequent polygamous marriage, whereupon the first wife could divorce. She particularly praised the fact that in recent years “Tunisia is literally on its last leg of completely liberalizing Islamic law,” with “absolute total formal equality for men and woman at every level of the system.”
Abu-Odeh described Tunisia’s development, in which women share family responsibilities and no-fault divorce rights with men, as “absolutely revolutionary” and “incredible.” Tunisian law recognizes marital rape, while treating the husband and wife as a financial unit, such that the “circle around her has been broken.” Abu-Odeh also described as “huge” deviations from received Islamic orthodoxy the fact that Tunisian Muslim women can now marry non-Muslim men and have equal inheritance rights with men.
Abu-Odeh noted that Tunisian legal reforms have a long pedigree, on the basis of an analytical tradition that many Islamic doctrines are historically-based and that therefore “reason prevails over text.” Heavily influenced by Tunisia’s former French colonial masters, Tunisian dictator Habib Bourguiba in the 1950s “worked incredibly hard at limiting the power of and neutralizing the religious establishment.” He accordingly abolished polygamy and a wife’s duty of obedience to her husband.
Abu-Odeh characterized feminists throughout Muslim-majority countries as “going push, push, push, to get to” Tunisian standards of women’s rights. She concluded:
We are moving from a very conservative system, where it is hierarchical, men have financial obligations and in return for them they get a lot of privileges…to a liberal system, more like a market system, where you are now in it together, you are both responsible for the family, and there is no hierarchy, it is formal equality.
Abu-Odeh’s support for liberal ideas reflects the secularism of this Arab-American, who has called for a “liberal and constitutionalist” binational Israeli-Palestinian state. Yet her secularism means that she refreshingly dismisses politically correct excuses for the deplorable conditions of women under sharia. During a 2013 Library of Congress presentation, she scoffed:
It has become almost obligatory if one wants to talk about women, like women in the Arab world, to first denounce American imperialism, global capitalism, and the influence of foreign funding on local NGOs, and even then one has to be careful not to represent Arab women as victims, not to sound too alarmed, and not associate the situation of women with Islam, Muslims, or Muslim culture. If pressed, one has to blame it all on the history of colonialism, state laws, and neoliberal reforms.
Abu-Odeh’s studies show that people in Muslim-majority countries have recognized the abusive nature of various Islamic doctrines towards women, among others, and are trying to effect reforms. This reality of Muslims themselves rejecting sharia as immoral and impractical rebuts sharia apologists in the West such as Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, who sat next to this author during the MEI event. In history’s stark judgement, if Muslims reject sharia, why should anyone else embrace it?
Buraq says
Good news, generally! But I sense that Shariah has many ‘snap-back’ aspects to its brutal nature: I mean that it could reclaim lost ground by claiming to be in line with the authentic version of Islam at the time of the so-called Prophet.
mortimer says
Yes, burqa, Islam has unending, irrational and self-referentially incoherent justifications for discriminating against women and kafir ‘others’.
The hadiths of Mohammed that insult and degrade all women:
– I think that women were created for nothing but evil.
– Women have ten ‘awrat (vulvas). When she gets married, the husband covers one, and when she dies the grave covers the ten (of her shameful parts).
– A straw mat in the corner of the house is preferable to a barren woman.
– Women are toys, so choose (your ‘toys’).
– The woman is a toy, whoever takes her, let him care for her [ or do not lose her ].
– Had it not been for women, God would have truly, truly been worshipped.
– Men perished the day they obeyed the women.
– Obedience to a woman’s advice causes regret.
– Consult women and act contrary (to it).
– Sneezing, drowsing, yawning in prayer, also menstruation, vomiting and nose-bleeding are from Satan.
– When…your affairs are in the hands of your women, the interior of the earth (hell) will be the better for you than its surface.
– If a woman offered one of her breasts to be cooked and the other to be roasted, she still will fall short of fulfilling her obligations to her husband. And besides that if she disobeys her husband even for a twinkling of an eye, she would be thrown in the lowest part of Hell, except she repents and turns back.
– Mohammed asked some women, “Isn’t the witness of a woman equal to half that of a man?” The women said, “Yes,” He said, “This is because of the deficiency of the woman’s mind.”
– I have not seen any one more deficient in intelligence and religion than you (women).
– I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers are women.
– Bad omen is in the woman, the house and the horse.
– After me I have not left any affliction more harmful to men than women.
– Don’t wear false hair for Allah sends His curse upon such ladies who lengthen their hair artificially.
– Treat women well for they are like domestic animals and they possess nothing themselves. Allah has made the enjoyment of their bodies lawful in his Qur’an.
– Women, slaves and camels are same.
– Prayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey and a woman.
– If you relax the woman’s bridle a tiny bit, she will take you and bolt wildly. And if you lower her cheek-piece a hand span, she will pull you an arm’s length … Their deception is awesome and their wickedness is contagious; bad character and feeble mind are their predominant traits.
– “[A man’s wife] fears him, while he fears her not, a kind word from him satisfies her, where nothing of hers has importance in his eyes, it is she who must tolerate the presence of concubines, and it is she who worries when he is ill whereas even her death would leave him indifferent.
– If a man calls his wife to his bed and she refuses, and he spends the night angry with her, the angels curse her until morning.
– Treat women well, for they are [like] domestic animals [awan] with you and do not possess anything for themselves. You have taken them only as a trust from God and you have made the enjoyment of their persons lawful by the word of God, so understand and listen to my words…
– Muhammad’s last words on women during his farewell speech:
– God allows you to put them in separate rooms and to beat them but not with severity. If they refrain from these things they have the right to their food and clothing with kindness. Lay injunctions on women kindly, for they are prisoners with you having no control- of their persons. Sirat Rasul Allah. Translated in English by A. Guillaume. First published by Oxford University Press, London in 1955
J D S says
Had it not Bern for some woman muhammad would not have been born..Im not even sure that he was born of woman. Possibly he was just made up by men to be the perfect man..If he did actually exist he sure was the imperfect man and left a race of people to be the imperfect race.
Ibrahim itace muhammed says
Buraq, mithraist christian marriage, in practice, is no more than prostitution where married couples have freedom to have indiscriminate sex outside marriage. According to AP more than 95% of American married couples have sex outside marriage and more than 98% of girls and boys have sex before marriage. Is that not beast way of life where one is not sure of who is his biological father? Sharia based marriage ensures control over sex behaviors so that sanctity of family system is maintained.
6woods says
Typical muslim liar. Please cite your numbers.
gravenimage says
The appalling Ibrahim itace muhammed wrote:
Buraq, mithraist christian marriage, in practice, is no more than prostitution where married couples have freedom to have indiscriminate sex outside marriage.
…………………………
What absolute crap. All he means is that we don’t *stone women to death* if they stray.
More:
According to AP more than 95% of American married couples have sex outside marriage and more than 98% of girls and boys have sex before marriage. Is that not beast way of life where one is not sure of who is his biological father?
…………………………
More bs–this is not what that article says at all. Rates of infidelity are actually around 14% in the West. Most couples stay faithful to each other.
More:
Sharia based marriage ensures control over sex behaviors so that sanctity of family system is maintained.
…………………………
What he means is that between FGM, child marriage, forced marriage, wife beating, marital rape, “Honor Killing”, and stoning women to death that *women* are controlled in Shari’ah.
Men have the right–which Ibrahim itace muhammed has confirmed–to marry up to four women (including little girls, no matter how young), of summary divorce for men only–the “Triple Talaq”–women are seldom able to get a divorce even when her husband is beating and threatening to murder her, to “Honor Kill” her, to rape Infidel women and girls in Jihad, and to keep an unlimited number of them as sex slaves.
*This* is what the foul Ibrahim itace muhammed considers the “sanctity of family system”–forced marriage, pedophilia, rape, sex slavery, and murder.
He has also said that those who marry for love should be killed. *Ugh*.
Ibrahim itace muhammed says
Liar, Check the statistics reported by AP. In your evil United States one could not distinguish married and unmarried woman , all are ready to offer sex like she-donkeys. Look at this savagery
Bash says
In Islam women are considered animals. Hit her like you hit a donkey…..
BC says
The versions of the quran and hadiths were not formally set out until 200 years after Moham’s death, in a somewhat similar way that the legends of JHC were not set down until almost 100 years after his alleged death
Elizabeth L says
I know that my reaction to this information is…….to put it mildly…..annoyance, irritation, disgust, and all that normally characterizes me as a healthy, rational person, BUT, I would as soon devote my time to digesting the mutterings and snortings of an out of control bull.
My observations of Islamic “ marriage” ( I resided in an Arab Muslim country for almost twenty years) led me to view these ‘unions’ with extreme distaste, rejection, and an affront to any civilized woman OR man. Nowhere could I see the expected gentleness, warmth, emotional or spiritual commitment and loyalty so typical of marriages where free choice, and mutual love, respect and devotion were the norm. The very harshness of these unions shocked me. At bottom, I reasoned that the unions of Arab Muslims was founded on “ i use you, you use me’ agreement. Basically, sex is an agreed upon payment for financial upkeep. Beyond this, the mistreatment of females in the agreement is not only condoned in Islamic law, but advocated for specified reasons. Since husband beating was not advocated, I concluded that wife beating was disgusting bullying by the usually bigger and more physically endowed man. In today’s world, there ARE women who could take the dominant physical role, but in Islamic marital law, such a step could earn her a trip to the noose in some countries.
One aspect of these delightful unions caught my attention as being unnatural and psychologically destructive to children, particularly boys. Muslim women, ar least in the country in which I resided, were absolutely NOT permitted to discipline their children. Indeed, ‘mom’s’ role and position was not unlike that of one of her children. I observed small boys confidently lecturing and bossing around their mothers – so instead of having parental guidance, these children were obliged to learn by discovery, and through the eyes of dominant, bullying and misogynistic males. Is it any wonder thatMuslim men view with distaste and disrespect their women folk?
Altogether, I determined that the Muslim culture was an aberration of all that was normal, rational, and human, and my convictions regarding this issue are solidified every day I pick up a newspaper and read of yet another beaten and slaughtered Muslim female sacrificed on the altar of primitivism and idiocy.
rubiconcrest says
Interesting direct experience especially with regard to the powerlessness of Muslim women when it comes to disciplining their male children.
mortimer says
The deviant, dysfunctional sociology of the Islamic family resulting from EXTREME MISOGYNY.
Older Canadian says
Thank you Elizabeth for your post. Personal experiences have great value.
gravenimage says
All grimly true, Elizabeth. There is no love in Islam.
6woods says
“A woman could contract to use contraception during the marriage for a certain period, such as when she is pursuing a degree, or to receive a weekly quota of meat…”
What? I’m so confused (must be my feeble female mind). Why does a woman need to be on contraceptives to get meat? Are pregnant or menstruating women not allowed to touch meat?
gravenimage says
6woods, Abu-Odeh was saying these are some things that a woman *might* be able to negotiate in a marriage contract–not that such things are related.
That she might not be able to eat meat unless she specifically is granted the right to it shows how women are routinely mistreated. (I am a vegetarian myself, but a Muslim refusing his wife meat is obviously just being cheap and punitive).
But she would not be able to negotiate any of the things deemed specifically Islamic.
6woods says
Ok. Thanks. But it seemed to me to be related to contraception, as I read the paragraph. Again must be my feeble female mind.
sarc/ off
gravenimage says
Women sure don’t have much choice in Islam.
Andrew Harrod says
The woman could contract various things like these items concerning meat or contraception.
gravenimage says
Thank you, Mr. Harrod.
gravenimage says
Professor: Sharia Marriage is No Bed of Roses for Women
………………………
No, it’s not. Child marriage, forced marriage, polygamy, wife beating, the “Triple Talaq” summary divorce for men only, and “Honor Killing”. Just hellish.
gravenimage says
The brave Professor Lama Abu-Odeh has written about “Honor Killings” in Muslim societies, as well:
“Honor Killings and the Construction of Gender in Arab Societies”
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2644&context=facpub
6woods says
Ok. Thanks. But it seemed to me to be related to contraception, as I read the paragraph. Again, must be my feeble female mind.
sarc/ off