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The Philosophy of Gender in Islam http://imranhosein.org/articles/women-in-islam/94-the-philosophy-of-gen...

The Philosophy of Gender in Islam


Articles - Women in Islam
Wednesday, 01 Sha'ban 1428

If God is a man, that’s bad news for women – because masculinity would then be divine – and hence only the
male would have been created in the divine image. This explains why the feminist revolution has redefined God
as being both male and female. Islam declares that Allah Most High created both the male and the female but is
neither male nor female. In addition, He never appeared in the person of anyone, male or female. And so
neither at point of creation, nor at any time thereafter, has the male ever defined the female in Islam. Islam is
thus unique in offering to women the opportunity to pray to a God who is not a man.

Nor has Islam ever discriminated between the male and the female in an unjust way. A woman complained to
the Prophet (peace be upon him) that divine revelation in the Qur’an was addressing men only. What about
women? she asked. In response, revelation came down in the Qur’an that addressed both men and women in
such constant repetition that the matter was conclusively settled that Allah Most High does not discriminate in
matters concerning gender in any unjust way. Indeed the blessed Prophet declared that all of mankind (male and
female) would stand before Allah on the Last Day “as equal in His sight as are the teeth of a comb.”

Nevertheless Islam does employ a philosophy of gender that reinforces the functional differences of the male
and the female in society, and that is the focus of our essay. The Qur’an teaches analogically that as day and
night are functionally different yet interdependent, so too are the male and female. The ominous warning is that
if this were ever to be changed, if the ‘night’ were to attempt to become ‘day’ and the sacred order of gender
were to be overturned, as in the modern feminist revolution, then the anarchy and disintegration of society that
would ensue would be equivalent of cosmic mayhem. The process of unraveling of social order has already
commenced. The police service knows this quite well. But so many who have eyes yet cannot see, and cannot
connect ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. .
The Qur’an has clearly established that men have (a measure of) authority over women, and has obliged a
woman to be obedient to her husband (or guardian). In this connection Islam has gone to great lengths to
reaffirm the natural order pertaining to the status, role and function of gender in society. Consider the following:

• The Qur’an refers to Allah Most High in the masculine, and never in the feminine gender. (The masculine
gender in Arabic does not necessarily connote masculinity.)

• The Prophets sent by Allah to mankind to function as spiritual guides and leaders were all men. There was
never a woman Prophet. But there is a perverted European effort which seeks to promote Mary to
Prophethood.

• Although angels are neither male nor female the Qur’an gives them male names and denounces those who give
them female names.

• When a child is born a thanksgiving feast called ‘Aqiqah’ is held. For a male child two animals must be
sacrificed, but a female child requires the sacrifice of only one animal.

• The Prophet said that “the best row (in congregational prayer) for men is the first, and the worse is the last.

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The Philosophy of Gender in Islam http://imranhosein.org/articles/women-in-islam/94-the-philosophy-of-gen...

And the best row for women is the last, and the worse is the first” (Sahih Muslim).

Thus men were placed physically in front of women in prayer for all times. A misguided American woman, in
true Yankee style, recently put herself in front of all the Muslim men (the Americans call them guys) and led
them in a completely invalid Islamic congregational prayer in a Euro-Christian church. America is a strange
place! Every morning when the sparkling sunshine envelops us as we welcome the ‘day’ as ‘day’, and every
night as we gaze in wonder at the romance of the stars and moonlight and recognize ‘night’ as ‘night’, the
splendor and harmonious symphony of gender overwhelms us. It is this that Islam seeks to preserve, even as the
essentially godless European world and its carbon copies around the world struggle to overturn it.

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