Voice of British Muslim Women

Rabia Salim, Ash, Surrey

On Friday 6th August 2021, the Annual Convention of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was upon us once again after a two year COVID 19 hiatus.  Day 2 as per tradition brought ladies the joy of the address of their Khalifa, His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad (may God be his Helper) in the ladies marquee. From the first word, as the speech unfolded, until the end, the direction of the speech perfectly addressed all our worries and concerns at that moment in time.  As we had not seen our Khalifa or prayed behind him for 17 months it was an added joy.

In those moments of his speech what unfolded was, as always, beautiful.  I wrote notes and there were gems of encouragement for every woman and girl.  Just as a spiritual father does, he kindly reassured, and guided us.  He spoke about how a righteous woman can be many steps and ranks above men.  Can any worldly organisation be proud of such an assertion?  Sadly, no, as even in recent times, men are treated as superior to women, in pay, respect, and status.  However our faith leader reiterated the Islamic view, that men and women are equal.  In fact, in the marriage sermon it states in what ways they are equal – in qualities and intellect.  This makes me feel absolutely reassured, and the fact that I am a Muslim woman writing this should make it evident.  If anyone is in further doubt, ask any Muslim woman who knows her rights for her view, and she will assure you that this is the true teaching. 

What followed on from this was glorious and made our hearts sing. His Holiness told us what rights we have in Islam.

Firstly, how men shouldn’t feel too superior to take counsel from women, and related an incident from the life of the Holy Prophet’s (peace and blessings of God be upon him) Companion and successor Hazrat Umar, may Allah be pleased with him) ).  In this incident Hazrat Umar’s wife was assertive and vocal, and when Umar questioned it, she backed it up with, and gave the credit to Islam. 

Secondly, the rights of women in a marriage are that the couple should have their own home, and not live in a joint family system, unless there is a specific need to live together.

Thirdly, the husband should give his wife the agreed dowry and the husband is not entitled to her property at any point unless this is her wish – either during the marriage, or at the end of the marriage if it ends unfortunately or after death.  The wife’s earnings are hers, and the husband’s earnings go towards taking care of the family, as he is responsible for the family’s well being. 

And finally, a right described in this august speech was that men are only allowed to remarry by following certain rules, and if the man can’t fulfil these, then he shouldn’t marry.  Men may talk about multiple marriages in Islam; however, this is certainly very restricted and cannot be a way to feed  carnal desires.  In fact many husbands say that to take care of one wife in the best way, as Islam requires, is responsibility enough.   Before marriage, a woman can even ask her husband to promise that he will not remarry if she wishes, and the husband must uphold this promise. 

I know countless women treated unfairly after divorce, due to shameful cultural narrow mindedness.  On the other hand when we look at Islam itself, we find it makes sense.  Take the concept of the Islamic veil, or ‘purdah’, literally, the purpose of this is to put a barrier between men and women, to avoid indecencies in society; however, it certainly does not mean to lock someone up.  In fact, men and women are both told to practice lowering of the eyes, or ‘Ghadde Basr’ first, and then women are enjoined to cover their heads and so on. Further, if we just look at domestic violence statistics we see violence against women has been studied by the World Health Organisation across 161 countries.  Therefore we see that subjugation and oppression of women is a world wide societal problem and can’t be condemned to a certain religion, such as Islam, or only south Asian culture.   His Holiness’s address, empowers women to be a source of knowledge, so if anyone has doubts about Islam’s treatment of women, we, as Muslim women, are happy to talk about our faith, to wipe away those doubts. 

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women