a. The individual dimension: the example of the veil
This reflection seems obvious on a personal development level. There still exists, however, many parents who, having understood the Islamic obligation of wearing the veil, impose the same upon their daughters without the latter understanding its meaning and import. Furthermore, very often such children do not practise, pray, nor are open to the inward dimension of faith. They respect an obligation which they do not feel – indeed refuse – but appearances are safer; to whoever sees them from the outside, they will look like good Muslims. Some parents will even obstinately begin the religious education of their daughters by what ought to be its culmination (a desired and voluntary culmination). They forget in all this that the veil was introduced in the fifteenth year of revelation; 15 years which were for the first Muslims as many years of learning, deepening of knowledge and, especially, of intense spiritual life. We find here exactly the same problem we have noted in the application of the Sharī’a, i.e. one of pure “display”. To offer women the horizon of an inward message of Islam by beginning with the imposition of the veil is tantamount to committing the same reductionism as that which consists of immediately applying a range of sanctions on the social plane without having undertaken the necessary reforms. It is an act of ignorance in some instances, but above all it is due to intellectual laziness and resignation. Repeating at will that Islam asserts that there is “no constraint in religion” does not change the reality of pressure, and oppression, that some Muslim women today are subjected to. Moreover, we reproach those who have refused to submit as having opted for the bad “choice”. Yet we have often not presented to them the terms of any real choice. For certain women, it is a question of either blindly obeying amidst discrimination, or revolting amidst transgression. The Qur’ānic verse:
No compulsion is there in religion. (Qur’ān, 2:256) 25
shines forth in a space which is eminently exigent, and we would be wrong to make the economy of the condition of education that it supposes. It offers human beings a choice; it is giving him, beforehand, sufficient education and knowledge in order to assert himself while possessing full knowledge of the cause. The responsibility of parents, educators, or trainers consists in giving to their children or pupils knowledge and the means to make their own choice of responsibility. Religious education does not go against this rule, even less the education of girls. They have the fundamental right to learn and it is here that is born personal responsibility before God and before society. This responsibility, lastly, has no sense unless women possess a real freedom to determine and choose for themselves.
What we have just said regarding the veil is a good illustration of a disfunctioning still too frequent in Islamic societies. The example of the veil is very vivid, but we can find this same tendency towards formalism in a great number of domains. By making the economy of reforming things in depth, we stop at what is in reality an Islamic varnish, when it is not a question of a social do-it-yourself, whereby we merrily mix restriction, confinement and cultural habit. Such situations are legion in all Arab-Muslim countries, in some Asian regions and in neighbourhoods of Europe and the United States. There is an urgent need for education and training not only of girls and women, but also of fathers and of all men. The worst enemy of the rights of women is not Islam but ignorance and illiteracy, to which we may add the determining role of traditional prejudices.
b. The social dimension
To be convinced, in light of the Qur’ān and the Sunna, that Islam recognises and defends the fundamental rights of women; to remind ourselves with conviction of our equality before God and of our prescribed social complementarity – for the man as for the woman – within familial priority; to call for a recognition of Muslim identity as the source of a social project which offers to the woman a space for life that returns to her all the rights that Islam bestowed upon her, but which present-day societies daily deny her – to do all this is to hold a very critical view on the contemporary 26 situation and to be engaged in changing things in consequential fashion for the long-term. This patience in action, which is the exact definition of the Arabic word “ṣabr”, 27 must be armed with the conviction that it is more appropriate to approach a model slowly than to hastily put make-up on the form.
To make any reference to Islam today, on the plane of social identity, is clearly to call for the liberation of women within and by Islam. It will certainly not be the model of liberation which has taken course in the West (this in consequence of its specific history and in which we will be poorly inspired if we do not recognise a certain number of gains), but one which nonetheless takes Muslim societies out of their serious and difficult situations.
It must first involve engaging in a vast enterprise of education and schooling. Great efforts are provided today by caring associations by NGOs and broadly speaking by movements that function on the model of South American based communities, but this cannot be sufficient. It is important that this reform is presented as a priority for states and that it is carried out and defended by a real political will. We know that this is not the case today and that nothing in what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank (WB) do makes this work a priority. For example, the rate of schooling for women in the Maghreb today is the lowest in the world. This situation is inadmissible from the point of view of Islam. The Muslim woman, like the Muslim man, has a right to learning. It is an inalienable right that any social organisation must respect.
The religious education of women should take the form of foundational instruction. For if Islam gives rights to women, it remains that they need to know these rights in order to defend them. The good, theoretical speeches of men have never remedied the daily sufferings of women. Consequently, the latter should have access to a different religious education, one which allows them to contribute in abstracting the essence of the message of Islam from the accidents of its rustic, traditional or Bedouin reading. This would be a means to facing up to the distortions of such readings. One that requires that we respect the orientations of the Revelation and not the strictly masculine pretensions of such and such a custom, or of any paternal “habit”. Women are nowadays more and more engaged in the sense of this education in all Muslim countries. Still we are far from what ought to be achieved. However, the progress, although not spectacular, is tangible. This work of depth is already an application of the Sharī’a. Its application is progressive, for the long-term and is fed by the memory of the path of its source. It is with human beings, for the respect of their rights, without ever forgetting God.
At one time women used to trade, and participate in meetings; they were even in-charge of the market at Madina under Caliph ‘Umar. Furthermore, they engaged in social life in the seventh century. Is it possible to posit that a process of “Islamisation” at the end of the twentieth century will be rendered by a definitive return to home, house confinement and infantilisation? 28 By what twist of the mind have we managed to disfigure the Islamic message while asserting a willingness to defend it? Undoubtedly, as we have suggested above, it is because nowadays we think Islam more in contrast to “Western derivatives” than in function of its proper essence (which indeed has rules to be respected but which has no reactive twist). It is, therefore, necessary to return, serenely we must say, to the original teachings of Islam and allow women, at all levels of social life, to take an active part in the achievement of the reforms that we would like to bring forth. This is the prolongation of the education which they have the right to and which will allow them to run their affairs, to work, to organise themselves, to elect and be elected without any contravention of Islamic ethics or the order of priorities. Women must be able to play a social role. And if Islam clearly stipulates the priority of the family, this has never meant that a woman cannot move out of this space. Priority conveys the idea of a hierarchy but not the expression of an exclusivity. 29 Wearing the veil, in this sense, does not mean the confinement of woman. If it is freely worn, 30 then it must express an exacting and moral presence on the plane of social activity. It marks a limit in the proximity of which man understands that the woman – a fortiori one who is socially active – is a being before God. It should instil respect of privacy, before any inclination towards seduction due to her appearance.
The debate on