Some Questions Related To Women’s Rights in Islam

Some Questions Related To Women’s Rights in Islam Author:
Translator: Majid Karimi
Publisher: www.al-islam.org
Category: Woman

Some Questions Related To Women’s Rights in Islam
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Some Questions Related To Women’s Rights in Islam

Some Questions Related To Women’s Rights in Islam

Author:
Publisher: www.al-islam.org
English

www.alhassanain.org/english

Some Questions Related To Women’s Rights in Islam

Author(s): Sayyid Rida Husayni Nasab

Translator(s): Majid Karimi

www.alhassanain.org/english

This text discusses about some important points concerning women, their treatment, their rights and issues related to them.

Miscellaneous information:

Some Questions Related To Women’s Rights in Islam Written By: Ayatollah. Seyed Reza Hosseini Nassab Translated By: Majid Karimi Edited By: Ghulam Abbas Sajan

Notice:

This version is published on behalf of www.alhassanain.org/english

The composing errors are not corrected.

Table of Contents

The History of Discrimination Against Women Before Islam 8

The Abuse Of Women's Rights During Sasanian's Dynasty 9

The Abuse Of Women's Rights In The Western Civilization 10

The Condition Of Women In Arabia 11

Notes 12

The Role Of Islam In Recognizing The Rights Of Women 13

Does Islam Consider Women And Men As Equal? 14

The Equality Of All Human Beings In The Presence Of God 15

Answer To A Question 16

Meaning of Protectors and Maintainers (Responsible) 17

Is Men’s Share In Inheritance Twice That Of Women In Islam? 18

Classifications Of Relatives' Heritage 19

First group: 19

Second group: 19

Third group: 19

Inheritance by the First Group 20

Heritage of the Second Group 21

Heritage of the Third Group 22

Does Islam Agree With Polygamy? 23

The Bases For Polygamy 24

The Role Of Islam In Limiting Polygamy 25

Why Has Islam Not Opposed The Temporary Marriage? 27

Has Islam Permitted The Man To Punish His Wife? 29

Meaning Of Responsible (Protector And Maintainer) 30

Encouraging righteous women 31

What is the meaning of "Disloyalty and ill- conduct” in this verse? 32

Prevention of Disobedience and Rebellion 33

What is the meaning of “dharb" in this verse? 34

To whom is this verse address to? 35

Conclusion 36

Note 37

Does The Right Of Divorce Belong Only To Men? 38

What Is the Difference between the Boys' and Girls' Maturation Age? 40

The Norm Of Recognition Of Maturation Age 41

What Is The Commandment Of Shaking Hands By Muslims With Non-Muslim Members Of The Opposite Sex? 42

Primarily Edicts About Shaking Hands 43

First anecdote: 43

Second anecdote: 43

Shaking Hands With A Hand Cover 44

Contacting In Emergency And Desperate Situations 45

What Is The Viewpoint Of Islam Regarding Guardianship? 46

Definition Of Guardianship 46

Is Guardianship A Right Or Duty? 47

The Criterion Of Religious Edict About Guardianship 48

Is The Women’s Veil Only In Islam? 50

Veil In Judaism 51

Veil In Zoroastrianism 52

Veil In The Christianity 53

The Veil In Islam 54

Verses About Veil 55

The Philosophy Of Veil 56

The History of Discrimination Against Women Before Islam

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful

From a review of the history of former civilisations and a research in historical periods before the advent of Islam, it becomes abundantly clear that the liberating religion of Islam was followed by regeneration of women’s rights in that dark period. For more information, we will take a look at the history of discrimination and injustice done to women in the territories of Sasanian Empire in Iran, Roman Empire, Europe and Arabian Peninsula

Before the appearance of Islam, a terrible situation of abuse of women's rights prevailed over Iranian and Roman empires and also in Arabia. These matters will be described and discussed according to historical evidences and instances.

The Abuse Of Women's Rights During Sasanian's Dynasty

A study of Zoroastrian historical documents such as books like "Matigan Hezardastan", "Vandidad" and "Andarzhaye Azarbad Mehrsepandan", dominant during the Sasanian reign of Iran, it becomes clear that the women's natural rights were terribly violated by the religionists and the governments of that time.

As an example, women were considered personal properties of men and had the same price as a slave which was about 2000 silver coins. For further information, please look up the entry of "slave and slavery" in the book of "Iranica Encyclopaedia".

In the book, "Bondhesh", it is mentioned that:

"Ormazed (it means Ahooramazda) was unable to find any creature for procreation and therefore, he, selected the woman”

On the basis of this book, women do not have any possibility of reaching Ahooramazda (God) like men1 .

Also, during that time, when a girl got to the age of nine years, she was required to marry a person that others had chosen for her and if she did not accept the choice, she faced the death penalty2 .

According to what is mentioned in "Matigan Hezardastan" men could sell their wives to others if they so desired.

In light of what is stated above, it becomes clear that the condition of women in the Sasanian period was repressive, discriminative and full of injustice because of tyrant governors and deviant religious men. Women’s rights were terribly suppressed and ignored.

The Abuse Of Women's Rights In The Western Civilization

The western world at the time of the appearance of Islam was dominated by Judaism and Christianity and women's condition of those societies were affected by these two religions.

Now let us look at some examples from the view point of these religions toward women

The Jews and Christians of the world believe in the Old Testament and New Testament (Torah and Bible) and have always been under the influences of their instructions. "Genesis" from Bible, has emphasized frankly to patriarchy and women have been introduced as those who must suffer and are to be controlled by men forever.

Here, we refer to the exact verses: In "Genesis" Chapter 3 Verse 16, where it says:

"To the woman he said: I shall greatly increase the pain of your pregnancy and in birth, you will bring forth children and your craving will be for your husband and he will dominate you."

According to the above mentioned verse in Old Testament, God gave two punishments to the women:

A: The labour pain in childbirth.

B: Domination of women by men (patriarchy).

And these two penalties are because of Eve's mistake that she ate the forbidden fruit!!

Moreover it is concluded from the above that not only the woman is not equal to man, but also she is subordinate and dependent on man and created from one of the man's ribs. With this regard, the human being was created in a form of man (Adam) and, the woman was created afterwards from one of his parts...

The reference text is as follows:

"Hence Jehovah God had a deep sleep fall upon the man, and while he was sleeping, he took one of his ribs and then closed up the flesh over its place. And Jehovah God proceeded to build the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman and to bring her to the man." (Holy Scriptures, Genesis, 2:21-22)

The Condition Of Women In Arabia

The dark period before appearance of Islam in Arabia, is even called by the Arabian people as the period of ignorance. The people of that period believed woman as a cause of indignity and embarrassment and whenever they were told that their wives had given birth to daughters, they became ashamed and remorseful. Therefore, many of them buried their baby daughters alive which was extremely brutal and savage.

Holy Quran, in The “Folding Up” chapter, refers to these horrible and awful crimes of the Arabs in the period of ignorance and questioned them why were those innocent and faultless daughters killed and buried alive? The text of mentioned verses is as follows:

The Folding Up

Sura Al-Takwir - 81 The Folding Up

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

[81:0] In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

إِذَا الشَّمْسُ كُوِّرَتْ

[81:1] When the sun (with its spacious light) is folded up.

وَإِذَا النُّجُومُ انْكَدَرَتْ

[81:2] When the stars fall, losing their luster.

وَإِذَا الْجِبَالُ سُيِّرَتْ

[81:3] When the mountains vanish (like a mirage).

وَإِذَا الْعِشَارُ عُطِّلَتْ

[81:4] When the she-camels, ten month with young, are left untended.

وَإِذَا الْوُحُوشُ حُشِرَتْ

[81:5] When the wild beasts are herded together (in human habitations).

وَإِذَا الْبِحَارُ سُجِّرَتْ

[81:6] When the oceans boil over with a swell.

وَإِذَا النُّفُوسُ زُوِّجَتْ

[81:7] When the souls are sorted out, (being joined, like with like).

وَإِذَا الْمَوْءُودَةُ سُئِلَتْ

[81:8] When the female (infant), buried alive is questioned-

بِأَيِّ ذَنْبٍ قُتِلَتْ

[81:9] For what crime was she killed?

Notes

1. For further explanation, refer to "Bondhash" by Mehrdad Bahar, part 6.

2. Refer to “Sasanian Kingdom", translated by Murtaza Saghab- Far, pages 173-175.

The Role Of Islam In Recognizing The Rights Of Women

The liberating religion of Islam in that Dark Age granted women their suppressed rights. On the one hand, the explanatory and illustrative messages of Quran rose up and challenged the inaccurate culture of ignorance that deprived women of their right of inheritance, whereas they were considered as inferior and dependent on man, and when the female children were buried alive. On the other hand, the great Prophet of Islam promoted the veneration of the women practically by venerating and respecting his wife Khadijah and his daughter Fatimah Zahra (Peace be upon them).

Whenever Fatimah entered any place where the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him and his progeny) was present, he stood up out of respect for her and kissed her hands and by this behaviour he replaced the old dark culture of ignorant times by the new and elevated culture of Islam.

*****

Does Islam Consider Women And Men As Equal?

From the perspective of Islam, God's consideration of the status of man and woman is equal as human beings. To shed light on this issue, we refer to the first verse of Chapter “The Woman” which is as follows:

Sura an-Nisa’ – 4 The Woman

يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ اتَّقُوا رَبَّكُمُ الَّذِي خَلَقَكُمْ مِنْ نَفْسٍ وَاحِدَةٍ وَخَلَقَ مِنْهَا زَوْجَهَا وَبَثَّ مِنْهُمَا رِجَالًا كَثِيرًا وَنِسَاءًۚ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ الَّذِي تَسَاءَلُونَ بِهِ وَالْأَرْحَامَۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلَيْكُمْ رَقِيبًا

[4:1] O mankind! Reverence your Guardian Lord who created you from a single soul and he created from that its mate. And from them twain scattered (like seeds) countless men and women – fear Allah, through whom you demand your mutual (rights), and (reverence) the wombs (that bore you): for Allah ever watches over you.

According to this verse, the origin of human beings creation, including both man and woman, is regarded as "primordial ego" that is sacred soul and there is no distinction between them as a human beings.

Therefore, the status of the soul of man and woman in the presence of God is the same and equal and this justice in creation is emphasized in the Glorious Quran.

The important point that is worth describing is that the physical differences of men and women are just because they are supplementary and complementary to each other. Thus while each one has his/her own special integrity; in humanity and human integrity they are equal. Therefore, the physical differences are not the justifiable reason for superiority of one group over another.

The Equality Of All Human Beings In The Presence Of God

God in the Glorious Quran addresses all human beings, both man and woman, and says:

Sura al-Hujraat - 49 The Chambers

يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَاكُمْ مِنْ ذَكَرٍ وَأُنْثَىٰ وَجَعَلْنَاكُمْ شُعُوبًا وَقَبَائِلَ لِتَعَارَفُواۚ إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٌ

[49:13] O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other (not that you may despise each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well- acquainted (with all things).

According to this verse, all of human beings, whether women or men, and black or white, are equal before the presence of God, and the only prominent factor for superiority and excellence is piety and virtue.

Answer To A Question

There is an important question, why has the Glorious Quran called man as "responsible"? Does it mean that men are superior?

In answering this question, let us examine the following verse:

Sura an-Nisa’ – 4 The Woman

الرِّجَالُ قَوَّامُونَ عَلَى النِّسَاءِ بِمَا فَضَّلَ اللَّهُ بَعْضَهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ وَبِمَا أَنْفَقُوا مِنْ أَمْوَالِهِمْۚ فَالصَّالِحَاتُ قَانِتَاتٌ حَافِظَاتٌ لِلْغَيْبِ بِمَا حَفِظَ اللَّهُۚ وَاللَّاتِي تَخَافُونَ نُشُوزَهُنَّ فَعِظُوهُنَّ وَاهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِي الْمَضَاجِعِ وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّۖ فَإِنْ أَطَعْنَكُمْ فَلَا تَبْغُوا عَلَيْهِنَّ سَبِيلًاۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيًّا كَبِيرًا

[4:34] Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore, the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in the (the husband’s) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next) refuse to share their beds, (and last) do dharb (have separation); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance) for Allah is Most High, great (above you all)

For the real meaning of this verse, please pay attention to the following points.

Meaning of Protectors and Maintainers (Responsible)

The word “Responsible” applies to the person who is in a position of trust. For this reason in lexical meaning, the word “Responsible” is applicable to everyone who has effective responsibility. Since the responsibility of undertaking and providing the subsistence and supporting the family financially, according to Islam, is on man, the overlord in this honourable verse of Quran, has introduced men as the supporter of women. They are responsible for undertaking the subsistence of life and providing the expenses of family members.

Therefore, the above verse does not mean that men are superior or excelsior in comparison with women, but it is an expression of responsibility for men in front of the family as protectors and maintainers.

After explaining equality and parity status of women and men in the presence of God and viewpoint of Islam, it is worth answering several other questions in this field like the difference in inheritance between men and women, polygamy, temporary marriage and the right of divorce and so on.

The word, “dharb” has different meanings in Arabic and in this instance it means separation.

Is Men’s Share In Inheritance Twice That Of Women In Islam?

Inheritance regulations in Islam are collection of rules and processes which can be understood after paying careful attention to the different scenarios. It will be absolutely clear after careful consideration to the issues of inheritance that the men’s portion are at times twice that of women; in some other situations the women’s portion are more than those of men; and in some situations the shares of men and women are the same.

The Noble Prophet (peace be upon him and his progeny) of Islam proceeded to enact inheritance rights for women, which the people of Arabia did not recognize before then. Before that women were disinherited in numerous territories like Iran, during the period of Sasanian dynasty.

Famous writer "Saeid Nafisi" in the book "Social History of Iran" writes about this period as follows:

"When the daughter got married she was disinherited from her father’s wealth, and she had no right to choose her husband."

For further explanation about the system of inheritance in Islam, we will discuss some of the applicable dimensions.

Classifications Of Relatives' Heritage

On the basis of regulation and provisions of Islam regarding heritage, the people who inherit through relationships are classified into three groups:

First group:

First group consists of father, mother and descendants of the deceased and if there is no child the heritage goes down to the grandchildren, great grandchildren, any descendants or anyone who is closer to the dead person is the inheritor. As long as there is even one single person of this group present, he or she has priority over the others, except the wife or the husband on some conditions.

Second group:

Second group are grandfathers, grandmothers, brother and sister of the deceased person and if there is no brother or sister, or their children or grandchildren, whoever that is closer to the dead person, will be the inheritor. As long as even one person of this group exists, there will be no inheritor among the third group; but if he had a wife, according to the general regulations of inheritance, she will inherit her portion of heritage.

Third group:

Third group includes uncles, aunts, maternal uncles, and maternal aunts. They will be the inheritors but if they do not exist, their children will inherit.

Inheritance by the First Group

In a nutshell, it will be sufficient to address the various questions related to this group by giving some examples

• If the inheritor of the dead person is from the first group, for example a son or a daughter, all the properties of the dead person belongs to her/him. If there are several sons or daughters, all the inheritance is shared equally among them and if there are both, sons and daughters, the heritage is divided in such a way that each son receives two portions and each daughter one.

In this situation the portion of man is twice that of woman.

• If the inheritor of the dead person is father, mother and a daughter, then each one of the father and mother receives one-sixth and the daughter three-sixth of the portion. The reminder, that is one-sixth of the portion, is divided amongst them in the same proportions.

In this situation, the woman's portion (the daughter of the deceased person) is three times that of the man (the father of the deceased person).

• If the inheritor of the deceased person is just the father and a daughter, or mother and a daughter, the heritage is divided into four shares; the father or the mother gets one portion and the daughter three portions.

In this situation also, the woman's portion (the daughter of dead person) is three times the man's portion (the father of the deceased person).

Heritage of the Second Group

Here, we refer to some of the questions regarding the portions of heritage among the second group and provide some examples:

• If the inheritor is just a brother or a sister of the deceased person, all the properties are inherited by him/her. In the situation where there are, several brothers or sisters from the same father and mother as the deceased, the inheritance will be in such proportion that the share of each brother will be twice that of each sister.

In this situation, the men's portion (the brothers) is twice that of the women (the sisters).

• If the inheritor is only one maternal sister or one maternal brother but not from the same father (step brother or step sister) of the deceased person, all the properties go to him/her or is divided equally between them. Whereas if there are some maternal brothers or some maternal sisters or combination of both, each of them shares equally the property of the deceased

In this situation, the women's portion (the sisters) is equal to that of the men (the brothers).

Heritage of the Third Group

Third Group includes paternal and maternal uncles and aunts and their off springs. If there is no one existing from the first and second groups, they will inherit the deceased person’s property. We now refer to some possible scenarios from this group.

• If the inheritor is a single paternal uncle or aunt, he/she inherits all the properties. If there are several paternal uncles or aunts, the uncles inherit twice that inherited by aunts.

In this situation, the men's portion (the uncles) is twice that of the women (the aunts).

• If the inheritor is a single maternal uncle or aunt, he/she inherits all the properties. If there are maternal uncles and aunts (whether they are all from a single father and mother or different father or mother), all properties are shared equally amongst them.

In this question, the man's portion (the maternal uncles) and the woman's (the maternal aunts) is equal.

• If the inheritor of the dead person is a maternal uncle and one paternal aunt, all the properties are divided into three parts, one portion goes to maternal uncle and two portions go to paternal aunt.

In this situation, the woman's portion (the paternal aunt) is twice that of the man (the maternal uncle).

From the above examples, it is clear that the claim of some writers that the men’s portion is always twice that of the women is not correct. This is because of lack of knowledge regarding heritage regulations in Islam. As can be seen, in some cases, women's portion is twice or three times that of men, in some cases, men's portion is twice that of the women; and sometimes, both of them share equally.

Therefore, the preference in Islamic inheritance rules is not based on gender, but it is based on the relationship of the deceased to the inheritors. Accordingly, it changes the portions of men and women - sometimes men get more, at time they get less and in some situations their shares are equal.

It therefore has to be clearly understood that the claim of those who say: when discussing Islamic inheritance that Islam grants more portion to men because of masculinity and less portion to women because of femininity”, is unacceptable, incorrect and unfair.

Does Islam Agree With Polygamy?

The phenomenon of multiple wives or "polygamy" has been one of the issues of the societies throughout the history of mankind. This phenomenon has attracted the attention of the researchers in different Eastern and Western countries even in the present age.

For example, some time ago, in United States a Christian priest "David Krish" claimed that he was a messenger of God and who also tried to collect weapons in his temple. He and his companions were killed by security forces of United States. It was revealed that he had 16 wives.

In the year 2006, another priest, "Varen Jeffs" in Utah State in America, who had about eighty wives, was summoned before the court as a result of complaints from some of his wives and for some other reasons. The explanations and expressions of his thoughts and the leadership of his sect and promulgation of polygamy was for a while the subject of the news and television discussions.

The Bases For Polygamy

It seems one of the social elements and a justification for polygamy in all centuries is that there have always been more women in comparison to men in many countries. Factors such as numerous wars prevailing in many countries, men working in dangerous places such as mines, the increase in life expectancy amongst women, and many other factors have caused the increase in the number of women in relation to men in the society.

In order to accommodate the lives of these women who could not find their male match, especially those who had lost their husbands in wars, some previous social reformers advised those men who economically and financially are able to support more than one family to marry these women who otherwise would have no opportunity to have married lives.

Social scholars have suggested three solutions to solve the problem of these groups of women whose number is more than that of men.

The First Solution is that these women remain single to the end of their lives and their expenses are covered by the governments. Although this solution may seem to be ideal, but considering two points it is not practical. Firstly, generally speaking, in previous societies and in many countries at present time, there is no social security system to cover these expenses. The women without the support will be vulnerable and will be deprived and left on their own. Secondly, each human being, further to his/her material requirements, has some natural and sexual needs and being asked to be single and unmarried for their entire life would be a recommendation against her/his natural needs and rights.

Second Solution is as is practiced in Western societies, is to expose these women to prostitution and earn their livelihood in this way.

Third Solution which is attributed to Bertrand Russell is that governments should provide the financial requirements of these women and their natural needs would be fulfilled through prostitution and illegitimate relations.

Obviously the second and third solution would lead into great social disorders such as degrading a women’s honour such as that of prostitutes and its consequential dangerous outcomes, such as an increase in the number of illegitimate children. Considering the millions of illegitimate children in European and American countries, some of the western scholars have admitted the incorrectness of the second and the third solutions.

Fourth Solution is that in order to meet the financial and natural needs of this group of women, those men who are able to support more than one family economically and socially should marry another woman. This solution has been practiced during many historical cycles and in many countries such as Mesopotamia region, ancient Persia, Arabian countries and similar places.

Considering the above, it becomes clear that polygamy is not limited to Islamic period or its divine guidance, but it is something which had prevailed among ancient nations as well. Furthermore, many of pre-Islamic religious leaders who are respected by Christians and Jews, such as the Prophet Abraham (Peace be upon him) had more than one wife.

The Role Of Islam In Limiting Polygamy

With regard to these four solutions, Islam does not recommend the first solution for its impracticality in societies and the denial of natural needs of the women. It also rejects the second and third solutions because of prevalence of prostitution and its outcomes and Islam clearly discards them.

In order to solve this social disorder, only the fourth solution remains.

Islam has neither denied it completely nor at the same time approved it unconditionally and without any limitations.

Prior to advent of Islam in Arabian Peninsula, without undertaking necessary commitments for supporting women, men were allowed to marry even ten women. Furthermore, head of states such as some kings in dynasties of ancient Persia used to keep tens of spouses, rather than the queen, in their Harems.

On the one hand, Islam limited polygamy and the number of wives one could have, and on the other hand, imposed two following main conditions:

First Condition: the ability of the husband to manage more than one family economically and to provide legitimate and natural needs of all the wives and their children.

Second Condition: the observance of treatment based on justice by husband towards all the wives and the proper and fair attitude to them on equal bases, without discrimination and without usurping the rights of anyone of them.

Now in order to clarify the role of Islam in limiting and imposing conditions on polygamy, two verses of the Glorious Quran will be reviewed:

Sura an-Nisa’ – 4 The Woman

وَإِنْ خِفْتُمْ أَلَّا تُقْسِطُوا فِي الْيَتَامَىٰ فَانْكِحُوا مَا طَابَ لَكُمْ مِنَ النِّسَاءِ مَثْنَىٰ وَثُلَاثَ وَرُبَاعَۖ فَإِنْ خِفْتُمْ أَلَّا تَعْدِلُوا فَوَاحِدَةً أَوْ مَا مَلَكَتْ أَيْمَانُكُمْۚ ذَٰلِكَ أَدْنَىٰ أَلَّا تَعُولُوا

[4:3] If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two, or three, or four; but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess. That will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice.

The expressions of this verse indicate that the permission for polygamy from Islamic point of view is under certain strict conditions, without them, the social problems would not be solved.

The other point to note according to this verse is that the number of wives, under the specified special circumstances, has been limited to two, three and a maximum four. And Islam, according to this verse clearly does not permit unlimited number of wives even if one is able to observe these conditions.

Furthermore, the Glorious Quran has considered the justice among wives as the fundamental factor in polygamy and Islam clearly opposes having more than one wife if these conditions cannot be fulfilled. In that case it is recommended that a man should have only one wife. The Quran categorically states: but if you fear that you shall be not able to deal justly with them then marry only one.

In another verse of the Chapter “Women” of Glorious Quran, we read:

Sura an-Nisa’ – 4 The Woman

وَلَنْ تَسْتَطِيعُوا أَنْ تَعْدِلُوا بَيْنَ النِّسَاءِ وَلَوْ حَرَصْتُمْۖ فَلَا تَمِيلُوا كُلَّ الْمَيْلِ فَتَذَرُوهَا كَالْمُعَلَّقَةِۚ وَإِنْ تُصْلِحُوا وَتَتَّقُوا فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ غَفُورًا رَحِيمًا

[4:129] You are never able to be fair and just as between women, even if it is your ardent desire: but turn not away (from a woman) altogether, so as to leave her (as it were) hanging (in the air). If you come to a friendly understanding, and practice self- restraint, Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful.

When this verse is compared with the third verse of the same chapter of the Glorious Quran, and if we think about them, obviously we will find that the Glorious Quran, in normal condition and where there are no exceptional circumstances, Islam prefers monogamy. Islam also limits the resort to polygamy even as a solution for social problems and insists on following with justice, which is difficult to accomplish.

Why Has Islam Not Opposed The Temporary Marriage?

Answer: Marriage is a union between man and woman. This union sometimes is permanent, without any limitation and sometimes is temporary with a time period being specified. Both of these are legal marriages; equal and the same and the only difference is for its duration: while one is permanent, the other is for a fixed period.

The following conditions are valid both in permanent or temporary marriages:

1) Man and woman should not have any legal obstacles in their marriage such as consanguineous or causative or any other legal obstacles, otherwise the marriage is void.

2) The dowry which is agreed by both sides should be mention in marriage contract.

3) The fixed period of marriage should be determined.

4) The marriage contract is legalized.

5) The child born in temporary marriage is legitimate and is just like a child born in permanent marriage and is entitled to have the identity card specifying the name of the father, and there is no difference between permanent and temporary marriage.

6) The child's expense is upon the father and the children inherit from both the parents.

7) When the period of marriage ends, the woman should keep the prescribed legal detachment period and if during the legal detachment it is found that she is pregnant, she should avoid any marriage until the baby is delivered.

Also, other rules of permanent marriage should be considered at the time of temporary marriage. The only difference is that the temporary marriage is for addressing the necessities.

The charges and expenses of the woman are not borne by man and if the woman at the time of marriage does not set out the condition of inheritance, she does not inherit from her husband. It is clear that these two differences do not have any impact on the marriage.

All of us believe that the Islamic rules are the final and eternal religious laws which answer all needs. Now consider a young man who is forced to live in another country for his studies for a long period of time and because of the limitation and lack of facilities cannot have a permanent marriage. He, therefore, has three choices:

A: He stays bachelor during the whole period.

B: He succumbs to corruption and fornication.

C: According to the above mentioned conditions, he marries a woman that legally permits marriage for a certain specified period of time.

In the first case, we frequently are confronted with failure, although a few are able to forego any sexual relationships and are patient and have forbearance; but this is not the case with all.

The condition of those who choose the second way is misery and corruption, which is also illegal in Islam. The thought of prescription of this method as a justification because of necessity is a kind of obliquity and malice.

Therefore, just the third way remains which Islam permits.

The point that is important to consider, is the permissibility of the temporary marriage is with specified qualifications. It does not mean that it is permitted at all times and unwarranted situations. Some people do perform temporary marriage for revelry. Some anecdotes from our holy leaders forbade the people from plethora in these matters.

Has Islam Permitted The Man To Punish His Wife?

The answer of this question can be inferred with precision from the anecdote of the honourable Prophet of Islam when he rhetorically asks those who have incorrect behaviour:

"How can you embrace your wife with the same hand that you beat her with?"1

Through this meaningful expression, it is clear that our holy Prophet who is the authority on Islamic divine rules, by this question and answer, seriously disapproved beating and punishing of the wife by the husband.

To those who use verse 33 of Chapter “The Woman” of the Glorious Quran, to prove discrimination between men and women, it is necessary to explain logical and correct meaning of this verse before explaining our reasons in this regard:

The Woman

Sura - 4 The Woman

الرِّجَالُ قَوَّامُونَ عَلَى النِّسَاءِ بِمَا فَضَّلَ اللَّهُ بَعْضَهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ وَبِمَا أَنْفَقُوا مِنْ أَمْوَالِهِمْۚ فَالصَّالِحَاتُ قَانِتَاتٌ حَافِظَاتٌ لِلْغَيْبِ بِمَا حَفِظَ اللَّهُۚ وَاللَّاتِي تَخَافُونَ نُشُوزَهُنَّ فَعِظُوهُنَّ وَاهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِي الْمَضَاجِعِ وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّۖ فَإِنْ أَطَعْنَكُمْ فَلَا تَبْغُوا عَلَيْهِنَّ سَبِيلًاۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيًّا كَبِيرًا

[4:34] Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore, the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in the (the husband’s) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next) refuse to share their beds, (and last) do dharb (have separation); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance) for Allah is Most High, great (above you all)

For understanding of the real meaning of this verse, please pay attention to the following points.

Meaning Of Responsible (Protector And Maintainer)

The word "Responsible" in this verse means to be in charge of protection and maintenance of the family. For this reason in lexical meaning, the word “Responsible"; applies to whoever understands effective responsibility. Since the responsibility of undertaking and providing the subsistence and supporting the financial requirements of a family, according to Islam, is on man, the overlord in this verse of the Quran, has introduced men as the supporter of women. The men are responsible for undertaking the subsistence of life and providing the expenses of the family members.

Encouraging righteous women

Those who have question regarding this verse in the Glorious Quran did not pay enough attention to this verse which encourages and exalts the proper characteristics of righteous and benefactor women, who are devoutly obedient, courteous, modest and chaste, compared to the admonished disloyal and disobedient women. Therefore, the rule of encouraging and appreciating its correct meaning is superior to the threat to and affliction pain on women.

What is the meaning of "Disloyalty and ill- conduct” in this verse?

It is obvious that every difference in opinion and taste in even trivial affairs of the family like selecting the colours of clothing or the kinds of food and so on do not mean "disloyalty and ill-conduct”". Because intellectuals never accept that these differences in taste or opposition in trivial affairs are causes to punish or injure the wife. Therefore, the literal meaning of the word "rebellion" is women who disobey divine rules and without any reason, harm her matrimonial relationship or betray her husband.

Chapter 1: The bourgeois and the official: a historical overview

German literature, in the narrow sense, is the literature of the states, predominantly the Lutheran states, of the Holy Roman Empire, and of their 19th-century successor kingdoms, which were gathered by Bismarck into his Second Empire and, after an interval as the Weimar Republic, formed the core of Hitler’s Third Empire. Austria, though a part of the Holy Roman Empire, can be excluded from this story, as Bismarck excluded it, together with Hungary and Austria’s other, non-Imperial, territories in the Danube basin. Prussia, however, has to be included because of its crucial role in the political defi nition of Germany, even though the duchy, later kingdom, of Prussia (now divided between Poland, the Baltic states, and Russia) was never part of the Empire but was an external power-base for the Electors of Brandenburg, rather like Austria’s Danubian hinterland, and even though Brandenburg-Prussia contributed little of signifi cance to German literature, outside the realm of philosophy, until the 19th century.

The clergy and the university The Lutheranism is important. The Reformation of the early 16th century marks the beginning of German literature, in the sense of the term used here. Not just because the Reformation followed relatively soon (and doubtless not by chance) on the linguistic changes which brought into existence the modern form of the German language, and on the invention of moveable-type printing, which made it desirable, and feasible, to have a standard written language for the whole area across which German books might circulate. By transferring the responsibility for the defence of the Christian faith from the Emperor to the local princes, the Reformation made it possible to imagine a German (Protestant) cultural identity that could do without the Empire altogether, as free of political links to the Roman past as it was of religious links to the Roman present. More, the Reformation launched the individual Protestant states on a voyage towards cultural and political self-suffi ciency even within the German-speaking world. In particular their clergy, then the largest class of the professionally educated and professionally literate, the bearers of cultural values and memory, were cut off from their fellows, even their fellow Protestants, by the boundaries of their state and their historical epoch. They could call only with reservations on the experience of Christians in other places and times and, in practical matters, they had to make their careers in dependence, direct or indirect, on the local monarch. Charged with providing, or supervising, primary education and other charitable activities, such as the care of orphans, which in Catholic states remained the responsibility of relatively independent religious orders or local religious houses, Protestant ministers were often virtually an executive branch of the state civil service.

The instrumentalization of the clergy in the Protestant princely states exercised a profound infl uence on German literature and philosophy because of a peculiarity in Germany’s political and economic development. The towns, mainly Imperial Free Cities, which in the late Middle Ages had been the most dynamic element in German society - centres of commerce, industry, and banking which were also the centres of a richly inventive middle-class culture, especially in the visual arts - went into decline in the century after the Reformation and failed to adjust to Europe’s shift from overland to overseas trade and to the new importance of the maritime nations. Germany’s devastating religious civil war, the Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648, sealed their fate. In the post-war period only the state powers could raise the capital necessary for reconstruction, and with few exceptions, the great Free Cities decayed into mere ‘home towns’. The princely territories, with their predominantly agricultural economies and rural populations that could be pressed into military service, gained correspondingly in relative power and infl uence. A political revolt of the middle classes, which in 16th-century Holland and 17th-century England was largely successful but which in France went underground with the suppression of the Fronde by the young Louis XIV, was in Germany out of the question. The Empire became a federation of increasingly absolute monarchs who in cultural as in political matters looked to the France of the Sun King as their model. The courtly arts, such as architecture and opera, dedicated to the entertainment and glorifi cation of the prince and his entourage, did well, but printed books were predominantly academic (so often in Latin) or, if they were intended to circulate more widely among the depressed middle classes, were either trivial fantasies, without social or political signifi cance, or works of religious devotion commending contentment with one’s lot. One institution, however, of the greatest importance to the middle class, which after the middle of the 17th century fl ourished better in Germany than elsewhere in Europe, was the university. At a time when England made do with two universities, Germany, with only four or fi ve times the population, had around 40. The university had come late to the German lands - the fi rst was at Prague in 1348 - but in the post-Reformation world it had a quite new signifi cance. The absolute, princely state, with its ambition to control everything, needed offi cers to carry its will into every part of its domains, and these the university provided, principally, until the later 18th century, by training the clergy. Practical subjects, such as fi nance and agriculture, were also taught, and much earlier in Germany than in England, but always with a view to their utility in the state administration. The offspring of well-to-do professionals could afford to study law and medicine and rely on family connections to fi nd them a billet, but for an able young man from a poor background the theology faculty, much the largest and most richly endowed, offered the best prospects of social advancement and future employment.

The 18th-century crisis Eighteenth-century Germany was a stagnant society in which economic and political power was largely concentrated in the hands of the state, and intellectual life was initially in the grip of the state churches. There was little room for private enterprise, material or cultural. Yet this society experienced a literary and philosophical explosion, the consequences of which are still with us. The constriction itself put up the boiler pressure. In England and France there was a signifi cant property-owning middle class, a bourgeoisie in the full sense of the word, able to fi nd an outlet for its capital and its energies in trade and industry, emigration and empire, and eventually in political revolution and reform. In Germany the equivalent class was proportionally much smaller and shut away in the towns, where it could engage in political or economic activity of only local importance. What Germany had in abundance was a class of state officials (and of Protestant clergymen who were state officials by another name), who were close to political power, and were often its executive arm, but who could not exercise it in their own right, and could only look on enviously at the achievements of their counterparts in England, Holland, or Switzerland, or, after 1789, in France:

‘They do the deeds, and we translate the narrations of them into German’, wrote one of them. The only outlet for the energies of this peculiarly German middle class was the book. Germany in the 18th century had more writers per head than anywhere else in Europe, roughly one for every 5,000 of the entire population.

Its fi rst industrial capitalists, its only private entrepreneurs who before 1800 were mass-producing goods for a mass market, were its publishers. In the middle of the 18th century Germany’s official class entered a crisis. The Seven Years War (1756-63) defi nitively established Prussia as the dominant Protestant power in the Empire and, on the continent of Europe, a counterweight to Catholic Austria, while Prussia’s ally, England, emerged similarly victorious on the world stage in the race for colonies at the expense of its Catholic rival, France. Yet at this moment when - at least from a German point of view - Anglo-German Protestantism seemed to have demonstrated its superiority in all respects over Europe’s Catholic South, the religious heart of the cultural alliance began to succumb to an enemy within. Under the name of Enlightenment, the deist and historicist critique of Christianity, which had originated largely in England, began to detach Germany’s theologically educated elite from the faith of their fathers. Since there was not much of a private sector in which an ex-cleric could seek alternative employment, and since loyalty to the state church was something of a touchstone for loyalty to the state itself, a crisis of conscience was an existential crisis too. The struggle for a way out was a matter of intellectual and sometimes personal life and death. Two generations of unprecedented mental exertion and suffering within the pressure-vessel of the German state brought into existence some of the most characteristic features of modern culture, which elsewhere took much longer to develop.

Two routes led out of the crisis, one considerably more secure than the other. First, it was possible to adapt Germany’s most distinctive state institution, the university, to meet the new need.

New career paths, inside and outside academic life, became available for those with a scholarly bent but a distaste for theology, through the creation of new subjects of study or the expansion of previously minor options. Classical philology, modern history, languages and literatures, the history of art, the natural sciences, education itself, and, perhaps most infl uential of all, idealist philosophy - in these new or newly signifi cant university disciplines 18th and early 19th-century Germany established a pre-eminence which, in some cases, has lasted into the present.

Second, and more precariously, the ex-theologian could turn to the one area of private enterprise and commercial activity readily accessible to him: the book market. It has been calculated that, even excluding philosophers, 120 major literary fi gures writing in German and born between 1676 and 1804 had either studied theology or were the children of Protestant pastors. But there was a snare concealed behind the lure of literature. To make money a book had to circulate widely among the middle classes, the professionals and business people, and their wives and daughters, not just among the officials. But these were the classes that the political constitution of absolutist Germany excluded from power and infl uence. It was not therefore possible to write about the real forces shaping German life and at the same time to write about something familiar and important to a wide readership. The price of success was triviality and falsifi cation; if you were seriously devoted to real issues you would stay esoteric, and poor. The German literary revival of the 18th century was in great measure the attempt, fuelled by secularization, to resolve this dilemma.

Especially in the earlier phases it seemed that the example of England, the ally in Protestantism, might be the answer, and hopes of a German equivalent to the English realistic novel, at once truthful and popular, ran high. But Germany could not model its literature on that of England’s self-confi dent and largely self-governing capitalist middle class. Its social and economic starting point was different, and it had to fi nd its own way.

In Germany, political power and cultural infl uence were concentrated in absolute rulers and their immediate entourage, loosely termed the ‘courts’. The interface between these centres and the rest of society, and specifi cally the groups that made up the reading public, was provided by the state officials.

Therefore, the class of officials - those who belonged to it, those who were educated for it, and those who sought access to it - formed the growth zone for the German national literature.

In material terms, a state salary, whether a cleric’s, a professor’s, or an administrator’s, or even just a personal pension from the monarch, provided a foundation so that a literary career, albeit part-time, was at least possible and did not have to be a relentless chase after maximal earnings. In intellectual terms, the writers’ proximity to power, and to the state institutions, meant that the issues they raised in the symbolic medium of literature were genuinely central to the national life and identity, even if their perspective was that of non-participants. The public literary genre which most precisely reflected the ambiguous realities of life in the growth zone, and which, towards the end of the century, reached a point of perfection subsequently recognized as ‘classical’, was the poetic drama, the drama which, though performable and performed, was most widely distributed and appreciated as a printed book. The dramatic form reflected the political and cultural dominance of the princely court, for none of Germany’s many theatres were purely commercial undertakings, all required some kind of state subsidy, and even in the Revolutionary period most still served their original and principal function of entertaining the ruler. Circulation as a book, however, as Germany’s equivalent of a novel, both truthful and commercially successful, reflected the aspiration of the middle classes to a market-based culture of their own. And, fi nally, the philosophical, if not explicitly theological, tenor of the themes of these plays reflected the secularization of Lutheranism which was providing a new vocabulary for the description of personal and social existence, whether by playwrights in the state theatres or by professors in the state universities. Among the most important elements in this new vocabulary were the concepts of moral (rather than political) ‘freedom’ and of ‘Art’, as the realm of human experience in which this freedom was made visible. The German ‘classical’ era gave to the world not only the meaning of the word ‘Art’ which enabled Oscar Wilde to say nearly a hundred years later that it was quite useless, but also the belief that literature was primarily ‘Art’ (rather than, say, a means of communication).

The rise of bourgeois Germany ‘Germany’ around 1800 was not so much a geographical as a literary expression. The most powerful impetus to give it a political meaning probably came from Napoleon. He imposed the abolition of the ecclesiastical territories, a radical reduction in the number of the principalities from over 300 to about 40, and the organization of the remainder into a federation of sovereign states, even before the formal dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. His annihilating defeat of Prussia in the same year forced on it a programme of modernization which was to determine German social and political structures for the next century and a half. The modernization did not, however, take the republican form it had taken in France, and though constitutionalism briefl y fl ourished when it was necessary to rouse the people to throw off the Napoleonic yoke from the necks of their princes, it was abandoned after the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 which turned Germany, until 1848, into a confederation of police states. The Prussian commercial, industrial, and professional middle classes were still too weak to challenge the king, or even the landowning nobility (the Junkers), and introduce representative government or a separation of legislature and executive. Instead the successful bid for power came from the king’s officials, and the autocratic absolutism of the 18th century gave way to the bureaucratic absolutism of the 19th - a rule of law, free of conscious corruption and directed to the common welfare, but imposing a military level of discipline on all layers of society. The king’s personal decisions remained fi nal, but they were increasingly mediated, and so to some extent checked, by his civil and armed services, into which the nobility were gradually absorbed - partly as a brake on the ambitions of the middle class. The new Prussia, the largest and most powerful of the German Protestant states, had an altogether new signifi cance for its fellows, once the old Imperial framework had vanished.

Territories which before 1806 could pass as constituent parts of a larger whole, however ramshackle and loosely defi ned, now had to justify themselves as economically and politically self-suffi cient states, a task to which none of them, apart from Prussia, Austria, and perhaps Bavaria, could pretend to be equal. Some kind of association between them had to be found. There was a supine intergovernmental ‘Federation’ dominated by Austria and a much more effective Customs Union (Zollverein) of a smaller number of territories grouped round Prussia, but the word ‘Germany’ now meant something future and unreal. If it had once referred to the Empire and any other territories attached to the Empire in which German was spoken and written, now it meant the political unit in which all, or most, German-speakers would fi nd their home. And there was the rub: who precisely was to be included in this future Germany? It could hardly contain both Prussia and Austria, as the old Empire and the new Federation were able, more or less, to contain them - though there were many dreamers to whom this seemed possible, among them the author of ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’ - but equally it could hardly exclude them, given their infl uence over the smaller states and frequent interventions in their affairs. In practice, the two great powers were resolving the issue for themselves: Prussia was expanding purposefully westwards to the Rhineland, while Austria was withdrawing from German affairs to concentrate on its non-German-speaking territories in Eastern Europe and North Italy. In the end, the Protestant intellectuals of Northern Germany, still held together, as under the old regime, by the publishing industry and the university network, threw in their lot with Prussia. After a decade of increasing agitation, 1848, Europe’s ‘year of revolutions’, saw the summoning of the Frankfurt Parliament, a quarter of whose membership was made up of academics, clergy, and writers, and which in 1849 offered the Prussian monarch the kingship of a Germany without Austria. Friedrich Wilhelm IV refused to rule by the free choice of his subjects - ‘to pick up a crown from the gutter’ - though his brother, Wilhelm I, accepted the same ‘lesser German’ (kleindeutsch) crown when Bismarck secured it for him by force of arms in 1866-71.

To the extent to which it was a revolution of professors, and perhaps rather further, the failed German revolution of 1848 was a revolution of the officials, the last act, and the fi nest hour, of the 18th-century reading public. It was an attempt to unify Germany by constitutional and administrative means, while retaining for government, and monarchical government at that, the leading role in the structuring of society. But the balance of power in the German middle class was already beginning to shift fundamentally. Between 1815 and 1848 the population grew by 60%, and as poverty intensifi ed the need for employment grew desperate. After some tentative, state-sponsored beginnings in the 1830s, a fi rst wave of industrialization was felt in the 1840s, with huge (often foreign) investments in a railway network, mainly within the Customs Union, and a consequent economic upswing.

The decade ended with an economic as well as a political crash, and with the last of the pre-industrial famines (partly caused by the same potato blight that devastated Ireland) - factors that together led (as in Ireland) to a surge in emigration. But in the following 20 years Prussia, governed from 1862 by Bismarck, embraced economic liberalism as a means of sweeping away historic and institutional obstacles to the unifi cation of its heterogeneous territories, and the long period of intensive growth began which was to transform Germany into an industrial giant.

As a result, when the Second German Empire was founded in 1871 it had a bourgeoisie, a property-owning and money-making class, which was much larger, wealthier, and more signifi cant for the common good than anything the First Empire had known. The consequences for literature and philosophy were far-reaching. As this class emerged, it battled for self-respect and cultural identity with the long-established middle-class instruments of state power, the officials. The revived bourgeoisie had a more obvious interest in the economic and political unifi cation of Germany than civil servants who owed their positions to the multiplication of power centres, and entry to it was not dependent on passage through the universities. In the early years of the 19th century its frustrated political ambitions expressed themselves, particularly in Prussia, in the literature of escape known as ‘Romanticism’, but as it gained in confi dence its literary culture took on a more explicitly revolutionary, anti-official colour - though the oppositional stance betrayed a continuing dependence on what was being opposed. After the humiliation of official Germany at Frankfurt, however, with industry and commerce fl ourishing in the sunshine of state approval, any sense of inferiority passed, the icons of the previous century were cheerfully ridiculed, literature itself became a paying concern as copyright became enforceable, and novels and plays with such strictly bourgeois themes as money, materialism, and social justice emerged from the realm of the trivial and, for a while, linked Germany’s written culture with that of its neighbours in Western Europe. The uniquely - for the outside world perhaps impenetrably - German culture of the late 18th-century Golden Age, scholarly, humanist, cosmopolitan, survived under the patronage of the lesser courts, in the lee of political events and economic changes, until 1848, but thereafter it declined into academicism or, in the case of the kings of Bavaria, into eccentricity. But though the official class had lost supremacy, it had not lost power, and through the universities, despite the growth of private cultural societies and foundations, it remained the guardian of the national past. As the redefi nition of the German state came to preoccupy all minds, so the servants of the state were able to retain for themselves a certain authority and the two main factions in the middle class sank their differences in the national interest. The concept of ‘Bildung’, meaning both ‘culture’ and ‘education’, was the ideological medium in which this fusion could take place, the value on which all could agree, precisely because it left carefully ambiguous whether you achieved ‘Bildung’ by going to university or simply by reading, or at any rate approving, the right books. The term ‘Bildungsbürger’ gained a currency at this time which it has never since lost. Suggesting a middle class united by its experience of ‘Bildung’, its main function is to identify the official with the bourgeois, to create a community of interest between salaried servants of the state and tradesmen, property owners, and self-employed professionals. A crucial step in the defi nition of ‘Bildung’ was the canonizing of the literary achievements of the official class as ‘classical’. Germany in 1871 was not only to be a nation like England or France - it was to have its literary classics like them too.

In Bismarck’s new Germany the bourgeoisie was accommodated, but kept on a short lead. It was given a voice in the Reichstag, the Imperial Diet, and the lesser representative assemblies of the constituent states, but the executive, with the Imperial Chancellor at its head, was in no formal way responsible to these parliaments.

In practice, of course, the Chancellor needed their co-operation to secure his legislative programme and so officialdom lost the almost absolute power it had enjoyed in the earlier part of the century. But the dominant model for a society in which military service was compulsory was provided by the army (with the upper ranks reserved for the nobility), and Bismarck and his successors treated all attempts to establish parliamentary accountability as insubordination: the socialist party was virtually proscribed for over a decade. Within the constraints imposed by the supreme priority of national unity, the agents of autocracy continued to look down on those they regarded as self-interested individualists and materialists because they made money for themselves, rather than receiving a salary from the state. In the world of ‘Bildung’

too the profession of a shared devotion to the national tradition papered over the deep animosity between those who wrote for a living and the university intellectuals whose literary activity was now largely confi ned to historical and critical study. Like Bismarck, the professor of ‘Germanistics’ - as it was beginning to be called - had as little taste for the bourgeois as for the socialists, Catholics, Jews, or women who were now unfortunately as likely as the bourgeois to involve themselves in the national literature.

In the turmoil of 1848-9, a little-noticed pamphlet, drafted by a German philosopher for a tiny group of English radicals, and with the title of The Communist Manifesto, had prophesied that the free markets aspired to by the national bourgeoisies would grow into a global market, a ‘Weltmarkt’. By the 1870s that prophecy was clearly coming true. Germany’s fi rst experience of globalization was painful, however. The worldwide stock-market crash of 1873, which began in Vienna, led to a long depression from which the world did not emerge until the 1890s. In Germany the depression was relatively shallow and some growth continued, though in the 1880s net emigration (which had totalled 3 million over the previous four decades) reached an all-time high of 1.3 million - a fi gure which is itself a measure of the intensity of globalization. In 1879 Bismarck was moved by the effect of cheap American grain imports on the incomes of the land-owning Junkers to listen to the growing demands for protection from other quarters as well, particularly the heavy industry that would be of strategic importance in wartime, and to abandon his earlier policy of free trade, erecting a tariff wall round his new state. At the same time, he put an end to his ‘cultural war’ (Kulturkampf) with the Catholic Church and endeavoured to outfl ank the working-class movement by introducing Europe’s fi rst system of social security. His motives in establishing ‘state socialism’, as it was soon called, were no different from those that had guided him earlier, and which had deep roots in the German past: first, the overriding need for unity in the state and, second, the interests of the agricultural nobility which continued to furnish Prussia with its ruling class. But the protectionist course on which Germany and the other European states now embarked, and which was eventually adopted even by Britain, long the staunchest advocate, and greatest benefi ciary, of free trade, accentuated the division of Europe, and the world, into would-be autarkic blocs.

Thanks to the inability of politicians, of any country, to imagine an international institutional order which would accommodate to each other the competing energies of numerous growing economies, the developed states, whether empires, federations, or unitary nations, set out to achieve economic and political - that is, military - self-suffi ciency. Germany’s bid for colonies in Africa and the South Seas, which began in 1884, was not so much a serious geopolitical move as a symbolic irritant. Like the huge expansion of the navy, it was a declaration that Germany was anyone’s equal and could look after itself. As general growth resumed in the 1890s it became clear that, with its armed forces backed by the largest chemical and electrical industries in the world, and a coal and steel industry that was catching up on the British, Germany was capable, not necessarily of displacing the British Empire, but certainly of disputing its power to impose its own will. A British hegemony was giving way to a bi-polar world, and from the turn of the century something like a Cold War began in the cultural sphere. Britain turned away from the German models, particularly in philosophy and scholarship, which had had great prestige since the days of the Prince Consort, while voices in Germany emphasized the uniqueness of German literary, musical, and philosophical achievements and the need to protect ‘Kultur’ (the creation of the official classes) from contamination by the materialistic and journalistic (that is, bourgeois) ‘civilization’

of the West. The fusion of disparate elements in the concept of the ‘Bildungsbürger’, though rejected by some of the most clear-sighted critics of the Second Empire, was sustained by projecting its tensions outwards on to the relations between nations and defi ning a unique role for the new Germany. Britain and France at this time wove similar myths of their own special mission in world-history. Tariff walls became walls in the mind, and the mental effects were as serious as the economic distortions which put increasing strains on the inadequate international political order. After more than a decade of toying by the nations of Europe with fantasies of their own exceptionality, in 1914 the war-games went real.

The officials strike back Globalization spelled the end of the bourgeoisie, in the strict sense, and not only in Germany. A class living solely off its capital, off the alienated labour of others, was sustainable only by societies with open frontiers, with open spaces into which the disadvantaged and disaffected could expand. As the world economy grew into a single closed system, and as societies that shrank from the challenge of the political co-operation required by economic integration sought - in vain, of course - to seal themselves off in smaller units, so there was less and less room for a leisured capitalist class, and it was forced increasingly into work. The intrusion of work into the world of capital was reflected, in the fi rst decades of the 20th century, in an intellectual upheaval which broke apart the forms and conventions of the earlier stages of cultural modernity and was at least as violent in Germany and Austria as anywhere else. In literature, art, music, philosophy, and psychology, the concepts of identity, collective and personal, that had been appropriate to an age when the world was wide, and economic expansion was untrammelled by political institutions, were subjected to intense and hostile scrutiny. It was Germany’s misfortune that the representatives of the bourgeoisie achieved the political autonomy, and even supremacy, for which they had been struggling for well over half a century, only when their social and economic and even their cultural position was fatally undermined. In 1918 Germany had its revolution at last. But the new republic was born in military defeat and shackled at once by an unequal peace. It was shorn, not only of its symbolic overseas empire, but of much of its mineral wealth in the territories returned to France and the resurrected Poland. Its middle class, which had grown into prosperity over the previous two generations, was pauperized in the terrible infl ations which reflected the lack of confi dence in its future, and, with the loss of their capital, many private foundations and charities, old and new, ceased to exist. Its rivals, cushioned for a while yet by empire, and by the complacency of victory, could afford to ignore the challenge to their identity implicit in the global market. But Germany and Austria, friendless and unsupported by the labour of subject peoples, had to make their way back to prosperity by their own efforts, as the world’s fi rst post-imperial, and postbourgeois, nations. The culture of the German and Austrian successor-states in the age of the Weimar Republic had about it a radical modernity, indeed postmodernity, whose full relevance to the condition of the rest of the world became apparent only after 1989.

In one crucial respect, however, the Weimar Republic had not been released from its past. The German bourgeoisie might have been reduced to a few super-rich families heading the vertically integrated industrial and banking cartels that had prospered in the days of Bismarck’s ‘state socialism’. But the other component of the middle class, the officials (including the professorate), had survived the debacle remarkably unscathed. The authoritarian monarch had gone, but the state apparatus remained, and its instinct was either to serve authority, or to embody it. The army, the academy, and the administration hankered after their king. They were ill at ease with parliamentary institutions that bestowed the authority of the state on a proletarianized mass society - that is, a society based not on the ownership of land, or even of capital, but on the need and obligation to work. The representative bodies of the Second Empire, crudely divided between nationalists and socialists, had been, largely, a sham and, once the monarchy that was the reason for their existence had passed away, they could not be grown on as a native democratic tradition. Nor was there any obvious external source of democratic inspiration. For nationalists there was no reason to look kindly on the liberal traditions of the victor powers, who hypocritically imposed self-determination on Poles and Czechs, in order to break up Germany and Austria, but withheld it from Indians and Africans, in order to preserve their own empires. To socialists it seemed more important that communist Russia had correctly identifi ed the proletarian nature of modern society than that it was maintaining and extending the brutal Tsarist regime of social discipline. In the absence of native republican models, and with the Prussian inheritance still obscuring the view back to the Holy Roman Empire, the continuing identity of ‘Germany’ was largely guaranteed by the persistence of the official class and its ideology of apolitical ‘Bildung’. The ideology, however, diverted all but the most perceptive writers from the task of defending the constitution. On the one hand, any number of new theories of ‘art’ provided as many reasons for dismissing contemporary politics as superfi cial or inauthentic. On the other, the acceptance of political engagement could lead to a general rejection of conventional ‘culture’ and a coarse anti-intellectualism. The Weimar Republic was betrayed on all sides, and if the writers and artists, on the whole, betrayed it from the left, the public service, including the professors, betrayed it, massively and effectively, from the right. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party presented itself, like ‘state socialism’, as above the distinction between left and right, as the party of national unity in the new age of work, but its appeal was unambiguously that of nostalgia for the authoritarianism decapitated in 1918. Its opportunity came when the excitement of global recovery in the 1920s faltered and, after the great crash of 1929, gave way to global depression. The disastrous decision of the Western nations to respond to this crisis with protectionism took in Germany in 1933 the form of electing a government committed to withdrawing the country from all international institutions and establishing in the economy, as in the whole of society, a command structure based on a military model - a queerly deranged memory of the Second Empire.

In the Third Empire, however, there was none of Bismarck’s subtle accommodation with bourgeois free enterprise. It was the period of officialdom’s greatest and most cancerous expansion, as new layers of uniformed bureaucrats were imposed on old in a permanent revolution generating permanent turf wars, and all the while new, malign, and irrational policies were executed with the same humdrum effi ciency or ineffi ciency as ever and the traditions of Frederick the Great and the 19th-century reformers terminated in Eichmann and the camp commandants who played Schubert at the end of a day’s work. By this stage, however, the culture of the German official class had ceased to be productive and was almost entirely passive. The universities, emptied of anyone of independent mind or Jewish descent, lost their global pre-eminence for ever. The agitprop generated by the ‘Ministry of Popular Enlightenment’ in the form of fi lms, pulp fi ction, or public art is of interest now only to the historical sociologist.

Music and the performing arts were parasitic on the achievements of the past, which by and large they caricatured. The free and creative literary spirits, whether or not they had had official positions, were nearly all either dead or in an exile which they found very diffi cult to relate to their experience of Germany’s past or its present. The professors of philosophy and ‘Germanistics’

who stayed behind devoted themselves at best to relatively harmless editorial projects. Of the worst it is still impossible to speak with moderation.

The bourgeois and the official After zero hour After 1871, 1918, and 1933, the fourth redefi nition of Germany within a lifetime began in 1945. Territorially the adjustment was the biggest there had ever been. Millions moved westwards from areas that had had majority German populations for centuries. The state of Prussia was formally dissolved. Germany was returned approximately to the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire (without Austria) at the time of the Reformation.

Socially and politically too the zones occupied by Britain, France, and the USA recovered something of 16th-century Germany, before the rise of absolutism: a federal republic, with a Catholic majority, dominated by the industrial, commercial, and fi nancial power of several great towns. Hitler had succeeded where all previous German revolutionaries had failed: he had made Germany into a classless society. For 12 years inherited wealth and station had counted for nothing; what mattered was race, party membership, and military rank. After the destruction, and self-destruction, of his absolutist regime the West German Bonn Republic began from a base of social equality unprecedented in the nation’s history. But the foundation had been laid by Hitler’s ‘party of the workers’ and thanks to the relatively rapid withdrawal of the occupying powers in the West the Federal Republic had from an early stage to confront, from its own resources, the question posed by its continuity with the immediate German past. At fi rst the confrontation, in the public mind, took the form of a creative denial, the energetic construction of an alternative Germany, west-facing, republican, committed to free markets and European integration, and in economic terms highly successful. Culturally, however, the underlying continuity betrayed itself in a troubled relationship with the remoter past of the nation. The literary and philosophical achievements of the period around 1800 still enjoyed their Second Empire status of ‘classics’, but they were stylized and reinterpreted as an ‘other Germany’ of the mind from which, in some mysterious and fateful process, the Germany of 1871-1945

had become detached. To claim, however, that the Federal Republic had recovered that ‘other Germany’ - and the claim was implicit in the decision to call its cultural missions ‘Goethe Institutes’ - was to make the improbable claim that it somehow reincarnated the world of the late 18th-century principalities.

The local German dialectic between bourgeois and official which created the literary culture of that era was at an end.

The relentless advance of the global market had destroyed both parties: the European bourgeoisie was no more, swallowed up in the tide of proletarianization which has turned us all into consumer-producers for the mass market; officialdom had lost its privileged relationship to the national identity with the decline in signifi cance of the nation-state and of the local centre of political power. Both the re-canonization of the classics and the contestation of their authority by critics who felt themselves suffi ciently unimplicated in the German past to sit in judgement on it were failures to assess realistically the historical process in which the 18th-century literary revival, the rise and fall of German nationalism, and the emergence of the new republican Germany were all equally involved. The Russian zone of occupation, from 1949 the German Democratic Republic, was the site of unrealism’s last stand. Here, as elsewhere behind the Wall - surely the ultimate tariff barrier - officialdom for 40 years enjoyed an Indian summer, in seamless real continuity with the previous regime of malignant bureaucracy but in total mental and emotional denial of any resemblance to it. Eastern Germany, in physical possession of many of the cultural storehouses of Bismarck’s Prussia-centred Empire, claimed to be the only true inheritor of what the Second Empire had defi ned as ‘classical’ - though it implausibly represented the ‘other Germany’ as a great materialist tradition culminating in Marx, Engels, and the Socialist Unity Party. With some vacillations, which recall similar uncertainties in Hitler’s cultural policy, this party line was maintained in theatres, museums, and the educational system. With far greater rigour than in the West, therefore, any interrogation of the present which threatened to reveal its affi nities with the Germany of 1933-45

was suppressed, and the appalling crimes of that period were dismissed as somebody else’s affair.

So it was left at fi rst to relatively isolated writers and thinkers in the Federal Republic to begin defi ning an identity for the new Germany by remembering the nightmares from which it had awoken. Official memory, in what was left of the university system, struggled, on the whole unsuccessfully, to recover the literature of the previous two centuries as a living tradition. But poets and novelists and writers for radio, supported by a market eager for books, turned, with rather more effect, to the even more intractable task of relating private consciousness to the world-historical disasters that Germany had both infl icted and suffered, and gradually gained recognition outside Germany too.

As the emigrant generation of the 1930s reached maturity, and as universities on either side of the Atlantic came to exchange personnel more freely, it also came to be appreciated in the wider world that German philosophy and critical theory still provided essential instruments for understanding the revolutionary changes of the 20th century, especially if they were allowed to interact with ideas from the English-speaking cultures. After 1968

some of these international developments accelerated, partly as a result of intensive French engagement with German thinkers, but Germany itself found it more diffi cult to move forward, perhaps because the rewards of a generation’s reconstructive efforts were at last being enjoyed. The universities, transformed into institutions of mass education, fi nally lost their privileged position in the nation’s intellectual life except perhaps in the area in which they had begun, Protestant theology. An affl uent social security system took the sting of practical urgency out of domestic moral and political issues, whatever theoretical heat they generated.

Above all, the gravitational fi eld of the Democratic Republic pulled all left-wing thinking out of true, creating the illusion of a political alternative even when the regime was universally acknowledged to have lost all credit, spuriously reviving the attractions of ideas obsolete since 1918, such as authoritarian state socialism and German isolationism, and obscuring the signifi cance of the once more rising tide of globalization. It was to the global ‘culture industry’, to an American TV series of 1979, not to 30 years of work by her native intelligentsia, that Germany owed her public awakening to the hideous truth that only then became generally known by the name of the ‘Holocaust’. When the global market fi nally swept away the last vestige of old Germany in 1989-90, the redefi nition of the nation - again the fourth in a lifetime - continued to be hampered by a persisting nostalgia which was only superfi cially directed at the old East (Ostalgie). In reality, it was the last - let us hope, fading - trace of an animosity that runs through 250 years of German literary engagement with the concept of nationhood: the animosity between the official and the bourgeois, between the representatives of state power (which makes people virtuous) and the forces that make money (and so make people happy). In the ‘Weltmarkt’, the confl ict between the economic system and political power has certainly not gone away - if anything, it has intensifi ed - but it is more diffused, at once more intangibly collective and more internal to the individual. For nearly three centuries the German literary and philosophical tradition has been compelled by local circumstances to concentrate on the point where the opposing forces collide. But there has always also been a cosmopolitan, or internationalist, vein in German literature, and those who in recent generations have tapped into it - even perhaps at the cost of a life of wandering or exile - have been more able than strictly national writers to make Germany’s traumas into symbols of general signifi cance for other countries caught like their own between a national past and a global future.