Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

The Rights of Women in Islam

This book is corrected and edited by Al-Hassanain (p) Institue for Islamic Heritage and Thought

• The Author
• Publishers Foreword
• Preface
• Notes
• Introduction
• 1. Family relation, A world problem
• Should we be independent or follow the west?
• Historical determinism
• 2. The constitution and ourselves
• 3. The attachment of the Iranian nation to religion
• Notes
• Part One: Proposal and Engagement
• Does a man’s proposal of marriage insult a woman?
• It is a man’s instinct to make the approach and ask, and a woman’s, instinct to be a source of attraction and act with self-restraint
• Man seeks union with woman, not to enslave her
• The custom of asking the hand of woman in marriage is a very safe and wise way of safeguarding the honour and prestige of a woman
• Errors by the writer of the forty articles in the Civil Law:]
• Notes
• Part Two: Fixed-Term Marriage
• Contemporary life and fixed-term marriage
• Modern youth, the time of puberty, and the onset of textual activity
• Monasticism for a fixed period, sexual communism, or fixed-term marriage
• Experimental marriage
• Russell’s views on fixed-term marriage
• Fixed-Term marriage
• Objections and difficulties
• Criticism
• Fixed-Term marriage and the problem of the harem
• Social causes for harems
• Is the provision of fixed-term marriage a license for promiscuity?
• Harems in the present world
• Prohibition by the Caliph of fixed-term marriage
• A tradition from ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib
• Notes
• Part Three: Woman and Her Social Independence
• Freedom in determining one’s future
• Marrying a woman before she is born
• Exchange of daughters
• The Holy Prophet gave az- Zahra, his daughter full freedom in choosing a husband
• The Islamic movement in favour of women was entirely independence
• Permission of fathers
• A man is a slave of his passions and a woman is a captive of her lovingness
• Our author writes
• Notes
• Part Four: Islam and Modernity
• The exigencies of the age
• Islam and the demands of the age
• Bernard Shaw, the great English liberal writer said
• Confused thinking
• What does time itself conform to?
• Adaptation or abrogation?
• Islam and Modernity
• Rigid people and ignorant people
• The story in the Qur’an
• Islam and modernity
• At present, it will be enough to clarify two points
• The secret of the dynamism and flexibility of Islamic law
• Attention to essence and meaning as opposed to shape and form
• The question of change of script
• Laws with the right of ‘veto’
• The governing authority
• The fundamental of ijtihad
• Notes
• Part Five: The Human Status of Woman in the Quran
• The particular philosophy of Islam concerning family rights
• Equality or identicalness
• The status of woman in the world-view of Islam
• Equality, but not Uniformity
• The Declaration of Human Rights is philosophy and not law
• Philosophy cannot be proved by questionnaires
• A glance at the history of women’s rights in Europe
• The dignity and the rights of human beings
• Important points in the preamble to the Declaration of Human Rights
• The dignity and respect of man
• The decline and fall of the human being in western philosophy
• The west is involved in a basic contradiction about man
• The west has forgotten both itself and its God
• Notes
• Part Six: The Natural Basis of Family Rights
• The connection between natural rights and the direction in which nature moves
• Social rights
• Family rights
• The natural basis of family rights
• Is family life conditioned by nature or regulated by convention
• The theory of the four eras
• Woman in nature
• Part Seven: The Differences Between Woman and Man
• Is it a question of symmetry or one of imperfection and perfection?
• Plato’s theory
• Aristotle against Plato
• The opinion of the modern world
• Reciprocal differences
• Feeling towards each other
• The differences between woman and man
• The masterpiece of creation
• A union stronger than passion
• Reciprocal differences in the feelings of men and women towards each other
• The view of a female psychologist
• A hasty movement
• The view of Will Durant
• Part Eight: Dowry and Maintenance
• A short history of the dower
• The dower in the Islamic system of rights
• A look at history
• The real philosophy of the dower
• Dower as in the Qur’an
• Two kinds of sentiments in animals
• Presents and gifts in illicit relations
• European love-affairs are more natural than their marriages
• Dower and Maintenance
• The customs of the pre-Islamic period that that were abolished by Islam
• Islam has its own system of dower
• Rule of nature
• Criticisms
• Dower and Maintenance
• The repression of European women up to the second half of the nineteenth century
• Why did Europe suddenly grant financial independence?
• The Qur’an and the financial independence of woman
• A comparison
• Criticism and reply
• Three kinds of maintenance
• In Islam there are three kinds of maintenance
• Does modern woman not want a dower or maintenance?
• An advantage to women in financial matters
• The purpose of propaganda against maintenance
• Wealth in place of husband
• Is the Declaration of Human Rights an insult to woman?
• Notes
• Part Nine: The Question of Inheritance
• The cause of woman’s being deprived of inheritance
• Inheritance of an adopted son
• Inheritance by a confederation
• Woman as a part of the share of inheritance
• Woman’s inheritance in the Sassanid period in Iran
• The share of women in inheritance according to Islam
• An objection by the worshippers of the west
• The objection of atheists at the beginning of Islam about inheritance
• Notes
• Part Ten: Right of Divorce
• The increase of divorce in modern life
• Divorce in Iran
• The environment in divorce-infected America
• Assumptions
• Divorce
• Dishonourable divorces
• A malicious tale without any truth
• Why did Islam not make divorce Illegal?
• Divorce
• Natural laws in the case of marriage and divorce
• The natural status of man in family life
• The view of a female psychologist
• The structure which is built on affections and feelings
• It is something more than equality which strengthens the foundation of the family
• Equality in corruption
• Divorce
• The nature of peace in the family is different from all other forms of peace
• 1. Islam welcomes any factor that will do away with divorce
• 2. The wife’s past services to the household
• Such women should take care from the beginning
• Divorce is a release in the same way as the inherent nature of marriage is dominance
• Penalty for divorce
• Wife having the right of divorce as an entrusted right
• Judicial Divorce
• Whether some marriages are a cancer which the wife must suffer and put up with
• Deadlocks
• The deadlock of divorce
• View of Ayatu’llah Hilli
• Other arguments and citation
• The view of Shaykh at-Tai’ifah
• Notes
• Part Eleven: Polygyny
• Sexual communism
• Plato’s view
• Several husbands
• The difficulty with polyandry
• Polygyny
• Islam and polygyny
• Polygyny in Iran
• (1) The historical causes of polygyny
• The cause of the disappearance of polyandry
• The failure of sexual communism
• (2) The historical causes of polygyny
• Geographical factors
• The form of polygyny in western countries
• Menstruation
• The child-bearing period of woman is limited
• Economic factors
• Factor of number and tribe
• There are more women than men
• An analysis
• The right of woman in Polygyny
• Women have more resistance to disease
• Right of woman in polygyny
• Russell’s view
• One in every ten English children
• Is it the nature of man to be polygynous?
• Polygyny is a source of protection for monogamy
• The real point at issue
• Twentieth-century man’s fraudulence
• The crises arising from the frustration of unmarried women
• Various results following from the phenomenon of the excess in the number of women
• Disadvantages and shortcomings in Polygyny
• A correct analysis
• From the psychological point of view
• The point of view of up-bringing
• From the moral point of view
• From the point of view of rights
• From the philosophical point of view
• The Role of Islam in Polygyny
• Limitations
• Justice
• The danger of injustice
• Harems
• Other conditions and possibilities
• Modern Man and Polygyny
• Notes