Women in Arab Societies - Arab Women Before Islam

Arab Women Before Islam

Many people / writers have discussed the status of women in pre-Islamic Arabia, and their findings have been mixed. Under the customary tribal law existing in Arabia at the advent of Islam, women as a general rule had virtually no legal status. They were sold into marriage by their guardians for a price paid to the guardian, the husband could terminate the union at will, and women had little or no property or succession rights. Some writers have argued that women before Islam were more liberated drawing most often on the first marriage of Muhammad and that of Muhammad's parents, but also on other points such as worship of female idols at Mecca. Other writers, on the contrary, have agreed that women's status in pre-Islamic Arabia was poor, citing practices of female infanticide, unlimited polygyny, patrilineal marriage and others. Saudi historian Hatoon al-Fassi considers much earlier historical origins of Arab women's rights. Using evidence from the ancient Arabian kingdom of Nabataea, she finds that Arab women in Nabataea had independent legal personalities. She suggests that they lost many of their rights through ancient Greek and Roman law prior to the arrival of Islam and that these Greco-Roman constraints were retained under Islam. Valentine M. Moghadam analyzes the situation of women from a marxist theoretical framework and argues that the position of women is mostly influenced by the extent of urbanization, industrialization, proletarization and political ploys of the state managers rather than culture or intrinsic properties of Islam; Islam, Moghadam argues, is neither more nor less patriarchal than other world religions especially Christianity and Judaism.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, women's status varied widely according to laws and cultural norms of the tribes in which they lived. In the prosperous southern region of the Arabian Peninsula, for example, the religious edicts of Christianity and Judaism held sway among the Sabians and Himyarites. In other places such as the city of Makkah (Mecca) -- where the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, was born—a tribal set of rights was in place. This was also true amongst the Bedouin (desert dwellers), and this code varied from tribe to tribe. Thus there was no single definition of the roles played, and rights held, by women prior to the advent of Islam.

In some tribes, women were emancipated even in comparison with many of today's standards. There were instances where women held high positions of power and authority.

In other tribes, women were of low status or even worse. Women enjoyed no rights whatsoever and were treated no better than a commodity. Not only they were enslaved, but they could also be inherited as a possession. They were subordinate to their fathers, brothers, and husbands. In some instances, women were chattels, effectively property. A woman had no share in inheritance because she was regarded as unwise and incapable of effectively managing her inherited property. There were also patterns of homicidal abuse of women and girls, including instances of killing female infants considered to be a liability. The Qur'an mentions that the Arabs in Jahiliya (the period of ignorance or pre-Islamic period) used to bury their daughters alive. The barbaric custom of burying female infants alive, comments a noted Qur'anic commentator, Muhammad Asad, seems to have been fairly widespread in pre-Islamic Arabia. The motives were twofold: the fear that an increase in female offspring would result in economic burden, as well as the fear of the humiliation frequently caused by girls being captured by a hostile tribe and subsequently preferring their captors to their parents and brothers. In his book Infanticide: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives, Glenn Hausfater details how Qais Bin Assem, a leader of the Tamim tribe, killed every daughter he had for fear of their capture (and his disgrace) in the inter-tribal wars that dominated Arabian society at that time. According to some scholars; during times of famine, especially, poorer families were likely to kill a daughter, regarding her as a burden on a starving family.

It is generally accepted that Islam changed the structure of Arab society and to a large degree unified the people, reforming and standardizing gender roles throughout the region. According to Islamic studies professor William Montgomery Watt, Islam improved the status of women by "instituting rights of property ownership, inheritance, education and divorce."

The Hadiths in Bukhari suggest that Islam improved women's status, by the second Caliph Umar saying "We never used to give significance to ladies in the days of the Pre-lslamic period of ignorance, but when Islam came and Allah mentioned their rights, we used to give them their rights but did not allow them to interfere in our affairs", Book 77, Hadith 60, 5843, and Vol. 7, Book 72, Hadith 734.