Men in Charge?: Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition

(First published in Karyawan, a publication by the Centre for Research on Islamic and Malay Affairs (RIMA), Volume 11, Issue 2, June 2016.)

In 2015, Musawah, a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, published Men In Charge? Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition (Oneworld 2015). The book is a product of a five-year Musawah Knowledge Building initiative that sought to critically engage with and re-think the two central juristic concepts of qiwamah and wilayah. The book tackles the question of how these legal postulates came to be and how the construction of male authority within Islamic legal tradition by classical jurists has stubbornly persisted till today. There are also suggested approaches to seeking egalitarian interpretations of these concepts, accounts of how women around the world experience them in their daily lives, how muftis engage with the changing reality of contemporary spousal relations, as well as the challenges faced by NGOs when attempting to suggest new ways of understanding these postulates in contemporary family law. The essays are thus interdisciplinary and provide a wide range of approaches to understanding qiwamah and wilayah, whether it’s from a legal, theological, historical or sociological lens.

In the Muslim legal tradition, qiwamah and wilayah generally provide legal and religious legitimacy to the supposed authority of men over women, effectively institutionalising gender inequality and upholding the patriarchal family as not only the ideal, but the only acceptable model of the family. To summarize briefly, qiwamah, a term that does not appear in the Qur’an but is derived from the word qawwamun (translated as ‘protectors and maintainers’) has been generally taken to denote the husband’s authority over his wife and financial responsibility towards the family. This postulate has been called the “DNA of patriarchy” by Musawah Advocates Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Zainah Anwar as it affects all areas of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) relating to gender rights, especially when it comes to laws regulating marriage. The second term, wilayah, does appear in the Qur’an and though it is not once used to sanction the authority of men over women, it has been taken to refer to the guardianship male family members possess over female family members.

Even for those unfamiliar with these concepts and their effects on fiqh, the book does a thorough job of introducing these terms, how they were derived, subsequently codified into law and why patriarchal interpretations have prevailed over more egalitarian ones.

The introductory essay “Muslim Legal Tradition and the Challenge of Gender Equality” by co-editor Ziba Mir-Hosseini provides an excellent primer of the historical context that surrounded these juristic concepts. Hosseini details the problems in the Muslim legal tradition and the tensions that arose when the understanding, validity or interpretations of these concepts were contested in a climate of modern demands for more equal gender relations. These two postulates and their codification then are not simply understood through the theological lens but with the added awareness that they were susceptible to and shaped by socio-historical pressures. It is clear from the introductory chapter that a holistic approach is needed if we wish to intelligently problematise these two juristic concepts. In a particularly incisive prognosis, Hosseini suggests that

“The problem is not with the text but with context and the ways in which the text is used to sustain patriarchal and authoritarian structures. The strategy must be not just logical argument and informed reinterpretations from within the tradition; there must also be challenges on the political front.”

The two subsequent chapters, “The Interpretive Legacy of Qiwamah as an Exegetical Construct” by Omaina Abou-Bakr and “An Egalitarian Reading of the Concepts of Kilafah, Wilayah and Qiwamah” by Asma Lamrabet, further provides a thorough understanding of these concepts for the reader. In the former essay, Omaina Abou-Bakr traces how a mere descriptive word, qawammun, had evolved to become the patriarchal construct of qiwamah and how this term came to be conceptualized and re-conceptualized by medieval theologians and then modern Islamic thinkers who each coloured it with their conceptions of gender difference, essentialism and hierarchy. Lamrabet would then follow up to detail how current interpretations of khilafah, wilayah and qiwamah that uphold patriachal notions of gender relations are in fact un-Qur’anic. By referring to injunctions in the Qur’an and directly analysing the semantics of these terms in relation to the Qur’an, that is, to interpret and understand these terms as they were to be understood, Lambaret uncovers how a reformation of these terms is not only possible, but Qur’anically valid:

“To reduce wilayah to male guardianship over dependent wards or qiwamah to an assumed authority of the husband amounts of violating the spiritual principles of the Qur’anic message regarding the ethics of marriage and family life. We must not forget that the meaning of Qur’anic concepts will evolve over time, especially since the Qur’an never set out to determine specific social roles for men and women.”

By now, these central juristic concepts have been adequately demystified. They are not immutable divine laws were subject to the whims of socio-historical contexts and human prejudice.

Further suggestions on approaches to reforming these juristic concepts include considering prophetic reports as a source that can help point one to a more egalitarian framework (Ayesha S. Chaudry) as well as utilising Sufi discourses and perspectives since Sufisms’s stress on the complete equality of all humans, regardless of gender, before God and its distaste for egotism and the exercise of personal and social superiority provides provides ample opportunity to critique gender discrimination from within the tradition (Sa’diyya Shaikh).

Subsequent chapters then provides real-life accounts and observations of how these concepts work in reality, whether through activists who have studied how the concepts of qiwamah and wilayah and the challenges NGO face when attempting to enact proposed reforms or the challenges faced by muftis who have to grapple with outdated interpretations of these concepts in a world of shifting gender relations. These accounts takes the reader away from understanding these juristic concepts theoretically and semantically, to actually understanding how they function as legal postulates that govern personal lives in our time and how they interact with international human rights law or human rights norms. The suggestions made then at this point are not about re-interpretations of the terms but about how NGOs can refine their approaches in proposing legal reforms.

Towards the last two chapters we then come to read of personal accounts of women. Lena Larsen details presents in her chapter the personal accounts of women from all over the world through the Global Life Stories project which documented and analysed personal accounts of fifty-eight Muslim women from 10 different countries and how they experienced qiwamah and wilayah in their daily lives. It is through the study of these personal accounts that one could truly see that the patriarchal understanding of these concepts do not stand in contemporary reality. For example, males are no longer necessarily the main providers of the family, females often take on economic roles in the family and polygomous marriages are evidently likely to put women

“at risk of economic marginalization, spousal abandonment, lack of support for their children and lack of emotional fulfilment.”

Perhaps a chapter that best provides a microcosm of what the journey to seeking a more egalitarian formulation of laws is the concluding chapter by Amina Wadud. She begins by sharing her personal and intellectual journey in grappling with the issue of male authority as articulated in dominant interpretations of the Qur’anic verse 4:34. She then continues to talk about the polarized perspectives she noticed women themselves had with regards to Islam and patriarchy. These personal experiences then would go on to shape her development of a new principle based on Tawhid(monotheism or the unicity of Allah). Often it is the personal that would go on to drive the way people would proceed to function in society, or the way they would choose to approach things like the reformation of laws. Paying attention to the personal and the real is what can bring about the most effective ways of diagnosing problems and coming up with precise solutions. That the book concludes with personal accounts is probably no small matter. After all, the personal is political.

Men In Charge? is a valuable contribution to the production of knowledge centred around family law and preciously includes the lived experiences of women. It demystifies the concepts of qiwamah and wilayah and aids in the push for reforming laws to reflect a more equal relationship between married partners and de-institutionalising gender inequality. Though critical feminist and other social-scientific methodologies were used, the approach that Musawah chose was still markedly rooted in the Islamic tradition. While these two approaches are not necessarily at odds, there has been a tension between the two discourses that activists continue to grapple with. Understanding that merely a human-rights based approach will not suffice without also integrating those who wish to work within the tradition is what makes Musawah’s method of knowledge production particularly effective. The book itself is a testament to the holistic approach they have chosen to take, starting with a more theoretical understanding of the two concepts, how these concepts function legally and socially in reality and ending with understanding them through personal accounts and lived realities.

Growing Up Perempuan

“The last time I was beaten terribly was during my fourth pregnancy.”

“My older sister would ask our neighbours for an egg or something to feed us.”

“[He would] demand sex even when she was still recovering from multiple miscarriages.”

“Colleague: Eh you not bad ah. You Malay but you smart.”

“A little bit over a decade ago, men were told that unless a woman’s response to marriage was hysterical, they could assume they have her consent.”

These are a few lines from a book that has sent so many readers in tears. Growing up perempuan (as a woman) is not easy. Growing up as a Muslim woman is even harder. As Singaporean-Muslim women, most of us deal with being a woman as well as being minorities in a country where the Muslim community & its issues are brought up & represented by our male counterparts. Representational politics render so many people voiceless. The Muslim woman is often spoken over and spoken for. The image of Muslims are often monolithic in the first place. We do not understand sufficiently the diversity in our own community. And rarely are we given the chance & platform to authentically express ourselves with the safety & assurance that we will be heard & that our concerns will not be ridiculed or trivialized.

To be heard & seen as a valid member of society, one often has to conform to a narrow, acceptable view of what a Muslim woman should be. Anything else & you are threatened with being seen as rebellious or heretical. Part of the pain of gendered violence & discrimination is the command that we also be speechless. We are expected to repress our pain & bear it alone.

A culture of silence means that we are unable to connect with each other, find strength in solidarity & to collectively disturb the main narrative imposed on us. Especially in a country like Singapore where most Muslims are also racial minorities, we struggle in speaking out about our issues because to speak about our problems also runs the risk of shaming our community to islamophobic sentiments. Often, while our male counterparts may passionately rail against racial discrimination, they do not extend that nuance & awareness of injustice when it comes to gendered violence & discrimination.

The women in this book struggle with domestic & sexual violence, racial harassment, body image issues, sexuality, amongst others. They talked about internalised racism, workplace discrimination, & being overlooked by their fathers in favour of their brothers. So much of what I read hit so close to home. The body policing, the realisation late in life that you have undergone female circumcision, racial microaggressions, questioning literalist & dogmatic ideas in religion & being met with unsatisfactory answers & so much more.

And then there were things that I could not relate to & could only read with an aching heart: girls who wrote about growing up in shelters, in severely abusive homes, being so poor they had to beg neighbours for food, being so neglected that they took themselves to school each day. There are stories by sex workers who talk about how & why they took up that profession & the struggle & stigma they bear. Women who endure horrific partner abuse or take on responsibilities when their husbands leave them, or are in jail. We often think of these things as exceptional cases affecting troubled youths or individuals. But these are not problems that should be individualised. They are the natural result of a society that is deeply unequal, deeply prejudiced, & unwilling to allow women full agency in their own life-decisions & choices. A capitalistic society that is hostile to helping the poor & provide them with a decent living wage. It is a reflection of our own values & attitudes when people in our community say that the people that have disappointed them most were members of their own community who judged them instead of helped them.

Because the dispossessed do not have the social capital to be heard; because the system benefits from forcing them into silence, there are often people who go through life with the illusion that our society is not at all unhospitable. People think that these kinds of stories are few & far between when the fact is that these everyday violences are so common. You have to approach this book with an open heart. Middle- & upper-class Muslims I think especially are sheltered from so much of the realities that are happening & affecting their brethren. They often discuss issues like gender violence, polygamy & marital rape in the abstract, without understanding the lived realities of people on the ground. This is it. These are women speaking for themselves. It is up to us if we will listen or not.