لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Expectations of the Muslim Woman
by: Dr. Ali Shariati
Part I
Prior to beginning my lecture, I would like to propose some practical
suggestions. Just speaking about women's rights, women's personality and
Islam's view of women is very different from realising the actual value
which Islam gives to human beings, and to women in particular. Most often,
we are satisfied by pointing out that Islam gives great value to science
or establishes progressive rights for women. Unfortunately we never actually
use or benefit from this value or these rights. We could benefit from these
if we were to act according to the understanding which we could acquire
of them.
A great many people are acquainted with Islamic views of society, social
relations, women's rights, children's rights and family rights, but these
same people then actually follow non-Islamic, ancient cultural traditions
and do not dare to base their lives upon Islamic values. That is, they
do not practice what they preach. Thus we always remain at the stage of
talking. We must complete Islamic views and intellectual discussions with
practical solutions. We must find a way whereby we reach these values and
rights in practice. After proposing my views, the question should be asked
as to how we can actually put them into practice. Throughout history, the
problem of women's rights and their role has always been considered to
be an intellectual problem. Thus, various religious, philosophical and
social systems have reached varying views in this respect.
From the 18th through to the 20th century (particularly after World
War 2) any attempt to address the special problem of the social rights
of women and their specific characteristics has been seen as a mere by-product
of a spiritual or psychic shock or the result of a revolutionary crisis
in centers of learning or as a response to political currents and international
movements. Thus, traditional societies, historical societies, religious
societies, either in the East or in the West (be they tribal, Bedouin,
civilized Muslim or non-Muslim societies, in whatever social or cultural
stage of civilization they may be) have all been directly or indirectly
influenced by these thoughts, intellectual currents and even new social
realities.
Unfortunately the crisis of the problem of women's liberation which
began in the West and has been strengthened by the ruling superpowers in
the 20th century has influenced all human societies, even closed traditional
and religious societies. There are only a few cultural, traditional and
even religious societies which have been able to properly stand against
this flood. Such societies have frequently been confronted by a particular
kind of modernism, which they have adopted under the guise of the liberation
of women, either by rejecting old traditions or by undertaking reckless
struggles. None of them have succeeded in standing against this attack.
In such societies the newly-educated class, the pseudo-intellectuals, who
are in the majority, strongly and vigorously welcome this crisis. They
themselves even act as one of the forces that strengthen this corrupting
and destructive transformation.
In traditional religious societies, including Islamic communities, neither
group could stand against the attack of the modern view of the liberation
of women as announced by the West. The pseudo-intellectual and modern class
of Islamic and non-Islamic societies in the East considered a modern style
of dress to be the symbol of modern civilization, progress and awareness.
The old, traditional group passed through and confronted this crisis with
non-scientific and illogical tactics due to their lack of experience. It
is a general law that when there is a fire resulting from a spill of oil,
if someone tries to hurriedly and unskilfully put the fire out, it only
spreads more rapidly and more vigorously! Thus such unskilled struggles
against the West have frequently been carried on in a manner that has created
complex and differing reactions inside such societies. In this way they
have paved the way for acceptance of Western ideas and innovations. There
are very few societies who have been able to stand against, to adequately
resist, and to show an effective reaction to the modern West by consciously
selecting their own manner and type of lifestyle.
One of the most important factors that can assist Eastern societies
in confronting and standing against the intellectual and cultural attack
of the West (as it relates to the view of modern woman) is to have a rich
culture and history full of experiences, values and ideas. It is important
to have progressive human rights and, in particular, to have perfect and
complete human models in the religious history of those societies and communities.
Fortunately from this point of view (although they have not been able to
consciously stand against the colonial attack of the West), Islamic societies
have cultural power and possibilities, have a very progressive history,
value system and religion, and are in this way very rich. Thus they can,
by relying on these values and sources, and by reviving and progressing
towards the high humanitarian values existing in their culture and their
past history encourage their new, young generation to stand and resist
the West's attack. The most effective weapon to confront Western values
and the most important factor for creating a conscious struggle within
the new generation in our Islamic societies against the West's seduction
is to hold up as examples some very noble, distinguished and characteristic
role models, real personalities from Islamic history. If the lives of such
personalities are known in detail, are described precisely, and they are
revived and introduced properly, scientifically and deliberately, and are
scholastically recognized and presented to our societies, the young generation
will sense that there is no need to accept the seductions of the West;
no need to deteriorate in the guise of modernism. Rather, they will sense
that there are very noble, elevated symbols in their own history and religion
to be followed and to be considered as models for self-reconstruction.
It must be taken into consideration that all matters related to women,
to science, to lifestyle, to class relationships, to scholastic understanding,
to one's world view - all have been designed, described and discussed in
Islam. We have only to solve our present difficulties, to answer the intellectual
challenges, and to reduce our sensual needs. How can we understand our
values? How can we use and obtain actual results from them? Our essential
aim must be to solve the problem of proper understanding and recognition.
The members of the Prophet's family, in the view of all of the intellectuals
of Islamic countries (who possess a more reverent image of them) have always
been the manifestation of the most elevating and liberating humanitarian
and Islamic values. These values are not limited to a particular tribe,
or even to all Muslims. Thus, all of the people of the world can easily
see and understand these symbols and examples which have come out of a
small house which is greater than the whole of history. Anyone who believes
in the values and virtues of humanity will admit that the symbolic role
of the members of this family in various aspects and fields is beyond the
historical values of class or tribe. They are, rather, the highest, meta-historical,
meta-tribal values. They are permanent symbols and role models for humanity.
Thus, anyone who is a human being respects them. Anyone who is aware of
the values of humanity, any committed intellectual in the world, will admit
to the values and virtues which this small house created in the arena of
human history.
Therefore, when we describe the biography of Fatima, as one of the members
of the Prophet's family, we must learn lessons from her personality, her
role, her social, mental, and political status and use them to guide our
lives in our communities and in our societies. The problem of proper understanding
is the most important and essential problem of our time. At the present
time, the struggles of committed Muslim intellectuals should be directed
to a proper understanding and recognition of Islam's history and religion.
This proper understanding, including the proper understanding of Fatima,
is the key to our salvation.
After World War Two, the issue of womens' status was considered to be
the most important and sensitive problem in the West. The war itself was
the main cause for family relationships to be strained and destroyed. Traditional
religious values such as ethics, morals and spirituality collapsed. Also,
due to the war, crime, cruelty, violence and theft increased. From the
intellectual and ethical point of view, it had very diverse effects, causing
decline in traditional culture in the post-war generation. Its undistinguished
effect, after a quarter of a century since World War Two, can be seen in
the spirit, thought, philosophy and even the art of the present time. Those
who have seen France, Germany, England, and even the USA (the latter was
far from the actual field of battle), prior to the war and visited those
countries after the war, can clearly see that, although it seems as if
centuries have passed, actually the traditional cultures collapsed within
one generation. Therefore, the overthrow of the traditional ethical value-system
was one of the natural outcomes of the war, and woman was its standard-bearer.
But it should be noted that prior to the war, the West had already started
a multi-dimensional fight, from the various philosophical, mental, social,
productive and cultural points of view, with the Catholic religion, the
ruling religion in the Middle Ages, and thus had unconsciously destroyed
all of the traditional ethical, intellectual and ideal values, as well
as the restrictions and limits which the Church had defended in the name
of religion. One of the values which the Church defended in the name of
religion was women's rights; women's values, both spiritual and social.
This defence co-existed with the decline in anti-female traditions, bonds
and limitations. But after the Renaissance and the development of the bourgeoisie,
the bourgeois revolution, the bourgeois culture (which is the culture of
individual liberty) defeated the Church, and consequently, with this victory,
the rule of the Church over moral, spiritual, scholastic and legal values
was abolished. Thus, all of the restrictions and values concerning women
which the Church had defended and supported in the name of religion, succumbed
to the rise of the bourgeoisie and its culture.
Then suddenly the phenomenon of sexual liberation appeared. Women realized
that under the banner of sexual liberation, all of the inhuman limits,
restrictions, and bonds which restrained them could be destroyed. Women
welcomed this change wholeheartedly to the extent that sexual liberation
entered the arena of science! What is normally designated as the scientific
understanding of religion is not a pure scientific and scholastic understanding.
It is rather a bourgeois cognition. After the Middle Ages, Science, which
had been in the service of religion and the Church, was made to serve the
contempory ruling bourgeois system. If nowadays Science appears to oppose
religion and moral values, it is not really Science that opposes these,
but it is the ruling bourgeoisie which does so, just as in the Middle Ages,
it was feudalism which defended aristocratic social-moral traditions in
the name of religion. It was Christianity which was, in fact, defending
feudalism, and now it is Science which, in fact, defends the bourgeoisie.
It is intellectuals - those who believe that economic and materialistic
social foundations are the basis of all social transformations - who will
more easily accept my argument and logic. Up to the appearance of Freud
(who was one of the agents of the bourgeoisie), it was through the liberal
bourgeois spirit that scientific sexualism was manifested. It must be taken
into consideration that the bourgeoisie is always an inferior class. Although
feudalism was an inhuman system, it nevertheless relied on an aristocratic
elite and their moral values, even though these moral values led to a decline.
The bourgeois mentality denies all of the elevated, exalted human values,
and believes in nothing except money.
Therefore, a scholar or scientist who lives, thinks and studies during
the bourgeois age, measures collective cultural and spiritual values (the
sacrifices of mankind, the martyrdoms, struggles, literature, art etc.),
with only the scale of naked economy, with production and consumption and
with nothing else. One who studies psychology or anthropology, looking
at all the dimensions and manifestations of the mystic spirit of human
beings, that which religion believes to be the spirit of God and the manifestation
of metaphysical virtues, sees only unsatisfied sexual appetites. Belief,
culture, mental illnesses all are related to the struggle to release an
imprisoned and condemned sexual complex. The bourgeois social scientist
looks at all of the delicate human sensations and feelings (even a mother
caressing her child, or the worship of the beloved by the lover, and all
other issues) in relation to sex. Freud, a modern bourgeois, armed himself
against all moral and human values, against all elevated and exalted manifestations
of the human soul, and called it "realism". Freud's realism was not that
of the bourgeoisie, but rather that of the scientist, scholar, philosopher,
psychologist, and anthropologist who serve the bourgeois class, for all
of these bring the human being down to the level of a sexual and economic
animal! Thus, the bourgeoisie, by alienating all values and virtues, made
only one religion, one school, one temple and one messenger for all the
miserable men of this age; a religion for which all must be sacrificed.
This messenger was named Freud. His religion was sex. His temple was Freudianism,
and the first to be sacrificed on the threshold of this temple was woman
and her human values.
We who live in the East always speak about Western colonization, but
I would like to explain that this does not mean that Western colonization
only colonizes or exploits the East. It is a world-wide power representing
a class of people that exploit and colonize both the East and the West.
If I had the opportunity, I would explain that this power has alienated
the European masses even more than the Eastern masses. The European has
been overtaken by colonialism's legacy of unemployment and misery and will
continue to be in the future. They will continue to be victims of anti-colonialism.
This ruling colonial power influences Eastern people in many ways, such
as placing emphasis upon unimportant, sensational and emotional matters;
spreading rumors, discrimination, and hypocrisy; and sowing discord and
pessimism, to keep Easterners occupied with mundane and unimportant issues.
By these means Easterners are kept in a state whereby they are unaware
of what Western colonization is doing to them, unaware of their fate and
destiny. These conspiracies then cause young Europeans, likewise, to become
alienated and destructive, and commit more deception and crime. All of
these actions are taken in the name of the colonization of Eastern countries
without the Easterners realizing it........
Revision by: Dr. Bartlett
