By

Prof. Dr. Mahmoud Hamdy Zakzouq

The President of Al-Azhar Center for Interfaith Dialogue

Al-Azhar Magazine (Rabi’ Al-Awwal, 1440 A.H. November, 2018.)

     Islam granted the Muslim woman total economic independence and gave her the right to manage her property, buy, sell, invest and donate money without her husband's permission, provided that she had the legal capacity to do so. Neither her husband nor any male relative had the right to take a single penny of her money without her consent.

     No man, not even a girl's father, can force a girl to marry a man against her will, and her consent to the marriage is essential. A young woman once went to the Prophet to complain that her father wanted to force her to marry her cousin (her father's nephew) whom she detested and that her father wanted to gain an elevated status for himself by that marriage. The Prophet summoned the girl's father and told the girl in her father's presence that she was free to agree to the marriage or to refuse it. The girl agreed to the marriage of her own free will and said to the Prophet: "O Prophet of God! I now agree to what my father desires and I only wanted to let the girls and women know that this is not a father's right!" She meant that fathers do not have the right to force their daughters to marry against their will.

     A woman is a man's partner in the family and in bringing up their children, No family can be happy and successful without the positive cooperation of both the husband and wife, without which the life of the family would be unstable and the children would be the victims of these circumstances. The Prophet (PBUH) declared that men and women must both share responsibility when he said: “All of you are guardians and are responsible for your wards. The ruler is a guardian and the man is a guardian of his family; the lady is a guardian and is responsible for her husband's house and his offspring; and so all of you are guardians and are responsible for your wards.”

     The fact that a woman is held responsible for her family refutes her being dominated by men, since responsibility implies freedom, which is incompatible with being dominated.

     No man has the right to deprive a woman from exercising her legitimate rights in life nor has he the right to prevent her from going to the mosque to pray. The Prophet said: "Do not prevent the maidservants of God from going to the mosques of God".

     If some Muslims do not abide by the Islamic rulings and laws concerning women that is due to their ignorance of the teachings of Islam or their misunderstanding of its just and humane principles.