The Husband’s Rights over the Wife
The source text is shaped around two main axes: the importance of Ramaḍān as a season of “spiritual care,” and a woman’s rights and duties toward her husband in Islamic jurisprudence.
The source text is shaped around two main axes: the importance of Ramaḍān as a season of “spiritual care,” and a woman’s rights and duties toward her husband in Islamic jurisprudence. While Ramaḍān is defined as an annual milestone for cleansing a person from consumption-based weaknesses, the institution of marriage is explained through the balance of responsibility and authority. The text argues that modernity, under the name of “equality,” has pulled woman away from her nature (fiṭra) and led to social unrest. The key to family happiness is shown as the wife’s obedience to her husband within the bounds of the sacred law (sharʿ), and the husband’s assuming the responsibility of being qawwām (manager/protector).
A. Ramaḍān: Season of Spiritual Cleansing and Care
The month of Ramaḍān is characterized as an annual maintenance period in which a person repairs a soul that has been allowed to “wear out.”
- Weakness of Consumption: Against the human tendency to consume things, relationships, and beauties, Ramaḍān represents a stance.
- Process of Preparation: The sacred nights (qanādīl: Raghāʾib, Barāʾa) are reminders for preparing for Ramaḍān. Shaʿbān is a period in which fasting and eating and drinking should be lightened so one may enter the format of Ramaḍān.
- Spiritualization: Fasting takes a person out of the prison of the biological body and spiritualizes him. This prepares the ground for the acceptance of prayers; for as the body withdraws from the worldly, the soul “beats its wings toward the beyond.”
B. The Balance of Authority and Responsibility in Marriage Law
In Islamic law, marriage is presented as a hierarchy shaped according to the weight of responsibility.
- The Relation of Responsibility and Authority: The livelihood of the entire household, the bills, and the duty of protection rest upon the man. It is natural that whoever bears the responsibility also holds the authority.
- The Concept of Obedience: al-Shāfiʿī’s statement “Marriage is in a sense a form of bondage” is explained as absolute obedience in matters that are not disobedience (maʿṣiya). Yet this obedience is protected by the bounds of the sacred law (God’s commands and prohibitions).
- The Man’s Being Qawwām: The wife’s obedience to her husband makes the man a responsible manager (qawwām).
C. Critique of Modernity and of Woman’s Identity
The text argues that the promises of “freedom” and “equality” modernity offers woman have in fact produced forms of victimization.
- Public Transport and Working Life: Forcing a woman to go to work in the early morning in settings such as crowded buses is defined as “poisoning life.”
- Differences of Nature: While woman is characterized as delicate and in need of care like a “daisy,” a power-based “strong woman” profile is said to make woman unhappy.
- “Nursery Lamb” Generations: With woman’s turn toward working life, children are said to grow up not as “mother’s lambs” but as “nursery lambs,” and this is claimed to corrupt the generation.
D. The Wife’s Basic Duties and Rights
From the jurisprudential perspective, the ways a wife may please her husband are detailed as follows:
1. Sexual Availability: Not turning away the husband’s request unless there is a legal impediment.
2. Loyalty and Privacy: Protecting the husband’s property, not giving anything from the house without his permission, and not going out without permission.
3. Chastity and Appearance: Adorning herself, using makeup, and applying pleasant scents for her husband within the home; outside, behaving with dignity so as not to draw the evil eye.
4. Economy: Avoiding demands that put the husband in material difficulty, and encouraging him concerning lawful earning.
Key concepts
- Spiritual Care
- Just as vehicles need maintenance, the human soul also needs annual care. Ramaḍān is the season of mercy in which this cleansing takes place.
- Function of Fasting
- Fasting is a worship that distances a person from bodily pleasures, spiritualizes him, and makes him “transparent.”
- Process of Preparation
- One should not enter Ramaḍān “headlong.” The sacred nights (Raghāʾib, Barāʾa) and the month of Shaʿbān are stages of preparation for this great season.
- The Concept of *Qawwām*
- Because the whole of responsibility rests on the man, it is argued that authority should also rest on him. The man’s assuming all obligations such as the livelihood of the home, the bills, and protection gives him the authority to be one step ahead.
- The Wife’s Responsibilities
- Among a woman’s essential responsibilities are obedience to her husband (within the bounds of the sacred law), protecting her chastity, and not wasting her husband’s property. According to the text, a woman has no legal obligation to provide for the household or to care for children; her essential duty is to gain her husband’s pleasure.
- Glad Tidings of Paradise
- It is stated that if a woman performs her five daily prayers, keeps her fast, protects her chastity, and obeys her husband, she will enter Paradise.
- The Delusion of Equality
- Women’s being wretched in public transport in the early morning under the name of “liberation” is characterized as a situation contrary to nature (*fiṭra*).
- Erosion of Manhood
- The man’s losing his authority and becoming “spineless” (for example asking his wife’s permission for a football pitch) are presented as elements that corrupt the family structure.
- Unhappiness of the Strong Woman
- It is argued that forcing a woman, who by nature needs protection, to be “strong” makes her unhappy.
- *Qawwām*
- The person (the man) who assumes responsibility, manages, and is responsible for the administration of the family.
- Disobedience (*maʿṣiya*)
- Going against God’s commands; committing sin.
- Waiting Period (*ʿidda*)
- The legally required period a woman must wait after her husband’s death or after divorce before she may remarry (in the case of death, 4 months and 10 days).
- Obligatory Duties (*farāʾiḍ*)
- God’s definite commands; acts of worship whose performance is obligatory.
- Abstention (*ijtināb*)
- Avoiding and keeping away from sin or the forbidden.
- Training of the Soul (*nafs*)
- The process of a person’s bringing his animal impulses under control and maturing his soul.
- Constancy (*mulāzama*)
- Attachment to a place or a state; the woman’s preserving her dignity in her husband’s absence.
Study questions
According to the text, why is the month of Ramaḍān accepted as a “milestone”?
Because it is a starting point for a person to cleanse his soul, change and transform, and pass through an annual spiritual care.
According to al-Shāfiʿī, what is the limit of a wife’s obedience to her husband?
Provided one does not go outside God’s commands and prohibitions (the bounds of the sacred law), obedience is obligatory in matters that are not disobedience (maʿṣiya).
According to the noble hadith, whose right over a man is greatest?
Mother three times in succession, then father, then his wife.
What are two things a woman must not do without her husband’s knowledge?
Not going out of the house, and not keeping a (supererogatory) fast.
In the story of the “three prayer rights” narrated in the text, what was the man’s final prayer?
That his wife, who had become ugly, return to her former (first) state.
What is the wife’s warning about the “forbidden” when seeing her husband off from the house?
“Sir, keep away from the forbidden; bring little but bring what is lawful; do not bring the forbidden into the house.”