On Jihad and the Muslim Oppression of Women

I attended a talk at our campus today by a former Texas Protestant preacher who, quite some years ago, converted to Islam.

He was good; of course. He was a professional talker. He has his own local TV show. Lots of folksy jokes, only a few of which I had heard before. Granted, no intellectual depth, and a whole lot of repetition. He was not honest or clever enough to avoid repeating as truth a typical bit of the Black Legend against the Catholic Church. He claimed vaguely that “a Catholic Church council 1600 years ago debated whether women had souls.”

There is a reason why he had to be vague—and this suggests dishonesty on his part. Makes it harder to check. The reference seems to be to the Council of Macon. No, you’ve never heard of it. Because it does not appear in any list of the Church Councils. Indeed, there is no reference to it of any kind in the Catholic Encyclopedia. This is because it was not an ecumenical Church Council, not what we normally mean by the term "Church Council." It had no authority to speak for the Church. It was just a small regional gathering of bishops in France, called by themselves--a "council" only in the generic sense of a meeting.

But there is also no evidence that it debated any such question.

We have the records from the actual council. There is no mention in them of either women or souls. All we have to the contrary is a claim by St. Gregory of Tours that at this or some other unidentified French council of about this time, one bishop argued that the term “man” in the Bible did not include women. No more, and no less; and none present, according to Gregory, agreed with him. Gregory reports the incident, apparently, because the bishop’s claim seemed so shocking, so absurd, to Gregory and to his contemporaries.

Now, here’s the great irony: if this means even one bishop believed women did not have souls, it means that feminists today do not believe women have souls—for they make exactly the same claim, that the term "man" does not include women. Yet nobody is shocked when they say it.

In other words, much of what Dr. Yusuf Estes said was probably misinformed. But he was fun to watch, anyway.

The Rev. Dr’s topic was “Why are women not equal in Islam?” An interesting extension of my recent posting here on abayas.

He pointed out that the majority of converts to Islam are women. And the reason for this is simple: because women get a better deal under Islam than do men. They are not equal, because they are superior.

The abaya is only the beginning. In Islam, a man who marries is obliged to fully support his wife financially. She has no financial obligations towards him. Legally, she can do as she pleases; work or not work. If she chooses to work, her money is then her own.

It is an overwhelming advantage for women: the same advantage a slaveowner has over a slave.

What of the man’s status within the family? Dr. Yusuf pointed out that the best the Quran said for the husband and father was that he was “imam” of the family. This does not imply dominance—the word for that would be “malek,” king. “Imam” means simply “leader in prayer.” Moreover, the word derives from the root “Uma,” which is the word for “Mother.”

In other words, it means the father’s position is to be “the mother during prayer.” And “mother” is roughly cognate to “leader.”

How can this be construed as elevating man above woman? Rather, at most, it elevates man to equality with women.

But only for a few minutes a day.

Dr. Estes also asked the audience to recite in unison—as they were able to do, even in English—one of the best-known Hadith.

Someone asked Mohammed to whom, after God, a mortal owed his obedience. “To the prophets,” Muhammed explained.

“And after that?”

“To their mother.”

“And after that?”

“To their mother.”

“And after that?”

“To their mother.”

“And after that?”

“To their father.”

Kind of makes the point.

Oppression of women? Right.

Of course, all this would be about equally true of Christian traditions—that they give the advantage overwhelmingly to the woman in most things. Which is one reason churches are mostly full of women, not men. The only real difference is that Islam still holds strongly to these values, while the West has mostly fallen away from its religious values.



In passing, Dr. Yusuf made another important point, on the meaning of the word “kaffir.” This is the word usually translated into English as “infidels” or “unbelievers.” People quote passages about fighting kaffirs, about “jihad” against kaffirs, as if they referred to Christians and Jews, as if they justified aggression against them.

They do not.

The proper meaning of the word “kaffir” is “someone who covers.” It is actually etymologically related to the English word “cover.” It is very like the Christian term “hypocrite,” literally, “one who wears a mask.”

It refers properly to someone who accepts the truth of Islam, and yet conceals it, or conceals his own acts counter to it.

No honest Christian can be accused of “covering up” his lack of adherence to Islam. Exactly as no honest Muslim can be accused of being a hypocrite.

And the calumnies the Quran pronounces against kaffirs are very similar to the calumnies the Bible pronounces against hypocrites.