Don't blame the Koran

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 504.

One of the great falsehoods deployed by the conservatives, nearly all of them men, is that the Koran, the word of God as imparted to Muhammad more than 13 centuries ago, decrees that women should remain in second place. The trouble in Saudi Arabia (and in Iran, just outside the Arab fold but still in­fluential in parts of it, such as Iraq and Lebanon) is that conser­vatives, on whom - for reasons of history and realpolitik - the regime still relies, have grabbed a near-monopoly of religious authority, imposing an exceptionally narrow interpretation of Islam on the people, especially women. To take but one exam­ple, it is written that women should dress modestly, but no­where is it stated that they should be covered from top to toe in black. Nor, for that matter, is it stated that women should be denied an equal say in decisions of state.

Saudi Arabia, it should be stressed, is exceptionally behind­hand. Yet, compared with most of their western sisters, Arab women elsewhere still, on the whole, enjoy fewer rights. But they have generally been gaining ground apace. And there are now numerous examples in the Muslim (but not yet in the Arab) world where, without in any way disavowing Islam, women have actually headed governments: for instance in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey.

It cannot be denied that there are problems, for liberals and supporters of full female emancipation, with the application of Sharia, the body of laws deemed to derive from the Koran, in those countries where the judicial system is wholly or partly based on it. Laws of inheritance, the relative weight of evidence given in court by men and women, rights of divorce and of children's custody - these, if taken literally, all diminish women. But there is far more flexibility and fuzziness, even here, than the conservatives concede. Sharia is not an actual code nor is it clearly defined; it is merely a basis for a system in­spired but not dictated by the Koran. It is certainly not incum­bent on all good Muslims to insist that the government use Sharia - or indeed the Koran - as the sole source of law. And both are open to wide interpretation, as they should be, to meet the changing demands of modernity.

Christians hardly need reminding that for centuries they fought bloody wars over competing versions of their faith, and bodies such as the Catholic Inquisition testify to the cruel­ties that can flow, within any religion, from a dogmatic deter­mination to impose a particular set of beliefs. Over the years, however, a separation of church and state has helped to nur­ture individual creativity alongside reasonable governance under temporal laws. A wider measure of separation of mosque and state would probably provide similar benefits, as it has done, for instance, in Turkey.

In the end, democracy, entailing a freedom of choice, is the prerequisite, for Muslims as much as anyone else, for creating a society that is both cohesive and fair. There is no reason why Muslim Arabs, women included, should not have the demo­cratic freedom enjoyed by people of other faiths. It would, after all, liberate men too.

Article 4