The Image of Women in Islam Ibn al-Jawzi's Mysoginist Writings

There have been a number of interesting articles and debates taking place recently concerning women and Islam. Below is an article on Ibn al-Jawzi. You may also be interested to read this article from the BBC: Egypt anger over virginity faking

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Qantara:

The religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi's collection of the prophet's recalled comments on women in Islam, well known in conservative Islamic circles. Does the work confirm our image of Muslim misogyny or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources? By Stefan Weidner

| Bild: Cover 'The Attributes of God' by Ibn al-Jawzi
Bild vergrössern "For most of you are firewood of hell": Ibn al-Jawzi's writings are extremely popular in conservative Islamic circles to this day | Commented collections of hadiths – oral traditions on the prophet's words – on the subject of women have been going around since the Middle Ages. The Book of Rules for Women, written by the Baghdad religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, who died in 1200, is one of the most read works of this type to this day. Hannelies Koloska, a young Arabist based in Berlin, recently translated the book into German.

The most interesting question is: Does the medieval scholar confirm our image of Muslim misogyny, or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources?

Even a brief survey of the headings to the 110 short chapters is enough to raise scepticism. Chapter 60, for instance, bears the astonishing title: "On placing women in fear of sin and instructing them that they make up most inmates of hell". In it we find: "It is delivered from Jabir: 'God's envoy spoke to the women: "Give alms, as most of you are the firewood of hell." A woman with dark-dyed hands from among the women stood up and asked him: "Why, envoy of God?" He answered: "Because you multiply evil or are always cursing and ungrateful to your husbands."'"

Hopeless case?

No one would think badly of a reader if he – or especially she – slammed the book shut at this point and declared the image of women in Islam a hopeless case. They would merely be doing exactly what feminist Muslim researchers do with al-Jawzi – condemning him as an archetype of a patriarchal and misogynist thinker.

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