In a fact-defying column attacking GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson for Salon, Qasim Rashid, Esq. a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Prince al-Waleed bin Talal School of Islamic Studies, makes the astonishing claim that Islam is more pro-woman than America.
Rashid quotes Carson’s claim that “Under Shariah law, women must be subservient and people following other religions must be killed.” He continues, “If Dr. Carson is correct—and unfortunately his rising poll figures indicate that enough Americans believe he is correct—then America’s 3 million Muslims are obliged to make America’s 170 million women subservient and likewise kill the nation’s 330 million non-Muslims. Both concepts are beyond absurd and wholly unfounded in Islam.”
Then Rashid delivers his pronouncement: “Far from Dr. Carson’s claim that in Islam women are subservient, Islam gave women equal rights in 610 that our own United States haven’t given even in 2015. To this day America has not passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Meanwhile the Quran 33:36 emphatically declares the equality of men and women: “Surely, men who submit themselves to God and women who submit themselves to Him…God has prepared for all of them forgiveness and a great reward.”
Rashid resorts to claims that are patently false: “Islam was the first religion to give women the right to choose to marry or to divorce, the right to own property, to become secular or religious scholars, the right to inherit, or to run a business—all in the 7th century … Fatimah al-Fihri, an African Muslim woman scholar, used her inheritance from her father to establish the world’s first University, al-Qarawiyyin University in 859 C.E.” He ignores the Bible completely, in which the daughters of Zelophehad inherited their father’s property, as he had no sons, as well as the story of the judge Deborah, lauded by the Jewish people for her wisdom. In addition, the world’s first university was established in 700 B.C.E. in Takshashila, in the northwest region of Bharat (India).
“Just how in the name of reality does Rashid claim Islam treats women better than America?”
But leaving ancient history aside, just how in the name of reality does Rashid claim Islam treats women better than America? As Matthew famously said, “Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”
In fact, in 2011, The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women didn’t even list statistics for violence against women in virtually any Islamic country, with the exceptions of Egypt and Turkey.
As the Clarion Project has pointed out, certain constants remain in Islamic marriage laws, including:
A man is entitled to up to four wives, but a woman may only have one husband. In Western societies, a man typically only takes one wife.
The husband (or his family) pays a “bride price” or “dower” (mahr, which is money or property paid to the bride) which she is entitled to keep. This “mahr” is in exchange for sexual submission (tamkin). Sexual submission is traditionally regarded as unconditional consent for the remainder of the marriage.
A man can divorce his wife by making a declaration (talaq) in front of an Islamic judge irrespective of the woman’s consent. Even her presence is not required. For a woman to divorce a man (khula), his consent is required.
There is no joint property; the man owns all property, (except for what the woman owned before the marriage).In addition,
Where do you start with abuse of women in Islamic societies? In Sudan, where “the vast majority of women and girls will survive at least one form of gender-based violence (GBV) — be it rape; sexual assault; physical assault; forced/early marriage; denial of resources, opportunities or services; or psychological/emotional abuse?” In Iran, where acid was flung in to the faces of women, and other women have been stoned? In Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to visit a male doctor without their male guardians, or arry without the permission of their guardian? The list goes on and on.
Rashid also attacks Carson’s second claim, that Shariah requires killing people of other faiths, protesting that the Koran only permits fighting in self-defense, or to protect “churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques” from attack. He asserts, “Prophet Muhammad issued numerous charters with Christians, Jews, and pagans to affirm his commitment to universal religious freedom and equal human rights for all people regardless of faith.”
That ignores Muhammad’s massacre of the Jewish tribe of the Qurayzah in 627 C.E. As one website notes, “according to a consensus of classical Muslim scholars of hadith (putative utterances and acts of Muhammad, recorded by pious Muslim transmitters), biographers of Muhammad’s life, jurists, and historians … some six hundred to nine hundred men from the Qurayzah were led on Muhammad’s order to the Market of Medina. Trenches were dug, and the men were beheaded; their decapitated corpses were buried in the trenches while Muhammad watched.”
Rashid also ignores the famous dictum from the hadith, “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).”
Rashid also ignores Shaykh Muhammad Mukhtar al-Mahdi, professor at Al Azhar and head of the Islamic Law Society, quoting this text at a major conference at Al Azhar in Cairo. Barack Obama loves Al Azhar University, of which he once said, “For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning.”
If someone needs a dose of reality, it isn’t Carson.