Women's Intelligence and the Islamic Tradition: Difference between revisions

Still others have, in recent times, suggested that the hadiths about women's mental deficiency, religious deficiency, and majority share in Hell be read sarcastically or satirically. The idea here, it appears, is that Muhammad, being very familiar with the women in his community, would have understood that in saying what he did, he would not be taken seriously. While sarcasm can be infamously challenging to detect in historical texts, particularly where cultural mores and expectations have changed dramatically with time, there is little in the relevant portions of scripture to suggest Muhammad was being anything but serious in his statements. Traditionalists are incensed by the insinuation that Muhammad could have been making light of such a theologically important matter as the inhabitants of hell or that he could have cited the Quran and Sharia to buttress what was only meant as a joke. Non-Muslim participants in this discussion have found this argument similarly incredible.  

Some modern Muslim scholars have shifted to interpreting {{Quran|43|18}} as a simple description of pagan attitudes towards women rather than an affirmation of those attitudes.<ref>{{Citation|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120518193855/http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=10&ID=12885&CATE=88|url=http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=10&ID=12885&CATE=88|title=Tafseer Quran 43:18: does this verse view women negatively?|author=Shaykh Sohail Hanif|publisher=SunniPath}}</ref> However, the following verse ({{Quran|43|19}}) uses the same interrogative and exclamatory device found earlier in the passage -- a statement of what the pagans believed followed by an ''alif'' (translated "What!") -- and then Allah's rebuttal ("did they witness their creation?") which expresses incredulity and outrage. Thus it seems more likely that in {{Quran|43|18}} Allah is making what he thinks is a factual counter-argument (i.e. that women are frivolous and unintelligent) to contradict the pagan belief in the daughters of Allah.

{{Hub4|Creation|Creation}}

==References==