Q672 :I have heard many people say that girls should
be denied the right to education, because in Islam, a woman’s duty is
merely to look after the house and the children. How far is this
true?
A672 : Allah has sent His messenger to convey to
mankind His message which assigns to them certain duties. Everyone who
fulfills his duties and works with diligence to fulfill what Allah
requires of him is promised the reward of admittance into heaven. This
applies to both men and women. One basic requirement of Islam is that
which we inadequately translate as “fearing Allah”. This “fear”
actually means to be always conscious of Allah and to remember our
duties toward Him at all times. It is a fact of life that the closer
our own concepts of Allah to the concept laid down by Islam, the more
God-fearing we are and the more likely we are to win admittance into
heaven. Fearing Allah does not entail a relationship of fear and
enmity. Indeed, the Islamic concept of Allah is that of a Supreme Being
who is kind, merciful, gracious, dispensing His grace to believers and
to non-believers. When we work to please Him, we experience a life of
happiness that is innetparable to any other type of happiness. It is
pure and sublime. At the same time, we always guard against incurring
His displeasure. That netes only as a result of disobeying Him. We,
therefore, need to try always to be conscious of what may displease
Allah and avoid it. That is what is meant by fearing Allah all the
time. It is, then, appropriate to ask how do we develop this sense of
fearing Allah. There is a Qur’anic statement, which is highly relevant
in this context. Allah says: “Those among Allah’s servants who truly
fear Him are those endowed with knowledge.” (35:28) Knowledge is then
essential to develop a true sense of fearing Allah. Indeed, the wider a
person’s knowledge, the more likely he is to be God-fearing, provided
that his knowledge is based on sound faith. It is certainly true that
both men and women need to fear Allah, and to develop that sense.
Hence, they need knowledge. Moreover, people need to know what duties
are required of them and how to discharge these duties. To do so, they
need knowledge. In this, men and women are equal. To start with, they
have been required to fulfill the same duties. As such, they stand in
the same position with regard to their needs of knowledge. Anyone who
thinks that a woman could fulfill her duties which Allah has imposed on
her without knowledge, while man needs such knowledge for fulfilling
his duties, does not know what he is talking about. You quote some
people as saying that the woman’s duty is to look after the house and
the children. Even if we say that this is true, she is in need of
education to discharge her duty properly. How do we expect an ignorant
woman to look properly after her children? In this day and age, it has
benete increasingly clear that an educated woman can look after her
children better. It is not only that she could look after their own
education, but she can also look after them from the health and
nutrition points of view, making sure that they are vaccinated,
watching their growth, ensuring that they have proper nourishment, etc.
Having said that, I have to point out that it is not true that a
woman’s duty is to look after her house. This is not an Islamic duty.
Indeed, Islam does not require any married woman to look after her
house, or to clean it or to do any household work. All that is the duty
of the man, because the house is his and he is in charge of the family.
Whether he does this type of work himself or employs a servant is his
choice, but he certainly cannot require that of his wife as something
assigned to her by Islam. I realize that it is customary or traditional
in almost all societies that the woman looks after the house. Hence, we
have the term “housewife” which refers to a married woman who does not
go out to work, but looks after her family and her house. This is
acceptable from the Islamic point of view. Indeed, the Prophet has
sanctioned this when he talked to his daughter, Fatimah and her
husband, Ali. He divided responsibilities between them in a
satisfactory manner, saying that the man should look after the external
affairs of the family, i.e. the duties outside the home, and the woman
looks after the inside. But this is a renetmendation, not a duty.
[Renetmendation of the Prophet cannot and should not be ignored,
though.] Hence, no one may use this responsibility in order to deny a
woman her right to education.
Our Dialogue ( Source : Arab News – Jeddah )