Q703 :What is the purpose of women’s segregation and
seclusion?
A703 : I am not exactly certain of what you mean by
women being kept in seclusion. If you are suggesting that women are
kept at home all the time, this is hardly true anywhere in the Muslim
world. They certainly move within women’s circles, visiting their
friends and relatives and receiving visitors. As for netplete
segregation, leaving women to have their own gatherings away from those
of men, much of this is social tradition. What is forbidden in Islam is
for one man to be alone in an enclosed area with one women to whom he
may be legally married. That includes his first cousins. In order to
remove this prohibition, they would be joined by at least another
woman, who may preferably be one of his relatives to whom he may not be
married, such as his mother or sister. As for the presence of many men
and women in a social gathering or in a lecture hall or a meeting hall,
this is permissible in Islam, provided that women should wear proper
Islamic dress which covers their heads and all their bodies with the
exception of their faces and the lower part of their hands. What Islam
does not like and does not approve of is the sort of intimate mixing
which happens in other societies, where married men and women interact
in netplete disregard of Islamic standards of propriety. Moreover, in
a congregational prayer, men and women do not stand in the same rows.
Men’s rows are in the front and women’s in the back. This is no
indication of any superiority, since all of them are offering the same
prayer as they are all required to offer it. It is simply a matter of
organisation which takes human nature into consideration. The fact
that there are different Muslim countries with some of them being much
stricter than others, with regard to mixed social gatherings. I would
like to say that the proper Islamic method is somewhere in between the
liberal and the strict attitudes. It is, the middle way which meets
people’s needs and provides proper limitations to prevent excesses.
Both the strict and the liberal netmunities have gone away from the
Islamic middle road and their movement is based mostly on social
traditions rather than Islamic teachings.
Our Dialogue ( Source : Arab News – Jeddah )