MEN AND WOMEN IN ISLAM

While masculinity serves Islamic communities as a key political and legal concept, there is no single, comprehensive or unitary Muslim masculinity: rather, Muslim masculinity is plural in terms of language and the law. Of the world’s thirty largest language communities, eleven – Arabic, Bengali, Malay, Farsi, Urdu, Punjabi, Javanese, Turkish, Telugu, Marathi and Gujarati – include significant populations of Muslim men. While ‘masculinity’ may be so fundamental to Islam as to be invisible (those responsible for successive editions of the "Encyclopedia of Islam" have overlooked it and affiliated topics), masculinity is a concept which differs among Muslims. While the Qur’an – source of Islamic law – contains numerous references to men in their capacity as believers in Allah, schools of jurisprudence interpret these references differently. Nation-states then codify social practices, providing fresh expression for such legal masculinities (Choueiri 2002: 651–2). Such differences are particularly evident in issues of men’s rights as women’s legal sex partners. Muslim men in Iran, for example, enjoy far greater legal powers over their wives than men in Tunisia.

The Qur’an’s second chapter – Al-Baqara – identifies men’s masculinity in terms of their legal responsibilities: ‘men have a degree (of advantage) over them’, i.e. women (002.228, Yusufali). Referring to child support after divorce, the Qur’an advises, ‘he shall bear the cost of their food and clothing on equitable terms. No soul shall have a burden laid on it greater than it can bear’ (002.233, Yusufali). Sunni Islam is currently restricted to four schools of legal interpretation, or 'madahab': Hanafi, Hanbali, Malaki and Shafa’I. Each school of jurisprudence, or 'usul al-fiqh', grants men different rights (see Makdisi 1979, 1984; Meron 1969); Shi’a Islam offers an alternative institution, the Ja’fari school of jurisprudence, to guarantee Muslims’ legal rights.

While their specific rights have differed from one school to another, ‘masculinity’ remains a central concept. As Roded points out, the Prophet Mohammed’s reported virility was an important model Muslims sought to emulate; colonists used the same reports to vilify his historical personage and his contemporary followers (2006: 58, 62). All four schools of Sunni law give husbands the privilege of breaking their marital bonds at will and the right to marry more than one woman, and they differentiate men’s greater shares in inheritance from women’s lesser shares.

Contemporary men’s legal status is specific, dependent and situated. Among Muslims, Ouzgane points out: ‘the opposite of masculinity is not necessarily femininity and... even misogyny is not the core of masculinity’ (1997). While modern states’ laws establish normative citizenship for male Muslims, these same men’s rights and obligations before the law depend on their mental soundness and sexual performance. As Anderson argues, even among marginal Islamic communities such as the Druze, believers follow mainstream Hanafi interpretations of Islamic law. Men are only guaranteed exclusive legal access to their wives on the condition of the husbands’ sexual potency. If a man suffers incurable impotence, his wife may seek dissolution of marriage (Anderson 1950, 1952). Sexual performance doesn’t necessarily remain a private issue between husbands and wives, but it also refers to such public issues as regional market and civic hegemonies, as Rothenberg demonstrates (2006: 102).

Nation-states’ claims to secular law point up the flexibility of men’s rights in the Islamic world. Charrad points out that while most explanations of change in Muslim men’s experience of normative citizenship in post-colonial states ‘emphasize factors such as economic development or revolutionary ideology’, neither is a determining characteristic in North Africa, where men’s rights ‘are also shaped by the political requirements of state stability or consolidation’ (1990: 19–20). Among predominantly Muslim residents of 'maghribi' states, Tunisian husbands are denied the right to verbal repudiation and must seek a court date; if they take multiple wives, they can be punished with imprisonment and a fine. Tunisian men are denied legal guardianship over adult women.

Following Iran’s revolution, Aghajanian (1986) noted structural changes in Shi’a men’s experience of divorce. Like all law governing Muslims, Shi’ite interpretation in Iran is mediated by modern nation-states’ administrative forms. The 1967 law accepted divorce only through a court; such public proceedings were time-consuming, tedious and embarrassing, but the 1979 law allows couples divorcing by mutual consent to sidestep these courts and register a change in personal status before a notary public ('mahzai') and two witnesses. That said, Iranian men report different experiences after a divorce than their partners. Shi’i Muslim men begin to enjoy legal protections after the divorce, since fathers have custody of boys over the age of two and girls over the age of seven. Men’s masculinity also enjoys extra-legal structural protections, since divorced mothers are vulnerable to poverty. Aghajanian noted that 73 per cent of divorcing fathers agree to pay child support to their ex-wives, even though the law does not require a man to support children’s living expenses outside his home after the age at which he enjoys custody (1986).

By Elizabeth Bishop in "International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities", edited by Michael Flood, Judith Kegan Gardiner, Bob Pease and Keith Pringe, Routledge, London/New York, 2007, excerpts p. 661-663. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

See also:

Men and Women in Hinduism - http://stravaganzastravaganza.blogspot.com.br/2014/01/men-and-women-in-hinduism.html

Men and Women in Judaism - http://stravaganzastravaganza.blogspot.com.br/2014/01/men-and-women-in-judaism.html

Men and Women in Christianity - http://stravaganzastravaganza.blogspot.com.br/2014/01/men-and-women-in-christianity.html