This is part three of the Islam vs. Women series. Click here to read part two.
Islam claims authority on women in more ways than one. When Allah said, "men are the caretakers of women," he did not say it empty-handed. Islam--through the word of Allah and Mohammed's teachings--makes many factual claims on the female body and its functions (along with the moral implications of these functions).
In this chapter, I will examine a number of ways that Muslim-majority countries and communities govern the female body as sanctioned by Islam.
The ways that I will be examining it is as follows:
Puberty
Menstruation
Virginity Tests
Abortion
FGM (Female Genital Mutilation)
Puberty
One of the most important stages of any person born into the Islamic faith is the pubescent stage of their life. The age of puberty is referred to in one hadith as "the age of committing sins." Once a Muslim child enters this stage in their life, they are required to begin practicing the five pillars of Islam1 and from that point forward are eligible to go to hell (whereas prepubescent children are considered to be innocent and automatically go to heaven).
In Islam, the general understanding of a female child's journey from girlhood to womanhood is the day she gets her period for the first time. This belief can be observed in girls beginning to practice the five pillars of Islam, wearing hijab (which is becoming an increasingly younger age in many Islamic countries as the generations go by), and the practice of child marriage in some Muslim countries and communities (as discussed in part 1 of this series under the "marriageable age" section).
Menstruation
According to Islam, a woman on her period is a dirty thing. A girl or woman on her period is prohibited from doing any of the following: praying, fasting, touching the Quran, entering a mosque, and so on. The reason for this is that it's believed for a menstruating female to be too impure to practice holy rituals.
I refer you to the wise words of the kind prophet and his benevolent god:
The prophet claimed to have peeked into hell and saw that the majority of the people there are women. He explained that the reason for this is their religious deficiency. Women have their monthly period, which forces them to stop praying, fasting, doing pilgrimage, etc., whereas men have no such bodily function that deems them too impure to worship Allah. (You may practice these holy rituals when you're bleeding in general, by the way, just not when the blood is coming out of your vagina.)
When asked about mensuration, Allah warns his followers, "beware of its harm! Keep away, and do not have intercourse with your wives during their monthly cycles until they are purified."
In the mosque, the menstruating women are to be kept away from the musalla2.
Truthfully, the topic of menstruation is an upsetting and confusing one for many Muslim girls and women. The combination of the abundance of intricate and arbitrary practices required by Muslims and lack of guidance for what to do depending on the conditions of the period (such as light spotting at the beginning or end of a menstrual cycle) causes doubt and confusion in Muslim girls and women. As a result, Islamic scholars, Muslim influencers, and family members have to fill in the blanks when answering Islam-related questions about periods.
Bonus: Though having sexual intercourse between a husband and wife is forbidden while the wife is menstruating, the prophet Mohammed figured out a way around it without having Allah disapproving of him. Mashallah.
Virginity Tests
In the 1972 book titled "Women and Sex", Egyptian physician and writer Nawal El Saadawi adequately described the misconception regarding the hymen that is prevalent in the Muslim world. As translated from Arabic to English by yours truly, she writes:
Most people [in the Middle East] are ignorant about what is referred to as the hymen. They believe that every girl must have a hymen, and that this hymen must tear upon the first encounter between the girl and the man, and the result of this tear must be red blood that can be [clearly] seen on a sheet. So, is this correct? The answer to this question is: no.
Virginity tests are the procedure of determining whether a female is a virgin, wherein the examiner checks the hymen of the female and concludes that if the hymen is intact then she is a virgin. It is commonly practiced in order to determine a woman's eligibility for marriage.
In 2018, the U.N. called for a global ban on virginity tests. The practice is unethical because of its nature of being humiliating and painful. "Forced virginity tests" is an oxymoron; I do not know what a consensual virginity test looks like. Virginity tests are cruel by nature, the result is something that is demanded, not offered. Besides, a girl or woman generally knows if she had sex or was raped. This test (that is not even backed up by science) is never meant for the individual girl or woman to keep for herself. The test is meant for everybody but her; it is meant to be for her family, her in-laws, her community, but never her.
The reason virginity testing is practiced in the MENA region is because in Islam, having premarital sex is a sin. As directly instructed by Allah, the punishment for it is one hundred lashes per person involved in the act.
It is important to mention that in Islam, virginity is a sign of virtuousness for both sexes, at least at it is practiced in the 21st century. However, the biological nature of the female body and sexual reproduction is more than enough to take all the attention away from Muslim men who commit unlawful and/or sinful sexual intercourse and shine the blinding spotlight on girls and women. After all, it is the female who has a hymen to get examined. It is the female who, if impregnated, carries around the "evidence" of the sexual act. This causes all the "honor" to fall onto her shoulders, which means that the family has much more to lose if they have a non-virgin daughter than a non-virgin son.
So, while it’s not blasé when a man is not a virgin, that is not good enough. It doesn't matter how much men suffer for not being virgins. Due to the biological nature of women's bodies and Islamic beliefs about them, it makes it so Muslim girls and women will suffer for being non-virgins 100 times more than Muslim men ever could.
Abortion
There is a lack of Islamic texts that directly address abortion, but the general consensus of Islamic scholars is that abortion is permitted when the woman's life is in danger. The practice varies from country to country.
From the Health and Human Rights Journal on abortion rights in MENA:
[...] all countries in the MENA region permit abortion if the pregnant woman’s life is in danger. This resonates with Islamic jurists who have historically perceived abortion as generally haram (forbidden) after the fetus achieves “ensoulment” (the status of a person), except to save the woman’s life. Some MENA countries also permit abortion in cases of a risk to the pregnant woman’s physical health (Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen), a risk to the pregnant woman’s mental health (Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia), fetal impairment (Iran, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and UAE), or rape (Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan).
FGM (Female Genital Mutilation)
For this section, I refer the reader to two posts on Ovarit.com:
The first was published to o/WomensLiberation titled "FGM informational post". It is clear, concise, and sourced. Click here to go to the post.
The second was published by o/Women titled "After effects of FGM", where a woman shared her personal experience with FGM. Click here to go to the post.
Click here to read Islam vs. Women: Honor Culture (Part Four).
In Islam, there is a list of mandatory practices and they're referred to as the "five pillars." As a Muslim, one must do these five pillars in order to go to heaven. They are as follows: (1) Shahada, which directly translates to "witness." You must profess the following: "There Is No God but Allah, [and] Mohammed is the Messenger of Allah." This is also what you say when you convert to Islam. (2) Prayer. Five times a day: at sunrise, at noon, in the afternoon, at sunset, and in the evening. It is essentially one prayer with five different variations. (3) Zakat, which is giving money to charity. (4) Fasting. Generally in the month of Ramadan, but there are other holy nights when people choose to fast. (5) Haj, which is a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. You must do this at least once in your entire life.
Musalla is the place of prayer, it can be a room to pray in or a small carpet to pray on.