“Do not visit the houses of men when they are absent from their homes, for the devil circulates within you like the blood in your veins. It was said, ‘O Prophet, in your veins also?’ He replied, ‘My veins also. But God has given me power over the devil and I am free from wickedness.’ ”
“Two women must not sit together, because the one may describe the other to her husband, so that you might say the husband had seen her himself.”
“Do not follow up one look at a woman with another; for verily the first look is excusable, but the next is unlawful.”
IV.—Muḥammadan law secures the following Rights to Women.
An adult woman may contract herself in marriage without her guardian’s consent, and an adult virgin cannot be married against her will. When divorced or a widow, she is at liberty to marry a second husband. She must be treated with respect, and it is not lawful for a judge to see more than her face and the palms of her hands. She should go abroad veiled. She is not required to engage in war, although she may be taken by her husband on a military expedition, but she can have no share in the plunder. She is not to be slain in war.
The fine for a woman is half that of a man, and in evidence the testimony of two women is but equal to that of one man, except in the case of a birth, when the evidence of one woman is to be accepted. Her evidence is not accepted in the case of retaliation. [[QISAS].] In the event of a person being found slain in the house or village belonging to a woman, the oath (in the matter of evidence) is administered to her fifty times repeatedly before the fine is imposed. If she apostatize from the faith of Islām, she is not to be put to death, but to be imprisoned until she return to the faith; for although Imām ash-Shāfiʿī maintains that she is to be put to death, Imām Abū Ḥanīfah holds that the Prophet has forbidden the slaying of women, without making any distinction between those who are apostates or those who are original infidels. But, according to an express injunction, they are to be stoned to death for adultery, and beaten for fornication. Women who have no means of subsistence are to be supported by the state.
(The law of divorce is treated under the article [DIVORCE].)
It is a curious arrangement of Muslim law, that (according to the Hidāyah, Grady’s ed., p. 340) a woman may execute the office of a Qāẓī or judge, except in the cases ḥadd and qiṣāṣ, in conformity with the rule that her evidence is accepted in every legal case except in that of ḥadd and qiṣāṣ, or “retaliation.” There is, in fact, no distinct prohibition against a woman assuming the government of a state. The rulers of the Muḥammadan State of Bhopal in Central India have been women for several generations.
V.—The Position of Women in Muḥammadan Countries
has been the subject of severe criticism as well as of some controversy. Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole says:—