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Ornella Rota

The first Muslim in history was a woman: Khadigia, Mohammed's first beloved wife who by his side lived in a condition considered unimaginable for the Arab society of the period. In those days, women could be sold like objects, they could not inherit any property, if they remained widows the inheritance would
go to the closest male relative, and when too many baby girls were born in a family they were buried alive.
The Koran condemned the killing of new-born baby girls and made young women participate in some way in the right to choose their bridegroom and to enjoy their dowry, as well as what they inherited. The Koran professed that a woman had to obey man, but at the same time the man had to treat her kindly and with a sense of justice. The maximum number of wives permitted was four: “But if you think that you cannot treat them equally, then choose just one.” The husband was granted the right to repudiate his wife, but the wife was offered the opportunity to defend herself from any form of injustice by asking for a divorce. And it instructed: “Divorcees have the right to means of subsistence depending on their honesty; this is a duty for he who has the fear of God.”
It was an impact still has not completely metabolised today, but equal dignity was truly a current practice in the ancient Islamic world and over the centuries of the Andalusian dream.
Contrary to what is generally believed, the Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, for instance, is not the first Muslim woman to rise to the heights of power. Centuries before her, other Muslim women occupied similar positions in Baghdad, Yemen, Egypt and Delhi. Even the events following Ali's scission (founder of the Shiites and fourth caliph of Fatima, daughter of Mohammed and Khadigia) are indication of women's participation in public, as well as military life.
Amongst the militants of both sides there were many women.
Women also rode on the backs of camels that carried the fighters to battle: of these, Aicha, the prophet's last wife and reference point of the traditionalists (the Sunnites). In Iraq, during the revolt of the Kereghites (initially supporters, later enemies, of Ali), a woman's figure has remained legendary for her courage: Ghazala. In the cultural field, the names of women blossomed: a case in point is Aicha bint Talha, who talked of astronomy, literature and history at the court of Damascus with major men of learning of the period, and Sakina Agila bint Ibn Ali Talib, to whose judgement writers subjected their works in her salon in Medina. Moreover, a woman ranked amongst the top representatives of the Sufi (mystical movement often connected with the Sciite line of thinking): Rabi'a al-Adawiyya.
All this took place in Mohammed's day or in the decades that immediately followed.
A few protagonists continued to exist even afterwards, but in order to reach the bloom of the initial period, one most go to Andalusia.
Many a woman's name shone between 1100 and 1200 AD.: Shahda bint Abi Naser El Dinuri, the woman of letters whose imaginative and skilful calligraphy imposed a style in this typically Arab-Muslim art; Aicha El Iskandraniya animated the literary circle “The Garden”, and was the author of such romantic poetry that she was nick-named “the flower of literature”; Wilada, daughter of the caliph El Moustakfi, was the heart of a salon that attracted all the learned men of the period.
Many centuries later, these splendid periods appear to be obscured by other dark periods, such as the mortifying way many women are treated today in certain Muslim countries. The role of women was - and still is - repressed by economic, social, political reasons that have nothing to do with the Koran whatsoever.
The women's condition began to change gradually after the death of Mohammed as the Muslim armies invaded and conquered Syria, Persia, the Maghreb.
On the one hand, the memory of how important women had been in the conflict between Ali and the Sunnites led to their participation in public life being limited; on the other, contact with such different peoples made them be protected from influences that went beyond their culture and their very identity.
At the same time, the Muslims learnt and slowly assimilated new customs that well satisfied their own needs. The Christians of the Byzantine Empire, for instance, obliged their wives wear - as an ornament - a precious veil that covered their faces and that distinguished the higher-class women from the plebeian women. The Arabs bore this teaching in mind.
Meantime over the centuries, the Fiqh - Islamic jurisprudence - drew up, although differently according to the place and period, norms and prohibitions that reduced the role of women according to circumstances and concrete needs. A case in point: working outside the home. In some countries where unemployment is an old social plague, a law subordinates the possibility of a woman working to her husband's approval. She who violates this law loses the right to be supported by her husband. However, in the Koran the latter right is not subject to any constraint whatsoever, unless outside the bond of matrimony.
Another example: the veil. On the subject the Koran writes: “It is for them the best way to make themselves be known and not offended”.
That's all. Today, these words could be interpreted as a search for identity. Refusing to wear it - perhaps also appealing to freedom of expression and equal rights for women and men - is seen as following the culture of the much-hated European colonisers. In other words, fighting against the ghost of westernization.
After all, even we have our own, specular, ghost. It is called Expansionist Islam, and it is embodied by those young Muslim women who, in Europe, wish to remain veiled even at school.
But if, at a more or less subconscious level, we did not perceive this scarf as a menacing fifth column of the Muslim expansion, why dramatise about it so much?

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