“Fascist-Islamophobia”: A Case Study in Totalitarian Demonization - Part 4

by Dr. Robert Dickson Crane

Chapter Four

A.  Sex Slavery

One of the most un-Islamic and bizarre of the charges levied by Spencer against the Prophet Muhammad concerns his alleged practice of sex-slavery.  He writes, “From the twenty-first-century perspective this is one of the most problematic aspects of Muhammad’s status as ‘an excellent model of conduct’: the treatment of women as war prizes, with no consideration of their will.  Even a contemporary Islamic legal manual stipulates that when a woman was taken captive, her ‘previous marriage is immediately annulled’.  If a jihad warrior takes her captive, she has no say in the matter.  The number of women victimized by this across the Islamic centuries cannot be calculated. … This phenomenon in the Islamic world… is particularly hard to eradicate because of the prophetic sanction it has received.”

The contemporary manual he is referring to has been translated by the American convert from Christianity, Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, and is widely available under the title, Reliance of the Traveler.  Shaykh Nuh is known as perhaps the most literalist of all the Sufi shaykhs, which normally would be a contradiction in terms.  He has spent much of his life teaching his followers around the world that all Christians are going to hell. 

Spencer states that the Qur’an supports sex slavery.  In the chapter “Casting Terror into their Hearts,” he relates the case of the Banu al-Mustaliq, an Arab tribe related to the Quraysh, who “were gathering against the Muslims, so he led the Muslims out to attack them.  And Allah, according to Ibn Ishaq, ‘put the Banu al-Mustaliq to flight and killed some of them and gave the apostle their wives, children, and property as booty. … The Qur’an permitted them to have sexual intercourse with slave girls captured in battle – ‘the captives whom your right hands possess’(4:24).”

Again and again throughout the Qur’an sexual intercourse with women captured in battle is condemned as either fornication or, if either one is married, as adultery.  The reference that Spencer uses, Surah al Nisaa “The Chapter on Women”, reads, “And [forbidden to you are] all married women other than those whom you rightfully possess [through wedlock]: this is god’s ordinance, binding upon you. But lawful to you are all [women] beyond these, for you to seek out, offering them of your possessions [dower], taking them in honest wedlock, and not in fornication.”  There are differences in interpretation about this verse, as there are on other verses, depending on whether one wants to use it as justification for what one is already doing or wants to do.  The words “whom your right hands possess” (ma malakat aymanukum), has always been considered by many of the most authoritative scholars to mean “women whom you rightfully possess through wedlock.”  The first words of the verse, “all married women”, which follows enumeration of women forbidden to marry due to incest, is meant to stress the prohibition of sexual relations with any woman other than one’s lawful wife.  This outlaws also all concubines.  As in so many of Spencer’s versions or perversions of the Qur’an, the meanings he gives are the precise opposite of those that seem clear both from the context of surrounding verses and from knowledge of the original Arabic. 

Throughout the Qur’an conditions are imposed that if followed would have eliminated slavery altogether within a matter of a very few generations. For example, if a woman held in slavery bore a child from the master, both she and the child are immediately declared to be manumitted or free. The standard penance for any manner of sins is to free a slave.  Muslims today joke that they are disadvantaged because they have no more slaves to free.

Scholars interpret Surah al Anfal 8:67 to forbid any wars or violence in which the acquisition of slaves is in any way a purpose, and requires all such slaves to be freed immediately.  Surah Muhammad 47:4 decrees that all prisoners of war must be freed as soon as hostilities cease.  For all practical purposes, these two verses abolish every kind of slavery of both women and men.

B.  Domestic Violence

Spencer discusses the rights of women by suggesting that they are all slaves in fact, even one’s own wife.  He quotes a hadith from his favorite “authority”, Ibn Ishaq, regarding the treatment of wives.  “God allows you to beat them but not with severity.  … Lay injunctions on women kindly, for they are prisoners with you, having no control over their own persons.  You have taken them only as a trust from God, and you have the enjoyment of their persons by the words of God.”

In support of this alleged right to do violence to one’s wife, Spencer translates Surah al Nisa’a 4:34 to command a man to scourge his wife.  The two dictionary meanings of “scourge” are: 1) to whip; and 2) to inflict severe suffering, vengeance, or punishment.  He takes this from Marmaduke Pickthall’s translation as follows: “So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded.  As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them.  Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them.”

The patriarchical dominance in scholarship over the centuries led to interpreting the word daraba as “beat” in order to justify what may have been common practice, and this then led to the establishmentarian view known as taqlid, which forbid all innovation in thought.  The only disputes then were over how severe the wife’s immorality must be to invoke this verse.  Some said any disobedience was sufficient, citing even the Christian marriage vow of women, which was universal until recently, commanding wives to “love, honor, and obey” their husbands.  Others said wife-beating is permissible only if one’s wife commits adultery. 

According to one tradition, however, cited by four of the major commentaries, Abu Da’ud, Nasa’i, Ibn Majah, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the Prophet Muhammad forbid the beating of any woman ever, “Never beat God’s handmaidens”.  He exclaimed, “How does anyone of you beat his wife as he beats a stallion camel and then embrace (sleep with) her?” (Sahih Bukhari).  The true following of the Prophet’s example, who never beat any woman under any circumstances, would prohibit wife beating even with “a folded handkerchief”.

It is perhaps excusable that Robert Spencer is not familiar with the research by Abdulhamid Abusulayman, “Marital Discord: Recapturing the Full Islamic Spirit of Human Dignity”, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought and reaffirmed by the Chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, Shaykh Taha Jabir al Alwani, which first identified seventeen different uses of the word daraba in the Qur’an.  Dr. Abusulayman observes that the general connotation of “daraba” in Qur’anic parlance is “to separate, distance, depart, and abandon.”  He points out that the idiom “jalala” is used for lash, whip, flog as in corporal punishment in Surah al Nur 24:2.  The “beating” verse refers to separation as a last resort, and itself must be interpreted within the context of the Prophet’s teaching that, “the worst of all permissible things is divorce.”

As the linguist, Jeremy Henzell Thomas, wrote in a letter to the present author on February 14, 2005, “The connotations of departure and seclusion are more readily acceptable and more compatible with the Qur’anic voice than the association of physical injury, psychological pain and disgrace, and well supported by the actual practice of the Prophet.  It is an effective emotional remedy that accomplishes the purpose of Islam in establishing the family structure on a basis of affection and compassion. … Given the fact that the Qur’an speaks of husband and wife living together on a footing of love, kindness, mercy, and mutual consideration, it affirms an approach to the Qur’an that is emancipatory rather than misogynistic.”

C.  Pedophilia

Another remarkable interpretation of a Qur’anic verse to justify Spencer’s charge that Islam and the Prophet Muhammad are inherently violent is his translation of Surah al Talaq 65:4 as approving marriage before puberty.  Spencer has found the highly problematic translation by Maulana Maududi, head of the fundamentalist movement in Pakistan, which reads as follows: “If you are in doubt concerning those of your wives who have ceased menstruating, know that their waiting period shall be three months. The same shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated.” 

All the standard translations refer only to whether the wife is menstruating or not, without any age implication.  Muhammad Asad’s translation reads: “Now for such of your women as are beyond the age of monthly courses, as well as for such as do not have any courses, their waiting period – if you have any doubt about it – shall be three months” (ya’isna min al mahidi min nisa’ikum in irtabtum).  The scholars consider that this is a generic reference to any physiological impediment, whether temporary or permanent. 

All legal provisions of the Islamic shari’ah must be interpreted by their purpose, because otherwise the law would become incoherent.  The purpose of the waiting period is to assure that there is no pregnancy, because the responsibilities for peaceful reconciliation would in that case be greater, as would also the husband’s responsibilities to care for his wife and child.  If there are no courses or if the courses are in doubt, after three months it would be clear whether or not the wife is pregnant.

Spencer argues that in some Muslim countries even today prepubescent marriage is common and that this is evidence that The Prophet Muhammad consummated his marriage with A’isha when she was either seven or nine years old, in accordance with some hadith that conveniently made this assertion for men who want it to be so.  He cites UNICEF reports that in the Year 2002 half the girls in Afghani and Pakistani refugee camps married by age thirteen.  Spencer concludes, “This is the price that women have paid throughout Islamic history, and continue to pay, for Muhammad’s status as ‘an excellent example of conduct’ (Qur’an 33:21)”.

This conclusion begs the question of whether the Prophet Muhammad could serve as a model in this matter, that is, whether he did indeed marry A’isha when she was nine.  The evidence both for and against this is reported in an article by the physician, T. O. Shanavas, in The Minaret of March 1999.

He first discredits the reliability of the original reports about A’isha’s age.  The relevant hadith trace back to Hisham ibn ‘Urwah, who started this story, allegedly from his father, when Hisham was senile and no longer competent as a narrator (muhadith).  He lived in Medina until he was 71 years old and had among his pupils Malik ibn Anas, yet neither Malik nor anyone else from Medina ever reported such a young age for A’isha at the time of marriage.  Shanavas gives statements by contemporaries who stated that after Hisham moved to Iraq at the age of 71 and had a long life there he was no longer competent. For example, Ibn Hajar al ‘Asqala’ni in volume eleven of his Dar Ihya al Turath al Islami, wrote, “I have been told that Malik objected to those narratives of Hisham that were reported through the people of Iraq.”

Equally telling is computerized analysis of hundreds of relevant hadith indicating that A’isha at the time of her betrothal to The Prophet Muhammad was not seven but seventeen.  Tabari quotes the age of seven according to Hisham ibn ‘Urwah, Ibn Hunbal, and Ibn Sad, but states in another work that “All four of his [Abu Bakr’s] children were born of his two wives during the pre-Islamic period.”  This would have placed A’isha’s birth some years before 610, yet the generally accepted year of her marriage to The Prophet was 624, which would give her a minimum age at marriage of fourteen.  This self-contradiction discredits Tabari as an authoritative narrator in this particular matter.

As one example of what computerized analysis can do, according to Ibn Kathir, A’isha’s sister, Asma, died at the age of 100 in the Year 73, which would have made her 28 years old at the time of the hijra.  Asma was ten years older than A’isha.  A’isha thus was either 17 or 18 years old at this time, which would place her age at marriage to The Prophet at 19.

Several hadith report the participation of A’isha in the first two of the three battles for the defense of Medina.  The Prophet did not permit children under fifteen years of age to participate in either of these battles, because they were to help the men, not burden them.  Since the Battle of Badr took place in 624, A’isha was at least fifteen when she married the Prophet that same year. 

Surah 54, Al Kamar, was revealed eight years before the hijra of 622, namely, in 614.  At the time A’isha was a young girl (jariyah), not an infant (sibyah) or yet unborn, as she would have had to be if she were only nine in 624.
According to a narrative reported by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, after the death of The Prophet’s first wife, Khadija, he was advised to marry a bikr, which is defined as “an adult woman with no sexual experience prior to marriage,” and A’isha was recommended to him as the daughter of his friend Abu Bakr.  This would suggest that at the time of her marriage, A’isha was an adult in her upper teens, a decade older than what Spencer would have us believe.  In much of the world even today, this is almost over age for marriage.

D.  Competence as a Witness

Spencer asserts: ”Islamic law restricts the validity of a woman’s testimony – particularly in cases involving sexual behavior.  He quotes the Qur’an in Surah al Baqara 2:282: “Call in two male witnesses from among you, but if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women.”  Spencer then cites an undisclosed legal manual that allegedly prohibits women from testifying on any subjects other than commercial transactions and concludes that, “otherwise only men can testify.” 

In fact, the exact opposite is true.  Women can testify as equals of men in all matters except in commercial transactions.  In commercial matters at the time, women were generally less knowledgeable than men, though the Prophet’s only wife until her death after fifteen years of marriage, Khadija, was a superior business woman.  Since the general culture at the time tended to restrict women’s roles in business, they were protected from the burden of testifying in such unfamiliar situations by exempting them from responsibility as a sole witness.  In accordance with the fundamental principle of Islamic normative law that rules apply only to fulfill their higher purpose, this need for protection and the provision for it no longer apply in the modern world.

Spencer concludes from his reversal of Islamic law on testimony that, “Consequently, it is even today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the shari’ah.  Unscrupulous men can commit rape with impunity as long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses.  They get off scot-free because the victim’s account is inadmissible.  Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself … because the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery.  This accounts for the fact that as many as 75 percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape. … Moreover, such abuses are extraordinarily resistant to criticism and reform – they are, after all, based on the example of the Prophet.”

This miscarriage of justice certainly does occur in Pakistan and some other predominantly Muslim countries, but the fault is the un-Islamic culture, not Islamic law.

E.  Stoning for Adultery

The practice of stoning for adultery is legislated in six countries of the world today.  Rather than expressing amazement at how this can possibly be in the modern world or could ever have been, he argues that the continuation of this practice is a natural result of the inherent violence in the Prophet Muhammad as a model for all time. 

He emphasizes the account from Ibn Ishaq about the Prophet Muhammad’s alleged order that a couple be stoned to death for adultery.  This story is clearly fabricated, because the Qur’an nowhere prescribes or even mentions such a bizarre punishment.  At the beginning of Sura Al Nur, 24:2, it limits punishment to one hundred lashes. 

The practice of stoning for adultery in six Muslim countries today shows the extent to which extremism can spread in the absence of critical thought.  The Muslim practice of stoning originated in a single hadith, which was included at the beginning of the Muwatta of Imam Malik.  This was widely accepted despite the fact that the last narrator asserted that he had heard the story from a person who had died when the narrator was only two years old.  This should have automatically excluded the story from any further consideration by scholars. Unfortunately, only now, after many centuries of intellectual stagnation are scholars replicating the long-forgotten, critical analysis necessary to uncover the extent of the fraudulent nature of hadith invented to justify the un-Islamic practices that one ruler or another had imposed.

The extremist hadith about stoning is used by Spencer to compare Jewish mercy with Muslim vengeance and to show how Muslims accuse the Jews of corrupting their own scripture.  On one occasion the Prophet challenged the Jews on the appropriate punishment of a couple accused of adultery.  The Jews said that they restricted the punishment to lashing, thereby showing mercy.  The hadith states that the Prophet Muhammad accused the Jews of corrupting their inherited revelation.  He then ordered the couple to be stoned to death. 

Spencer gives the moral of the story at the conclusion of Chaper Six as follows:  “Not only does this episode reveal the sharp distinction between Jewish and Islamic concepts of compassion, but the contrast between Muhammad’s teaching and that of Jesus (“let he who is without sin cast the first stone”) could not be more marked – and the difference has shaped Muslim and Christian history, and ideas of mercy and justice.” 

*  This is a pre-publication copy, with copyright in the name of the author, Robert D. Crane.  Parts One and Three of this book are scheduled for publication separately by the International Institute of Islamic Thought as part of the Conference Proceedings of a panel, entitled “Countering Islamophobia: The Intellectual’s Response,” held at the IIIT’s offices in Herndon, Virginia, on October 17th, 2007.  Part Two is scheduled for condensation and publication by the IIIT as Part Three of the book, Compassionate Justice: The Normative Approach to Human Rights, Robert D. Crane, 2008.  The final published version will include all of the notes and references.

  Dr. Crane is a former Franciscan monk of the Third Order who embraced Islam as a spiritual path while living in the Gulf emirate of Bahrain in 1976-77 writing the book, Planning the Future of Saudi Arabia, Praeger/CBS, 1977.  He earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1959 with a specialization on comparative legal systems.  He is Director for Global Strategy at the Abraham Federation: A Global Center for Peace through Compassionate Justice, and author or co-author of a dozen books, including Compassionate Justice: Source of Convergence Between Science and Religion.