Another one from Anj.

Anjem Choudary @anjemchoudary

MCB Spokesman says he doesn’t believe in segregation between men & women but Allah (SWT) & the Prophet said they must be e.g. in gatherings

MCB Spokesman says that wife’s don’t need to obey their husbands but Allah (SWT) says that they must [Qur’an 4:34] i.e husbands have Qawama!

So I was curious about Qawama, so I looked it up. I found an article at Women Living Under Muslim Laws by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im.

 The most important principle of Shari’a influencing the status and rights of women is the notion of qawama. Qawama has its origin in verse 4:34 of the Koran which states that:

“Men have qawama (guardianship and authority) over women because of the advantage they (men) have over them (women) and because they (men) spend their property in supporting them (women)”.

According to Shari’a interpretations of this verse, men as a group are the guardians of and are superior to women as a group, and the men of a particular family are the guardians of and are superior to the women of that family.

This notion of general and specific qawama has had far reaching consequences for the status and rights of women in both the private and public domains. For example, Shari’a provides that women are disqualified from holding general public office, which involves the exercise of authority over men, because, in keeping with verse 4:34 of the Qur’an men are entitled to exercise authority over women and not the reverse.

It’s in a book; it’s a sentence in a book; therefore millions of women for hundreds of years have had their lives stunted and confined.

I have a really easy solution to this problem of men spending their property in supporting women and thus having “guardianship” over them and being superior to them. Share the support duties, and share the power and the equality. See? See how easy that is? Men shouldn’t be required to do all the money-providing, and women shouldn’t be required to be inferior. Both should be free to arrange things the way both want to. Both should be free to ignore the sentence in the 1700-years-old book. It’s just a book. There are a lot of books. Nobody has to obey that book. It’s an illusion to think you have to.