c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The Verse: “A nation led by a woman shall not prosper.”

The Context: This verse is part of a longer hadith, or narration about the life of Muhammad, recounting the story of how a Persian king executed one of the Islamic prophet’s messengers, sparking his anger against the empire. Muhammad made the statement after the king died and his daughter became ruler.

This hadith is considered sahih, the Arabic term for the highest level of authenticity that scholars can give to a hadith, based on a rigorous verification of the chain of narrators who transmitted the reports from generation to generation.

The Controversy: Some Muslim women worry this hadith is used to keep them out of leadership roles, deny them educations and generally oppress them. They say it is also inconsistent with Islamic principles of gender equality, expressed in the Quran and other examples from Muhammad’s life.

Interpretations: Mohammad Fadel, an Islamic law professor at the University of Toronto, argues that this hadith, as sahih, cannot be dismissed as invalid only because the text suggests women are inferior. Rather, the text must be reinterpreted.

While Islamic scholars and leaders in the past have invoked this hadith to keep women down, says Fadel, other scholars suggest another view: that the hadith is a historical reference to Muhammad’s anger with the Persian Empire, not a pronouncement that women are inferior.

“Some of those presumptions on which the hadith were based are no longer around,” explained Ebrahim Moosa, an Islamic scholar at Duke University. “You don’t kill the hadith by throwing it out; you have to interpretively kill it, to show that it’s no longer applicable.”

KRE/PH END SACIRBEY

Editors: See main story, RNS-ISLAM-HADITH, transmitted Aug. 2, 2006.