Much has been noted about Muslim harsh
treatment of women. Some of it derives from various and old tribal cultures and
is not specified in the Quran or Haditha.
But close study by historians say it derives principally from Arabia,
Persia and the Prophet himself. Arab
life before Mohammad was tribal and mostly nomadic. 90% of Arabs were nomadic (Bedouins) and the
other 10% settled, raising primarily spices, dates and other fruits. The Red
Sea is a tectonic boundary which spawns volcanoes which are a souce for gold
near Mecca. Desert clans are small and close-knit, defending resources. But they fight over more than waterholes and
camels. The Arabs took great pride in
their women’s beauty. Their language is
close to Hebrew and gained alphabetic writing early, but most Bedouins had
little use for reading and disdained it.
Thus poetry and eloquent stories, especially about their women and war
was their passion. The desert winds made
beauty fleeting, however, and the constant struggle for survival made for a lot
of drudgery in women’s work. 10 minutes
of romance and a lifetime of drudgery. Women’s prime value was in having
children and thus men fought to the death for their wives. Yet women were not partners but
chattels. When a man died, his estate
contained his wives for the heir.
In this culture, Mohammad was not
unusual. He arranged marriages to gain
allies, took in a couple widows of loyal followers as an act of mercy, and
engaged in betrothal to Aisha who was 6 years old. He was wealthy so he had 10
wives. But they quarreled and were
demanding of him and Mohammad seems to have soured on his harem, saying in the
Haditha that he had seen heaven and few women were there, maybe one in 1000
makes it. The Quran allowed 4 women in
polygamy, and has advice about beatings and other treatment. His first wife, Khadija, was Jewish, who faithfully
recorded the visions of the illiterate Prophet, but her fellow Jews poked fun
of him and his strange new religion. Hence
his distrust of women’s faith. Mohammad died in Medina and accomplished some
astounding things. Where Arabs had been
idolatrous and worshipped sacred stones—like the Black stone of Mecca’s Kaaba—Mohammad
had created a new religion from visions, borrowed heavily from Judaism and
linked to Jesus. Before Mohammad, other
Arabs had noted that their cruel feuds and culture seemed low-life compared to
Greco-Romans and Persians, and seemingly needed a new faith, but what? This
religion was simple and stressed its spread by any means possible, though we
don’t think he had designs of world conquest during his life. Yet under his
faith, Arabia went from tribes to a
nation. He left no successor except Abu
Bekr who led prayers in his place in the mosque. The leaders voted Abu Bekr Caliph of Islam
over the protest of Ali, Mohammad’s cousin, leading to the major Sunni-Shiite split
in Islam to this day.
Some Syrian Arabs were resisting
Byzantium and another Arab tribe wanted to invade Persia. The two empires had exhausted one another with
war the previous century, and the Arabs found the looting easy. There are a
host of reasons why the Arabs kept winning, but soon they had overrun the
Persian empire. [Understand Persian Empire to extend from the Indus Valley of Pakistan and Afghanistan through Iraq to Syria and then north to the Caucus Mtns.] Persians were a former
nomadic people too. Leaders had mistresses they used as public escorts while
wives stayed home and were required facial coverings when they went out in
public. The Arabs adopted a lot of
Persian government and culture in order to rule and seem to have adopted this
regime with the wives as well. Proof that headcoverings were adopted from Persia is that Muslim women didn't wear them until about 100 years after Mohammad.
While this follows fundamentalist Islamic rules, modernists have vacated the escorting of women outside the home and even head covering. Apart from the Persian Gulf and 3rd world areas like Afghanistan, most Muslims are monogamous.
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