6 facts about women, testimony, inheritance and marriage in Islamic law

The objection runs as follows: the Quran itself rates a woman’s word at half a man’s, since a debt needs two male witnesses or one man and two women. The verse exists and says this. It sets out how to record a loan, and asks for two men, or one man and two women, so that if one of the women forgets, the other may remind her.^[1]

Its scope is narrow. Taha Jabir al-Alwani observed that this is the only verse in the Quran that pairs two women with one man, and that most jurists classed much of its content as guidance on avoiding disputes over money, with only a few treating it as binding.^[2] The verse gives its own reason, the risk that one witness forgets, which al-Alwani tied to a society in which women seldom handled credit.^[2]

The classical schools did not apply the ratio across the board. Ibn Rushd, in his comparative manual of the schools, records agreement that property is established by one man and two women on the strength of the verse, and that the majority accepted the testimony of women alone, with no man present, in matters that men seldom witness, such as childbirth, the cry of a newborn and women’s hidden defects.^[3] The schools differed on the number required for such testimony: Malik held that two women suffice, al-Shafi’i held four, and Abu Hanifa accepted a woman’s word for what lies between the navel and the knee.^[3] He adds that the schools also discussed the testimony of a single woman to a case of suckling, in light of the Prophet’s question to the man in the report, “How, when she has suckled you both?”^[3]

Critics point to the rule that a son receives twice the share of a daughter.^[4] That rule is part of a wider system. The same chapter of the Quran makes the husband responsible for supporting his wife from his own wealth,^[5] and requires that the bride receive her dowry (mahr, the marriage gift) as her own property, which she may waive only by her own choice.^[6]

A daughter keeps what she inherits and what she receives at marriage, and owes nothing to the household. Her brother carries the cost of a wife, children and, in classical law, needy relatives. The double share funds a duty that she does not bear. The two-to-one ratio also holds in only some cases: a mother and father each receive one sixth from a child who leaves offspring, an equal share.^[4]

The verse that allows a man up to four wives at once attaches a condition in the same sentence: if he fears that he will not be just, then one.^[7] A later verse in the same chapter tells men that they will never be able to deal with their wives with full equality however much they wish to, and forbids them to leave a wife suspended.^[8]

Read together, the verses set a ceiling and a test of justice that the Quran itself says few men will pass in full. The text names one wife as the course for a man who doubts that he can be fair.

Honour killing is often presented as an Islamic practice. The clearest report on the question points the other way. Sa’d ibn Ubada asked the Prophet whether a man who found another man with his wife should kill him. The Prophet answered no.^[9] When Sa’d protested, the Prophet told those present to listen to what their chief was saying drawing attention to his outburst. The answer to the question itself stood: no.^[9]

Islamic law treats the accusation of adultery as a matter for a court, with a demanding standard of proof and a separate procedure of mutual oaths (li’an) for a husband who has no witnesses. Private vengeance has no place in that scheme.

Defenders of the practice cite one report, in which the Prophet told a woman who performed circumcision in Medina not to cut severely. Abu Dawud, who recorded it, judged it himself: he called it a weak report, noted that it was also transmitted with a gap in its chain, and said that one of its narrators is unknown.^[10]

In November 2006 the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, said that he found nothing in religion requiring circumcision for women, and the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, noted that the Prophet did not circumcise his daughters.^[11]

Critics say that Islamic law grants a husband sex on demand, and cite the report that if a man calls his wife to bed and she refuses, so that he spends the night angry, the angels curse her until morning.^[12] The report is a moral warning addressed to the wife about refusal that leaves her husband aggrieved. It describes the husband going to sleep angry. It prescribes no penalty and grants him no licence to compel her.

The Quran frames the marriage bond in other terms. Spouses are a garment for one another.^[13] God placed affection and mercy between them so that each may find rest in the other.^[14] Husbands are commanded to live with their wives on a footing of kindness (bi al-ma’ruf, according to what is right and decent).^[15] Force against a wife breaks each of these commands, and the jurists’ ban on harm, cited in the article on 4:34, applies to it.