The Dark Danger: Bigotry: The Fanatics' Idea of How Muslim Women Should Treat Their Husbands

When a man calls his wife to his bed, and she does not respond and he (the husband) spends the night angry with her, the angels curse her until morning. (Sahih Bukhari and Muslim)

If a woman spends the night deserting her husband's bed (does not sleep with him), then the angels send their curses on her till she comes back (to her husband). (Sahih Bukhari, Book 62, Hadith 122)

O womenfolk, if you knew the rights that your husbands have over you, every one of you would wipe the dust from her husband's feet with her face. (Reported as sahih by Ibn Hibban, and with a jayyid isnad by al-Bazzar.

See Ibn al-Jawzi, Ahkam al-nisa', p. 311.)

By Him in Whose Hand is my soul, if from his foot to the crown of his head there was a wound pouring forth pus, and she (the wife)

came and licked that, then she would (still)

not have fulfilled his right. (Ibn Hajar al-Haytami 2/121 Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Musnad, V, 239)

Any woman who asks her husband for a divorce with no good reason will be deprived of even smelling the scent of paradise. (Reported by Tirmidhi, 2/329, abwab al-talaq, 11; Ibn Hibban, 9/490, Kitab al-nikah, bab ma'ashirah al-zawjayn)

There are three people whose prayers will not be accepted, neither their good works: … a woman whose husband is angry with her, until he is pleased with her again … (Reported by Ibn Hibban in his Sahih, 12/178, Kitab al-ashribah, 2, fasl fi'l-ashribah)

She who does not observe the rights of her husband will have failed to observe the rights of God. (Shir'a)

In the mentality of the fanatics, women have an obligation to abide by the ignorant idea of "performing wifely duties" for their husbands, even if they are not happy with their treatment and morality.

John William Godward's oil painting "A Souvenir,"

1920 A woman who hurts her husband will be under the curse of God until she makes him contented. (R.

Nâsihîn)

If we consider these hadiths one by one; O womenfolk, if you knew the rights that your husbands have over you, every one of you would wipe the dust from her husband's feet with her face.

(Reported as sahih by Ibn Hibban, and with a jayyid isnad by al-Bazzar. See Ibn al-Jawzi, Ahkam al-nisa', p. 311.)

By Him in Whose Hand is my soul, if from his foot to the crown of his head there was a wound pouring forth pus, and she (the wife) came and licked that, then she would (still) not have fulfilled his right. (Ibn Hajar al-Haytami 2/121 Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Musnad, V, 239)

When we look at these two false hadiths, we see that Islam is portrayed as depicting women as supposedly second-class entities condemned to submit to their husbands' every whim (surely our Lord, the Qur'an and Islam are beyond that); according to that devilish way of thinking, the husband has such dominion over a woman that she will never be able to repay him, not even if she wipes the dust from his feet with her face or licks his body clean of pus. Despite this weird mentality, for hundreds of years, nobody felt the need to even question why a husband should enjoy such rights over a woman, and that led to this blind, superstitious belief putting down deep roots; so much so that most Muslims have regarded that kind of twisted logic as legitimate.

Under this foul way of thinking, women have been forced to fulfill the ignorant concept known as "a woman's duties" toward their husbands even if they are deeply unhappy with those husbands' appalling behavior and lack of moral values. They have been despised and mistreated, and the precious few rights they enjoyed have been restricted to the point of irrelevance. The idea that they are second-class and feeble entities condemned to oppression has been imposed on them by force, and that perspective has become institutionalized in Islamic societies. For centuries, nobody stood up and said, "There is no such way of thinking or belief in the Qur'an. Men and women are equal. God bestows wide rights and freedoms on women in the Qur'an." On the contrary, for centuries, the mentality of superstition has imposed non-Qur'anic practices on some ignorant Muslims through a variety of falsehoods spoken supposedly in the name of God and the faith, such as, "This is what the faith commands. God and the angels will curse those who do not do it. Such people will be sinners. They cannot earn God's approval or enter paradise." The characters of most Muslim women have been annihilated by husbands brought up with the teachings of the fanatical mindset because in the religion of the fanatics, women have no choice but to obey their husbands and do whatever they want. The great majority are not allowed to read, work, enter into social life or even so much as look out of a window. Therefore, since they are made physically and psychologically dependent on their husbands, and since the customs and traditions that prevail in that segment of society also nourish the fanatical mindset, it is next to impossible for women to free themselves from that repression.

We need to ask here, what it is about men in these fanatical societies governed by superstitions that cause men to view themselves as wholly superior and adopt the perspective that women are little more than chattel? In the view of the Qur'an, superiority lies solely in piety, and the reward for that is to be hoped from God. How can a man have such dominion over a woman that she can never repay him even if she licks the pus off of his body? Who created those rights that can never be repaid, and why? What can bestow any rights on him apart from this superiority of piety? God certainly bestows no such privilege on him, and thus that privilege appears nowhere in the Qur'an: So where did this claimed superiority come from? How did "every husband" without exception come to enjoy this lofty position, irrespective of whether he is devout or irreligious, a believer or a polytheist, a sinner or a tyrant?

It is the false hadiths in question that have bestowed this false elevation onto men and that have been John William Godward's oil painting "A Tryst,"

1912 made part of Islam by the fanatical mindset. They have spread and imposed that mindset, which is not in the Qur'an and which is cursed by God, in the name of the faith. Most Islamic communities, and even most women who have been indoctrinated in these Islamic communities, simply cannot comprehend any other way of thinking. That is one of the worst scourges that the religion of the fanatics has inflicted upon the world.