Nawal El Saadawi Quotes
The family code in Egypt is one of the worst family codes in the Arab world. Polygamy. The husband is having absolute power over the family.
El Saadawi, Nawal. "Conversation with Nawal El Saadawi." Interview by Harry Kreisler. Conversations with History, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, 16 Apr. 1999.
This type of religious sexism is not unique to Islam. Fundamentalist Christians place women in a secondary role as do fundamentalist orthodox Jews although both allow a man to take only one wife. The Islamic scripture tells us that the Prophet allowed multiple wives only if the man had the resources to care for the wives and all the children. 4 is the maximum.
It is of little comfort to the Muslim wife who is beaten to know that her abusive spouse is not among the “best” of men in the eyes of Allah. She probably had such suspicions herself.
This is a particularly interesting passage of the Koran. On the one hand it provides the religious justification for the sexist dominance of the male in a marriage. However, at the same time, it gave wives rights at a time when few cultures and religions did--such as the right to own and inherit property. Women in the Western world did not obtain some of these rights until the last hundred years. So historically, Islam was somewhat ahead of Christianity when Muhammed lived, but while most Western interpretations of gender role and rights have changed and advanced, a small minority of Islam has been reformist and modern so Islam has gone from a leader in modern gender relations to an obstacle to equality and fairness by not changing and reforming.
Lockwood had sought the post of Minister to Turkey, a Muslim country which allowed a man four wives. Cleveland had instead selected a man who was generally known as a womanizer.
In many countries, wives must have the permission of their husbands to have any major medical procedure. In some she cannot leave the home, travel, or make a contract without the permission of the husbands. Each year, in the third world, many women die in from not being able to have medical care because they were not allowed to leave the village to go to a hospital or clinic in an emergency, until the husband could be found to grant permission. Under American and most law of developed countries, either spouse had the unilateral right to have any medical procedure and neither is required to inform or obtain the permission of the other.
At the time the law in the United States gave a husband control of all property of the wife including any money she might earn. In this sense the English Christian legal tradition was far less fair and modern than even Islam which guaranteed some property and inheritance rights to women.
Nawal El Saadawi was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician, and psychiatrist. Described as "the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World", and "Egypt's most radical woman", she was the author of several books on the oppression of women in Islam, including the practice of female genital mutilation; She wrote and spoke to ban it. She also wrote and spoke to ban male circumcision.
