The Islamic Case for Excluding Women from Public Order

The Islamic Case for Excluding Women from Public Order The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s stance on women’s role in national life is viewed with suspicion even among some Islamic circles. This is especially so with regard to the Islamic government’s decision to exclude women from higher education. This paper seeks to present the Islamic case for the general exclusion of women from public order. We begin by clarifying the nature of the distinction between public and private order. Private and Public Order Private life is that sphere of existence in which individual consciousness is formed. Most world religions – Islam, Judaism, Christianity, even Hinduism – recognize the primacy of private life in the formation of being. That is why a large proportion of Sharia injunctions relate to the private life of the individual. Liberalism – and most idealist thinkers – at least theoretically acknowledge the primacy of private life in social order. But they view the formation of individual consciousness as unproblematic. It is assumed that everyone is naturally selfish, pleasure and power seeking. Socialists and nationalists in general reject the primacy of private order and believe that individual consciousness is formed in public order through communicative interaction. Man in this view is a species being and forms his nature through interaction in a community of “associated procedures”. Islam rejects – as does non-revisionist Christianity – the liberal and socialist conceptions of being. According to Islam man possess both angelic and bestial qualities. He is inclined both to the satisfaction of his biological desires and to the fulfilment of his spiritual needs. The private circle is the principal sphere for the nurturing of the spiritual qualities of man. The family is the principle source for the nurturing of man’s spiritual qualities and the principle agent for creating individual moral consciousness through the mother and the wife. Women rule the private sphere within Islamic society. Their rights and duties are all centered on their role as queen of the household – their rights and duties are fully elucidated in the edict on the subject issued by Hazrat Ameer-ul-Moumineen issued in the early days of the Revolution in January 2022. Love, selflessness, devotion and the spirit of sacrifice are nurtured constantly and continuously by the acts of the wife and the mother. Creating and sustaining Islamic consciousness is a fulltime, life-long activity and the indispensable means for the nurturing of femininity. That is why Islam relieves the women of the duty to participate in production and governance – the sphere of the public order. Women’s participation in production and governance necessarily destroys femininity and erodes family life and family life disintegration implies the deconstruction of Islamic individuality – the nurturing of the spiritual qualities of man’s being. The Capitalist Attack on Femininity Despite its valorization of chastity , Christianity paved the way for capitalism’s sustained attack on femininity. It did so by devaluing the status of the mother and the wife through its institution of nunnhood (separating women from the family sphere). From the Convent to the Factory was an easy transition. Christianity’s subsumption within capitalism’s civil society is so comprehensive that Pope Francis has become an advocate of homosexuality rights.

Capitalism’s attack on femininity began in the 19th century and is now in full cry. This attack has taken two forms. First the commodification of female labor is almost complete in the West and growing rapidly in non-Muslim South and East Asia (especially in China and India). Secondly the commodification of women’s bodies has led to the development of pornography and entertainment as the leading industries of the world. The Feminist movement demands greater women’s participation in capitalist civil society – more jobs, more access to governance roles, more sexual freedom, more defeminization, more “relief” from child and elderly care responsibilities. The Feminist movement is in effect a movement for the defeminiztion of women through a devalorization of the role of the mother and wife. As our lord and master Hazrat Maulana Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall – may Allah bless him – taught capitalism is essentially a spiritual force – the spirit of takhathur. This spirit seizes control of man’s labor and man’s wealth to produce and reproduce capitalist individuality – an individuality dominated by the vice of avarice (hirs) and covetousness (hasad). Capitalism stands Christianity on its head. Christianity regarded avarice and covetousness as evil to be suppressed through penance and prayer. Capitalism celebrates the universal practice of avarice and covetousness. Creating capitalist individuality requires the destruction of private life – the sphere of the family for the nurturing of love, devotion and self-sacrifice. Capital penetrates the private sphere in its perpetual quest for the commodification of all aspects of being. It cannot tolerate the existence of the mother and the wife – the embarkments of love, devotion and self-sacrifice. It crushes femininity hypocritically calling it Feminism. The capitalist individual is an isolated, alienated being who knows nothing of love or self-sacrifice. He is human capital obsessed with the desire to relentlessly accumulate through the praxis of capitalist rationality. The Imperialist Assault on Femininity Having destroyed femininity in the West and in much of East Asia, imperialism is seeking to destroy it in the Muslim world and especially in the Islamic states of Iran and Afghanistan. The attack on femininity is especially strong and protracted in Afghanistan. The imperialists who killed about 193000 women and injured 1.7 million women (not to count those women who were widowed, lost their sons and fathers in imperialist air raids) are now shamelessly championing women’s “rights” – the “rights” to submit to capitalist production and governance processes. The imperialists seek the destruction of traditional Afghan Muslim society in the hope that this will eventually lead to a delegitimation of Islamic rule and the replacement of the Islamic government by a pro-imperialist administration. Spreading lewdness in Afghan society in a major aim of imperialism – after all UN staff are notorious for the sexual crimes they have frequently committed in Sub-Sahara Africa and Latin America. Imperialism seeks the commodification of private life in Afghanistan.

The stance of the Islamic government is in line with mainstream Islamic teachings and also in line with the practices in Islam’s pre-imperialist twelve hundred years of history. Women were excluded from participation in public life in all Islamic societies in the pre-imperialist societies. In no Muslim society prior to the imperialist era were provisions made for women’s higher education or for their professionalism in production and governance processes. Indeed higher education facilities for women were not provided in pre-capitalist Christian, Jewish and Hindu social order either. Contemporary higher education is a capitalist invention participation in which necessarily leads to the destruction of femininity. If Islamic social order is to be preserved in Afghanistan the sanctity of family/private life has to be assured and the capitalist mode of production is to be rejected. The Islamic government must continue to stand firm on the stand it has taken resisting the imperialist assault on femininity. The disastrous consequence of any relaxation in this regard has already been seen in the Islamic Republic of Iran where participation of women in public life has been legitimated on the basis of isolated exceptional incidents reported in the Nusus (it should be noted that no general principles (usul) have been derived from these isolated incidents by our fuqaha including Jafri fuqaha). The result is that Feminism has emerged leading anti-Islamic, pre-imperialist, political and social movement in the Islamic republic of Iran. Similarly women in higher education institutions and the armed forces has led to an explosion of ghair nikahi marriages and an unprecedented abuse of the muta’ contract throughout Iranian society. Facilitating women’s participation in public order endorses the devalorization of femininity. It is a means for undermining the religious character of Afghan society and for enabling a capitalist society in Afghanistan. In Sha Allah we will not fall into this imperialist trap.