Living The Quran
Warning Against Affront
Surah al-Ahzab (The Confederates) Chapter 33: Verses 56-62
 "God
and His angels bless the Prophet. Believers! Bless him and give him
greetings of peace. Those who malign God and His Messenger will be
rejected by God in this world and in the life to come. He has prepared
for them a humiliating suffering. And those who malign believing men and
women for no wrong they might have done shall have burdened themselves
with the guilt of calumny and with a blatant injustice. Prophet! Say to
your wives, daughters and all believing women that they should draw over
themselves some of their outer garments. This will be more conducive to
their being recognized and not maligned. God is Much-Forgiving,
Merciful. If the hypocrites, those who are sick at heart and those who
spread lies in the city do not desist, We will rouse you against them,
and then they will not be your neighbours in this city except for a
little while: bereft of God's grace, they shall be seized wherever they
may be found, and will be slain. Such has been God's way with those who
went before. Never will you find any change in God's way."
The whole
universe echoes God's praise of His Prophet. No honour could be greater
than this. When God so honours and praises the Prophet, it is
exceedingly grotesque for humans to give offence to him. What makes this
even more grotesque and ridiculous is that it is an affront to God by
His creatures. They can never affront or offend God, but the
expression here serves to show great sensitivity to any offence
committed against the Prophet, in effect making it an offence against
God Himself.
God's strong
condemnation against maligning believers generally, men and women,
suggests that there was in Madinah at the time a group of people who
schemed in this way against believers: they defamed them, conspired
against them and circulated false allegations about them. God undertakes
to reply to the accusers, describing them as hypocrites guilty of
calumny and injustice.
God Almighty
then instructs His Messenger to say to his wives, daughters and Muslim
women generally to draw over themselves some of their outer garments. In
this way, they would be recognized as Muslim women and the hypocrites
would be wise not to follow them to tease and malign them. Commenting on
this verse, al-Suddi says: "Some wicked people in Madinah used to go
out at nightfall to make indecent remarks to women... When such people
saw a woman wrapped in her outer cover, they refrained from maligning
her as they recognized her as free and chaste."
We note the great care taken to purge all wicked behaviour from the Muslim society. These
elements had to be pushed into a narrow corner, while new Islamic
values and traditions took firm root in the Muslim community.
The passage
concludes with a stern warning to the hypocrites and those who were sick
at heart as well as those who circulated false rumours requiring that
they stop all such wicked action, and refrain from affronting the
believers and the Muslim community as a whole. Unless they stopped, God
would empower His Messenger to drive them out of Madinah, so that they
could be taken and killed wherever they were.
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Understanding the Prophet's Life 
Rape
During the time of the
Prophet (peace be upon him) punishment was inflicted on
the rapist on the solitary evidence of the woman who was raped by
him. Wa'il ibn Hujr reports of an incident when a woman was
raped. Later, when some people came by, she identified
and accused the man of raping her. They seized him and
brought him to Allah's messenger, who said to the woman,
"Go away, for Allah has forgiven you," but of the man
who had raped her, he said, "Stone him to death." (Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud)
Islamic legal scholars interpret rape as a crime in the category of Hiraba. The famous jurist, Ibn Hazm, had the widest definition of hiraba, defining a hiraba
offender as: ‘One who puts people in fear on the road,
whether or not with a weapon, at night or day, in urban
areas or in open spaces, in the palace of a caliph or a mosque,
with or without accomplices, in the desert or in the village, in
a large or small city, with one or more people… making
people fear that they’ll be killed, or have money taken,
or be raped (hatk al arad)… whether the attackers are one or many."
The Maliki judge Ibn Arabi, relates a story
in which a group was attacked and a woman in their party
was raped. Responding to the argument that the crime
did not constitute hiraba because no money was taken and no weapons used, Ibn Arabi replied indignantly that "hiraba with the private parts" is much worse than hiraba involving the taking of money, and that anyone would rather be subjected to the latter than the former.
The crime of rape is classified not as a subcategory of ‘zina’ (consensual adultery), but rather as a separate crime of violence under hiraba. This
classification is logical, as the "taking" is of the
victim's property (the rape victim’s sexual autonomy) by
force.
The focus in a hiraba prosecution is the
accused rapist and his intent and physical actions, and
not second-guessing the consent of the rape victim. Hiraba
does not require four witnesses to prove the offense,
circumstantial evidence, medical data and expert
testimony form the evidence used to prosecute such crimes.
Islamic legal responses to rape are not limited to a criminal prosecution for hiraba. Islamic jurisprudence also provides an avenue for civil redress for a rape survivor in its law of "jirah" (wounds).
Islamic law designates ownership rights to each part of one's
body, and a right to corresponding compensation for any harm done
unlawfully to any of those parts. Islamic law calls
this the ‘law of jirah’ (wounds). Harm to a
sexual organ, therefore, entitles the person harmed to
appropriate financial compensation under classical
Islamic jirah jurisprudence. Each school of Islamic law
has held that where a woman is harmed through rape
(some include marital rape), she is entitled to
financial compensation for the harm. Further, the perpetrator must pay the woman an additional amount based on the ‘diyya’ (financial compensation for murder, akin to a wrongful death payment).
Compiled From:
"Rape & Incest: Islamic Perspective" - Uzma Mazhar |
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Blindspot!
Control of Authority
One can often read and hear, from Muslims and non-Muslims alike, a translation of shariah
as meaning only and strictly "Islamic Law." This understanding and
translation are significant: they reveal one of the reductions that took
place within Muslim thought over the course of centuries. Ash-shariah,
which had been the Way to the light from which the implementation of
laws over time and in different environments was thought out, came to be
reduced to a set of laws to be implemented formally, as they then were.
This understanding and translation reveal reductions that have critical
consequences.
Civil society, that of
ordinary women and men, needs to wake up and call for legal councils and
intellectuals to provide comprehensive, but precise and consistent
answers to their social, cultural, economic, and political questions.
The population, through its commitment and its legitimate demands, must
take it on itself to seize control of the authority to which it is
entitled. The shift in the
centre of gravity of authority involves the return of ordinary women and
men to full civic commitment, uncompromising critical questioning, and a
collective, practical search for solutions. This is one of the
aspects of the crisis and of the shortcomings that can be observed
today in the Islamic Universe of reference, always with the same
reflexes of defensive formalism as obsessed with otherness, whereas what
should be initiated is a confident, universalistic reform movement,
which is both wholly inclusive and positively assertive.
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Jazakillah khoiron katsiron.
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