The Islamic Principles of Equality

​​Religion and religious leaders have a major role in both the reduction and the production of violent conflicts in Middle Eastern societies. It is a fact that in this region of the world, the body politics ― its laws, institutions and most of its political leaders ― are under the domination of Sharia discourses. Even in some societies, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, and Taliban Afghanistan, the political system empowers extremist readings of Sharia as an instrument for their rule.

Tracing the chronic aspects of violence in most societies of the Middle East, one is faced with the violence against women, in particular, which is markedly influenced by Sharia rules. Freedom House, in a recent survey on women's rights in 17 countries of Middle East and North Africa, found that guarantees for gender equality, which were even set forth in every one of these countries' constitutions (save Saudi Arabia, of course), were systematically and pervasively undercut by other legal provisions based on Sharia law.

Protecting an Islamic utopia

In the Middle East it is normal to find very God-fearing and pious Sharia jurists and philosophers in the Islamic seminaries of who time issue fatwas justifying various kinds of discrimination, killing and torture for they believe the protection of their Islamic utopia is a "God-commanded duty", no matter the cost to the lives of other people. Simply said, they believe that the ends justify the means.

Even though in ancient Persian, Arabic and Greek societies women or other-believers or criminals were regarded as inferior and thus treated violently, how can one justify these practices in the context of modern society in which most people are conscious of and communicate globally about their human rights?

How can Muslim jurists use the historical inequity ― the fact that women in pre-modern societies did not have equal rights because of illiteracy and poverty ― as a reason for the claim that women are "naturally" weaker than men?

Contradictions of Sharia law

In the past, there was compatibility between people's perception of the world, self, woman, slave and pagan, and their laws, and as a result there was no context in which to oppose those laws. Today, however, the traditional perception of the world, self, woman, religion and rights among most of the young Middle East population has fundamentally changed.

In a way, we can firmly argue that presently the majority of progressive Muslim societies cannot understand current Sharia rulings. In these societies, we witness a daily clash between "their Being" (vojood) and "their laws" (hoqooq); in other words, there is daily conflict between "women's Being", for instance, and "women's rights"; between "non-Muslim's Being" and "non-Muslim's rights" and so on.

There is an urgent need for a conflict-transformation program with regard to Sharia thought on women's rights. That requires, in my view, a new way of thinking in Sharia, an Ijtihad in the principles of Sharia towards a humane legal system that respects human dignity.

This is, indeed, what the Qoran says, that all human beings, women and men, are the direct addressees of representatives of Allah (Khalifatullah) on earth (Koran 2:30).

Tawhid – rejecting all forms of discrimination

Muslims believe in the guiding principle of Islam, i.e. in the unity of human, nature and God (Tawhid), a principle that rejects all forms of discrimination. It is through this principle that "free relations" which are devoid of power form the bases for the interaction of the individual with "self," "society" and "nature".

I am going to conclude that the notion of "Islam as a discourse of freedom", which is best represented by Abol Hassan Banisadr, one of the main contemporary Muslim theoreticians, challenges any dichotomist approach to the gender question from an indigenous Islamic perspective (See Adol Hassan Banisadr, Le Coran et le pouvoir: principes fondamentaux du Coran, Paris 1993).

This discourse firmly rejects the underlying assumption of radical Sharia rulings which justify the violence against the women. Banisadr's approach is a freedom-based reading of Islam and is based on the rejection of any relations which lead to power relations, or better said, any unequal relationships. In other words, any power relation between individual and 'self', 'others' and 'nature' is un-Islamic since it runs in contradiction to the core of this Islamic principle.

Unfortunately, most Moslems and non-Moslems alike believe Tawhid means just 'oneness' of God, which stands against polytheism. But referring to Islamic Sufism tradition, like Rumi's tradition, one can grasp its gigantic, intellectual, socio-economical and cultural implications.

The unity of self and other

In brief, Tawhid means a lack of separation between everything existing, a unity of self and other, individual and society, God and human, human and environment; this concept disrupts all those dichotomies and makes them untrue.

From the Tawhid perspective 'power relations' in the dominant Sharia discourse in the Middle East which are often seen as 'natural' in the relation between man and woman by radical Islamists, are regarded as the direct result of the Muslims' negligence to the heart of Islam.

Finally, discriminatory and unfair rulings and practices against women and minorities which exist in the most of the Middle Eastern societies can be quite well rejected within an authentic Islamic discourse, i.e. by referring to Tawhid as the first principle and core spirit of Islam which leaves no empty space for any power relation in both personal and societal relationships.

Hassan Rezaei

© Hassan Rezaei 2005

Hassan Rezaei is an expert in Islamic and Iranian Law and Research Fellow of the Max Planck institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany.

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