<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is commonly said among Muslims that Islam \u201chonored women\u201d and elevated their standing after they had \u201cno value\u201d in what is called the Jahiliyyah<\/em> (Age of Ignorance). Yet a direct examination of a number of hadith texts found in the collections Muslims themselves regard as most authoritative raises serious questions about this claim. This study gathers these texts from their original sources, presents the questions they raise, and then presents what hadith commentators and Muslim scholars themselves have said in interpreting them and their context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Texts Found in the Sahih Collections<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Most of the inhabitants of Hellfire are women.<\/strong> Al-Bukhari relates from Usamah ibn Zayd, from the Prophet: \u201cI stood at the gate of Paradise, and most of those who entered it were the poor… and I stood at the gate of Hellfire, and most of those who entered it were women\u201d (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Nikah, Bab la tadhan al-marah fi bayt zawjiha illa bi-idhnih).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Woman is like a crooked rib.<\/strong> Al-Bukhari relates from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said: \u201cWoman is like a rib; if you try to straighten her, you will break her, and if you leave her be, you will enjoy her company, crookedness and all\u201d (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Nikah, Bab al-mudarah maa al-nisa).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. A woman and a donkey break the prayer.<\/strong> Al-Bukhari relates from Aishah that, when what breaks the prayer was mentioned in her presencem a dog, a donkey, and a woman, she said: \u201cYou have compared us to donkeys and dogs\u201d (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Salah, Bab man qala la yaqtau al-salata shay). Muslim relates from Abu Dharr a clearer wording: \u201cA donkey, a woman, and a black dog break his prayer,” adding that “the black dog is a devil\u201d (Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Salah, Bab qadr ma yasturu al-musalli).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Deficient in reason and religion.<\/strong> Al-Bukhari relates from Abu Said al-Khudri that the Prophet went out to the prayer ground on a feast day and said: \u201cO women, give charity, for I have been shown that you are the majority of the inhabitants of Hellfire.\u201d They asked why, and he said: \u201cYou curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in reason and religion who is more capable of overwhelming a sensible man’s judgment than one of you.\u201d They asked about this deficiency in reason and religion, and he said: \u201cIs not the testimony of a woman equal to half that of a man?… That is due to the deficiency in her reason. Is it not that when she menstruates she neither prays nor fasts?… That is due to the deficiency in her religion\u201d (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Hayd, Bab tark al-haid al-sawm).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. The angels curse the wife who refuses.<\/strong> Al-Bukhari relates from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said: \u201cIf a man calls his wife to his bed and she refuses, and he spends the night angry with her, the angels curse her until morning\u201d (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab Bad al-Khalq, Bab dhikr al-malaikah).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. A woman approaches and departs in the form of a devil.<\/strong> Muslim relates from Jabir that the Prophet saw a woman, went to his wife Zaynab while she was working a hide, and had intercourse with her, then went out to his companions and said: \u201cA woman approaches in the form of a devil and departs in the form of a devil; so when one of you sees a woman [and is drawn to her], let him go to his wife, for that will repel what is in his mind\u201d (Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Nikah, Bab nadb man ra’a imra’atan fa-waqa’at fi nafsih).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. No fasting for a woman without her husband’s permission.<\/strong> Al-Bukhari relates from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said: \u201cIt is not lawful for a woman to fast while her husband is present, except with his permission, nor to allow anyone into his house except with his permission\u201d (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Nikah, Bab la ta’dhan al-mar’ah fi bayt zawjiha li-ahad illa bi-idhnih).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. Ill omen resides in women.<\/strong> Al-Bukhari relates from Ibn Umar that when ill omen was mentioned in the Prophet\u2019s presence, he said: \u201cIf ill omen is in anything, it is in the house, the woman, and the horse\u201d (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Nikah, Bab ma yattaqa min shum al-marah).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. Women are a trial (fitnah).<\/strong> Al-Bukhari relates from Usamah ibn Zayd that the Prophet said: \u201cI have not left behind me any trial more harmful to men than women\u201d (Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Nikah, same chapter).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. Fever in the form of a woman.<\/strong> Imam Ahmad relates in his Musnad, from Jabir ibn Abd Allah, a symbolic report describing \u201cfever\u201d (the illness) as having asked the Prophet\u2019s permission to enter in the form of a woman named \u201cUmm Mildam\u201d (Musnad Ahmad, Musnad Jabir ibn Abd Allah).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Summary of the Argument<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the basis of these texts, found in the two most authoritative hadith collections among Sunni Muslims (Bukhari and Muslim), the qur\u2019anic and prophetic view of women, as conveyed by these reports, is far from the claim of \u201chonoring\u201d them; rather, it describes women as deficient in reason and religion, a source of trial and ill omen, a danger comparable to an animal in breaking the prayer, an object of the angels\u2019 curse when she refuses sexual relations, and the majority of Hellfire’s inhabitants, and these texts, given the soundness of their chains of transmission according to the majority of hadith scholars, constitute a direct challenge to the “honoring of women” discourse common in contemporary Islamic outreach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Counter-Position: How Hadith Commentators and Muslim Scholars Read These Texts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Scholarly integrity requires presenting what recognized hadith commentators (such as Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani in Fath al-Bari and al-Nawawi in his commentary on Sahih Muslim) and contemporary Muslim scholars have said in interpreting these texts and their context, from several angles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hadith commentators (Ibn Hajar, al-Nawawi) and contemporary Muslim scholars explain the \u201cdeficient in reason and religion\u201d hadith as a technical explanation offered by the Prophet himself: \u201cdeficiency in reason\u201d is tied to the rule requiring two women\u2019s testimony in place of one man’s in financial transactions (Al-Baqarah 2:282), a rule the Qur\u2019an itself justifies as being so that one may remind the other, not as a ranking of intellect between the sexes; and \u201cdeficiency in religion\u201d is tied to the lapsing of prayer and fasting for a menstruating woman, a technical legal-accounting term rather than a statement about faith, with some scholars noting that the hadith’s setting (a feast-day sermon urging charity) is rhetorically exhortative rather than doctrinally declarative. The hadith “a dog, a donkey, and a woman break the prayer” carries within its own text Aishah\u2019s explicit objection (\u201cyou have compared us to donkeys and dogs\u201d), and the later majority of jurists (Hanafi, Maliki, and most Shafii) rejected the ruling. The \u201cill omen\u201d hadith is read in light of the explicit hadith \u201cthere is no contagion and no evil omen\u201d and some of its narrations that end with \u201cbut God removed that through Islam,\u201d treating it as a report of an existing pre-Islamic belief rather than as independent legislation. The hadith \u201ca woman approaches and departs in the form of a devil\u201d is understood as behavioral guidance directing desire toward one\u2019s spouse, not a judgment on woman\u2019s essential nature. These texts are weighed against others that elevate women\u2019s standing: the hadith \u201cyour mother, your mother, your mother, then your father,\u201d the verse on the single origin of humankind (Al-Nisa 4:1), the Qur\u2019an\u2019s grant of independent inheritance rights to women, and its condemnation of the burying of infant daughters (Al-Takwir 81:8-9), for which there is no evidence outside Islamic books, since women were queens, prophetesses, leaders, and beloved figures before Islam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201ctechnical\u201d reading (that deficiency in reason and religion is a jurisprudential accounting term rather than a statement of inferiority) is not the only reading, nor even the historically or numerically dominant one among Islamic scholars. The four Sunni schools of jurisprudence, as well as Jafari (Twelver Shiai) jurisprudence, do in fact affirm a religiously binding hierarchical framework between men and women in specific, clear domains: qiwamah<\/em> (headship), based on \u201cMen are in charge of [qawwamun ‘ala] women\u201d (Al-Nisa 4:34); guardianship in marriage; unequal testimony; unequal inheritance shares; and the restriction of judgeship and the highest religious leadership to men according to the majority of classical jurists. This is not a fringe opinion adopted by some isolated sheikh here or there, but the position that prevailed across the centuries among the overwhelming majority of jurists and exegetes, and it is still held today by a great many contemporary scholars within official religious institutions, not only in extremist discourse. This disparity is itself acknowledged and described in explicit terms, \u201cqiwamah\u201d and \u201cfadl\u201d (preference\/superiority), in the qur\u2019anic text itself (\u201cbecause of what God has preferred [faddala] some of them over others\u201d), and many scholars themselves have not hesitated to describe it as a preference, not merely an equivalent functional difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And reality today says the opposite in many Islamic societies and states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Afghanistan under Taliban rule is the clearest case today: girls remain barred from secondary and higher education, women are barred from most employment and from parks and gyms, and in 2025 the Taliban formally instituted a requirement that women be accompanied by a mahram<\/em> (male guardian) when traveling any significant distance. UN Women’s report (August 2026), five years into Taliban rule, describes this situation as “the normalization of the exclusion of women and girls,” and Human Rights Watch’s report documents the same trajectory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Saudi Arabia, the codified 2022 Personal Status Law was criticized by Amnesty International for entrenching provisions tied to guardianship (such as a husband’s right to “obedience” and conditions placed on a wife’s right to work or travel).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The unequal weight given to women’s testimony (based on the classical “deficiency in reason” reasoning) remains codified in the personal-status laws and Sharia courts of Saudi Arabia and a number of other Gulf and Islamic states, though it is not applied uniformly across the entire Islamic world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The foregoing shows that these hadith texts are soundly attested according to the majority of hadith scholars, and that the real dispute between the two sides is interpretive: they reveal a fundamentally inferior view of women in the prophetic source; hadith commentators and Muslim scholars hold that much of this is tied to a specific historical, social, or rhetorical context, that some of it (such as the prayer-breaking hadith) carries within its own text an objection from the very narrator that the later majority of jurists did not adopt, and that these texts should be weighed against the full body of other texts honoring women in the same religious source. The reader is invited, as always, to consult the primary sources (Ibn Hajar’s Fath al-Bari and al-Nawawi’s commentary on Sahih Muslim) to assess the strength of these two lines of reading before favoring either one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Introduction It is commonly said among Muslims that Islam \u201chonored women\u201d and elevated their standing after they had \u201cno value\u201d in what is called the Jahiliyyah (Age of Ignorance). Yet a direct examination of a number of hadith texts found in the collections Muslims themselves regard as most authoritative raises serious questions about this claim.\u0627\u062f\u0627\u0645\u0647 \u0645\u0637\u0644\u0628 “The Status of Women in Islam”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":236231845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peSSf1-pb","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/236231845"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1565,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/1565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/fa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n