Question

Unfortunately lately I have been feeling pscyhologically traumatised by Islam. The only thing I am finding is fear and so much hate towards women which makes me feel miserable and is giving me really bad thoughts including suicide because I just cannot handle it. I am just finding so much concepts to be psychoogically tramutising and tailerd to suit men only while making a woman psychological traumatised. A classic example is domestic violence and reward, where Islam seem to always take the male side and completely ignore the female. Hoor Alyn are are crystal clear example of this they not only deprive a woman of what she desires in paradise, but also make her feel misreable about herself and encourage domestic violence and psychological trauma. They are described more than any other reward and they have excess beauty. This makes a woman have a very low confidence in herself. Not only that women HATE being part of polygamy and we do find it hell equivalent. No one likes to share thier spouse men don’t like to share their wives and men also do not. But for men they wont hav to share their spouse not in this life nor in paradise. Women unfortunately will still have to share their husbands even if they hate that. While, I understand there is no saddness in paradise an things are different, but the point is things are made different to suit the interests of men not women. Men will still want to have many wives and not share them so they will have that. Whereas women they simply wont feel sad while not getting their desire. It is very heart breaking how a man gets to have many wives just for him and a woman who may have so much more good deeds than him will have to share her husband. Not just that Hoor alyn curse wives who abuse men, while women when they are abused there is no one to curse. It seems men get all the reward and the good and women get all the deprivation and the violence. It just breaks my heart and traumatises me that a man who likes to spend lots of time woth his wives gets that, but a woman who likes to spend lots of time with her husband does not. It seems that women will be treated like objects in paradise, who only see their husbands when the husband wants to see her, but when he does not want her, she will not see him, the only thing she will get is not being sad about it. And when there is domestic violence, a woman is cursed and a men no one curses him and there are tons of hadiths about wives being punished and none for men. This makes me want to kill myself because I just can’t live any longer knowing that Islam hates women so much as they are deprived in this life and the next. Can someone completely avoid both hell and paradise and just cease to exists, because I don’t want to go to hell and would rather not go to paradise if I will be deprived of my desires and be an object for my husband.

Answer

Jazakumullah for reaching out with your concerns. From what I understand, there are some core issues mentioned in your question and I would like to address them one at a time.

First, Islam does not encourage violence against women. On the contrary, there are verses of the Qur’an and several narrations from the Prophet ﷺ that not only advise but command men to treat women with kindness. The Prophet ﷺ presented his dealings with his family as the example to be followed by other men when he said, “The best of you are the best to his family, and I am the best to my family.” It is unfortunate that violence against women is found in many Muslim societies, but this kind of misogyny is found all over the world as a socio-cultural and socio-economic rather than a religious phenomenon, with the top five most dangerous places for women in terms of violence all being non-Muslim countries. The permission for striking the wife that is found in the Qur’an is, according to Muslim scholars, for a very specific set of circumstances, where the wife is denying her husband his right to intimacy, leaving him vulnerable to breaking the limits of Allah to fulfil his sexual needs. Furthermore, this striking is not meant to harm the wife, as is obvious from details provided in Prophetic narrations, but rather to jolt the wife to the severe implications of her denial. The Prophet ﷺ himself never exercised this right and his response to the one occasion we know of when there was tension in his household was shifting temporarily to the mosque rather than being aggressive towards his wives. We encourage the Prophetic practice.

Second, Islam does not consider women to be merely objects of men’s sexual satisfaction. Rather, men and women are both ultimately seen as spiritual beings, whose highest potential is actualized in complete submission to Allah, the most High. Both men and women can attain this spiritual rank equally, though the tasks set out for them to propel them along this path might be different. One of the tasks set out for men is to control their sexual instincts and restrict themselves to their wives, while one of the tasks of women is to make themselves available to their husbands to make it easy for him to protect himself from extra-marital relationships. As far as the Hereafter is concerned, its ultimate reality is that it is what no eye has ever seen and no mind has ever imagined, and in it will be for every person whatever their heart desires. Women can rest assured that they too will find ultimate joy and satisfaction of every sort in Jannah.

Third, polygamy is permissible in Islam for the protection of both believing men and women, as a solution to practical problems that arise in all human societies. Married men are protected from falling into sin if their heart inclines towards another woman or if their needs are not fulfilled by their wife alone as they now have the opportunity to have relations with a second wife rather than out of wedlock. Women are protected because they now have to be given the status of a wife and their expenses have to be met rather than being used and then abandoned as mistresses. It also protects women from being divorced and left to fend for themselves as their husbands can now keep them and still marry other women. While polygamy offers a benefit to men it also places on them the immense responsibility of taking care of multiple households, and that too equitably. Women are not given the same right to have multiple husbands because first, they seem to need this allowance less and second, the responsibility of fulfilling the needs of multiple husbands and families would be too difficult for them to bear, even if they wanted to.

There is a lot of misunderstanding today about Islam’s position on women and women’s issues partly because of a conflation between the condition of women in Muslim countries and communities—which is the result of many social, economic and cultural factors—and between Islamic injunctions regarding the same, and partly because of blatant misrepresentation of these injunctions out of context. It is important for Muslims to protect themselves from such traps and seek authentic knowledge and an informed perspective—as you have done—remembering that Allah’s infinite love, mercy and justice extends to all of His creation, including women. May Allah Ta’ala guide our hearts away from the deceptions of shaytan and towards the Truth. Ameen.

Answered by:
Apa Myra Hamid

Checked & Approved by:
Mufti Abdul Rahman Mangera
Mufti Zubair Patel