Who falsified this hadith?

A lead paper of the same title was presented by a representative of FOMWAN (Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria). As usual, in a presentation of this kind, all the rights and privileges granted to women within Islam were recounted. The presenter did a good job of that in her well-researched and ably presented […]

A lead paper of the same title was presented by a representative of FOMWAN (Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria). As usual, in a presentation of this kind, all the rights and privileges granted to women within Islam were recounted. The presenter did a good job of that in her well-researched and ably presented paper. Controversy only started when the paper’s discussant Dr. Salisu Shehu of Bayero University Kano cautioned against the reference to a Hadith of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as a weak hadith, when it actually exists in the most authentic of all collections of the sayings of The Messenger (SAW):The Sahih Bukhari.

I joined the debate where I agreed with Dr. Shehu not only because a hadith found in Bukhari’s collection should not be doubted, but because the so-called scholarly authority which conducted the research that found this Hadith faulty is not a credible one. Let me confess that all my student life, I have come across his hadith and had no reason to doubt its authenticity. The first time I heard that there was any doubt concerning this hadith was fifteen years ago in Kaduna when I had an interview with an Islamic scholar on what roll Muslim women should play in partisan politics.  This scholar replied that they could join politics and aspire to any level they wanted. But how about the statement contained in this hadith? I asked. And the scholar answered that the itself hadith was a weak one and couldn’t stand the test of scholarly scrutiny.

The Hadith in question is the one narrated on the authority of Abu Bakrata, a lesser known companion of Allah’s Messenger SAW, than the more popular first Caliph Abu Bakr As-Siddiq. This Companion narrated that he was there when the Prophet (SAW) declared ‘Cursed be the nation that is ruled by a woman’ in response to one of his emissaries, who said the town he was sent to by the Prophet (SAW)  had a woman as it’s leader. In the absence of any categorical statement in the Holy Quran on the subject, this hadith has for centuries been the guiding principle behind the belief that Islam does not allow women total sovereignty over a nation.

I heard the name Fatima Mernissi for the first time during my interview with this scholar in Kaduna one and a half decades ago. He told me that this Moroccan scholar had done a scholarly research on the hadith and had found out that;

1.    The hadith was fabricated by Abu Bakrata when his town was overran by the forces of Aisha (RA), then the Prophet’s widow, when she led a faction of Muslims to fight against Ali (RA)  during the Battle of the Camel. It was in order to discourage Aisha’s advance as a leader of the Muslim army that he made up the hadith.

2.    That the hadith is in conflict with the spirit of the Qur’an which narrated the story of Bilqis, the queen of Sheba in respectful and admiring terms in Suratal Naml. Therefore it is not natural for an authentic hadith to contradict the stand of the Qur’an.

3.    That the companion Abu Bakrata was a man of questionable character having been punished for lying at some point in his life.

Needless to say, this roused my interest in the woman Fatima Mernissi. Not too long after this incident I came across one of her books, Dreams of Trespass. As I read the book one thing that became abundantly clear was that this is a book from someone who enjoys making a mockery of Islamic injunctions. Not knowing that there were feminists in the Arab world at the time, I was shocked at the irreverent way she dealt with certain issues of great import in the Islamic belief system. When I finally read about her as a person, my suspicions were confirmed that Ms Mernissi is just a feminist pursuing all the excesses that feminists do in order to achieve their aims.

Born in 1940 at Fez city in Morocco, Dr Mernissi was at no point in her life a student of religion, let alone a religious scholar. She was educated at Sorbonne University in France where she read political science, after her primary and secondary education in Morocco. She later went to Brandeis University for her Doctorate degree in political science. She taught Sociology and family psycho-sociology at Muhammad V University in Morocco. An author of many books and a regular contributor to magazines and journals, Fatima Mernissi is best known internationally as an Islamic feminist.

With a profile like this, one wonders why our respected intellectuals and scholars should consider her such an authority on religious issues. It is very true that Islam lays very few restrictions on the activities of women in public life. I, myself, am a proof of this, having never had restrictions imposed on me in either my educational or my career pursuits. And the countless professional Muslim women we see serving our society in various capacities are all proofs of this fact. But surely if we want to make a case for women in politics, especially aspiring for high executive offices we ought to do better than rely on the rejection of an authentic hadith by a feminist writer whose motives are totally suspect?

Why would the words of Fatima Mernissi be so reliable as to make us reject a Hadith transmitted by Imam Bukhari? I mean we have all read about the meticulous methods that the late scholar employed in verifying his collection, how can we throw all this to the winds because of her findings? I was once asked why I do not feel insulted by the contents of the hadith and I said to my questioner that the logic of the hadith is simple. It is that any society whose men are so useless that women have to abandon their role as guardians of the home-front to rule over them is accursed indeed. This may not be the perfect interpretation of the hadith but this is my understanding of it, and as such I never had anything against the prophetic saying.

Back at the Conference last Saturday, another respected scholar, responded to my comments on Dr. Mernissi by saying that the debate we were engaging in over women’s political participation was done in Pakistan decades ago, ahead of Benazir Bhutto’s presidency of the country. He said that certain scholars who had vowed never to elect a woman ended up saying that a woman was better than a corrupt man, which paved the way for Bhutto’s success. I was forced to ask him just how much better was Benazir Bhutto when the corruption perpetrated under her is still hunting her husband long after she had left office and even died? Additionally her own personal conduct earned her ‘votes of no confidence’ from the parliament, so where was the better leadership she exhibited?

At the risk of sounding like a self-hating female, I wish to say that since Islam has made it categorically clear that our primary responsibility is to our home and our families, and that any societal role is secondary, why should we be so desperate for political leadership? Already we have achieved so much by being wives, mothers and players in certain public roles, why must we take over political leadership just to score a point? And who will now mind our children and give them the desired level of upbringing we want them to have? We endlessly talk about moral decay, drug addiction and educational failure among our youths, yet rather than give greater attention to them, we now want to grow even further away from them through ambitious political participation?

The challenge before our Muslim scholars today is to come together and issue a fatawa, regarding this issue. For instance some Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia say there is absolutely no role for women in politics. The Iranians say women can only go as far as the legislative level but not the executive. And the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and the Indonesians say women can be executive rulers of a country, and have indeed practiced that. So what are Nigerians scholars saying?

But the intellectuals who cling to Ms Mernissi’s research must do better than continue quoting her to us, they should embark on their own independent study or commission credible Islamic scholars to do so. For now most of us will cling to that hadith and accord it the same respect we give to all authentic sayings of the Rasullullah SAW.

This column will be away for two weeks, insha Allah.