Gender in Islamic Culture Barbara Thesis

Their freedom of movement was by no means restrained by the new law and it only aimed at providing protection for them when outside their homes (idem).

Once Islam expanded into new territories, it met new cultures and borrowed some of the customs in the newly conquered regions. Two of them were the veiling of women and their confinement within the walls of their homes they took from the Byzantines and the Sasanians.

The consequence of the so called "Affair of the Lie" that involved Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha and her and the accusations of being unfaithful that rose against her was the revelation that gave God's word in favor of her innocence, followed by some other piece of legislation in Sura 24:4 that punishes those who accuse women of not being chaste and are not able to provide four witnesses (Stowasser, 1994).

There are a few specific verses in the Qur'an that address the Prophet's wives after his seclusion from them which were extensively used in the debates of theologians and Islamic law makers. Verse 33:33 is according to Stowasser the precise source of forbidding Muslim women to display any parts of her body or wear embellishments in public.The first generations after the Prophet started to consider him and his entire life sinless and his women became flawless models for any Muslim woman. There different views over the image projected by the Prophet's wives that ranged from the all too common women who were subject to all human weaknesses to the models of virtue that will lead all Muslim women toward a life according to the word of God.

Modern interpreters of the Qur'an are presenting the life of Muhammad and his wives from the point-of-view of the western scholar who emphasizes the rational explanations for the polygamy, for example.

The nineteenth century brought the arguments around the "hijab" to the level where it became a "cultural symbol"(idem). Traditionalists consider it the very guarantee of public virtue while modernists held it responsible for every evil in women's lives. Traditionalist see women's mobility and their right to work outside their homes as the very destructive factor for the Islamic family.

Barbara Freyer Stowasser (1994): Women in the Qur'ran, Traditionas and Interpretations. Oxford University Press

Ziba Mir-Hosseini.(1999) the Religious Debate in….....