- Dr. Shabir, welcome
to Let the Quran Speak - Pleasure to be on. - A young woman, 22
years old, Mahsa Amini, died in police
custody, Dr. Shabir. She was charged with not
wearing appropriate clothing, not wearing modest
enough clothing by the Iranian government. Dr. Shabir, this has raised
all sorts of questions. You know, there
are women from Iran all over the streets
now, protesting, taking off their hijabs,
cutting their hair, in protest of what has
happened to Mahsa Amini, and just anger over
the Iranian government and the regime, And so Dr. Shabir, this
has raised a question about the state,
the Islamic state, and does an Islamic state
need to enforce the hijab? - Well, to begin
with, we can say that it is very
clear from the Quran that the Muslim polity
would have certain... Well, it would it be
within their jurisdiction to enforce penal laws, so for example, the
law against stealing, against murder, and so on. At the same time, the Quran does not give
any specific mandate with regards to hijab in terms of a Muslim
polity enforcing it, We can only say that in general, the Muslim polity would
have the responsibility to do what the Quran
speaks of generally as (speaks Arabic), commanding what is good and
forbidding what is wrong. But of course, when it comes to so many different
evils in society the Muslim government
would have to be sagacious in picking the battles,
and seeing, you know, what can be enforced,
should be enforced, as opposed to some things which you need to just be
content with preaching, and education, and so on. So it seems to me that the
Muslim woman's clothing has been much misunderstood
in Islamic law and in our classical law books, to the extent that, you know, the covering of the
entire woman's body is sometimes being
presented as a given, and as if it all
has the same ruling of (speaks Arabic)
or obligatory. And so one would see
that as a, you know, if somebody violates
any aspect of that, they would see that, you know,
it's like the whole thing. This almost reminds
me of a statement in the Book of
James in the Bible where it says if
you omit one law, it's like you broke
the whole thing, something of this nature. But it's not an all or nothing, because in Islamic law, it
is generally recognized, though it somehow doesn't
seem to apply here, I mean, people have
not applied it here, but I don't see why not. So generally, it is understood that there are
gradations of things. So for example, if you
think of our prayers, there are those aspects of
prayer which are obligatory, those which are (speaks Arabic), not quite obligatory, but
one might say essential, those which are (speaks Arabic), that means it's a generally
recognized practice, either of the Prophet,
peace be upon him, or of the earliest Muslims. And then among those, there
are those which are emphasized and those which
are not emphasized. So there is non-emphasized
(speaks Arabic), such that if you omit those, you are not under any penalty, you do not actually
incur any sin. And then there are
voluntary aspects, so they're good,
nice if you do them, but if you omit them,
no questions asked. So when it comes to the
Muslim woman's head cover, how is it that's
everything is presented as if it has the same verdict of (speaks Arabic),
or obligatory? No, in an Islamic state, I
think it would be essential for the government
to draw distinctions between certain aspects, and say, okay, we
desire for people to adhere to this dress code, but if they violate this
aspect or that aspect, it's not, you know, something
that requires a penalty, and so on. They could-
- Yeah, because Dr. Shabir, even if something is obligatory, there doesn't need to be a
law commanding it, you know, even if something is obligatory
by, you know, religion, it doesn't necessarily mean that the government needs to
take it into their own hands to enforce it. - True.
- Right? Like, for example, prayer. I can't imagine that many
Islamic states enforce prayer, and say, you know,
yes, it's obligatory. I think all Muslims would agree
that prayer is obligatory, but nobody is saying, okay, you know,
if you don't pray, or even if you don't come
to the congregational prayer once a week, that you're going to
be charged, right? - Yeah, of course,
Muslim governments have, you know, following perhaps
purists in this regard, have enacted laws and
made sure, for example, that businesses would be
closed at the prayer time, especially on a Friday, and a purist might argue
further that, you know, the person who does not come
to join the regular prayers, or does not do the
regular prayers at all, they could face certain
penalties, and so on. Even we can extend
that to fasting, and see that purists
would argue, you know, the person who does not fast
during the month of Ramadan though being able-bodied, and not being ill or
being on a journey, that person should
be penalized as well. But all of this is taking
Islamic law too far, and it is going beyond what the Prophet, peace be
upon him, himself practiced, and people might try to pin this on the Prophet,
peace be upon him, by saying, you know, the Prophet, peace be upon
him, would have done that, but that is a little
bit far-fetched. In any case, more to the
point about the hijab, in time of the Prophet,
peace be upon him, it is not so clear that we had the present
standards about hijab that we think is so essential. It's not so clear that
this is what was prevalent in the time of the
Prophet, peace be upon him. The narratives that go to show that the women were so
completely covered, for example, you wouldn't find it
in (speaks Arabic), you would find it, for
example, in (speaks Arabic), that says that when such and
such a verse of the Quran was revealed, then the women came
out of their homes with their heads partly covered so they appear to be like, you know, they have something
like the crows have, this comb on the head. The way they wore
their head cover apparently gave that kind
of impression to people. But it's significant that this is not in
(speaks Arabic) in Muslim, it's in (speaks Arabic). In (speaks Arabic), the most
you would find is that it says that if a woman prays
without her head covering, then her prayer is not accepted. But that's only about prayer. It's not about the
generality of the situation, and, you know, in the
time of the Prophet, peace be upon him, there were slaves, as there were in the time
of Jesus, on whom be peace, and the rules for
slaves are acknowledged to be very different from
the rules for free citizens. When it comes to clothing,
there is a hadith which seems to indicate that slave women
only had to cover from the waist
down to the knees, which is basically what is
prescribed for men as well. And so if we try to
imagine that situation, it's hard for us today, being accustomed to
the rules of hijab as we commonly know it. But when we look
at that, we realize that, you know, a lot
has developed over time, for better or for worse, and where it works and people are fine with
living by these standards, one cannot doubt that
this is very decent, you know, to wear the
muslim woman's hijab as it is commonly worn in many
parts of the Muslim world. But to now enforce that and say that this was as it was in the time of the
Prophet, peace be upon him, that requires more
evidence and proof, and that evidence
and proof is lacking. So I think we need to relax
a little bit about that when it comes to
public enforcement, and-
- And Dr. Shabir, if you think about a, you know, an Islamic country where the
majority of people are Muslim, there's going to be a certain
culture in that society of how to dress, right?
- Yes. So you don't
necessarily need a law to tell you how to dress. People just know. Like, for example, you
go to Egypt, right? There's no law,
necessarily, telling you okay, you gotta wear a hijab, but the majority of
people do wear it, right? - Yes, yes. And you can count on
education, and preaching, and you know, if you're
running the state, you have state television,
you have state media, you can, through all
of these media outlets, you can educate
people, and guide them, teach them about the Quran, and the way of the Prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, and since these teachings
are so beautiful and self-explanatory, and wise, people will naturally
gravitate towards them, and you don't need
to enforce the laws that you derive from them. - 'Cause sometimes, when
you have too many laws, people rebel against those laws. - True, true, and it becomes
difficult to enforce as well, and then if you go
enforcing everything, then you become a police state, which is also not very
desirable a place to live under. So a balance has to be struck. In almost every
country in the world, you will have some line
that cannot be crossed, and you know, people
will be penalized for crossing that line. So there are indecency
laws against, you know, the laws against indecency. So where the law is gonna be
drawn in the Muslim society may be slightly different, but it shouldn't be
so radically different so as to make everyone squirm, and make Islam look like
something inapplicable in our modern world, something so out of place. - Thank you for
that, Dr. Shabir. - You're welcome.
