Keywords

Qur’anic Verses on Social Discord, or fitna

One of the strangest cultural twists I encountered on my travels was the discovery that in some Muslim communities, women are believed to personify fitna .

Now fitna in Arabic denotes such big-picture concepts as social discord or divisiveness, often due to oppression or persecution. Examples from the Qur’an are:

Verse

Verse The Cow, 2:217 …And oppression (fitna ) is worse than killing… Repentance, 9:48 They (who do not believe) had sought to sow discord (fitna ) and had upset things for you… The Spider, 29:10 There are people who say: We believe in God. But when they are hurt because of (their belief in) God, they mistake their persecution (fitna ) by others for punishment from God…

On a personal or more micro-level, fitna in the Qur’an refers to a trial (personal ordeal ) or affliction, often due to our own character flaws or as a consequence of our choices. Examples:

Verse

Verse Spoils of War, 8:25 And beware of an affliction (fitna ) that does not only befall wrong-doers, and know that God is severe in punishment. …continued in 8:28 And know that your wealth and your children are but a trial (fitna ), and that with God is an immense reward. The Pilgrimage, 22:53 That He may make that which Satan proposes a trial (fitna ) for those whose hearts are diseased and hard…

The above is but a sampling of how the Qur’an uses fitna , a ubiquitous word appearing both in noun and verb form dozens of times—while never having anything to do with women as such.

But oh, for the power of cultural insinuation!

When I re-met Amr Abdalla in March 2015 after having crossed paths with him a couple of times years earlier, it was at a lunch-time talk he was giving at Georgetown University on some topic related to Islam. His experience as a sharia -trained prosecutor in Egypt was a fascinating one to hear about, containing valuable insights for today’s challenges. But what I remember the most that will probably always make me think of him is one word: kayda-kunna . Let me explain.

Amr asked our small group if we were familiar with the story of Joseph in the Qur’an. Some of us nodded: Chap. 12 actually carries the prophet Joseph’s name and tells his entire life story, and is moreover famous for being the longest continuous narrative in the book.

Were we familiar with the story of how his master’s wife had tried to seduce Joseph? Nods all round…

And when Joseph tried to resist her, how she grabbed his shirt and it tore in the process? Yes…

And when Joseph and his master’s wife ran into the husband at the entrance and she accused Joseph of having made advances at her, what happened then? We mumbled that someone suggested that if Joseph’s shirt were torn from the front, then the master’s wife was telling the truth—but if it were torn from the back, then she was lying and Joseph was telling the truth. And of course it was torn from the back…

And what does the Qur’an then say, Amr asked?

And this is where eager-beaver me blurts out: kayda-hunna ‘adheem! … just as I realise that I was the only one who spoke, because I was the only Arabic-speaker in the group who knew the famous line.

Are you sure, Amr asks me?

Why, yes!

Are you sure it is kayda-hunna (all women, who are all schemers), not kayda-kunna (you women who scheme), that are said to be terrible?

Here I gradually begin to realise what is going on…but surely not! Everyone, all my life, has always said kayda-hunna when deploying that supposed idiom!

But Amr was not done: he asks me who I think uttered those words, and now I can no longer be quick to reply. Eager Beaver is suddenly pausing for thought.

He is gracious, dear Amr, and offers it up: Do you think this phrase was uttered by God, or by the master of the house?

And of course the answer has to be by the master of the house (12:28), not God, except that people usually cite the phrase as if it were uttered by God Himself. The story then continues with a group of women being invited by the master’s wife to check out Joseph’s beauty for themselves, and the accusation is repeated by Joseph (12:33) and once more by his master (12:50), both times clearly in reference to this group of scheming women.

I will never forget this cautionary tale, which was a brilliant way to make a point about the cultural impositions on religion. An uttering by one man to a scheming woman a long time ago is verbally perverted through the change of one letter and presented as a negative utterance by God Himself about all women. Amr told our group that every time he used this example in a class, he got the same reaction from the native Arabic speakers present as he had from me. Just think about that for a moment.

Perhaps it is the mis-reciting of this phrase, which relates to the attempted seduction of Joseph , that has led the word fitna to become mis-associated with the idea of “women as constant sexual enticement” and as “naturally conniving” in so many corners of the world. This is an oddly specific and narrow association given the broad, existential concept that fitna is in the Qur’an. I cannot say for sure, but this mis-recital cannot have helped matters.

Interestingly, this matter of how a single letter can change the meaning of a word in Arabic is one I have been aware of for many years in relation to another verse, but one that has no bearing on our topic here. I mention this nevertheless because it makes me wonder how many more suspect verbal departures from Qur’anic verses we have absorbed into our everyday Arabic speech as proverbs without realising it.

The Pushback of Alleged hadith on Women’s Character: Hell Is Full of Women!

Supposedly, the Prophet has said that the majority of the inhabitants of hell are women, because they are ungrateful (to their men) and in other more flowery versions, also because they are deficient in intellect and religion, and they often slander and curse.Footnote 1

The first time I read about this “hadith ” from Bukhari’s compilation, I was initially dismissive. But the ensuing discussion made me realise that it has quite a bit of currency even in some influential quarters,Footnote 2 and soon my amusement turned to shock. Shock then turned to incredulity when I found some efforts to explain it by “putting it in context”, the thrust of the argument being that the Prophet had used exaggeration and even humour to offer women very good religious counsel!Footnote 3

How could this be? Who could possibly have wished to go this far in their desire to discriminate against, and oppress, women? Who would risk their soul to put such counter-Qur’anic words into our beloved Prophet’s mouth, or perhaps into the mouths of his contemporaries—who knows?

As I think of this, there can only be two answers as to how this could have happened. Either those responsible did not fully believe in Muhammad’s message, or they did but thought they were acting in the interest of the greater good as defined by their own prejudices.

In any case, several overburdened Muslim expertsFootnote 4 have since taken on this alleged hadith and done us the service of exposing its shortcomings, whether technically or substantively. I feel grateful to them, but also regret that their formidable skills had to be applied to something so sordid. I regret that so many of us are no longer content to refer back to the Qur’an or our conscience and would rather waste our precious scholars’ time on tedious rebuttals of the absurd, rather than free them up so they can reach more of us with their spiritual example and inspiration.

Finally with regard to a supposed hadith claiming that the Prophet had said that men face no greater threat of social discord—fitna —than women, we should know that this is a “hadith ” that has been roundly shown to be unreliable.Footnote 5