Expectations from the Muslim Woman

"Expectations from the Muslim Woman" is one of Ali Shariati's most important lectures and regards women's rights in Islam. The point of his lecture is not to show that Women's rights do not exist in Islam, however the point of his lecture is to show that Anti-Islamic traditions among Muslims have had tragic results for Muslim women. Even Muslims who have attempted to liberate Women by getting rid of the Hijab haven't helped, since the Hijab is supposed to protect women, not deprive them of doing certain things. He believed that the liberation of Women in Iran at the pre-revolutionary era should not have anything to do with the Hijab and those who were forced not to wear it have been deprived of their rights as women in a nation where Muslims form practically all of its population. He uses Fatima Zahra, the daughter of Mohammad as an example stateing that she played a significant role in the societies social and political status. To him the proper understanding of Fatima's life was the key to Muslim's salvation. He argues that the traditional ethical value-system should not be the standard-bearer of women's rights.

He begins his lecture by stating that:

"Most often, we are satisfied by pointing out that Islam gives great value to science or establishes progressive rights for women. Unfortunately we never actually use or benefit from this value or these rights."

He states that Muslims have been following Non-Islamic and traditional laws for many years and it has become one of the resons why Women's rights have been violated in many Islamic states or among Muslims. "Thus we always remain at the stage of talking", sine we do not practice what we preach.

"We must complete Islamic views and intellectual discussions with practical solutions. We must find a way whereby we reach these values and rights in practice."

He continues by stating that:

"From the 18th through to the 20th century (particularly after World War 2) any attempt to address the special problem of the social rights of women and their specific characteristics has been seen as a mere by-product of a spiritual or psychic shock or the result of a revolutionary crisis in centers of learning or as a response to political currents and international movements. Thus, traditional societies, historical societies, religious societies, either in the East or in the West (be they tribal, Bedouin, civilized Muslim or non-Muslim societies, in whatever social or cultural stage of civilization they may be) have all been directly or indirectly influenced by these thoughts, intellectual currents and even new social realities."

He argues that the crisis of the problem of Women's liberty has begun in the west and many fear of it occurring in the Muslim world, patially due to the fact that they are misinformed Muslims and have not looked at Islam through a historical perspective and are using their own misinterpretations of Islam:

"In such societies the newly-educated class, the pseudo-intellectuals, who are in the majority, strongly and vigorously welcome this crisis. They themselves even act as one of the forces that strengthen this corrupting and destructive transformation."

Shariati believed that women in Iran were only sexually liberated and they did not have any social freedom. He blames this partially on the "rather bourgeois cognition", by arguing that before our time Science was meant to serve religion, although now the scientific understanding of religion is unpure. He partially blames the Freudian ideal of sexual liberation. To Shariati Freud was one of the agents of the bourgeois:

"Up to the appearance of Freud (who was one of the agents of the bourgeoisie), it was through the liberal bourgeois spirit that scientific sexualism was manifested. It must be taken into consideration that the bourgeoisie is always an inferior class."

He concludes that therefore, a scholar or scientist who lives, thinks and studies during the bourgeois age, measures collective cultural and spiritual values with the scale of economy, production and consumption.