REMARK OF THE CHIEF JUSTICE

Only a man of law can give a final opinion as to the relevance of this remark of the Chief Justice from the purely legal point of view, but it is certainly not correct from the academic point of view. He has quoted this saying of the Prophet to support his claim that Islam advocates the unjust treatment of a segment of society, whereas, on the contrary, this saying enjoins men to treat women with justice. The remark of the honorable Chief Justice does apply to Manu’s statement, but it does not apply at all to the sayings of the Prophet. When it has been clearly stated that women should be treated gently, how can it be claimed that unjust and unfair treatment of women was advocated in a saying of the Prophet (as it clearly was in Manu’s dictum)? So far as a woman’s being like a rib is concerned, mention of this is made only to support fair treatment of women rather than the reverse. It has been clarified above that this was only an example. In view of the particular psychology of women, it was cited to show that if she was subjected to rough treatment, it would go against her nature and would result in perversion rather than reform. In this saying of the Prophet the likening of woman to the rib was a simple metaphor. The misunderstanding arose because of the biblical statement brought in to explain it. While this saying had nothing to do with the biblical conception of woman, what has been said in the above hadith is a natural fact which has often been expressed in different ways, as in the words of Matthew Arnold: “With women the heart argues, not the mind.” CORRESPONDENCE In response to the remark made by the former Chief Justice, Mr. Chandra Chud, in his verdict on the Muhammad Ahmad-Shah Bano case, we sent him a letter which is reproduced on the next page. As is clear from the preceding discussion, this remark of the Chief Justice is wholly baseless from the academic point of view. But what is stranger still is the fact that when we drew his attention to this by this letter, he did not care to reply. We sent him this letter for the first time on 17 April 1986, by registered post. Having received no reply we sent a copy of this letter to him again on May 14, 1986, but again he did not respond. Then, after trying several times, we succeeded in contacting him on the telephone. We asked for an appointment with him, so that we could discuss this matter with him, but he excused himself and refused to comply with our request. Now we have no choice but to publish this letter without his reply. SUMMARY God “created man’s mate from the same soul” means simply that women are of the same species as men. God created them that way so that there should be harmony between the two sexes. If men and women had been derived from different species — if one had been