Exemplary Muslim Women

are innumerable examples in Islamic history of such work having been successfully carried out by women. A notable example is that of Aisha, a brilliant woman who was one of the Prophet’s wives. Being much younger than he was, she survived him by about fifty years and, with her excellent, and almost photographic memory, she continued to communicate in great detail everything she had learned from him during their close companionship. So, she could fulfill a highly informative role for about half a century. In short, she became a living cassette recorder for the ummah. Abdullah ibn al-’Abbas, a Companion of great stature and one of the Quran’s best commentators, was one of Aisha’s pupils. The more significant part of his knowledge of religion was learned from her. Similarly, many other Sahaba (Companions of the Prophet) and Tabi’un (companions of the Sahaba) acquired their religious knowledge from her. So here we have the excellent example of a Muslim woman imparting to others the religious knowledge she had imbibed directly from the Prophet. There were other examples of the role of Muslims in the early period of Islam in religious matters, one of which occurred in the time of ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph. It concerned the amount of money or goods that had to be given as a dower (given by the husband to the wife at the time of marriage as a token that he would meet all her expenses in the future). In the Prophet’s lifetime, this had been a nominal amount, but with the increase in resources after the conquest of other countries, people had begun to