WOMEN IN ISLAM — An Intellectual Role

Fulfilling this command of God, Abraham took them to the desert and started to leave. Hajira asked him repeatedly why he was leaving them there in the desert alone. Receiving no reply she asked if God had commanded him to do so. On receiving the reply in the affirmative, she said, “Then God will not let us go to waste”. With that one action, she became the main supporter for Abraham in fulfilling God’s plan and the entire Muslim community. The rite of sa’i, performed by all Muslims at the time of Haj by running back and forth seven times between Safa and Marwa—two hillocks near the Kabah—is a re-enactment of Hajira's desperate quest for water to quench the thirst of her crying infant when they arrived in the dry desert. The performance of this rite is a lesson in struggling for the cause of God. It is of the utmost significance that this was an act first performed by a woman. Perhaps there could be no better demonstration of a woman’s greatness than God’s command to men, literally, to follow in her footsteps. Aisha A study of the life of the Prophet of Islam tells us that education, whose actual goal from the Islamic point of view is the arousal of human awareness, is as essential for women as it is for men. Indeed, it is only aware men and women who can conduct the practical matters of life smoothly. There are traditions which tell us that the Prophet’s conversations with his wife Aisha were aimed at educating her. Aisha says that when the Prophet of Islam would get up at night after a few hours of sleep, he would converse with her at length in that peaceful atmosphere. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim) This course of informal education, continuing uninterruptedly, even while traveling, so benefited Aisha that she became the most distinguished authority on religious knowledge. She survived the Prophet for a full fifty years, during which period she remained a truly valuable source of religious knowledge. Her house served as a school of religious learning. As in the first era of Islam, academic activity centred mostly on the Hadith (words of the Prophet) and Athar (sayings and deeds of the Prophet’s Companions), Aisha and a number of the Prophet’s women Companions contributed in large measure to the narration and preservation of the Prophet’s traditions. It is said that ‘Aisha, herself