←IndexThe Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Lecture 6: The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam

Section 8 of 14

Ziya on women's rights and family law

Section summary

In brief

Iqbal presents Gökalp's demand for women's equality in marriage, divorce, and inheritance not as a departure from the Qur'an but as a correction of the 'interpretation of the Qur'an by the learned.' He then celebrates Turkey alone among Muslim nations as having 'shaken off its dogmatic slumber,' and grounds the entire case for legal evolution in ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb's declaration 'The Book of God is sufficient for us.'

Section 7 presented Ziya Gökalp's vision of an International Islam — a 'League of Nations' constituted by independent, self-strengthened Muslim republics — and his Comtian adaptation of the relationship between religion and science, concluding with the controversial proposal to displace Arabic with Turkish in worship and Qur'anic education. Section 8 now turns to the most socially radical dimension of Gökalp's programme: the reform of family law, particularly the demand for equality between men and women in divorce, separation, and inheritance. Iqbal presents this as the logical consequence of the 'spirit of Islam' rather than as a departure from it, and closes the section with one of his most forceful declarations about Turkey's unique position in the modern Muslim world and the capacity of Islamic law to evolve.

The section advances through three movements. First, Iqbal presents Gökalp's poetry on the status of women — lines that challenge the traditional juristic interpretation of Qur'anic inheritance and marriage provisions and demand equality as a precondition for national and familial health. Gökalp's rhetorical strategy is notable: he does not argue against the Qur'an but against the 'interpretation of the Qur'an by the learned,' framing the inequality of women not as a divine prescription but as a scholarly error. Second, Iqbal pivots from Gökalp's specific proposals to a broader evaluation of Turkey's significance: Turkey alone among Muslim nations 'has shaken off its dogmatic slumber,' has 'passed from the ideal to the real,' and is 'on the way to creating new values' rather than 'mechanically repeating old values.' Third, and most importantly, Iqbal poses the question that governs the remainder of Lecture VI: 'whether the Law of Islam is capable of evolution' — and answers it with the invocation of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb's declaration at the Prophet's deathbed: 'The Book of God is sufficient for us.'

This closing move is architecturally decisive. By grounding the entire argument for legal evolution in the authority of ʿUmar — the second caliph, one of the most revered figures in Sunnī Islam, and by Iqbal's description 'the first critical and independent mind in Islam' — Iqbal anchors the most radical implications of ijtihād (including women's legal equality) in the deepest stratum of Islamic authority. The argument is not that Islam must be modernised from outside but that Islam's own founding generation modelled the critical independence that modernity demands.

Original text

In another passage the poet gives his ideal of womanhood. In his zeal for the equality of man and woman he wishes to see radical changes in the family law of Islam as it is understood and practised today:

'There is the woman, my mother, my sister, or my daughter; it is she who calls up the most sacred emotions from the depths of my life! There is my beloved, my sun, my moon and my star; it is she who makes me understand the poetry of life! How could the Holy Law of God regard these beautiful creatures as despicable beings? Surely there is an error in the interpretation of the Qur'an by the learned?'³⁰

'The foundation of the nation and the state is the family!' 'As long as the full worth of the woman is not realized, national life remains incomplete.'

'The upbringing of the family must correspond with justice;' 'Therefore equality is necessary in three things — in divorce, in separation, and in inheritance.'

'As long as the woman is counted half the man as regards inheritance and one-fourth of man in matrimony, neither the family nor the country will be elevated. For other rights we have opened national courts of justice;'

'The family, on the other hand, we have left in the hands of schools.'

I do not know why we have left the woman in the lurch? Does she not work for the land? Or, will she turn her needle into a sharp bayonet to tear off her rights from our hands through a revolution?³¹

The truth is that among the Muslim nations of today, Turkey alone has shaken off its dogmatic slumber, and attained to self-consciousness. She alone has claimed her right of intellectual freedom; she alone has passed from the ideal to the real — a transition which entails keen intellectual and moral struggle. To her the growing complexities of a mobile and broadening life are sure to bring new situations suggesting new points of view, and necessitating fresh interpretations of principles which are only of an academic interest to a people who have never experienced the joy of spiritual expansion. It is, I think, the English thinker Hobbes who makes this acute observation that to have a succession of identical thoughts and feelings is to have no thoughts and feelings at all. Such is the lot of most Muslim countries today. They are mechanically repeating old values, whereas the Turk is on the way to creating new values. He has passed through great experiences which have revealed his deeper self to him. In him life has begun to move, change, and amplify, giving birth to new desires, bringing new difficulties and suggesting new interpretations.

The question which confronts him today, and which is likely to confront other Muslim countries in the near future is whether the Law of Islam is capable of evolution — a question which will require great intellectual effort, and is sure to be answered in the affirmative, provided the world of Islam approaches it in the spirit of ʿUmar — the first critical and independent mind in Islam who, at the last moments of the Prophet, had the moral courage to utter these remarkable words: 'The Book of God is sufficient for us.'³²

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7. Ziya Gökalp's poetic vision and the international ideal

9. The dangers of unchecked liberalism

Original text

'The foundation of the nation and the state is the family!' 'As long as the full worth of the woman is not realized, national life remains incomplete.'

'The upbringing of the family must correspond with justice;' 'Therefore equality is necessary in three things — in divorce, in separation, and in inheritance.'

'The family, on the other hand, we have left in the hands of schools.'