Woman in Islamic Shari‘ah
3. Womanhood in Islam
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Creator of the heavens and the earth: He has
made for you spouses of your own kind, and
the cattle He has also created in pairs.
36
From a perusal of these verses, one can see that the
same word has been used for the spouses of
ordinary human beings as was used for Adam’s
spouse in the verse quoted above. Just as Eve was
created from Adam’s
nafs,
so other women have
also been created from the same
nafs
— or kind —
as their male counterparts.
Clearly there is no question, in these other verses, of
inferring that every female spouse has been created
from the body of the male. There is no alternative
but to take the word
nafs,
occurring in these verses,
as meaning ‘kind.’ God has created for you spouses
of your own kind, the Qur’an is telling us, in order
that they may provide you with true
companionship in your journey through life.
To summarize, women and men are from the same
species. Biologically speaking, women have not
been extracted from the bodies of their male
counterparts. God fashioned them according to His
Will, just as He fashioned men in accordance with
