Woman Between Islam and Western Society
5. Position of Woman in the Islamic Shari‘ah
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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
