Women in Islam

(Please also read this related article: 4 Eyewitnesses: Muslims compelled to change Islamic Laws)

For the past 14 centuries, all Muslims have upheld the belief that four male eye witnesses are necessary to prove rape cases. However, finding four such witnesses in cases of rape is nearly impossible, resulting in almost 0% rapists being punished based on this requirement throughout the 1400 years long history of Islam. Even Ibn Taymiyyah also accepted that from the time of Muhammad till his era, not a single person got punished on the basis of 4 eye-witnesses (link).

Especially, slave women were extremely vulnerable to being raped in Islamic societies, while:

Islam didn't allow them to wear the Hijab and even kept their breasts naked in public (link).
Muslim men used to molest slave women, and Allah/Muhammad didn't punish or even rebuke those men (link).
A Muslim owner forced his slave women into prostitution but again Allah/Muhammad didn't punish him (link).
Like free Muslim women, the witness of slave women is also not accepted in Islamic courts about their rape (link).

In contemporary times, modern Muslim apologists feel compelled to defend Islam from criticism. As a part of their defense, they now deny the necessity of four eyewitnesses in rape cases according to Sharia law. They argue that the Muslim community of the past 14 centuries has made a mistake in interpreting this aspect of the law.

However, despite their denial, the question still remains:

If Allah truly exists and possesses knowledge of the "Unseen" about the future, and He knew that for the next 14 centuries, the entire community would continue to make this mistake,
and due to this mistake, hundreds of thousands of women and slaves who suffered rape would never receive justice because there would be no presence of four eyewitnesses,
then why didn't Allah reveal a clear verse in the Quran specifying the number of witnesses in rape cases? And why didn't He make it simple and straightforward whether a woman's testimony is acceptable in cases of rape or not?

The Quran is a voluminous book, but Allah filled it with boasting about His grandness and powers, some old stories, and tales.

Why didn't Allah have the capability to straightforwardly present the commandments of Sharia in a scholarly manner so that countless innocent women wouldn't fall victim to injustice in the cases of rape?

The only logical conclusion drawn from all this is that there is no all-Knowing, all-Wise, 100% Perfect, and Flawless Allah above the heavens. Instead, it was Muhammad himself who was formulating the Sharia. And since Muhammad was just a human and not 100% perfect, and he didn't possess knowledge of the future "Unseen," we are left with a Sharia that is full of imperfections and human errors.

Not only the voluminous Quran but there is no single authentic Hadith that specifically addresses the issue of rape and states that four eyewitnesses are not required and that a woman's testimony is also acceptable in such cases.

Subsequent Consequences of these Islamic Rulings:

Muwatta Malik Book 41, Hadith 15:

Malik said, "The position with us about a woman who is found to be pregnant and has no husband and she says, 'I was forced,' or she says, 'I was married,' is that it is not accepted from her and the hadd is inflicted on her unless she has a clear proof of what she claims about the marriage or that she was forced or she comes bleeding if she was a virgin or she calls out for help so that someone comes to her and she is in that state or what resembles it of the situation in which the violation occurred." He said, "If she does not produce any of those, the hadd is inflicted on her and what she claims of that is not accepted from her."

And the largest Fatwa Website (run by Saudi Salafi Muftis) Islam Q&A writes in its fatwa (link):

Rape is essentially zina (fornication or adultery) and is proven in the same way as zina is proven, which is with four witnesses. The punishment is one hundred lashes if the man was a virgin and stoning if he was previously married ... Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr (may Allah have mercy on him) said: She is not to be punished if it is proven that he forced her and overpowered her. That may be known from her having screamed and shouted for help. (Al-Istidhkaar, 7/146 ) ...

It is very difficult for a raped woman (or a small child girl) to bring proof of her rape. There are no people present where she is raped who can hear her calls for help, and blood also does not always come. The biggest problem is, perhaps 100% of women don't even know about these Islamic Rulings about rape that they have to immediately present their blood in public. Their first reaction is to hide their face along with their rape. Their own families could kill them in the name of Ghairah.

Do you think that small child girls could act upon these Islamic rulings if they are being raped by their own fathers, brothers, uncles or the Mullah in the Quran schools?

The Largest Islamic Website is Islamweb.Net. It records this Fatwa (link):

“This means that if a woman accused a pious man of forcing her into adultery and there were no witnesses to prove her claim and she did not drag him by his clothes (to prove the offense), then she should be subjected to the hadd of slander whether or not she is well-known for chastity she should be subjected to the hadd of zina if she becomes pregnant as a result. The same ruling applies if she is proven non-pregnant unless she retracts her claim. If she drags him by his clothes and reports the crime of her own volition, then the hadd of zina is waived from her even if she is proven pregnant given the public defamation that she brought upon herself by reporting the offense. She is still subject to the hadd of slander and has no right to ask the man whom she accused to take an oath and swear to his innocence of the charge brought against him. On the other hand, if she accused a dissolute man of such a crime and she did not drag him by his clothes, then she is not subject to the hadd of slander or zina unless she is proven pregnant. However, if she dragged him by his clothes, then the hadd of zina is waived from her even if she is proven pregnant and the hadd of slander is waived from her as well. Lastly, if she accused a man whose religiosity is unknown and she did not drag him by his clothes, then she is subject to both the hadd of slander and that of zina. If she dragged him by his clothes, then she is not subject for that to the hadd of slander...”

Please tell us, how a poor woman/girl, who has been raped, has a force to drag her rapist in front of people?

And without eye-witnesses, and without have the power/chance to drag her rapist with his clothes in public, if she becomes pregnant, then she will be punished for 80 lashes (if she is a virgin), or she will get stoned if she is a married woman. And her child will automatically become a Bastard (Islamic Term: Walad-ul-haram ولدألحرأم). Do you see any Divine Justice with such a poor woman/girl here?

Here are some examples of these flawed Islamic Rulings:

Bariya Ibrahim Magazu is a Nigerian teenager who was lashed 100 times after she became pregnant before marriage. She claimed she had been raped by several men who had loaned money to her father. However, the state she lived in, Zamfara, had transitioned to Sharia law, and the male judges presiding over her case acquitted the accused men, but upheld her hadd sentence.
Safiya Hussaini is another Nigerian woman who was sentenced to stoning after becoming pregnant following her divorce. Her state, Sokoto, had also recently transitioned to Sharia law. She claimed that she had been raped repeatedly by her neighbor, but the court acquitted her neighbor while sentencing her to death. Fortunately, she was acquitted by a higher court, because her alleged adultery must have happened before Sharia was actually implemented in Sokoto.

The information from the Website: The Religion of Peace

A recent fatwa from a mainstream Islamic site echoes this rule and even chides a victim of incest for complaining when she has no "evidence":

However, it is not permissible to accuse the father of rape without evidence. Indeed, the Sharee’ah put some special conditions for proving Zina (fornication or adultery) that are not required in case of other crimes. The crime of Zina is not confirmed except if the fornicator admits it, or with the testimony of four trustworthy men, while the testimony of women is not accepted.

Hence, the statement of this girl or the statement of her mother in itself does not Islamically prove anything against the father, especially that the latter denies it.

Therefore, if this daughter has no evidence to prove that her accusations are true, she should not have claimed that she was raped by her father and she should not have taken him to the court. (IslamWeb.net, Image)

Since it is incredibly unlikely that a child molester will violate his victim in front of "four trustworthy men", strict Sharia amounts to a free pass for sexual predators.

Islamic law rejects forensic evidence such as DNA in favor of testimony. An interesting situation thus sometimes develops in cases where a victim alleges rape but the man denies that sex even took place. In the absence of four male witnesses, rape cannot be proven. The woman's testimony then becomes a "confession" of adultery. She can even be stoned, even though the male is unpunished since he never admitted to a sexual act.

Some clerics blame rape on the woman. Australian Sheik Feiz recently said a rape victim "has no one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world... to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature." Even his successor, who was brought in to mitigate the backlash, compared unveiled women to "sweet pastries," tempting 'hungry' men.

One of the world's most respected Sunni scholars, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, told an audience on his al-Jazeera television show in 2004 that "to be absolved from guilt, the raped woman must have shown some sort of good conduct."

Dr. Abd al-Aziz Fawazan al-Fawzan, a professor of Islamic law said that "if a woman gets raped walking in public alone, then she, herself is at fault. She is only seducing men by her presence. She should have stayed at home like a Muslim woman."

This was echoed by the imam of a Salafist mosque in Cologne, Germany in the wake of the shocking sex abuse rampage by recently arrived Muslims on New Year's Eve in 2015. He explained that "the events" (which included rape) "were the girls' own fault because they were half-naked and wearing perfume."

A Saudi cleric, in 2017, also put the blame for both rape and sexual harassment squarely on the woman, and added that "a woman who leaves her house wearing make-up and perfume is an adulteress."

When it came to light in 2016 that a 13-year-old British girl had been abused by a dozen Pakistani rapists, certain members of the Muslim community said they believed the victim "played her part."

In 2013, Syria's chief Mufti, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman Ali al-Dala, issued a statement that gives soldiers religious permission to rape the women they capture.

There can also be no such thing as rape in a Muslim marriage, even if the husband hits the wife in order to bring about her submission. Another recent fatwa reminds a woman, she "does not have the right to refuse her husband, rather she must respond to his request every time he calls her." (Islam Q&A, Fatwa No. 33597).

Keep in mind that most Muslim countries do not operate under strict Islamic law, but rather under legal codes copied from the West. Therefore rape victims in these countries can - and often do - receive justice under more reasonable standards of proof.

Muslim Excuse:

Today, Islam apologists try to defend Islam by presenting these Hadiths as evidence:

Jami` at-Tirmidhi 1454:

Narrated 'Alqamah bin Wa'il Al-Kindi: From his father: "A women went out during the time of the Prophet (ﷺ) to go to Salat, but she was caught by a man and he had relations with her, so she screamed and he left. Then a man came across her and she said: 'That man has done this and that to me', then she came across a group of Emigrants (Muhajirin) and she said: 'That man did this and that to me.' They went to get the man she thought had relations with her, and they brought him to her. She said: 'Yes, that's him.' So they brought him to the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ), and when he ordered that he be stoned, the man who had relations with her, said: 'O Messenger of Allah, I am the one who had relations with her.' So he said to her: 'Go, for Allah has forgiven you.' Then he said some nice words to the man (who was brought). And he said to the man who had relations with her: 'Stone him.' Then he said: 'He has repented a repentance that, if the inhabitants of Al-Madinah had repented with, it would have been accepted from them.'"

Under the following Hadith, Shams al-Haq Azimi, the commentator of Sunan Tirmidhi, writes (link):

( فلما أمر به ) : أي بإقامة الحد عليه . زاد في رواية الترمذي ليرجم ، ولا يخفى أنه بظاهره مشكل إذ لا يستقيم الأمر بالرجم من غير إقرار ولا بينة ، وقول المرأة لا يصلح بينة بل هي التي تستحق أن تحد حد القذف ۔۔۔ وقال سمعت محمدا يعني البخاري يقول عبد الجبار بن وائل بن حجر لم يسمع من أبيه ولا أدركه يقال إنه ولد بعد موت أبيه بأشهر .

"(When the Prophet) ordered it": meaning, to establish the punishment (i.e., stoning). It is also mentioned in another narration of Tirmidhi that he (the Prophet) ordered the punishment of stoning. However, it is evident that carrying out the punishment of stoning solely based on the testimony of an affected woman without any solid evidence is problematic. The testimony of a woman is not considered strong evidence; rather, she is liable to receive the punishment of slander (false accusation of adultery) until it is proven otherwise. It is reported that Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, "Abdul-Jabbar ibn Wail ibn Hajar did not hear from his father, nor did he meet him, as it is said that he was born several months after his father's death (i.e. this is an "authentic", but a "weak" Hadith)."

Furthermore, if today's Muslims consider this narration to be valid, then it would lead to a situation where the punishment for rape would become inherently unfair:

How could Prophet Muhammad order the stoning of an accused person based solely on the statement of an affected woman without verifying it with concrete evidence?
This would mean that in Islamic law, any woman could falsely accuse a man, and he would be put to death based solely on her testimony.
Also, if the woman made a mistaken accusation due to darkness or uncertainty, why did Prophet Muhammad not give the benefit of the doubt to the innocent accused man?

Thus, if today's Muslims present this narration as evidence, they should, by the same logic, establish a law that punishes a man based solely on a woman's testimony. But as we can observe, present-day Islamists do not enact such a law, and they do not apply the punishment of stoning based on a woman's testimony. This illustrates their double standards.

Moreover, this narration fails to answer the question: If Allah truly exists and possesses knowledge of the Unseen, and He knew that the scholars of the past 1400 years would overlook this narration, resulting in countless women and slaves suffering rape without receiving justice, why didn't Allah clearly state the laws and conditions related to rape in the Quran?

Some more Excuses by a Muslim Scholar:

Ammar Nasir Khan is a "reputed" Scholar of Islam in Pakistan. He further presents three incidents from Companions and Successors about rape in order to defend Islam. He writes in his magazine "Al-Sharia" (link):

"Syedna Abu Bakr ruled in a case of forced adultery that the criminal should marry the woman (Musanif Abdul Razzaq, Riqm 12796). And Umar ibn Abdul Aziz and Hasan Basri suggested the punishment for forced adultery to be that the criminal should be lashed 100 times (as Hadd punishment) and then he should be made a slave to the woman with whom he committed the act of aggression (Musanif Ibn Abi Shaybah, Hadith 28423, 28426)."

Response:

Firstly, please note these 3 incidents do not count as Sharia (i.e. neither they are from the Quran, nor from the Sunnah of Muhammad). Sharia is only that which Jibril brought to Muhammad directly in the form of Quran or Hadith.

Secondly, If Abu Bakr indeed arranged the marriage of a girl to her rapist, then it would be an act of injustice on his part. And if you argue that Abu Bakr was acting in accordance with Islam, then such an Islam can only be regarded as oppressive and unjust. This is double injustice against the poor victim of rape. Moreover, this is the self-made Sharia by Abu Bakr (which is known as Bid'ah/Innovation by Muslims)

Thirdly, and if Umar ibn Abdul Aziz and Hasan Basri did punish a rapist by lashing him 100 times and also making him a slave to the woman he raped, then tell us, where is this punishment mentioned in the Quran or Hadith? Did Umar ibn Abdul Aziz and Hasan Basri have the authority to create their own Sharia? Why are you endorsing their "Bid'ah (i.e. innovation)"?

And why did your scholars not follow the innovation of Umar ibn Abdul Aziz and Hasan Basri and continue to adhere to the condition of four male witnesses?

Is there not a contradiction in these cases according to the narrations? Abu Bakr is arranging the marriage of a rapist with the girl he violated, while Umar ibn Abdul Aziz is punishing the rapist by making him a slave to the woman he assaulted. And on the other hand, for the past 1400 years, the Muslim community has been considering the condition of four witnesses as part of the Sharia. Is there not a contradiction in these three different cases?

Then Ammar Nasir Khan continues (link):

"The opinion of the Tabi'i Mufassir Suddi was that if a woman is forcibly raped, the criminal should be put to death ... If someone or some people force a woman and commit evil with her, then their punishment is not stoning or flogging; instead, they should be caught and their necks should be broken.'"

Response:

Now, here comes the fourth Sharia, where Suddi comes up with a new innovation/Bid'ah.

Where is this command present in the Quran or Hadith that a rapist should be killed instead of flogging?

And does it make any difference whether the rape is committed after following the victim or by suddenly attacking her?

And where does Suddi state how many witnesses are required to prove this incident? And then why did your scholars for the past 1400 years not accept Suddi's innovation?

And if Allah knew that Suddi's innovation would not be accepted and the community would continue to rely on four witnesses for 1400 years, then why didn't Allah clearly reveal this command in the Quran? Who is responsible for this negligence, which led to countless women and slaves being raped and unable to obtain justice for 1400 years? Then who is the criminal?

Ahead, Ammar Nasir writes (link):

During the time of Umar, a man attempted to assault a woman who was alone, but she defended herself by picking up a stone and struck him with it, causing his death. When the matter was brought before Umar, he said that Allah had caused the man's death, so there was no retaliation (qisas) required. (Source: Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah, Hadith numbers 27793, 27794). And in the era of Sayyiduna Umar's Caliphate, another incident occurred where a man was killed, and his body was discarded on the road. After thorough investigation and inquiries, Umar eventually reached the woman who had killed him. She confessed to the murder but presented the excuse that the deceased had attempted to rape her as she was sleeping, and in self-defense, she killed him and threw his body away. Umar accepted her explanation and did not impose any punishment on her. (Source: Ibn Qayyim, Al-Turuq Al-Hukmiyyah, pages 34, 35).

Response:

If these events are indeed "authentic," then they raise questions about the justice of Umar ibn Khattab.

Do Muslims really want to create a law that allows any woman to kill any man she encounters alone (and even dispose of his body), but if caught, she can merely claim that he intended to rape her, and then she would be acquitted of all charges on the basis of her single witness?

Even in the past 1400 years, Muslim scholars did not derive any Islamic law from these two incidents, and they maintained the conditions of four witnesses in cases of alleged rape (zina bil jabr).

Furthermore, the question arises that if Allah is indeed the Knower of the unseen and knew that these two incidents are not ENOUGH, and Muslims of next 1400 years will not use them as a source of Sharia law, and countless women and enslaved women being denied justice in the next 1400 years, then why did Allah not reveal a clear and explicit verse in the Quran about the laws related to rape?