On February 24, 2018, the current Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community claimed that Islam had enshrined women’s rights and had guaranteed women equality. These statements were made during a speech at the National Waqifat-e-Nau Ijtema:1
Similarly, when it comes to marriage, it is essential that the bride consents freely and happily, without any form of coercion or pressure. Forced marriage is completely wrong and a grave violation of Islamic teaching. …no one who looks at Islam’s teachings in a fair and impartial way can deny the fact that Islam has enshrined women’s rights and has granted them freedom and equality.
The High Status of Women in Islam[archived]
author: Mirza Masroor Ahmad, 5th Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
Address to National Waqifat-e-Nau Ijtema on Feb 24, 2018
So let’s look at this claim in a fair and impartial way to check its veracity. According to Islamic rules, a woman’s consent in the choice of her spouse is required. Considering the 7th century context, this is in fact, an improvement. But if we want to assess it by today’s standards, we have to consider what the norms for consent were back then. What counts as approval, according to the hadith, is deeply problematic.
I asked the Prophet, “O Allah’s Apostle! Should the women be asked for their consent to their marriage?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “A virgin, if asked, feels shy and keeps quiet.” He said, “Her silence means her consent.”
To consider silence equal to consent is grossly negligent. It does not protect against forced marriages. Such marriages will still take place because they have not been preceded by clear and affirmative consent. Young women who wouldn’t dare imagine speaking up openly in protest against the partners chosen by their families are thus, effectively forced into a marriage.
In defense of this hadith, apologists will often object. They will suggest that this scenario would only ever apply to those girls who, due to their age, are still too “shy” to openly commit to the proposed spouse. To excuse this rule by appealing to a girl’s young age is gravely problematic. Even if it were true, it only shows that the girl in question is not yet old enough to make such a significant decision; one in which a lasting impact on her life will indelibly be made.
Approval cannot be considered completely free if one of the parties involved is not mature enough to make an informed decision. The consent of the father (or male guardian) can therefore not be justly interpreted as representing the actual and meaningful consent of the girl.
Within the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community today, consent is given in writing. The presence of at least two witnesses is required. The Jama’at has therefore further improved on the rules for consent. A step that I welcome.
In real life, however, there is sometimes substantial social pressure within a family, amplified by the dogmas of the Jama’at. There can exist coercion of one’s young adult children to agree to the arranged marriage as soon as possible. This topic is further explained in my post on marriage pressures within the Jama’at: Repressive sexual morality and marriage pressure within the Ahmadiyya.
Another restriction when choosing a partner for women is that their choice can only take place within the religious Community that is the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at. Men, however—with the approval of the Caliph—can also marry women of the other abrahamic religions. Women are not allowed to do this. This is a clear disadvantage for women and it leads to many problems and imbalances, especially in places with small communities. In some areas there is a glaring 1:5 ratio between marriageable men and women in the Community.2 Given the tight restrictions on partner selection—something which the Community demands—many women are simply left behind.
Because the Jama’at opposes same sex marriages, women cannot choose a partner from their same gender (had their sexual orientation desired such). In fact, this same restriction also applies to homosexual men. Consequently, the topic of homosexuality isn’t covered in this article. It is of course, still an important topic for religious communities to grapple with. Members of the Jama’at who also belong to the LGBTQ+ community most definitely face discrimination vis-à-vis marital choices available to them within the Jama’at.
Restrictions on partner selection exist not only when it comes to marrying someone from outside the Community, however. The rules of the Jama’at generally deny women the right to freely choose their own partners. While a man can personally agree to his own marriage (nikah), securing the consent of a male guardian is by contrast, mandatory for a woman.
Symbolic Traditions?
In some circles, a father’s permission is transfigured into a purely symbolic act. It’s presented as something which corresponds to a father leading his daughter down the aisle and handing her over to her groom. It’s couched as a sign of recognition and respect. Now this may very well be the case if everyone involved agrees. I do understand that it may be of great symbolic and emotional importance for some, but I no longer see it as benign.
Yes, even Christian traditions of walking down the aisle and handing over the bride from father to groom—these do perpetuate the symbolication of problematic gender roles. If we really wish to overcome the symbolic representation of a transfer of property, we must question the actions which glorify this way of thinking. We have to replace them with traditions that no longer bear this character.
The emotionalization of such symbolic elements has a big part to play in the religious indoctrination many of us have received. The ideas and symbols that we are presented with early in childhood are the very tools with which we are made to feel comfortable with discrimination. We are presented these problematic ideas in a manner which seems nice. Therefore, our cursory inclination is to preserve them. Our emotional bonds to toxic ideas are essential for misogyny to become internalized. They present a big obstacle in our charting a path forward where we might finally let go of the subtext of misogyny that pervades many of the religiously inspired traditions with which we were raised.
However, the rules laid down by the Jama’at go much further than the ceremonial act performed during the Nikah function. Consider what the official website of the Jama’at on Rishta Nata (marriage issues) has to say:
D. Marriage consent If any woman gets herself married without the permission of her guardian, her marriage is void, her marriage is void, her marriage is void.
(In case of minor boys/girls and adult woman the right of guardianship belongs to Father, Paternal Grandfather, Brother, Paternal Uncle and son successively.)
Introduction to Rishta Nata Department
http://www.rishtanata.org.uk/home/articles [archived]
organization: The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
How this rule is to be applied within the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is made very clear in a Friday sermon by the current Caliph, Mirza Masroor Ahmad. In that sermon, the Caliph condemns a widowed mother who married off her own daughter without the consent of a male guardian:
The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) gave young women the right to choose. However, Islam also restricts that any nikah without the presence of a wali (guardian) of the girl is not valid. Hazrat Musleh Maud ( may Allah be pleased with him) said that if God sent the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) and if he truly was from God then apart from the exemptions that our Islamic Shariah itself makes, no nikah is valid without a wali. It is our duty to explain these matters to people and if they do not accept then we should sever ties with them. An incident happened in the lifetime of the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace). A girl wished to get married to someone to which her father did not agree. The girl went to another town and had her nikah officiated by some mullah and announced that she was married. The couple returned to Qadian but the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) had them exposed from Qadian because they had their nikah performed against Shariah.
Official Summary of Friday Sermon, April 8, 2016 [archived]
title: Khalifatul Masih II: Pearls of Wisdom
speaker: Mirza Masroor Ahmad, 5th Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
It’s very clear that according to the rules of the Jama’at, women are not permitted the right of self-determination in the matter of their own marital lives. A woman’s consent is required but it’s not sufficient. A woman does not get to decide whom she might marry without (or against) her male guardian’s permission. It is also clear that Islamic Shariah on this matter is not grounded in the supposed ‘protection of women’.
The fact that the Jama’at presumes unmarried women, regardless of their education and experience, are unable to decide for themselves reveals the underlying sexist mindset at work here. In the Jama’at this right is simply a question of who has which genitalia—those who can therefore decide for themselves—and those who cannot.
In and of itself, these rules are clearly sexist, and as such, they should be condemned. Whether the motives of the people who enforce them today are sexist does not matter in making this determination.
In comments made by the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community on this topic, underlying attitudes of sexism are clear—and unmistakably so. Consider the following passage:
Just as Islam does not approve of a woman marrying without the consent of her guardian, i.e., her father, brother, or other near male relative, likewise it does not approve of a woman to separate from her husband on her own. It orders even greater care in case of divorce, and enjoins recourse to the authorities to protect her from any harm she may do to herself on account of her lack of understanding.
The Essence of Islam Volume III, p. 316 [archived]
author: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
founder: Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
In the same book, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad has provided his reasoning for this discrimination:
The answer is that men and women are not equal. Universal experience has shown that man is superior to woman in physical and mental powers. There are exceptions, but exceptions don’t make the rule. Justice demands that if man and wife want to separate, the right to decide should lie with the husband.
The Essence of Islam Volume III, p. 314 [archived]
author: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
founder: Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
The patriarchal and misogynistic mindset on which these rules are based is obvious. There is no rational basis for these misogynistic statements. Certainly, nothing that justifies the unequal treatment of women when it comes to marriage. Nothing can be explained away with the higher average upper body strength of men, or the different performance levels of male athletes at the Olympic Games. Yes, these are actually common talking points proffered by Islamic apologists to justify the discrimination woven into the very fabric of their religion against women.
At this point in the discussion, representatives of the Community will often throw their critics a bone by citing utterances from their spiritual leaders where male members are told to treat their wives and daughters kindly and with love. But that is missing the point entirely. People who think that this is a valid defense of discriminatory rules are starting from a place of internalized misogyny, where they accept the sexist rules as a given and then try to rationalize them by adding additional context, often hypothetical, to the original damning quotations. All of this, in order to mitigate the negative effects of patriarchal structures assumed by their religious texts. However, our critique is in fact, even more fundamental than that. The Islamic apologist’s approach doesn’t change the sexist nature of the rules and their underlying view of women which these rules project.
You cannot just rebalance bad and discriminatory laws by asking those you privilege by them, to be kind to those who are being disadvantaged.
What is the problem with women having the same rights to self-determination that men already enjoy? This question cannot be resolved with instructions to men to not take advantage of the privilege they have been given by Islam. Discriminatory rules, in combination with a request for compassion, is not addressing the root of the problem. A much better approach would be to not start from a point where discriminatory rules like this exist in the first place. The members can still be called to emphatic and loving treatment of their spouses. That injunction is not dependent on the existence of the disadvantages imposed on women by the religion itself.
The rules currently applied in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community represent an unmistakably discriminatory imbalance against women. This imbalance concerns an area that is highly personal. It strikes at the deeply important questions of who you can love, whether you have agency over your own body, and whether you are able to freely decide with whom you wish to share it.
In Islam, decisions by women that concern their innermost core are made dependent on the mercy of men.
A self-determined life is considerably more difficult to achieve with all of the attendant rules prescribed by the Community. Even when a woman seeks marriage to someone from within the Community, her father has the power to effectively veto that choice. In individual cases, these decisions by a father can be enacted for rather banal, reactionary or culturally rooted reasons. However, even when a father’s reasons for rejecting a partner for his daughter are not based on the dogma of the Community, the patriarchal framework of the Jama’at gives the father as guardian a theological foundation to defy his daughter’s declared will. This leverage which men are handed freely by the Community by virtue of them being men creates a power imbalance that a women has to overcome should her father not agree with her choice in a partner.
In contrast, no such requirements exist for a son. In some cases, if the disagreements are strong enough, sons may face a degree of pressure as well, but there is no codified religious rule that sons have to overcome in order choose their spouse.
Daughters on the other hand, are bound by it. If daughters disagree, they have to stand up to their own family, put their own reputation and “honour” of the family at risk, trust that the Caliph will decide in their favour and that the Jama’at will ultimately protect them from their own family’s rebuke. Unfortunately, this has not always worked. It can also end very tragically, as has happened before in this Community.
The Jama’at can declare over and over again, that all these negative outcomes have only cultural causes to blame. They can allege that it is only the misconduct of individual men who behave in this way when the wishes of their daughters are ignored. The Jama’at can insist that only the parents are responsible if a rejection, for private or cultural reasons, causes suffering for the daughters who then face having to make impossible choices. These deflections are nothing more than the Jama’at looking at the rules under idealized conditions only, and in their ignoring the discrimination inherent in the very fabric of their religious rulings.
Such a view ignores the fact that it is the rigid rules of patriarchy within the Jama’at which give fathers the very tools of oppression. Cultural and personal reasons are enforced with religiously sanctioned authority.
To say after the fact, that these reasons or actions were not compatible with the Community’s views is simply not enough.
I believe that everyone can see that there is no equality for women on this issue—not 1400 years ago—and certainly not today. As appreciative as one can be of the improvements that were made back then, we have to keep them in perspective. There is no point in fetishizing an idealistic and overly simplistic view of the past whilst ignoring the insight we now posses regarding consent. It is not enough to just run the propaganda claim on repeat that “Islam enshrines the rights of women”. Such statements ring hollow as the vacuous public relations stunts that they are, such as when the current Caliph states:
Tragically, some Muslim women have come under the influence of certain non-Ahmadi Maulvis (religious clerics) and so have become prone to the belief that they are somewhat inferior to men. This is completely wrong and erroneous. No woman should ever accept the false notion that somehow, they are bound for hell, inferior to men or unable to gain knowledge or wisdom. Let it be crystal clear that in no respect is a woman’s status less than that of a man.
The Equality of Women and Their Role in Society [archived]
author: Mirza Masroor Ahmad, 5th Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community
Address at National Waqfaat-e-Nau (Girls) Ijtema UK 2017.
Does the Caliph’s rebuke include and encompass the Jama’at’s own scholars and literature? Is the Caliph unaware of his own predecessors’ utterances? Will the current leadership of the Jama’at also rebuke the very founder of their Community who made claims about the inferior mental faculties and agency of women?
I certainly appreciate this new tone by the Jama’at, but it can only be a first step. To be consistent and honest, the Jama’at must recognize and reconcile with the misogyny woven into the very fabric of its own religious literature and guidance.
To pretend this sexism only exists because of non-Ahmadi clerics is for the Jama’at to avoid all responsibility for the mess the Community’s members must contend with in their daily lives. It makes it harder to believe that the Jama’at’s rhetoric is genuine.
Even more importantly, an acknowledgment and rejection of the statements of the past must be followed up with structural changes that reflect these newer values. We cannot be satisfied with flowery speeches as long as the discriminatory rules discussed here, still exist. Without a change in the rules, talk of the supposed rights women will remain as nothing more than hollow words. For those who suffer from these rules, the vacuous statements uttered by leaders of the Community sound like mockery. To say to those who criticize the rules, “Hey if you don’t like them, you should just leave [the Community]” doesn’t change the discriminatory nature of these very rules. Statements like these also reveal a profound ignorance of social dynamics and the importance of interpersonal relationships.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community—the Jama’at—is most certainly aware of this problem. In the short audio clip that follows, one can hear a candid admission from a Canadian Imam, Maulana Muhammad Afzal Mirza. In the clip we hear the imam relay that when a call comes into the mosque where a young man is expressing interest in joining the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, his immediate reaction is not, “Alhamdollilah! Our efforts are bearing fruit. Our apologetics are convincing non-Muslims to convert.”
No. Instead, the reaction from this missionary imam is to politely ask, “Who is the [Ahmadi] girl that you want to marry?”
Ahmadiyya Jama’at doesn’t only have Conversions for the ‘sole’ purpose of Marriages but also young #Ahmadis are LEAVING the #Jamaat because of its draconian law to marry only within the community!
Should the #Khalifa also announce the number of #Ahmadi apostates at Annual #Jalsa? pic.twitter.com/r86keVlpg8— Outside TheBox (@alislamtribune)
No doubt, the Jama’at’s own spiritual leadership must also feel the pressure created by the suffering of their members. However, this has only led to the Jama’at insisting on an even greater level of compliance with their archaic rules.
The Jama’at has responded with reactionary policies. Doubling down on gender segregation and related matters. Instead, the Jama’at should start to question and overcome some of the marital restrictions they have long since imposed. They should question at a more fundamental level the negative image of women which they themselves are responsible for projecting with their own policies.
The rhetoric around women’s rights, paired with a positive admonition to men needs to be accompanied by structural changes in the Jama’at’s policies and rules. Only then might we see an end to the unequal treatment and subordination of women in this Community.
- Waqifat-e-Nau refers to young female children who have been dedicated to God by their parents, usually at or just before their birth. In practice, this means that these children are raised with a special mission. They are taught to believe that their lives are no longer for themselves, but for serving God through the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. An ijtema is a religious camp.
- See the speech “Timely Marriage – A Citadel Against Contemporary Challenges” given in English at Jalsa Salana Canada 2018 by Imam Muhammad Afzal Mirza. Time index 31:52.
- The quote has also been cited by non-Ahmadi Muslims as coming from Al-Hukum, Qadian, Vol. 8, No. 45, Dec. 16, 1920. However, that has not been verified by the author or this website. This article will be updated if/when we have access to the Urdu and a translation.