The unshed tears, the shaking voice and the chattering teeth were the answers of the wife to the inquiries of the civil servant who called her to ask about a commercial enterprise that was registered in her name as she inherited it from her father. The official pitied her and tried to calm her down. After she managed to regain her self-control, she said to him, “Please do not ask me. My husband is the one who knows everything. I know nothing.” The official replied, “But this is registered in your name and you are the one who is held responsible for it. You have an independent financial liability.” The woman raised her head and looked astonished and disapproving, and said, “Independent financial liability? No! That is shameful!”
The use of the word “shameful” summarizes the predicament of many women concerning the rights that Islam has granted them. They think that discussing opinions with their husbands, asking for kind treatment, adhering to independent financial liability, disapproving of the husband’s oppression and asking him for personal financial maintenance is shameful. The rights turn out to be shameful and asking for them is paramount to rudeness and impoliteness. After that, the woman cries because of her feeling of humiliation and inferiority. She protests because her rights are lost and accuses men of conspiring against her but she forgets, whether intentionally or otherwise, that she was the first to conspire against herself and that her ignorance or indifference regarding her rights was the first reason for her losing them.
When a person gives up his rights, he should not blame others if they exploit this. The Muslim house that has a man who clings to things that are not his and a woman who forsakes her rights, is broken as it lacks two important pillars: awareness and understanding. Any home that lacks these two pillars cracks or at least appears to be standing while the relations within it are flimsy and near to collapse. There is a great difference between the woman who squanders her rights because of her ignorance and negligence or because she follows the norms that disapprove of women being aware of their rights, and the one who is aware of her rights but she forgoes and gives up some of them seeking the pleasure of Allah The Exalted firstly and for the sake of her partner. The first one is moved by familiarity with norms and suppresses a strong feeling of oppression that she tries to survive with as she can do nothing about it, while the second one enjoys the honor of awareness, seeks the reward of Allah The Almighty and does not feel that she is oppressed as she finds that what she has chosen is perfect justice. The woman who disapproves of having independent financial liability does not only squander her right but also denies it. Thus, she combines two faults: considering her lawful rights to be evil, giving the norms precedence over them and wasting them.
Thus, it is the duty of the women’s liberation movements to add to their priorities the importance of spreading awareness among women of their rights so that women would support their rights and would act as living proof of the greatness of Islam and its humanitarian superiority. Our rights, as women, that have been granted to us by Islam are not considered defects or something shameful that we should disassociate ourselves from. On the contrary, they are crowns of dignity and wreaths of honor. Their preciousness remains unaffected, even if we shed them. The tragedy, however, remains in our intellectual vulnerability upon losing those blessings, whether that loss is caused by ignorance or coercion. Our exposure is thereafter the most effective weapon that we present our enemies with, for them to stab our faith in the heart.