早期伊斯兰教妇女观及妇女地位初探

EARLY-STAGE ISLAM' OUTLOOK ON WOMEN AND WOMEN'S STATUS

伊斯兰教产生前后的阿拉伯妇女地位是个颇有争议的问题。很多伊斯兰教历史学家指出:蒙昧时代阿拉伯妇女地位十分低下,当时阿拉伯社会盛行毫无限制的一夫多妻制、活埋女婴,妇女也没有财产权。据此,伊斯兰神学家认为伊斯兰教改善了妇女地位。阿来努丁在《伊斯兰教中的妇女地位:一个现代观点》一文中指出,伊斯兰教在四个方面提高了妇女地位:(1)

Islam's outlook on women at its early stage mainly contained the following aspects: One,all the Moslem men and women were equal before Allah with the same religious belief and obligation; Two, in real life, men were superior than women, and men must protect and dominate women who must obey men; Three, men should segregate from women who should live peacefully at home and must not show up in the public; Four, in marriage, women could preserve a relative self-decision; Five, women had the right to heritage and to giving witness. During this period, Moslem women still enjoyed a relatively high status, an habitual extension of the high status of women in the age of barbarism. In the sequence of the mid-period of the Abbassid Dynasty,the concept of oppressing women long shaped in Persia, Syria, Iraq and other relatively developed farming society integrated with the Islam principle of restraining women, thus laying the foundation for the declining status of women in the patriarchy society. Since then, Moslem women have lost freedom to action, and have heen deprived of self-decision to marriage or devorce; They have to strictly maintain fidelity and chastity after the death of their husbands, and a piece of veil has thus segregated them from the external world.