One need look no further than the success of French editors publishing testimonies by Muslim women and the proposed titles which speak volumes on this obsession with representing the Muslim woman as an inevitable victim of Islam: Burnt Alive by Souad; Forced to Marry by Leila; Mutilated by Khady; The Woman’s Stoning by Freidoune Sahebjam; Disfigured by Rania el Baz; I Was Born in a Harem by Choga Regina … almost all of which were published in the year 2005 alone!
We must go back, way back, to the story of human creation … The universal story and popular imagination are indelibly marked by a same and unique belief which transcends time, cultural space, religious dogma and the history of civilizations … This belief stipulates that Adam – as a man – was God’s first creation and that Eve, the woman, was created from one of Adam’s ribs.
Henceforth, this legendary truth has become the founding myth of the inferiority of women and we know the disastrous effect this type of concept has had throughout the history of humanity.
It remains undeniable that the affirmation of the inferiority of women as compared to men finds its origins in theological assumptions widely anchored in ways of thinking, both in Judaeo-Christian cultures and in Muslim lands. Without going into the metaphysical details, these main assumptions are found, with much continuity, in the interpretative texts of the religious traditions of the three monotheistic religions and one can summarize the main points through three observations which continuously return in universal religious history.
Firstly, there is this idea that woman was created from Adam’s rib, which equates to saying that her creation was necessarily secondary, Adam – man – being considered as the norm or representative of the human ideal.
The second observation is that which suggests that Eve is the primary cause of Adam’s eviction from Paradise, since it is she, according to this very widespread understanding, who incited Adam to transgress God’s command and to taste from the forbidden tree. She has become the undeniable muse of the legendary ‘original sin’.
And the final assumption, that woman was not only created from Adam, but she was created for him! An important nuance! It is from here that the entire culture of the oppression of women that we are familiar with has emerged and which has found its legitimacy in a particular religious discourse. Today, the majority of Christian exegetes consider the story of Adam and Eve to be symbolic and many theologians interpret it differently from traditional readings. They recognize the existence of many contradictions in the Bible and reject classical interpretations which they consider to be too literalistic.
As for Islam, or, rather the Qur’anic text itself, nowhere does one find this conception of Eve coming from Adam’s rib. Nonetheless, it is stupefying to see the extent to which the different commentaries and religious works, and moreover the Muslim imagination, have remained profoundly tainted by the traditionalist Judaeo-Christian understanding!
In the Qur’an, several verses illustrate a very different conception to that widely circulated nowadays. First we find a central verse in Surah al Nisā’ (Women):
O MANKIND! Be conscious of your Sustainer, who has created you out of one living entity, and out of it created its mate, and out of the two spread abroad a multitude of men and women [...] (al Nisā’ 4: 1)1
It is very important to redefine the terminology used in the Qur’anic text concerning creation, because key words in this verse will be interpreted in the vast majority of cases according to a classical schema of the hierarchizationof human creation. In fact, in classical commentaries the term ‘nafs wahida’ refers to Adam as a masculine being and zawj to his wife.
However, a more structured approach indicates that the term ‘nafs’, which is feminine in Arabic, refers to a range of notions which one can translate according to the meaning of the text, as: person, individual, soul, essence, matter, spirit, or even breath of life.
As for the term ‘zawj’, it refers to both spouses, the pair or, the partner. It is often used to speak indistinguishably of the husband or wife and despite the fact it is grammatically masculine, it can be used both for the man or the woman.2 In the Qur’an, it is often used to speak of a couple, and this, as much when discussing humans as plants or animals. It is what the Qur’an describes in this verse, for example:
And in everything have We created pairs,3 so that you might bear in mind [that God alone is One]. (al-Dhāriyāt 51: 49)4
Nevertheless, a great majority of scholars interpret the term ‘nafs’ as ‘Adam’ as a man or male and the term zawj as ‘wife’, which, according to this logic, reinforces the classical anthropomorphic representation of the origin of human creation. Since Adam is a man, the term ‘zawj’, as referred to by the Qur’an in this verse, refers to the female counterpart, namely Eve or Hawwa. Since the first exegetes drew widely from the pre-Islamic religious heritage in order to support their interpretations, the legend of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib was widely reported and subsequently endorsed by Muslim scholars.
Starting from this assumption and certain supporting hadiths, the classical commentators concluded that Eve was created from one of Adam’s ribs.
However, one notes firstly that in the Qur’an, Eve (or Hawwa) is not mentioned by her name. The significance of the term ‘zawj’ or ‘partner’ depends on the meaning of the verse or ‘siyaq al-ayah’. Based on the consistency and the orientation of the verse, the term ‘partner’ can be translated as either the man or the woman and sometimes, as is the case in this central verse, it remains totally abstract, apparently in order to better underline the Divine will to transcend gender when it comes to the first human design.
What’s more, there is no Qur’anic affirmation which specifies that the Adam of this initial creation was male and even less that Eve was drawn from one of his ribs! Some Muslim scholars, both classical and contemporary, question and even refute this type of interpretation which seems to be, according to them, largely influenced by the previous scriptural texts.
These thinkers consider that the term ‘Adam’ is used primarily in the Qur’an in its broadest meaning of ‘human being’ or ‘human kind’. In his various writings, the imam Muḥammad ‘Abdu suggests that Adam also refers to individual, human being, ‘al-insan’ or ‘bashar’. Adam, as he is mentioned in this verse, specifically seems to refer to ‘humanity’ in its entirety, which amounts to saying that in creating Adam, God created the human race, male and female at once, in its initial form.
This reading, which is dubbed reformist to distinguish it from classical approaches, advocates a single unique provenance for humanity, in other words a humanity which emerged from a single matter and same origin. Still within this reformist perspective, the objective of the verse describing creation would be to unequivocally affirm the original equality of all human beings. Unlike the classical reading which translates the term ‘nafs’ by ‘man’ or ‘Adam’ and zawj by ‘Eve’ or ‘the first woman’, the term refers here and according to the perspective of these reformists, to ‘the original essence’, whereas ‘zawj’ refers to ‘partner’, which supports the idea of a full human equality, beyond any considerations based on gender or race. Humanity was thus created from this ‘first entity’ or ‘initial truth’, and through his unique interpretation the definition by Imam Muhammad ‘Abdu who, differs markedly from the classical commentators.
