99 The emancipation of women

The biggest surprise I got from my reading of the Koran at the breakfast table was how emancipatory and revolutionary the text is. Early in my reading I discovered that I could not read the text as a monolithic timeless structure. I constantly had 7th century Middle Eastern society in my head with Christian Byzantium as main trendsetter together with Coptic Egypt coloured by Hellenism and African Christian Ethiopia who were surrounding hungrily frisky heathen Arab tribes. I saw the riches of Syria and the decadence of Byzantine overlords. Reading the Koran text I also got a vivid picture of how the 7th century Arab tribes treated their women worse than their beloved camels. How they buried infant girls alive if there wasn’t enough food to go around or if they deemed there were too many of them. How orphans were robbed of their dead father’s property. How males preferred each other to females whom they abused and neglected. How group rape of innocent travellers was their idea of hospitality. How mercy, compassion and solidarity with the unfortunates wasn’t on the agenda. How greed, violence and exploitation reigned. Through The Act Of Recitation, Allah urged any man who would listen to change their ways and become decent, God fearing and considerate. Men were in particular urged to do good by women, girls and orphans. Allah let it be known through his Messenger Mohammed that women were equal to men in everything except in child making and rearing. In the historical setting of 7th century Arabia this was so revolutionary it was neigh impossible to demand. The obvious strategy for immediate change was taking one privilege or custom from men and granting them another lesser damaging thing. That’s why the Koran is directed equally to men and women in all things spiritual, ‘intellectual’ and communal while talking to men solely when it is about daily life, the treatment of others and acceptable behaviour. Or so I understood as a female and Lesbian reader.

98 A book of admonitions

Dawood’s translation of the Koran is 430 pages of densely written text. That promises a lot of content. But a hefty portion of the text is repetitive admonitions; something that had put me off the very first time I opened its pages 45 years before. Passages abound like this one: ‘Allah knows those who are truthful and those who are lying. Or do the evil-doers think that they will escape Our punishment? How ill they judge!’ Still all the warnings didn’t make for an aggressive tone, because in the same breath the do-gooders are assured of the rewards that await them. One could say that Allah was a ‘Mad man’ avant la lettre. He used near endless repetition to sell his product. The admonitions are the commercials in a TV program: ten minutes of every hour broadcasting. In seventh century Arabia it helped the Koran ‘reciters’ to let the audience reflect on what they heard ‘between commercials’ and in the meantime be subconsciously influenced by the repetitive ad-monitions. One could call it also ‘the chorus’. The whole Koran is one long warning: don’t do this, but do that. And what was one supposed to do to please Allah? The Koran was the last rescue operation of Allah for hopelessly erring humankind. Through the Koran the God of Abraham gives us earthlings a definitive guidance and directive. In the seventh century peoples ‘of the Book’ and Arab tribes had replaced the worship of the one God in favour of a pantheon of tribal gods, saints and holy rabbis. The main aim of the Koran was to get people to do away with idolatry and bow once again for the God of Abraham. That was the first easily understood meaning I got from my daily reading.