[hijab flutter ~ MuslimMatters]
فَأَجَاءهَا الْمَخَاضُ إِلَى جِذْعِ النَّخْلَةِ قَالَتْ يَا لَيْتَنِي مِتُّ قَبْلَ هَذَا وَكُنتُ نَسْيًا مَّنسِيًّا
“Allah has heard the saying of her that disputes with you (Muhammad) concerning her husband, and complains unto Allah. And Allah hears what you both have to say. Lo! Allah is Hearer, Knower.”
[Quran - 58:1]
The backdrop of Surah Al-Mujadilah is a very interesting one. It tells us how once a Muslim wife directly approached the Prophet Muhammad [صَلَى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّم], complaining to him of the dhihaar which her husband had pronounced on her earlier. According to Arab custom in those days, dhihaar constituted a divorce initiated by a sentence spoken by a (usually enraged) husband to his wife: “You are to me like my mother’s back”, which obviously implied that he’d no longer give her, her conjugal rights or financial support. This left a wife dangling, and though her husband could proceed to marry another wife, she had no hope for marrying another.
The woman whose husband divorced her, then wanted her back:
This lady was Khaulah Bint Tha’labah [may Allah be pleased with her], and to this day she is respected for being the woman whose appeal for justice was heard and responded by Allah. This is because the Quran itself testifies to how Allah heard her complaint. A little analysis of the Arabic words:
سَمِعَ اللَّهُ - Sami’Allahu: Muslims recite these two words as a start of the phrase uttered when standing back up from rukoo in salah. In the verse above, it means, simply and empathetically, that Allah heard her.
تُجَادِلُكَ - Tujaadiluka: “The woman who was altercating with you” – the word meaning of the root – ja-da-la – is provided directly from Edward William Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon
The reason for going into the depth of this word by consulting this lexicon is to enable the readers to imagine the way Khaulah Bint Tha’labah was “presenting her case” to the Prophet Muhammad [صَلَى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّم]. Certainly, suffice it to say that her guts are admirable indeed. Not the typical, stereotypical picture of the oppressed Muslim woman under a cloth shuttlecock, is it?
تَشْتَكِى - Tushtakee: She was complaining.
[And to think how often women are criticized for "nagging"!]
Incidentally, this Surah is known as both Al-Mujadalah as well as Al-Mujadilah. If it were read as “mujadalah“, it would mean, “pleading and arguing”, and if it were read as “mujadilah“, it would mean “the woman who pleaded and argued.” Both cases apply to the incident that happened as a backdrop of its revelation.
Khaulah Bint Tha’labah could have stayed at home crying about her fate, resigning herself to it after her husband proclaimed dhihaar on her and left. Something, however, made her get up to go appeal to the Prophet [صَلَى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّم] directly. The three words Allah has used in the verse above – disputing, complaining, and mutual conversation – followed by the admission that He was listening to her, indicate that what she did was admirable and praiseworthy, not dissident or rebellious.
The word تُجَادِلُكَ implies that Khaulah was eloquent and confident in setting forth her case, as the lexicon proves. I think this verse of the Quran is ample proof of the fact that if the husband is persistently wrong or oppressive in a certain way towards his wife, she has the right to complain about him to a higher authority, who can set matters aright.
Cut to the present, and the rampant incidents of domestic abuse that women suffer the world over, make dhihaarpale in comparison. It is normal for husbands and wives to argue and fight sometimes, yet in some cases, when extreme lines are crossed, insults and verbal altercation can pave the way for physical abuse. Each case is different and one solution cannot apply to each, unless the particular circumstances are taken into account first.
The custodian of the masjid was a very young student there and late at night when he walked through the masjid before locking up he noticed this beautiful young lady. He was a respectful young man who feared Allah and so politely asked her to leave, saying that if she was found there then both would be dishonored and thrown out. She pleaded with him because of the extreme danger outside and so he agreed that she could spend the night, and sat down to study at the opposite end of the masjid.