Woman in Islam — Page 2
2 “Of His Signs it is that He has created mates for you of your own kind that you may find peace of mind through them, and He has put love and tenderness between you. In that surely are Signs for a people who reflect. ” (30:22) Islam teaches that the faculties and capacities bestowed by God upon man are a divine bounty and must be beneficently employed: “Allah brought you forth from the wombs of your mothers, when you knew nothing, and gave you ears and eyes and hearts that you may employ them beneficently. ” (16:79) This means that they must be exercised at their proper time and on their appropriate occasion, in which case they would be fostered and multiplied. But their neglect or misuse would attract divine wrath. Some religious disciplines mistakenly esteem celibacy more exalted spiritually than conjugal life. Islam disapproves of celibacy and condemns it. The Holy Quran says: “They devised monasticism as a means of seeking Allah’s pleasure. We did not prescribe it for them, and they did not observe it duly. ” (57:28) The whole concept of monasticism originated in the notion that woman was an inferior type of creation and association with her was degrading and demoralizing. The Church Fathers laid the responsibility of man’s fall upon woman, and represented her as being without a soul and an instrument of the devil.