ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Rights of Women in Islam Part One: Proposal and Engagement I begin my discussion about the proposed forty articles from the very point they themselves begin. Those proposals for the Civil Law start in the subject of proposal and engagement. The fact is that the articles relating to proposal and engagement laid down in the Civil Law are not straight Islamic Laws.

In other wards, the specific text and command from Islam itself about most of them is not cited. Whatever the Civil Law has cited in support of these Articles is all based upon precepts that are deduced from general Islamic beliefs. So we do not consider ourselves obliged to defend the Civil Law, and we shall not enter into a discussion of the individual ideas of the proposer.

For the proposer has perpetrated some great mistakes, and is even unable to perceive the correct meaning of some simple articles. However, there are two points here which cannot be waived aside. Does a man’s proposal of marriage insult a woman? The writer of the proposal says: Our legislator did not loose sight of the reactionary and inhuman attitude in these few simple selections of the law (relating to proposal and engagement) whereby man as such as the principal figure and woman the secondary.

In pursuance of this conception, Article 1034, the opening article of the section on marriage and divorce has been drawn up in the following way: ‘Article 1034. One can propose marriage to any woman who is free of impediments to marriage’. It is evident that although the Article does not contain any order nor assign any obligation, marriage has nevertheless been brought up for consideration as the ‘taking of a wife’ by man.

He is treated as a customer or buyer while the woman is represented as some sort of merchandise. In social laws, expressions like this create a very bad and distasteful psychological effect: the above mini definitions in the laws of marriage especially have an effect upon the relations between men and women, and give man the position of master and owner and woman the status of something owned or of a slave.

After such subtle psychological observations, the said proposer puts forward the draft of an article to do with asking the hand of a woman in marriage.