Musa ‘Amid...

Musa ‘Amid, on page 8, after his remark that ‘in ancient times it was religion which laid the foundations for the formation of families and not natural ties,’ he says: “The religious spokesmanship of the family (under the patriarchal system) was with the grandfather of the family, and after him, the religious rites and rituals of the family were performed only by the male children, generation after generation.

The ancients considered that the male children were the only source of continuation of their lineage.

The father of the family, life-giver to his son as he was, also transferred his religious beliefs and the religious rituals, the right to keep the Fire alive, and the right to recite special prayers also.[^1] As is mentioned in the Hindu Vedas and in the laws of Greece and Rome, the power of generation is confined to men, and the result of this antiquated belief was that the family regions were the special concern of men.

Women had no business and concern with religion except through their fathers and husbands….. and because they had no hand in religious rituals, they were naturally deprived of all family privileges. Afterwards, when with the improvement of the economic situation an occasion for inheritance arose, women were deprived of that right.” There were other reasons also for woman’s being deprived of inheritance. One of them was their weakness in combat.

In societies where preferences and prerogatives were based on heroism and valor and one war-faring person was preferred to a hundred thousand non-war like persons, woman was naturally deprived of inheritance because of her weakness in the performance of acts of defense and bravery.

Arabs of the pre-Islamic age were against were against woman’s receiving inheritance for this very reason, and when there was a male member of a family however distant in the ranks of inheritance he may have been, they never gave inheritance to a woman.