During its ideological war against Islam, the Western secular capitalist world, has always given special attention to the matter of women’s position and rights under Islam and Shariah. It associated the cause of oppressions such as forced marriages and honour killings to the Shariah and blamed it for the exclusion of women from education, social life and politics in various Muslim communities and countries. Islamic provisions which contradict Western ideals like gender equality or liberal freedoms constituted the most significant area for their attacks. Feminists and secular liberal politicians, media and organizations relentlessly attacked specific Islamic social and family laws, and declared Islam and its rule as misogynist under the label of being discriminatory and unjust towards women. A multitude of myths and misinformation were specifically propagated by secularists and Western orientalists, feminists and politicians regarding the status of women under the Uthmani Khilafah, the last seat of Islamic rule. They disseminated a narrative that became ingrained into the psyche of many in the West and Muslim world who consequently came to view the position of women under the Shariah through these lies. They promoted the idea that women under Ottoman Islamic rule were deprived of any rights, and treated as chattels and slaves – all in an attempt to create hatred and shame within Muslims towards their Islamic culture and heritage in order for them to embrace secular liberal capitalist values and systems and abandon any support for the resumption of the implementation of the Shariah under a Khilafah state.
Many of these lies originated from male orientalists who lived during the Uthmani era, the majority of whom were never allowed to have any interaction with Ottoman Muslim women due to the strict separation of the genders that was implemented under the state. The harems, the living quarters of women within the houses of the Uthmani Khilafah were the subject of many Western fantasies related to the enslavement, exploitation, and oppression of women. They were portrayed as sexually depraved places, where women were imprisoned and treated as mere objects to provide pleasure for men. However, entry into the harem institutions was forbidden for any man, other than the husband of the woman or her close blood relatives such as her father, brothers, or sons. Hence, it was impossible for these male Western orientalists to give first-hand accounts of the life of women under the Uthmani Khilafah.
Therefore many of the Western depictions of Ottoman women were born from nothing but European imagination and fantasies. Despite this, their false narrative of the degrading treatment, oppression, and imprisonment of women under the Islamic rule of the Uthmani Khilafah was repeated endlessly over the decades. It was subsequently adopted and propagated by modern-day secular historians, feminists, and writers. Consequently this view point regarding Ottoman women became engrained into the consciousness of the West as well as in the minds of many Muslims. These Western depictions were often engineered to re-enforce orientalist notions of the superiority of the West over other nations and was used by Western imperial states to provide moral justification for their colonisation of the Muslim world to secure their political and economic interests in the region.
However, an examination of the judicial records of the Uthmani Khilafah, paint a very different picture of the lives of women under its Islamic laws. In the 1970’s, American history professor R. C. Jennings conducted an extensive research on more than 10,000 Ottoman court records from the 17th century, mainly from Kayseri, a city in Anatolia, Turkey. These records and the type of cases brought to court by the women of the time give an insight into their status and treatment under the Shariah and the rights they enjoyed. Inspired by Jennings work, after the 1980s, more and more researchers such as Haim Gerber, Abraham Marcus, Afif Marsot, Judith Tucker and Suraiya Faroqhi, also presented the various experiences of Ottoman women by researching the Ottoman judicial and estate records (Sicil and Tereke) in its various lands.
These records show that women under the Islamic laws of the Uthmani Khilafah were protected from violence and forced marriages, were financially maintained by their husbands and families, could initiate divorce, and had their dowry and inheritance rights protected. In addition, they had the same economic rights as men and were able to manage their wealth and economic affairs independently of male relatives. This included the right to buy and sell property, run a business, form contracts, invest their wealth, and hold managerial positions in businesses run by others.
The elevated status and rights that women enjoyed under the Uthmani Khilafah is re-enforced by the writings of Western female travellers and writers who were able to have closer interaction with Ottoman Muslim women and at times even permitted to enter the harems. They were therefore able to witness directly the nature of the lives of women within the state. Indeed, many of these female Western writers were critical of those who based their writings on hear say and fantasy. Lady Montague for example, wife to the British ambassador to the Uthmani Khilafah in the 18th century wrote in one of her letters to a friend, “You will perhaps be surprised at an account so different from what you have been entertained with by the common voyage writers, who are very fond of speaking of what they do not know.”
These female writers rejected the idea that Ottoman women were imprisoned, enslaved, and degraded human beings; rather they witnessed the opposite. Julia Pardoe for example, a British poet, historian and traveller wrote in her book, ‘The City of the Sultan and Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1836’, “If, as we are all prone to believe, freedom be happiness, then are the Turkish women the happiest, for they are certainly the freest individuals in the Empire. It is the fashion in Europe to pity the women of the East; but it is ignorance of their real position alone which can engender so misplaced an exhibition of sentiment.” Similarly, Lady Craven, also a British traveller and writer stated in her book ‘A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople’ published in 1789, “The Turks in their conduct towards our sex are an example to all other nations…- and I think them (Turkish women) in their manner of living, capable of being the happiest creatures breathing.”
These European women also refuted the claim that harems were abodes of sexual depravity where women were imprisoned and exploited, describing them instead as simply the living quarters of women within a household, and a representation of great respect with which they were viewed by Turkish Muslim men. For example, Lucy M. J. Garnett, a 19th century British Folklorist wrote in her book ‘The Women of Turkey and their Folklore – 1890-91’, “The seclusion of Moslem women, instead of being, as is generally assumed, a result of their ‘degraded position’, is on the contrary, the outcome of the great respect and regard entertained for them by the men of their own nation.”
However, despite these multiple writings and records that contradict the popular Western narrative of the exploitation and oppression of women under the Shariah laws implemented by the Uthmani Khilafah, this popular false narrative continues to be widely promoted by secular institutions, feminists, and writers. Their aim is clearly to attempt to win a secular ideological war against Islam by continuing to make Muslim and non-Muslim alike fearful of the re-establishment of a Khilafah state that rules by Islam alone.
Of course the Uthmani Khilafah was not a utopian state for women. There were various problems that occurred within the state due to the misapplication of Islam that affected women negatively, especially towards the end of its rule when various Western ideas entered the Muslim lands. However, Western attempts to paint the whole landscape of Ottoman rule or the lives of women under Islamic governance through the lens of these problems that resulted due to weakness in the understanding and application of Islam is misleading and wrong.
It is therefore essential to dismantle the lies and correct the misunderstandings surrounding the status and rights of women under Uthmani Islamic rule. This is in order to remove the apprehensions related to what the implementation of Shariah in a future Khilafah state would mean to the women of the Muslim world.
This series of articles, entitled “Women Under the Uthmani Khilafah: Challenging the Myths” seeks to achieve exactly this.
“The Turks in their conduct towards our sex are an example to all other nations…- and I think them (Turkish women) in their manner of living, capable of being the happiest creatures breathing.”
From ‘A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople’ (1789) by Lady Elizabeth Craven, British Traveller and Writer
Women’s Section in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir