Muslim Women Between Work and Home: A New Perspective

In Islam, the house is an institution. It is a family development centre that is in tandem with other social institutions, facilitates and supervises the rise of Islamic societies and, by extension, Islamic culture and civilization.

The importance of the house institution-cum-centre is unparalleled. Together with the mosque institution, it occupies the pinnacle of the hierarchy of social establishments.

Consequently, women, as wives, have been appointed as its managers or directors (guardians). They have been honored greatly thereby.

The Prophet said on this: “Everyone of you is a guardian and everyone of you is responsible (for his wards). A ruler is a guardian and is responsible (for his subjects); a man is a guardian of his family and is responsible (for them); a wife is a guardian of her husband’s house and she is responsible (for it), a slave is a guardian of his master’s property and is responsible (for that). Beware! All of you are guardians and are responsible (for your wards)” (Sahih al-Bukhari).

However, due to the global assaults of the materialistic worldview and its resultant lifestyles, the Muslim consciousness has been affected.

Instead of seeing the development and administration of the most important institution—i.e., the house—as not only a pivotal enterprise but also a privilege, Muslims suddenly started seeing it as a sign of backwardness and women’s imprisonment.

Instead of perceiving it as a mark of honor, they started perceiving it as a mark of degradation.

That resulted in conceiving, planning, building, and maintaining houses as centers of materialistic tendencies and corresponding hedonistic behavioral patterns, in lieu of vibrant centers of family and generally social development.

In such houses and under novel circumstances, Muslim women, without warning, found themselves underutilized and, so, underperforming.

Staying home as just “housewives” became an undesired anomaly. It became meaningless in a way, which was understandable.

If everything changed, from thinking to performing, whereby essentially all things were looked at through the prism of materialism (money-making), it was natural that Muslim women demanded changes with regard to their lives as well.

Muslim women now became more useful outside the house than inside it. Inside, they were confined, but outside, emancipated. Inside, furthermore, they were inhibited, but outside, unleashed.

In reality, though, Muslim women were the last link in a chain to be affected, after the family institution itself and the general idea of social development had been affected (distorted).

As per a more scathing assessment, Muslim women had to abandon houses because Muslim men were failing in their own duties outside them.

Rather than supporting and complementing each other, Muslim men and Muslim women began to encroach on each other’s roles and even compete with each other.

Moreover, instead of talking about equity as well as synchronization between the two different groups and realms, the Muslim mind was forced to waste itself on such nonsensical issues as equality between two inherently different things (men and women) and the status of Muslim women within the frameworks that, from the very beginning, had been wrongly conceptualized.

And so, Muslim women were taken from the warmth and intimacy of the sanctuary of the house institution to the outside world, with no or very little protection.

With all honesty, women were neither built nor meant for such unfortunate adventures. What Muslim women now achieve outside the home institution pales in comparison with what they used to achieve inside it.

By the same token, what they achieve outside is nothing when compared with what they lose by abandoning the family establishment and the prospect of family development as part of a holistic civilizational advancement.

This is one of the fundamental reasons why Muslim societies suffer today, because they dispose of the essentials without which no healthy model of growth is possible.

In consequence, warm and welcoming homes were converted into cold and aloof houses as mere architectural displays; family-cum-social development centres were turned into museum-like hubs of fake prosperity. Dynamic and busy homes became empty and lifeless structural shells.

In other words, multidimensional homes simply became one-dimensional shelters, and the assignments of nurturing individuals and shaping generations were delegated to either incompetent or insincere protagonists.

If Muslim women underperform, yet fail, as administrators, lawyers, economists, journalists, teachers, businesswomen, etc., that will on no account be the “end of the world.”

The consequences will be minimal and the impacts generated thus, before long, smoothed over.

But if Muslim women fail as wives, mothers, mentors and neighbors, as segments of the multilayered post of home managers or home directors, that will spell catastrophic repercussions, such as divorces, broken families, poorly raised and educated children, “cold homes,” and general despondency.

Undoubtedly, such failures can be neither smoothed over nor counterbalanced.

If Muslim women fail, Muslim societies fail. The future is in women’s hands.

What the majority of Muslim men do, such as handling machines, running businesses, routine office work, and manual labor, in the long run is not as consequential as what women do in relation to the house.

They build people, yet future generations, as the foremost components of which all sectors of society are constructed.

While women’s tasks are unreplaceable, most men’s ones are. The capabilities and inputs of men, by and large, can be purchased, obtained from a third party, replicated, and even substituted with cost-effective foreign labor.

It cannot be said enough that Muslims ought to desist from making observations and judgments from purely materialistic standpoints. There are other, more important things at stake.

It is indisputable that the development of civilizations involves far more than just the growth of economies (material progress).

Developing minds and purifying souls as part of the process of cultivating individuals is more critical. It is more rewarding in both worlds.

Bearing in mind all of the above, it is essential to ensure Muslim women receive appropriate education.

It is normally stressed that education is Muslim women’s right, which is absolutely correct; however, their twin right is also an education that is in harmony with their Islamic identity and their existential mission.

For example, education for Muslim women should be such that they will be trained to be exemplary custodians (managers or directors) of the delicately demanding house institution above all else. The rest are subordinate positions relative to the former.

Educating Muslim women to be mere professionals ahead of everything else in fields that lie beyond their prescribed domains denotes a form of misguidance and betrayal for them.

In the name of learning and enlightenment, they are led astray; in the name of empowerment, they are incapacitated; and in the name of enrichment, they are “robbed.”

This by no means implies that Muslim women have no role to play outside the purview of the house institution.

On the contrary, they have outstanding roles to play that are part of the comprehensive roles of the house or are fully independent from them.

Nevertheless, the truth remains that the house institution is the top priority. Other opportunities are subordinate to it.

If the functionality of the top priority is not affected in any way, Muslim women are welcome to perform the needed and appropriate external functions, just as the women of the Prophet’s era and the women of the subsequent eras of the truly golden age of Islamic civilization have done.

But if the functionality of the house and the orb of its activities are affected, Muslim women should then hasten to either reduce or terminate their outer involvements.

Doing so, however, is not a choice but an obligation, for which Muslim women will have to answer to their Creator on the Day of Judgment:

“(and) a wife is a guardian of her husband’s house, and she is responsible (for it)” – rewarded for good performances and answerable for inadequate ones.

This article is from our archive.