The Women of the Arabs. Henry Harris Jessup
hear a scream in the Moslem quarter of the city and ask the reason, it will be said to you with an indifferent shrug of the shoulder, "that is only some man beating his wife."
That thirty-eighth verse of Sura iv. is one of the many proofs that the Koran is not the book of God, because it violates the law of love. "Husbands love your wives," is a precept of the Gospel and not of the Koran. Yet it is a sad fact that the nominal Christians of this dark land are not much better in this respect than their Moslem neighbors. The Greeks, Maronites and Papal Greeks beat their wives on the slightest provocation. In the more enlightened towns and cities this custom is "going out of fashion," though still often resorted to in fits of passion. Sometimes the male relatives of the wife retaliate in case a husband beats her. In the village of Schwire, in Lebanon, a man beat his wife in a brutal manner and she fled to the house of her brother. The brother watched his opportunity; waylaid the offending husband, and avenged his sister's injuries by giving him a severe flogging. In Eastern Turkey, a missionary in one of the towns noticed that not one woman attended church on Sunday. He expostulated with the Protestants, and urged them to persuade their wives to accompany them. The next Sunday the women were all present, as meek and quiet as could be wished. The missionary was delighted, and asked one of the men how they persuaded them to come? He replied, "We all beat our wives soundly until they consented to come!" This wife-beating custom has evidently been borrowed by the Christian sects from their Moslem rulers and oppressors, and nothing but a pure Christianity can induce them to abandon it.
III. Some have supposed that there will be no place in the Moslem Paradise for women, as their place will be taken by the seventy-two bright-eyed Houris or damsels of Paradise. Mohammed once said that when he took a view of Paradise he saw the majority of its inhabitants to be the poor, and when he looked down into hell, he saw the greater part of the wretches confined there to be women! Yet he positively promised his followers that the very meanest in Paradise will have eighty thousand servants, seventy-two wives of the Houris, besides the wives he had in this world. The promises of the Houris are almost exclusively to be found in Suras, written at a time when Mohammed had only a single wife of sixty years of age, and in all the ten years subsequent to the Hegira, women are only twice mentioned as the reward of the faithful. And this, while in four Suras, the proper wives of the faithful are spoken of as accompanying their husbands into the gardens of bliss.
"They and their wives on that day
Shall rest in shady groves." (Sura 36.)
"Enter ye and your wives into Paradise delighted." (Sura 43.)
"Gardens of Eden into which they shall enter
Together with the just of their fathers, and their wives." (Sura 13.)
An old woman once desired Mohammed to intercede with God that she might be admitted to Paradise, and he told her that no old woman would enter that place. She burst into loud weeping, when he explained himself by saying that God would then make her young again.
I was once a fellow-passenger in the Damascus diligence, with a Mohammedan pilgrim going to Mecca by way of Beirût and Egypt, in company with his wife. I asked him whether his wife would have any place in Paradise when he received his quota of seventy-two Houris. "Yes," said he, looking towards his wife, whose veil prevented our seeing her, although she could see us, "if she obeys me in all respects, and is a faithful wife, and goes to Mecca, she will be made more beautiful than all the Houris of Paradise." Paradise is thus held up to the women as the reward of obedience to their husbands, and this is about the sum and substance of what the majority of Moslem women know about religion.
Women are never admitted to pray with men in public, being obliged to perform their devotions at home, or if they visit the Mosques, it must be at a time when the men are not there, for the Moslems are of opinion that the presence of women inspires a different kind of devotion from that which is desirable in a place set apart for the worship of God.
The Moslem idea of woman is vile and degraded. A Moslem absent from home never addresses a letter to his wife, but to his son or brother, or some male relative. It is considered a grievous insult to ask a Moslem about the health of his wife. If obliged to allude to a woman in conversation, you must use the word "ajellak Allah," "May God elevate you" above the contamination of this subject! You would be expected to use the same expression in referring to a donkey, a dog, a shoe, a swine or anything vile. It is somewhat like the Irish expression, "Saving your presence, sir," when alluding to an unpleasant subject.
A Greek christian (?) in Tripoli came to an American Missionary physician and said, "there is a woman, 'ajell shanak Allah' here who is ill. I beg your pardon for mentioning so vile a subject to your excellency." Said the doctor, "and who may it be?" "Ajellak, it is my wife!"
I remember once meeting the Mohammedan Mufti of Beirût in Dr. Van Dyck's study at the printing press. The Mufti's wife, (at least one of them,) was ill, and he wished medical advice, but could not insult the Doctor by alluding to a woman in his presence. So he commenced, after innumerable salutations, repeating good-morning, and may your day be happy, until he could decently proceed to business. "Your excellency must be aware that I have a sick man at my house. May God grant you health! Indeed, peace to your head. Inshullah, it is only a slight attack!" "He has pain in his back, headache, and he will not eat." "Has he any fever?" "A little." "I will come and see her this afternoon." "May God increase your good. Good morning, sir!"
The Mohammedan laws with regard to polygamy, inheritance and divorce, are a decided advance on the Pagan Arabs of "the Ignorance."
The Pagan Arabs allowed any number of wives. The Koran allows only four to any believer, the prophet himself having peculiar privileges in this respect. The modern practice of Mohammedans in taking a score or more of wives is directly contrary to the Koran. The Pagan Arabs suffered no woman to have any part of the husband's or father's inheritance, on the ground that none should inherit who could not go to war, and the widows were disposed of as a part of their husband's possessions. The Koran says, (Sura iv.) "Women ought to have a part of what their parents leave." A male shall have twice as much as a female. But a man's parents, and also his brothers and sisters are to have equal shares, without reference to sex. "God commandeth you to give the male the portion of two females. If she be an only daughter, she shall have the half. Your wives shall have a fourth part of what ye leave, if ye have no issue."
Among the Pagan Arabs, divorce was a mere matter of caprice. The Koran says, (Sura ii.) "You may divorce your wives twice (and take them back again). But if the husband divorce her a third time, it is not lawful for him to take her again, until she shall have been actually married to another husband, and then divorced by him." I have known cases where the husband in a fit of passion has divorced his wife the third time, and, in order to get her back again, has hired another man to marry her and then divorce her. A rich Effendi had divorced his wife the third time, and wishing to re-marry her, hired a poor man to marry her for a consideration of seven hundred piastres. He took the wife and the money, and the next day refused to give her up for less than five thousand piastres, which the Effendi was obliged to pay, as the woman had become the lawful and wedded wife of the poor man.
No Mohammedan ever walks with his wife in the street, and in Moslem cities, very few if any of men of other sects are willing to be seen in public in company with a woman. The women are closely veiled, and if a man and his wife have occasion to go anywhere together, he walks in advance and she walks a long distance behind him. Nofel Effendi, one of the most learned and intelligent Protestants in Syria, once gave me the explanation of this aversion to walking in public with women, in a more satisfactory manner than I had ever heard it before. Said he, "You Franks can walk with your wives in public, because their faces are unveiled, and it is known that they are your wives, but our women are so closely veiled that if I should walk with my wife in the street, no one would know whether I was walking with my own wife or another man's! You cannot expect a respectable man to put himself into such an embarrassing position!" No Moslem woman or girl would dare go into the street without a veil, for fear of personal chastisement from the husband and father, and the Greek, Maronite and other nominal Christian women in Syria shrink from exposing their faces, through fear of insult from the Mohammedans.
When European women, either residents