The Hidden Half: Women and Islam

By Stuart Robinson

This book is about women and Islam. It does not seek to sensationalize; nor should it be seen as an attempt to moralize. It simply records widespread practice and the authoritative religious texts that validate these practices. It also seeks to motivate the reader to engage with Muslims in society through practical actions of Christian grace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9780994260796

Stuart Robinson

Dr Stuart Robinson is the Founding Pastor of Australia's largest Baptist Church. Before that he worked for fourteen years in South Asia where he pioneered church planting among a previously very resistant majority people group. He travels extensively as a speaker at Seminars, Conferences and Colleges. He is the author of thirteen books including best-selling titles, Mosques & Miracles, Defying Death, The Prayer of Obedience and The Challenge of Islam. He graduated from four tertiary institutions. Stuart was born in Brisbane Australia and is married to Margaret. They have three married children. www.drstuartrobinson.com

Book preview

THE HIDDEN HALF

Women and Islam

by

Stuart Robinson

Award Winning & Bestselling Author

CHI–Books

PO Box 6462

Upper Mt Gravatt, Brisbane

QLD 4122

Australia

www.chibooks.org

[e-mail]

The Hidden Half – Women and Islam

Copyright © 2017 by Stuart Robinson

Print ISBN: 978-0-9942607-8-9

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9942607-9-6

Under International Copyright Law, all rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, including by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise in whole or in part without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of sermon preparation, reviews or articles and brief quotations embodied in critical articles. The use of occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request.

Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

All Scriptures references are from the NIV unless indicated otherwise.

Printed in Australia, United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Distributed globally through all major outlets.

Editorial assistance: Anne Hamilton

Cover design: Hadassah Wallis

Layout: Jonathan Gould

What others are saying about this book…

Who does one believe? Does the media give an insight into truth? Or is reality found elsewhere? Stuart Robinson's The Hidden Half: Women in Islam, uses material from the popular press to examine life as a woman from birth through to death in an Islamic context. Alongside that portrayal Robinson has included statements from Muslim clerics and scholars, together with verses from the Qur'an, the Hadith, and Sunnah (the life of the Prophet) which constitute the authority base for Islamic belief and practice. He also includes personal stories and experiences. It's a book worth reading because it reflects numerous aspects of life that many Muslim women experience to varying degrees.

Dr Ruth Nicholls

Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam, Melbourne—Australia

In our time, when two correlated forces confront Western Judeo-Christian societies – massive Muslim immigration and jihadist terrorism – this book makes us ponder over an important issue: the place and role of women in Muslim societies. Some aspects of the woman and children condition could be found in all ancient patriarchal societies where superstitions passed for medical science and short life required early marriage. With time such practices disappeared and are today obsolete. But other characters specific to non-European cultures, being inscribed in religion and laws are until today in full force, untouched by the passing of millennia and the progress of science. Such is the case of the status of Muslim women. In the unified and fraternal humanity we hope to build, the meticulous and harsh persecution, the degradation and cruelty against women incite hatred and divisions.

Robinson’s book investigates in depth this most important problem now imported in our societies. Its objective and scientific tone will help to alleviate a major human and social issue.

Bat Ye’or

Writer on the legal and historic condition of Jews and Christians under Islam. Author of The Decline of Eastern Christianity; Islam and Dhimmitude; and Eurabia —Switzerland

The Hidden Half opens a window onto Islam’s treatment of women, showing it to be deplorable in both theory and practice. Read it and weep. This is an essential resource for everyone concerned about human rights in our globally connected world.

Rev. Dr Mark Durie

Author and Theologian, Melbourne—Australia

The Hidden Half: Women and Islam, addresses gender apartheid in the Muslim world globally. It is important that Dr. Robinson's information be considered by infidels, feminists, and by dissident Muslims.

Dr Phyllis Chesler

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies,

City University, New York—USA

This book is well researched, and a courageous study of women in Islam. It deals with women from birth, female circumcision, marriage, obligations, clothing, value, family’s honor, slavery, courts and Muslims living in non-majority Muslim countries.

The Hidden Half will help the reader to understand, by Islamic laws, that males are very dominant. This affects every aspect of Muslim culture. Any woman who is thinking of becoming a Muslim, must read this book. For general readers, the book will help you to pray and hopefully love Muslim people.

Dr Ian Hawley

Former Vice Principal, Melbourne School of Theology, Lecturer in Islam and World Religions, Melbourne—Australia

Stuart Robinson must be congratulated for giving voice to The Hidden Half. One can only weep at the systemic persecution, humiliation, deprivation, dehumanization, ludicrous rulings and litany of injustices against those women steeped in this shame and honor culture. These accounts should compel us to speak up and reject the paralyzing fear of ‘Islamophobia’ in order to unshackle and assist the brave women represented here. In multicultural Australia, this is a heart-wrenching reminder that we must reject sacralising culture when it should be scrutinized.

Vickie Janson

Political Advocate & Author of Ideological Jihad, Melbourne—Australia

This mosaic of the daily realities that women living in Muslim societies experience, is at once numbingly confronting, and profoundly insightful! Even when describing difficult facts in graphic detail, Dr Robinson doesn’t attempt to sensationalise about his subject matter, or to moralise about Muslim and non-Muslim women’s experience of Islam.

Instead, he draws together a range of women's stories, so we hear their voices. They are from different historical eras, a diversity of socio-cultural contexts, a variety of ages, and a range of faiths – Muslim, Christian and secular.

Then drawing from the four key sources for devout Muslims, the Holy Quran, the Hadith, the Biographies of the Prophet and Sharia Law, Dr Robinson describes how these authoritative religious texts validate the widespread practices he graphically documents, that women experience in Islamic contexts.

Interweaving women’s stories with the declarations and fatwas of imams, muftis and scholars, Dr Robinson relentlessly builds a disturbing profile of ‘a woman’s place’ in Islam, challenging us to re-imagine what life can be like for many Muslim women.

This is not a book to read as entertainment, for diversion or even in anger! It’s far too important for that! These stories are the voices of real humans, made in the image of a loving Creator, of immense worth, and sacrificially redeemed by their Saviour? Please read this book, only if you are willing to be transformed to be part of Jesus’ heart of grace, and hands of mercy amongst the peoples of this world for whom he died!

Ian L. Grant, PhD

Vice President Emeritus – Harvest Bible College Intercultural & Leadership Studies, Melbourne—Australia

By the Same Author

Mosques & Miracles: Revealing Islam and God’s Grace

Defying Death: Zakaria Botross — Apostle to Islam

Traveling Through Troubled Times

The Prayer Of Obedience (Revised 2016)

The Promise Of Vision

The Challenge Of Islam

Islam Rising – The Middle East and Us

Persevering Prayer – Growing Your Church Supernaturally

Positioning For Power – Kneeling Low in Prayer Standing Tall in God

Praying The Price

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife, Margaret,

who provided the initial impetus

and inspiration for its writing and

who has lived much of its contents with me.

Foreword

Growing up as a young woman in Australia in the 1970s and 80s, my life was rich with opportunity. I received a good education, participated in sport and played music. I swam and mingled freely, enjoying the wind in my hair and the sun on my skin. But my real freedom started after 1979 which was my final year of secondary schooling, my last year of school uniforms, school bells and school rules. Was I ever glad to get out of school. Free at last!

With life and the whole world before me, I got my driver’s license, pursued higher education, participated in ministry, cast my first vote and played lots of music. Totally free to choose what I would wear, as a practicing Christian I chose freely to dress modestly, be that in a dress or in jeans: long sleeves or singlet top; hair up of hair down. I socialized widely, at liberty to choose my own companions. I married for love. I was free and secure. And I took it all for granted.

Like most young women growing up in Australia at that time, or indeed anywhere in the Western world even today, it never occurred to me that the freedom and security I enjoyed were anything other than natural and universal. I had scant appreciation for the fact that the liberty and security I enjoyed were the consequences of a Biblical worldview, the fruit of a Judeo-Christian culture. It was just life. Meanwhile for women growing up in the Muslim world life was taking an ominous turn.

In far off places, in countries of which we knew little in down under Australia, the birth pains of new movements were increasingly being reported in our national media. In my freedom year 1979 the Islamic Revolution burst upon the international scene with Ayatollah Khomeini replacing the Shah as supreme leader in Iran. Twentieth century practices were swept aside, supplanted by more ancient customs of Shiite Islam.

Saudi Arabia and its religious allies increased their influence by exporting their interpretation of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism. These states funding of mosques and Islamic centres to support increased emigration of Muslims from their homelands to the west in search of an economically better way of life, also resulted in an increasing awareness of Islam in countries where previously it existed almost unnoticed.

The events of 11 October 2001 saw the fall of the towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and Al Qaeda’s short-lived triumphalism. America’s response was swift as it with its allies attacked the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. After 15 years that war continues. Syria is being physically destroyed and Iraq remains as brutally contested territory by competing Muslim forces.

From all of this upheaval the West is not excluded. There are now at least 57 known Islamist groups operating around the world with devastating effect. While the activities of these violent terrorist and military battles form the content of daily media releases, as a religious liberty analyst and as a woman, I have been increasingly aware of another phenomenon which almost goes unreported—the role which classic Islam assigns to women in society, which is vastly different from the freedoms I and other women have taken for granted in Western nations.

Like any international movement, Islam and its practices vary from country to country and from generation to generation. Variations notwithstanding some things remain constant and unchangeable within Islam—the Quran, the Traditions (Hadith) and the early biographies of Islam’s prophet—Muhammad. All Muslims are committed to observe and obey the teachings and examples of these texts. When one examines these writings carefully it makes the treatment of women in Islamic societies understandable. These teachings are being implemented today. It disturbs and shocks western sensibilities.

While my life has been far from perfect and is marked with the scars of suffering and trials and while western law and culture are far from perfect I have always been aware that I live in a state where the laws are designed to protect me and in a culture that increasingly deems the subjugation and abuse of women as being totally unacceptable. But my life is significantly different from the frequent experience of many women in Muslim countries.

What is also distressing is that bodies established to be guardians of human welfare, Human Rights movements and more specifically, to fight for Women’s Rights—Feminist Movements—all seem unbelievably almost silent on the confronting issue of Women and Islam. But Political Correctness doesn’t silence everyone.

In this book, Stuart Robinson carefully documents what is happening in Muslim societies around the world. He also documents from Islam’s own sacred texts the teaching which validates such attitudes and behaviours. Robinson has spent much of his life living among Muslims and engaging with Islam. He speaks experientially and not just as an insulated academic.

Because of his love for Muslims he yearns to see each freed into a far different life, not just economically but spiritually such as only an encounter with Jesus Christ may deliver. The events reported in this book may disturb you and even move you to tears. But if change is to occur reality must first be faced. The purpose of the book is not simply to inform you but to move you to engage with Muslims anywhere so that brokenness may be healed and families transformed through practical actions of Christian grace activated by the power of prayer. Dear Lord, may it be so.

Read the whole book and make sure you stay with it till the hope-filled last chapter.

Elizabeth Kendal

Religious Liberty Analyst,

Research Fellow, Arthur Jeffrey Centre