the disease of gender-based superiority.
Verily, we can never become successful as a society if we do not follow the instructions of the Prophet ﷺ. Among these timeless instructions is the command to treat women well.
The Prophet ﷺ gave both men and women highly specific instructions regarding this. You will find this noble command recorded in Sahih Muslim (Hadith 1218), Sahih al-Bukhari (Hadith 3331), Sahih Muslim (Hadith 1468), Sunan al-Tirmidhi (Hadith 1162), Ibn Majah (Hadith 1977 — graded Sahih), Musnad Ahmad (Hadith 23957), and Ibn Hibban (Hadith 479).
Acknowledging the war that Shayṭān is waging is only part of the solution. We will never end this gender war unless we end injustice — and we cannot end injustice if we refuse to even acknowledge it. If women are not a greater risk of being oppressed by men and women then men and women wouldn't have been instructed to treat women well by the Prophet ﷺ so strongly and repeatedly.
So let us revive the knowledge that will equip us. Reviving knowledge is only part of the journey. Acknowledging the wrongs committed against the oppressed and sincerely repenting for hoarding knowledge are among the first steps toward healing as a society.
Brothers and sisters in Islam,
Among the Muslims are those who suffer from sins such as backbiting, pornography, stealing, lying, giving incomplete measures, and the diseases of the heart — jealousy, envy, pride, and so on.
And all of these, in a sense, are a blessing — because you will hardly find a believer who does not admit that these are sins. They recognize their faults and know that they are wrong.
However, there is another disease — one far more concealed, yet far more destructive — the disease of gender-based superiority.
This is the disease of arrogance, domination, and unjust control — a disease not only unadmitted but spiritualised and paraded as virtue, especially by those who otherwise appear upright.
Many Muslim men fall into this arrogance. When the subject of gender arises, they no longer care about the truth.
How many have ever sat with sincerity and said to themselves:
“I will seek the truth about the family structure from ALLAH, and I will accept whatever I find, even if it hurts me.”
Very few.
Instead, they approach the subject with a made-up mind — convinced that they already possess the truth and can never be wrong.
“Anything that threatens my lust for dominance must be false. I am the superior gender; nothing else could possibly be true.”
This is arrogance — the same arrogance that blinds one to his own ignorance.
They do not approach the texts with humility or readiness to submit to the truth. They approach every verse, every hadith, with a fixed conclusion already settled in their hearts.
It is like trying to explain Islam to someone who has already decided that Islam can never be true. They would never even consider the possibility that they might be mistaken.
So they persist — insistence after insistence, volume after volume of misinterpretations — building castles of falsehood upon the sands of ego.
All praises belong to ALLAH, The Most High, who raised Shaykh ʿUthmān Dan Fodio — a man who refused to bow to the arrogance of Muslim men who objected to the scholarship of women in his time.
May ALLAH elevate his rank and reward him for standing firm against “pious men” who, out of lust for superiority, sought to exclude women from the circles of knowledge.
For years, Black Americans were denied university education by white people who declared themselves a superior race. Today, we repeat the same evil — spiritualising un-Islamic control over women and turning injustice into a virtue.
Muslim women,
beware of men who approach the Qur’an not with submission, but with rage — searching for evidence to justify oppression.
Men who use divine words to defend cruelty, such as forcing co-wives into the same house and same kitchen, ignoring the truth of justice that's too inconvenient for their natural state of wickedness.
The truth is clear to every human heart who has searched genuinely on the subject of housing multiple wives — that you cannot put two wives in the same house where they share the same kitchen/bathroom/etc. The most you can do is put two wives in the same compound but never in the same house.
But how many people are going to seek knowledge even if it's against their own selves?
How many people are going to learn with humility and not rage of quest to support what they've already made up their minds to do?
How many people are going to accept the truth that's inconvenient and painful?
It is rare — almost impossible, when it comes to the subject of family structure — to find a Muslim man who sits with sincerity before the Book of ALLAH, saying:
“I want to know the truth, even if it exposes my faults.”
You know that attitude we, Muslim women, often have — when we say:
“I want to know the truth about this matter, even if I am not yet able to live by it.”
That humility, that honesty, is nearly extinct among men drowned in gender-based ego.
Instead, they rage and roar, guarding their illusions of superiority. They cling desperately to the errors of great men, using them as shields to justify their own injustice.
Believers oppress believers everyday, and we all agree that oppression is wrong. Except when it comes to gender-based oppression. Not only do we refuse to admit that it's wrong. We often spiritualise it and present it as a virtue. May Almighty ALLAH liberate us from the plots of shaytan.
May ALLAH protect us from those who oppress in the name of piety.
May ALLAH protect us from those who believe they can never be wrong.
And may ALLAH protect us from the beasts who use sacred knowledge as a weapon against His servants.
Aameen, Ya Rabb.
With love and pain,
Hamidah Abbas | Author, Polygamy Ijma'a
