The City of the Prophet 69after Muhammad’s death, that he once heard the Prophet say “Those
who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity,” his
authority as a Companion was unquestioned.
When Ibn Maja reported in his collection of hadith that the
Prophet, in answer to a question about the rights a wife has over her
husband, replied rather incredibly that her only right was to be given
food “when you [yourself] have taken your food,” and clothed “when
you have clothed yourself,” his opinion, though thoroughly against
the demands of the Quran, went uncontested.
When Abu Said al-Khudri swore he had heard the Prophet tell a
group of women, “I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelli-
gence and religion than you,” his memory was unchallenged, despite
the fact that Muhammad’s biographers present him as repeatedly ask-
ing for and following the advice of his wives, even in military matters.
And finally, when the celebrated Quranic commentator Fakhr ad-
Din ar-Razi (1149–1209) interpreted the verse “[God] created spouses
for you of your own kind so that you may have peace of mind through
them” (3:21) as “proof that women were created like animals and
plants and other useful things [and not for] worship and carrying the
Divine commands ...because the woman is weak, silly, and in one
sense like a child,” his commentary became (and still is) one of the
most widely respected in the Muslim world.
This last point bears repeating. The fact is that for fifteen centuries,
the science of Quranic commentary has been the exclusive domain of
Muslim men. And because each one of these exegetes inevitably brings
to the Quran his own ideology and his own preconceived notions, it
should not be surprising to learn that certain verses have most often
been read in their most misogynist interpretation. Consider, for
example, how the following verse (4:34) regarding the obligations of
men toward women has been rendered into English by two different
but widely read contemporary translators of the Quran. The first is
from the Princeton edition, translated by Ahmed Ali; the second is
from Majid Fakhry’s translation, published by New York University:
Men are the support of women [qawwamuna ‘ala an-nisa] as God
gives some more means than others, and because they spend of their