��The City of the Prophet 71dignified, and devout man. But he also had a fiery temper and was
prone to anger and violence, especially toward women. So infamous
was he for his misogynist attitude that when he asked for the hand of
Aisha’s sister, he was flatly rebuffed because of his rough behavior
toward women.
Umar’s misogynist tendencies were apparent from the moment he
ascended to the leadership of the Muslim community. He tried
(unsuccessfully) to confine women to their homes and wanted to pre-
vent them from attending worship at the mosque. He instituted segre-
gated prayers and, in direct violation of the Prophet’s example, forced
women to be taught by male religious leaders. Incredibly, he forbade
Muhammad’s widows to perform the pilgrimage rites and instituted a
series of severe penal ordinances aimed primarily at women. Chief
among these was the stoning to death of adulterers, a punishment
which has absolutely no foundation whatsoever in the Quran but
which Umar justified by claiming it had originally been part of the
Revelation and had somehow been left out of the authorized text. Of
course, Umar never explained how it was possible for a verse such as
this “accidentally” to have been left out of the Divine Revelation of
God, but then again, he didn’t have to. It was enough that he spoke
with the authority of the Prophet.
There is no question that the Quran, like all holy scriptures, was
deeply affected by the cultural norms of the society in which it was
revealed—a society that, as we have seen, did not consider women
to be equal members of the tribe. As a result, there are numerous
verses in the Quran that, along with the Jewish and Christian scrip-
tures, clearly reflect the subordinate position of women in the male-
dominated societies of the ancient world. But that is precisely the
point which the burgeoning Muslim feminist movement has been
making over the last century. These women argue that the religious
message of the Quran—a message of revolutionary social egalitari-
anism—must be separated from the cultural prejudices of seventh-
century Arabia. And for the first time in history, they are being given
the international audience necessary to incorporate their views into
the male-dominated world of Quranic exegesis.