208 Kökoğlu
Pickthall’s later life and fiction, introducing a note of optimism into the latter
which deals no longer with symptoms offering minoritarian treatment instead.
Pickthall’s idea that Islam transforms “marriage from a state of bondage for
the woman to a civil contract between equals, terminable by the will of either
party”55 is based on Saïd Halim’s revivalist view of Islam and his reframing of
the vital function, broad scope, and rightfully adjustable and distinctive nature
of the concept of the contract in Islam from the relations of the sexes to the
affairs of state. Pickthall summarises Saïd Halim’s view of marriage and the
relations of the sexes in Islam as follows:
The institution of marriage as a civil contract between free individuals,
with facilities for divorce and remarriage, [...] allow to men and women
in such matters the utmost liberty compatible with decency, with the
welfare of both sexes and with the rights of children.
The maintenance of a decent reserve between the sexes, for the safety
of women.
The Islamic law of Inheritance, which prevents undue accumulation
of wealth by individuals and secures a portion of it to the women of a
family.
Respect for women’s persons, property and rights.56When the theory of contract is combined with the Turkish women’s inherent
practice, there remains no need for the crow as a messenger. Thus the deca-
dence symptomized in a Turco-Egyptian Pasha’s house in Veiled Women is
offered a minor solution by a real Turco-Egyptian Pasha and Turkish women.
Thus Pickthall hopefully regards Turkey as the sole field of experiment for
the modus vivendi between not only the West and the East, but also men and
women.
Pickthall argues that Turkish people are monogamous with the only excep-
tion of the Sultan. They chose polygamy with the permission, or even insis-
tence, of their wives when, for instance, the latter cannot have children, or
when the wife does not want to leave the comfort of her house in Istanbul and
refuses to accompany her husband on a long duty far away from Istanbul.57 It
can be added that Turkish men in their preference for monogamy, follow the
example of the Prophet in Mecca; as Pickthall points out later “there is no more
bright example of monogamic marriage in all history than the twenty-six years’
55 Pickthall, Cultural Side of Islam, 152.
56 Ibid., 182–83.
57 Ibid., 91.