Daughters of the Prophet

"Oh, women of the Prophet," commands the Koran ". . . stay quietly in your houses." A 12th century philosopher was more specific: "A woman should go out of doors only thrice--to go to her husband's house, to the funeral of her parents and, finally, to her own funeral." Omar the First (581-644) advised: "Consult women, and then do the contrary of what they advise."

In the back countries of the Moslem world, the men who can afford it still keep the Allah-granted quota of four wives. Unable to read, forbidden to attend schools, or to listen to the deliberations of the males, millions of Islamic women remain quietly in their houses, unaware that there is any world beyond the narrow one visible through the slits in their veils.

But in the cities of Islam, time has chipped at the hard pillars of Islamic dogma:

P: In making modern Turkey, Kemal Ata-tuerk, one of the truly great men of this century, enlisted women in his army and abolished polygamy. In 1930 Turkish women got the vote and the right to public office.* Today women cast 60% of the Turkish vote, and three smart women sit in Parliament.

P: In Syria only eight years ago, a report that some women were going to remove their veils in public touched off a riot. Now, Syrian women who can show a primary-school diploma have the vote.

P: In Lebanon, which is officially half Christian and half Moslem, women press for reforms through nearly 100 women's clubs dominated by beloved old Ibtihaj Kha-doura, who in 1930 became the first Lebanese woman to rip off the veil.

P: Pakistan, upon its creation in 1947, began to loosen some of the old restrictions on women: purdah lost ground, women got a couple of seats (which they still hold) in the parliament. But the mullahs of Islam have reasserted the old customs; the Begum Liaquat Ali Khan, widow of the assassinated Premier and once a militant suffragist, has been forced into a quiet life, and the wife of the new Premier hides uncomplainingly in strictest purdah.

But it was in Egypt that the stirrings of emancipated women rocked Islam's elders most, for it took place in the very shadow of the mosques and chambers where the high priests of Islam hold their greatest sway. Well-to-do Egyptian women formed the Feminist National Party. Another group, Daughters of the Nile, led by smart and young (34) Doria Shafik, a philosophy graduate of the Sorbonne, signed up more than 1,000 upper-class Egyptian women. They prowl Cairo fixing politicians with the same gimlet stare on which Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt once impaled squirming U.S. Senators.

Erring Woman. The elders of Islam decided it was time to put the women in their place. From the Council of Ulemas of Al Azhar University, the supreme court of Islamic law, recently came a stern fatwa (Koranic interpretation) of the 1,3OO-year-old teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. The Koran's references to women, said the fatwa, clearly bar the 150,000,000 women of the Islamic world from voting and from holding public office. Allah gave this commandment because women are too influenced by their feelings and affections in making judgments; they are addicted to "straying from the path of wisdom." Women are biased and incompetent, while men are balanced, impartial, self-controlled. Sons of the Prophet who have been yielding to the demands of women, said Al Azhar, are guilty of "gross violation of Allah's Book and His Prophet's teachings."

Militant Woman. Not long ago such a pronouncement from Al Azhar would have put every veiled woman in Islam in her place. But it rolled off the arched backs of Egypt's feminists. Into the office of Egypt's new boss, General Mohammed Naguib, last week strode smartly styled Doria Shafik to demand a new deal for women. "You have broken the chains that bound the nation," she said, "and now . . . break the chains of the women who form half the nation."

General Naguib offered to open some army jobs to women, but as for giving women the vote, he pleaded: "Please postpone this matter now. We want unity among all ranks of society. This is no time for controversy now."

Doria swept out of the general's office, her face fixed in that familiarly Western look of a woman who is not going to let a man have the last word.

* Not so belatedly as Westerners may like to think. Before World War I only four countries (Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Norway) allowed women's suffrage. The U.S. granted women full suffrage in 1920, Britain not until 1928, France and Italy not until the end of World War II.

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