A Final Comparison and Contrast - II
01/01/2012| IslamWeb
Some Jewish sects placed the girl in the rank of the slave, whose father had the right to sell her due to her being legally incompetent. She had no right to inherit in the presence of a brother more than what had been given to her as a gift from her father during his lifetime, for inheritance was the right of the male only. However, when a girl was deprived of inheritance due to the presence of a brother, it became incumbent upon him to provide for her expenditure and marriage gift. If the father left an estate, he would give her from it; and if he left movable property, then, neither spending nor a marriage gift would be due to her, regardless of how much it might be.
If the inheritance went to a girl due to the absence of a brother, it would be impermissible for her to get married to anyone belonging to another sect, or to transfer her inheritance to a sect other than hers; in other words, she would only be its guardian, not its owner.
Also, to prove innocence of the charge of adultery, she was to carry out a strange procedure that was humiliating and disgraceful and that has never been permissible in any other religious law. She had to drink water mixed with dust. If her abdomen got swollen and her thighs fell away, the charge would be confirmed against her: “Then the priest will bring her near and have her stand before the Lord. The priest will then take holy water in a pottery jar, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle, and put it into the water. Then the priest will have the woman stand before the Lord, uncover the woman’s head, and put the grain offering for remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of suspicion. The priest will hold in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. He will make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and the water that brings a curse will enter her to reduce bitterness. The priest will take the grain offering of suspicion from the woman’s hand, wave the grain offering before the Lord, and bring it to the altar. Then the priest will take a handful of the grain offering as its memorial portion, burn it in the altar, and afterward make the woman drink the water. Then he has made her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and behaved unfaithfully toward her husband, the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness – her abdomen will swell, her thighs will fall away, and the woman will become a curse among her people. But if the woman has not defiled herself, and is clean, then she will be free of ill effects and will be able to bear children." [Numbers 5:16-28]
ln both cases, her abdomen would get swollen, and, more precisely, she would be afflicted with a fatal disease, which means that in both cases, she would be an adulteress and the charge of adultery would be confirmed against her. Meanwhile, her thighs would not fall away in both cases, which meant that she would gain nothing other than death and disease, and the charge of adultery would be confirmed against her wrongfully and falsely. This analysis might probably have led some of there scholars to view the woman as a prostitute regardless of her morals, religion, family status and ancestry.
Jerome, a French bishop, who lived in the 12th century, wrote that all women are prostitutes, and, like Eve, the cause of all evil in the world. The English monk Alexander Nakham, said that since the woman is sexually insatiable, she, more often than not, catches a contemptible miserable man to sleep with her on her bed to satisfy her sexual yearning when her husband is absent at the very moment of her nymphomania. As a result, the husbands had to raise children who were not their own.
This law of testing the woman's chastity is similar to what was stated in the Code of Hammurabi, article 129, according to which the woman was to be tested by being thrown into the river; if she was able to swim on the surface of the water, she would be innocent, and if she died (by drowning), she would be sinful.
Compare this with the Li‘aan (the measure of mutual invoking of curse against the liar of the couple in case the husband accuses his wife of adultery), as mentioned in Soorat An-Noor, according to which both the wife and the husband should take oath five times to confirm the husband's truthfulness and the wife's innocence from the charge of infidelity. If the woman insists on her innocence, she will not be harmed, but the couple will be separated.
The uncleanness imputed upon the woman led the English parliament to issue a law, during the time of King Henry VIII, forbidding the woman from reading the New Testament. Compare that with the Muslims' entrusting Hafsah, may Allah be pleased with her, to be in charge of the Noble Book of Allah, the Quran.
Moreover, when anesthesia was used in operations of childbirth in 1847, the church objected to it for in the Bible, God said to Eve, as they allege, after both she and Aadam fell into sin and ate from the prohibited tree: "To the woman He said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children." [Genesis 3:16]
This was as if they wanted to say, "How could we relieve women of pain, if the Lord decreed that the woman should suffer from pain during childbirth? We then have to aid the Lord in His revenge on women."
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