Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE WORSHIPFUL ACTS t 219
their original Arabian environment into the great cities of the Fertile
Crescent, they adopted, and adapted, the social mores they
found there, including the segregation of women. But what was a
social custom rapidly became religious as well in the totalizing
environment of Islam. Quranic texts were uncovered and unpacked—most
notoriously the famous “veiling” (hijab) verse, 33:
53, where the context seems to refer to the privacy of the Prophet’s
wives, who may have been bothered by unwanted visitors to this
famous Medina household. Far more pointed Prophetic reports
were eventually adduced in great numbers to support the contention
that the Muslim woman was a taboo object excluded not
merely from participation in the sacra but from any share in the
public life of Muslim society.
The public social segregation of women was not simply borrowed
custom, to be sure. The Quran, not less than the Bible and
the New Testament, urges modesty on women. Quran 24:30–31,
which begins, “And say to the believing women that they cast
down their looks and guard their private parts and do not display
their ornaments except what appears thereof, and let them wear
their head-coverings over their bosoms, and do not display their
ornaments except to their husbands and fathers,” is a famous example.
Women’s being rendered “unavailable” in various ways
also has its obvious parallels in the two other monotheist communities.
But though Islam and Judaism have valued as highly as
Christianity women’s chastity, they have never celebrated the virginity
of either men or women as an ideal. Where Christians
adopted the Virgin Mary as the feminine ideal, Muslims (who revere
“Maryam,” though not for her virginity) look rather toward
Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter and the mother of his two favorite
grandchildren, as the embodiment of Muslim womanhood.
Muslim Prayer
The Quran shows no interest in the earlier Jewish temple cult,
though there is good evidence that Muhammad himself originally
prayed facing Jerusalem. The Quran’s one possible reference to the