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Islam discourages free mixing between men and women when they are alone but not all interaction between men and women. Interaction between men and women is prescribed to be maintained at a healthy and modest level, to the extent where they can socialize in order to know each other as ordained by God in the Quran (Surah al-Hujurat), as long as there is no obscenity, touching, secret meetings and any sexual contact, which violates the general rules of interaction between the genders.[1]
However there is no evidence from the Quran or Hadith that enforces segregation of sexes.[2][3], actually there's evidence of the opposite.[4]
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In the Muslim world, preventing women from being seen by men is closely linked to the concept of Namus.[5][6]
Namus is an ethical category, a virtue, in Middle Eastern Muslim patriarchal character. It is a strongly gender-specific category of relations within a family described in terms of honor, attention, respect/respectability, and modesty. The term is often translated as "honor".[5]
The Qur'anic verses which address the interaction of men and women in the social context include:
and
The following hadith indicate that the separation practiced in some Islamic societies today has little precedence in early Islamic practices:
Narrated Sahl,
Narrated Anas ibn Malik,
Narrated Ar-Rabiʿ bint Muʿawidh,
Other hadith also confirm that men and women eating at the same place, and even at the same table, is not haram.
Abu Hurairah reported,
Another narration is,
Based on this hadith, the scholars concluded that it is part of hospitality that the husband and wife eat with their guest.
Also, Imam Malik, as reported in Al-Muwatta', was asked about a woman eating with non-mahram, and he said: "There is no harm in doing this."
Similarly in strict Muslim communities today, women are discouraged from going to the mosques. Yet, Muhammad specifically admonished the men not to keep their wives from going to the mosques:
Ibn Omar reported,
Also, it is clear from the following hadith that the women simply prayed behind the men and were not separated in a separate room or even concealed by a curtain or partition as is practiced in so many mosques today:
Asma' daughter of Abu Bakr said,
Islam requires believers to:
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Afghanistan, under Taliban religious leadership, was characterized by feminist groups and others as a "gender apartheid" system where women are segregated from men in public and do not enjoy legal equality or equal access to employment or education.[7][8] In 1997 the Feminist Majority Foundation launched a "Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan", which urged the U.S. government and the United Nations to "do everything in their power to restore the human rights of Afghan women and girls." The campaign included a petition to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and U.N. Assistant Secretary General Angela King which stated, in part, that "We, the undersigned, deplore the Taliban’s brutal decrees and gender apartheid in Afghanistan."[9]
In 1998 activists from the National Organization for Women picketed Unocal's Sugar Land, Texas office, arguing that its proposed pipeline through Afghanistan was collaborating with "gender apartheid".[10] In a weekly presidential address in November 2001 Laura Bush also accused the Taliban of practicing "gender apartheid".[11] The Nation referred to the Taliban's 1997 order that medical services for women be partly or completely suspended in all hospitals in the capital city of Kabul as "Health apartheid".[12]
According to the Women's Human Rights Resource Programme of the University of Toronto Bora Laskin Law Library "Throughout the duration of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the term "Gender Apartheid" was used by a number of women's rights advocates to convey the message that the rights violations experience by Afghan women were in substance no different than those experienced by blacks in Apartheid South Africa." [13]
When Ruhollah Khomeini called for women to attend public demonstration and ignore the night curfew, millions of women who would otherwise not have dreamed of leaving their homes without their husbands' and fathers' permission or presence, took to the streets. After the Islamic revolution, however, Khomeini publicly announced his disapproval of mixing between the sexes.[14]
Sex segregation is also prevalent in health centers. In Saudi Arabia, a male doctor is not allowed to treat a female patient, unless there are no female specialists available; and it is also not permissible for women to treat men.[15] A woman is also not allowed to meet her spouse unveiled until after the wedding. Saudi daughters are encouraged to wear the niqab in public.[16] Religious Saudis believe it is forbidden for a woman to eat in public, as part of her face would be exposed, therefore in most restaurants barriers are present to conceal women. Some have linked this conservative attitude to an increase in homosexual behavior in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.[17]
Of the late 1800s and early 1900s European Jewish immigration to Palestine, Norman Rose writes that secular "Zionist mores" were "often at odds with Arab convention, threatening the customs and moral assumptions that lent cohesion to a socially conservative, traditional Palestinian society."[18] The active political role of the women of the Yishuv, and their lack of segregation, was judged as particularly offensive.[19]
It is claimed that Muhammad preferred women to pray at home rather than at a mosque, although this is disputed. According to one Hadith, a supposed recounting of an encounter with Muhammad, he said:
Muhammad is also recorded to have said: "The best places of prayer for women are the innermost apartments of their houses"[21]
Despite the recommendation that women should pray at home, Muhammad did not forbid women from entering his mosque in Medina. In fact, he also told Muslims "not to prevent their women from going to mosque when they ask for permission".[22]
It is recorded that Muhammad ordered that Mosques have separate doors for women and men so that men and women would not be obliged to go and come through the same door.[23] He also commanded that men should pray in the first rows and women should pray behind men.[24] He also commanded that after the Isha evening prayer, women be allowed to leave the mosque first so that they would not have to mix with men.[25]
After Muhammad's death, many of his followers began to forbid women under their control from going to the Mosque. Aisha bint Abubakr, the favorite wife of Muhammad, once said:
The second caliph Umar also prohibited women from attending mosques especially at night because he feared they may be teased by males, so he required them to pray at home.[27]
As Islam spread, it became unusual for women to worship in mosques because of male fear of immorality between sexes [28]
Sometimes a special part of the mosque was railed off for women. For example, the governor of Mecca in 870 had ropes tied between the columns to make a separate place for women.[29]
Many mosques today will put the women behind a barrier or partition or in another room against most Islamic beliefs. Mosques in South and Southeast Asia put men and women in separate rooms, as the divisions were built into them centuries ago. In nearly two-thirds of American mosques, women pray behind partitions or in separate areas, not in the main prayer hall; some mosques do not admit women at all due to the lack of space and the fact that some prayers, such as the Friday Jummah, are mandatory for men but optional for women. Although there are sections exclusively for women and children, the Grand Mosque in Mecca is desegregated.[30]
There is a growing women's movement led by figures(such as Asra Nomani) who protest against their second-class status and facilities.[31][32]
Justifications for segregation, despite clear Islamic rules against this, include the need to avoid distraction during prayer, although the primary reason cited is that this was the tradition (sunnah) of worshipers in the time of Muhammad.[33]
Muslim website developers have created websites that practice sex segregation of men and women.[34] Such social networks enable users to interact with people of the same gender and restrict interaction with the opposite gender to a certain extent.
Case studies:
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