101 Reasons Why We Left Islam – Chapter 2: Women in Islam – Reason 10
A key principle of feminism is that women have equal rights to men. To claim any aspect of gender parity, this needs to start with financial independence. The problem starts when you open the Quran and read what is the ruling on women and men. Next, we present series of verses and I want you to count with us which gender comes on top of the inheritance score challenge.
Quran 2:240-241
Those of you who die leaving widows should hand down for them a year’s maintenance without forcing them out. But if they choose to leave, you are not accountable for what they reasonably decide for themselves. And Allah is Almighty, All-Wise. Reasonable provisions must be made for divorced women—a duty on those mindful ˹of Allah˺.
Taken on their own, these are terrible verses. It suggests women only have one year before being forced out of their homes after their husband dies. Who gets the inheritance? It is not clear. Dig up the Tafsir, and Ibn Kathir saves the day when he states: “…Ayah 2:240 was abrogated by Allah on inheritance in Surah 4:12.”
But for context, we will start from Quran 4:11 and present all the inheritance verses:
Allah commands you regarding your children: the share of the male will be twice that of the female. If you leave only two ˹or more˺ females, their share is two-thirds of the estate. But if there is only one female, her share will be one-half. Each parent is entitled to one-sixth if you leave offspring. But if you are childless and your parents are the only heirs, then your mother will receive one-third. But if you leave siblings, then your mother will receive one-sixth—after the fulfilment of bequests and debts. ˹Be fair to˺ your parents and children, as you do not ˹fully˺ know who is more beneficial to you. ˹This is˺ an obligation from Allah. Surely Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.
— This verse talks about children’s inheritance. We start with a clear and undisputed statement: ‘the share of the male will be twice that of the female’ as the verse sets the scene of what will be mostly the theme throughout. We start the scoring: Males 1: Females 0.
— If there are two or more females, their collective inheritance is two-thirds. So, if there is one boy and two girls, then this will be a fair split of a third for the boy and two-thirds for the girls. This is a draw. But what if there are three girls, four girls, five or more? Well, the verse says they will collectively share two-thirds, but the boy’s share remains a third: Score Males 2: Females 0.
— The verse then says, “But if there is only one female, her share will be one-half.” The suggestion here is that if the parent dies and they only have one male, they get everything. But if it is female, she only gets one half, and the other half is passed on to other relatives. This is where living grandparents and brothers of the deceased get inheritance in line with other rulings. Another score for the males: Males 3: Females 0.
— What if you are childless and you die? Where will the money go? “But if you are childless and your parents are the only heirs, then your mother will receive one-third. But if you leave siblings, then your mother will receive one-sixth.” This implies the father of the deceased will get two third as this is consistent with the first statement that males get twice as much as females: Score Males 4: Females 0.
Maybe the next verse that talks about wives will have some relief to the females.
Quran 4:12
You will inherit half of what your wives leave if they are childless. But if they have children, then ˹your share is˺ one-fourth of the estate—after the fulfilment of bequests and debts. And your wives will inherit one-fourth of what you leave if you are childless. But if you have children, then your wives will receive one-eighth of your estate—after the fulfilment of bequests and debts. And if a man or a woman leaves neither parents nor children but only a brother or a sister ˹from their mother’s side˺, they will each inherit one-sixth, but if they are more than one, they ˹all˺ will share one-third of the estate…”
— With the previous commandments on inheritance in place, we continue 4:12 with men getting half the inheritance of their childless wives: “You will inherit half of what your wives leave if they are childless” but for comparison, what do wives get if the man is childless is mentioned in the next few lines “And your wives will inherit one-fourth of what you leave if you are childless.” Men get 50%, but under the same scenario women get 25%, yet if you thought this is bad, it gets worse. This 25% is split among all the wives! If the man has four wives, this works just 6.25% for each wife: Score Males 4: Females 0.
— The same scenario is repeated if the spouse has children. If the wife dies, the man gets 25% all for him, but if the husband dies, the wives get 12.5%. Again, this is the best scenario because wives have split it among themselves, which could be as little as 3.12% if the husband has four wives. What is so insulting about this ruling is that if there is one single son and four wives, the son gets 75% of his father’s inheritance, yet each wife must live with just 3.12%: Score Males 5: Females 0.
— The final scenario, we get some sense of fairness that states should the man or woman die with without living parents or children, then the estate is split between the brothers and sisters depending on their numbers – however, scholars still apply the very first rule of male getting twice as much as females – so brothers get the share of two sisters, even in this scenario. But because this was not clearly stated, this issue kept coming up in the Prophet’s days so Quran 4:176 clarified this particular point. Quran 4:176
They ask you ˹for a ruling, O Prophet˺. Say, “Allah gives you a ruling regarding those who die without children or parents.” If a man dies childless and leaves behind a sister, she will inherit one-half of his estate, whereas her brother will inherit all of her estate if she dies childless. If this person leaves behind two sisters, they together will inherit two-thirds of the estate. But if the deceased leaves male and female siblings, a male’s share will be equal to that of two females. Allah makes ˹this˺ clear to you so you do not go astray. And Allah has ˹perfect˺ knowledge of all things
The rolling score is Males 6: Females 0.
Issue 10.1. We can safely state the calling Islam a feminist or a gender fair religion is a lie and at best a myth. It is important to appreciate that with money comes power and influence. We can see that in every possible scenario presented above, men came up the winners. And if you had not noticed the tune of the Quran, it is always addressing men as if they are the only part of this conversation. We know from the story of Khadijah, the prophet’s first wife, that she was a strong and independent businesswoman. She was one of Mecca’s richest women who did business trading and sending the biggest camel convoy to Syria and Palestine. We know that the Prophet was her employ. This was all before Islam came about. Where did her main financial power come from? It came from her parents and two of her husbands after they died, and she inherited them. We do not have any references in the Islamic sources as to what was the inheritance system before Islam, but you can bet that if it were the Islamic one that we saw above, Khadijah would have been left with pennies. This is very important because it shows that Islam did not necessarily make women’s lives better than what it was before Islam.
Issue 10.2. If you blinked, you would miss the elephant in the room- the human process that is clearly displayed here. First, we have this very odd verse 2:240-1 that clearly was not popular and grossly unfair that it had to be replaced. Even men would have found it difficult to digest. Then, when a full ruling on inheritance did come down, Allah forgot to clarify something about the inheritance of the sisters and brothers. Instead, Allah waited for some 150 passages later to fix and clarify Quran 4:12. Yet, even the verse itself admits that people kept asking the Prophet this particular issue, so much so that it starts with “They ask you…”. This issue goes back to that age-old point we keep bringing this up. How can Allah, who knows everything that will happen and has set this book in stone tablet from the start of time (13.5 billion years ago), not decide to make this clarification in Quran 4:13 simply? What was the purpose of leaving Quran 2:240-1 where it is now completely redundant? The human process of writing and fixing is again evident in this reason for leaving Islam.
Apologist Response:
Issue 10.1. The Quran was responding to the needs of mankind where men are the bread winners of the family and in a universal fairness, men deserved more of the share to sustain their families. You would have had a point to call this anti-feminist if women were denied their inheritance completely, but this is not the case. Women are getting a fair inheritance. This is a feminist fairness without being anti-women or anti-male. As for Khadijah’s story, she came from a very wealthy family, and she was special in many ways. This was not the standard experience of women in the pre-Islamic era. Many women were denied inheritance altogether. Islam came to be fair to women and ring-fence their share of inheritance equitably.
>> Our response: If Islam had allowed equality between genders, none of the issues raised above would have been valid. If women were allowed to learn, work, inherit, and earn equally to men, then it would have been a feminist religion. In other cultures where equal rights were given, we saw equality and fairness between genders. It does not make it anti-men to allow equal rights. As for suggesting that Khadijah was special, this is not true. The Pre-Islamic era had goddesses, had women tribe leaders, and had while we do not have enough data because it was all but destroyed and distorted in post-Islamic literature, there is some suggestion that pre-Islamic culture allowed many of the rights that were later taken away or reduced. Inheritance being one of them.
Issue 10.2. These assumptions you present about the human process in the writing of the Quran is speculative. Why Allah (SWT) decided to include this verse later for reasons only He knows. It is never a sufficient reason to leave Islam based on that. Also, as you explained the understanding from verse 4:11 would have been enough to clarify how the brothers and sisters would inherit a person with no children or parents alive. So, verse 4:176 is not a correction to what was already understood but a clarification. We find clarifications in all books on legal matters.
Our response: These excuses do not really address how this ruling would have been set in stone in this sequence. What is more, if you open Surah Al-Nisa (Chapter 4), you find that verse 4:176 is the very last verse, completely out of place with the last three verses of the chapter that appear as if they are ‘closing’ the chapter where suddenly we get ‘Oh wait, they keep asking you….’. These is not grand plan here, this the evidence of the human process.
Final Thoughts:
This issue is enough argument for anyone to debunk the claim that Islam is feminist. Power follows the money, and as we have shown above, it is nearly always in favour of men. Our argument is that the Quran is man-made for men, and if you follow the money, you find it always goes to men to maintain the dynamics of male dominance. Just imagine the case of the one son and four wives’ scenario we presented, and you can quickly feel how humiliating it is for four grown-up women to be given peanuts compared to one male child! But there is something seriously wrong with the inheritance calculations. They simply do not add up. In Reason #19 for leaving Islam, we return to the inheritance to examine one of the mathematical errors of the Quran and how Islamic scholars had to figure out ways to fix these numbers.