"The male is not the same as the female"
By: A. Mohamed
The following glorious Quranic verse contains some remarkable words which need stopping at and analysing:
Then when she (Mary's mother) delivered her (Mary), she said, "My Lord, I have given birth to a female". God was well aware of what she delivered, and that the male is not the same as the female. "I have named her Mary, and I seek Your protection for her and her offspring from the outcast devil." 3:36
The knowledge that nothing in the Quran is coincidental leads us to dig deep and try to find significance for the unusual manner in which the underlined sentence was phrased.
Note that God did not say:
'The female is not the same as the male.'
God said:
"The male is not the same as the female."
"The male is not the same as the female."
The female was placed last in the comparison.
Does the order matter? Indeed it does. Initially, it may appear that both sentences arrive at the same conclusion, but in fact they do not. This will become apparent when we read other Quranic verses where the words (not the same as) are used:
1- Have you considered the offering of drinks to the pilgrims and the maintenance of the Masjid Al-Haram to be the same as believing in God and the Last Day and striving in the cause of God? They are not the same in the sight of God. God does not guide the transgressing people. 9:19
2- And God cites an example of two men, one of them is dumb and cannot do a thing and is a burden on his master. Wherever he sends him, he brings back nothing good. Is he the same as one who advocates justice and is on a straight path? 16:76
3- Say, "The bad and the good are not the same, even if the abundance of the bad may impress you. So you shall reverence God O you who possess intelligence so that you may succeed." 5:100
4- Say, "Who is the Lord of the heavens and the earth?" Say, "God." Say, "Have you then taken up allies besides Him who do not possess for themselves any benefit nor harm?" Say, "Is the blind the same as the seer? Or, is darkness the same as the light?" Or, have they assigned for God partners who created what is similar to His creation, so that all the creations seemed similar to them? Say, "God is the Creator of all things and He is the One, the All-Conquering." 13:16
Blindness and sight in 13:16 are in reference to the content of the heart and not the physical sight.
5- Not the same are the sedentary among the believers,except the disabled and those who strive in the cause of God with their money and themselves. God has favoured, in rank, the strivers with their money and themselves over the sedentary. For both, God promises good things, yet God favours the strivers over the sedentary with a great reward. 4:95
It may escape the casual reader, but with closer inspection we note a common factor in the wording of all the above verses. What we observe is that the less valued category is placed first and the more valued category (by God) placed last.
As an example, let us look at 13:16. The words used are:
"Is the blind the same as the seer? Or, is darkness the same as the light?"
The seer is naturally better than the blind, thus the seer is placed last in the comparison.
Simlarly, light is better than the darkness, and light is also placed last in the comparison.
With this knowledge, let us now return to 3:36 and remind ourselves with the deliberate arrangement of its words:
"The male is not the same as the female."
Following from the pattern we derived from the 5 verses above, we can conclude that God placed the male first, and stated that the male is not the same as the female, which can only mean that God honoured the woman more than the man in the Quran.
Indeed, we note a number of notable confirmations in the Quran for how God honoured women above men, the following are some examples:
1- God instructed us to treat our parents kindly (31:15 and 46:15), yet we note that it is the role of the mother in carrying and suckling her child that is acknowledged and honoured in these verses, but there is no acknowledgement anywhere in the Quran for the father with regards to his role in bringing up his child.
2- In the case of adultery, even though the punishment of 100 lashes (24:2) applies equally to men and women who are found to have committed such a sin, yet God is more favourable towards women in the process of accusations and verifications.
a- First, it is the man and not the woman who is required to produce four witnesses, and if he is not able to produce four witnesses, he shall receive 80 lashes:
[24:4] And those who accuse married women then do not produce four witnesses, lash them eighty lashes, and after that, never accept any testimony from them.
b- If a man accuses his own wife of adultery, he should produce four witnesses. If he is unable to produce the witnesses, God allowed his testimony to count as four testimonies. However, God gave the woman the last word in this situation. She is able to testify four testimonies that he is a liar, and by doing so, the punishment is averted from her:
[24:8] The punishment shall be averted from her if she testifies four testimonies, swearing by God, that he is indeed of the liars.
c- The following verses speak about the case when either the husband is a liar or his wife is the liar.
In the case of a husband lying and accuses his wife falsely, we read:
[24:7] And the fifth shall be God's curse upon him if he should be among the liars.
When God spoke the case of the wife being the liar, God said:
[24:9] And the fifth will be God's wrath upon her if he was of the truthful.
Naturally, to be cursed by God is a much more severe case than to incur God's anger. After all, God is the Forgiver of sins and thus His anger can be retracted; however, being cursed by God denotes a lasting condemnation.
All the above details related to accusations of adultery, portray rulings from God that are in favour of women. These rulings demonstrate how God honoured women in the Quran and placed their honour above men's accusations.
3- Women are much more protected in the Quran in the case of divorce than men. To name a few examples:
- It is the woman who is not to be evicted from the marriage home (65:1).
- It is the woman who should receive a divorce compensation (2:241).
- The woman receives an alimony for one year if her husband dies (2:240).
- Men are not to take any gifts they gave their wives if they divorce them (2:229).
4- It is the man who must suffer the humiliation of seeing his wife marry another man if he divorces her three times and wishes to take her back (2:230). This rule does not apply to the wife if she divorces her husband three times.
5- It is the women who must be financially supported by their men in a marriage and not the other way round (4:34).
Having said that, this must not be confused with other issues that may wrongly imply that men are more honoured than women in the Quran.
We know for example that God deemed that all prophets be men and not women. This is not to honour men above women, but simply because in the role of prophethood is more suited to men for what they require of resilience and the capability to endure the life of persecution and hardship that is associated with prophethood. If we consider the stories of all prophets, with the exception of probably David and Solomon, we would find that their lives were extremely arduous and full of hardships and persecution.
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For the debunking of the claim that the Quran promotes male superiority see:
Are men superior in the Quran?
For the debunking of the claim that the Quran promotes male superiority see:
Are men superior in the Quran?