Disclaimer: I read Quran in the light of science, philosophy, ethics, and public policy. This is not a theological discussion, but some rational thinking shaped by the Quran.
After the defeat of Hilary Clinton, many considered that USA was not yet ready for its first female president. Meanwhile, Bangladesh with 3rd largest Muslim population has known only female prime ministers and the leaders of the oppositions since 1991.
Bangladesh is unique in this regard that as of today the prime minister, the opposition leader, and the speaker of national parliament, all three are women. In non-Arabic Muslim world female prime ministership is not uncommon.
Paradoxically, the role of a woman in leadership is the most contested issue in Islamic discourses.
Most of my western friends consider themselves feminist. Some of them are also activist. For them religion is a repressive force. The successes of Western feminism lie in the successful rejection of patriarchy and religion. It takes them to the conclusion that the women in the Muslim world must reject their religion to overcome their woeful situation.
I agree with many parts of this analysis. However, I don’t think religion is the problem but that is altogether a different discussion. There is no easy answer. Often, to provoke the arguments and add further nuances to it, I set examples of higher number of female prime ministerships in the Muslim world.
If we only compare the number between Muslim World and the West. It looks like women in the Muslim world have been more successful.
I did not realise that these female leaders do not represent our women. They represent their late fathers or husbands who were our national heroes. Over the last 30 years, the women in Bangladesh have done enormous progress.
However, the credit goes to the millions of the female garment workers. The revolution had started long before.
These female prime ministers do not prove or disprove the acceptance of female leadership in Islamic. It is safe to say that the female leadership in Islamic discourse is highly contested, and theologically speaking feels more towards forbidden.
However, as a non-theological reader of the Quran, I found, at least in the Quranic stories, that the successful leaders have been defined by his/her capacity and wisdom not by the gender of the leaders.
The Quran gives us examples of both righteous and worse heads of state: King David, King Solomon, Julkarnain and the Queen of Saba’ are the examples for the good side and the Pharaoh of the exodus is the example of the worse side.
The Sabean queen is the only female head of state mentioned in the Quran. I’ve tried to understand her legacies. What made her so unique as a head of state that she is so elaborately mentioned in the Quran?
According to the Quranic story, Hoopoe, the bird soldier of King Solomon, brough the news to the King that there was a great kingdom down south throned by a queen. King Solomon had a great kingdom also in worldly sense. Something would need to be really mesmerising to impress someone who had been familiar with the grandiosity of the kingdoms of Solomon and David.
Indeed, the Kingdom of Saba’ was highly prosperous trading nations. The ancient city of Ma’rib, located approximately 120 km east of Yemen’s modern day capital city Sana, was their capital. The main source of their prosperity was their advanced knowledge in dam technology.
Ma’rib was like modern day Amsterdam. It is said that the people of Amsterdam did agriculture without land and the people of Israel did agriculture without water. They were able to do this because of their advanced technologies in dam construction and irrigation, respectively.
The Great Dam of Ma’rib mentioned in the Quran as Sadd Al-Arim was the example of their great engineering feats. The dam was built upstream to capture the periodic monsoon rains falling on the nearby mountains and irrigate the agricultural lands around the city.
Ma’rib is described in the Quran as the city divided into two big gardens, where all sorts of pure food produces were available. They used to control the frankincense and spice trading routes in Arabia and Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia).
As always, national prosperity required the protection of a big military might. Indeed, the Sabean had a large military. The King Solomon invited the Queen to the One God and asked her to submit. Otherwise, he would invade her land.
And here comes my point: when the letter from King Solomon reached the Queen with the carrot of an open invitation to God and a big military stick, the queen called her royal council to discuss. The advice from her top generals was that they were adequately able to face the threat, but they would follow her decisions.
How many of great kings went down in the annals of history just because they failed to control their generals. We don’t need to go very far. The end of the Muslim rule in India is one of many tragic examples. To me her single greatest achievement was that she could come to submission to God with her full court and thus save her nation.
What the Sabean queen could achieve, Heraclius, the Byzantine Emperor could not achieve in seventh century. From two long narrations in the book of prophetic tradition Sahih Al Bukhari, we know that Heraclius could recognise that the Prophet Mohammad (s) was a true prophet and predicted the upcoming Arab victory. It seems that he wanted to accept Islam.
When he understood that his conversion would cost him the throne, he refrained from it. When the Muslim Army under the command of Khalid ibn Walid finally defeated the Byzantine Army in the battle of Yarmouk ending the Byzantine rule in Syria, Herclius was still alive and he himself witnessed the Arab victory that he had predicted.
Probably the most celebrated king in the biography of Prophet Mohammad (s) is Negus, the King of Abyssinia during the time of Prophet. He was a great refuge for the persecuted early Muslim and a source of constant help to the Prophet. He was the example of the righteous Christian mentioned in the Quranic chapter Al Maida:
“And when they hear what has been revealed to the Messenger, you see their eyes overflowing with tears because of what they have recognized of the truth. They say, “Our Lord, we have believed, so register us among the witnesses.” (Quran 5: 83)
Nevertheless, he too failed to convince his royal court to accept Islam. We know also that the Great Moghul Emperor Akbar had invented a new religion but could convert none of his royal court except one.
The Quranic story continues.
After many years the Sabeans became rebellious against the God of King Solomon. As a divine punishment, a great flood overflowed the dam and destroyed their irrigation systems and all agricultural produces.
The Quran does not tell us if they had a king or a queen during that period of calamity. But the Quran did tell us about the fate of a later king from the same Yemen.
He was Abraha who came to Mecca to destroy then the most famous sanctuary the Kaaba only to meet his doomsday.
Though Abraha was a Christian ruler sent from Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia) to Yamen, one of his adopted royal titles was the King of Saba’. He repaired the central irrigation systems of the great Ma’rib dam and built a great church.
Most probably, he found that agriculture alone would not be enough to control the trade route because of business competition from many bourgeoning cities between Yemen and Syria.
He wanted to have a new sanctuary to attract the pilgrims who had been going to Kaaba. His arrogance led him and his people to their demise. His expedition was the antithesis of the wise delegation of the ancestral queen of the land to the court of the King Solomon.
According to the story, Abraha was too strong for the Makkans. When he came and camped at the edge of the city, all the Makkan men went to the mountain to save themselves.
Finally, when he went to destroy the Kaaba, God sent flocks of birds, who threw stones upon him and all the solders to their annihilation. Thus, the Kaaba was saved by divine will.
The Quranic story of the Sabean people had begun with a small bird Hoopoe and after almost 1400 years later the story ended with another groups of birds sent this time by God to destroy a king, who unlike his predecessor, misjudged his military might in front of divine power.
The verse 58 of the Women chapter of the Quran is as follow.
“Indeed, Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due and when you judge between people to judge with justice. Excellent is that which Allah instructs you. Indeed, Allah is ever Hearing and Seeing.” (Quran 4: 58)
Here the divine command did not say that the public trust should go to the most righteous man among us. Instead, we are asked to put our trust to the most qualified among us.
I’m not trained in theology. It appears to me that according to the Quranic stories, the Sabean Queen was the right choice for her people.
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