Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

Society Religion & Philosophy
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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

but it is the Quran which tells us to ask people of knowledge, if we are confused in any matter.

004.059 *
**YUSUFALI:* O ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you. If ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if ye do believe in Allah and the Last Day: That is best, and most suitable for final determination.

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

Hareem, you should also read the verse before it:

004.058
YUSUFALI: Allah doth command you to render back your Trusts to those to whom they are due; And when ye judge between man and man, that ye judge with justice: Verily how excellent is the teaching which He giveth you! For Allah is He Who heareth and seeth all things.

The context is not here of learning something but of judging between a dispute or something that requires the role of a judge. Then we should not take the matter into our own hand but confer it upon those who have been given the authority for it. In the Prophet SAW, it was him.

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?


I read that as having the opposite meaning. If ye differ (i.e. are confused) refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if ye do believe in Allah and the Last Day: That is best, and most suitable for final determination.

It says to refer to Allah and His messenger when opinions differ, not a 'scholar'. There is no hiearchy in Islam so who are those 'charged with authority'? Could that not mean those in authority within the community, government or society? And if that differs from the Quran, then check the words of Muhammed and Allah?

Many Muslims love to say they only follow the words of God. Then they implement the words of Muhammed, and now you are telling me you obey mere mortals who have a penchant for memorizing, quoting scripture and wanting to tell everybody.

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

Semi, I think I explained the context in my post. A scholar is no authority but more of a religious reseacher. Each scholar may differ based on their research. Authority is vested in those who elected to enforce the Shariah an make decisions based on their knowledge of Islam or take advice when they think they are defficient.

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?


And if there is no shariah like today?

Or if shariah made a comeback but those elected are corrupt or inept? We see the quality of leaders today, both those who seize power and those who are elected.

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

That didn't answer my question. Did someone write it for you? The type of writing doesn't match up with your other samples of writing on GS.

~*~ GS (Cafe) Kay Guppies / Guppans ~*~
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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

Exactly, you go to school, college, and universities to learn to think on your own. You don't go and get a bunch of information and walk away being an encyclopedia. You learn to think, synthesize and evaluate information, and above all, use it to make a difference for mankind.

Are you doing any of that?

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

You mean half-broken Shariah or a hybrid Shariah or shariah standing on one leg with both hands tied behind its back. There is no fixed form of Shariah in my opinion. The principles behind are sort of immutable and provide guidance. Sometimes it is just not practical given the state of circumstances to implement it ditto as it was done 1400 years ago.

If you have corrupt leaders it is an indication that people have lost there sense of justice or proper reform. If they have been conquered and didn't have much choice then eventually it will lead to a war or insurgency or some other method of rebellion unless they are happy with the new ruler for some reasons.

Personally me, I am not for implementing the laws as ditto to what they were 1400 hundred years ago with a few exceptions maybe. And if you have studied Islam there are only a handful of punishments given for some crimes, which ruin the very fabric of society e.g. murder, theft, rape etc. Laws for other misdemeanors can be infered from the principles which are taught in Islam. For instance, this thead has been mostly about the witness issue i.e. having two women witnesses in business transactions. The way business transactions are conducted today sometimes do not even need people to be present and everything is printed out for you on a contractual agreement. Say you are buying a book for Amazon, you pay for it and print out your receipt and you can printout your terms and conditions. The justice system will also honor those documents are evidence without the presence of any witnesses so we can't really use the rule being discussed in this thread.

For any rule to work, it must also be legally validated practice in a court of law or your justice system. If some friend of mine lends me money with another friend as a witness on terms that I will repay and later on I renege then I doubt any court of law today would be able to help him recover his money unless he can prove he lent it to me. The credibility of a witness in todays society is next to nothing, but it was a lot 1400 hundred years ago.

What that shows me the demands for trust have gone higher as we have progressed.

MSN
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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

:rotfl:

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?


Then would you agree this whole 'you must have 2 female witness' is not valid in today's society?

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

English is my second language and sometime i need help in putting down my thoughts clearly. So I get help(from books, internet and my husband) for that but the thoughts are mine.

~*~ Brand of Vehicle ~*~
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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

Are you doing any of that?

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

Why are you reading or writing only half of the ayah?

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~*~ Brand of Vehicle ~*~
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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

I didn't repost the whole thing, but I did read the whole thing and my post addressed the whole. So let's assume I did repost the whole thing, what's your answer?

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

Whats your question?

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

The points I raised about your posting *004.059 *as if it had any context in the discussion. And you conveniently skipped over USResident's response to its irrelevance as well.

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

Semi, it would be absolutely valid if it were infered the correct way to me. It you can create the same circumstances that prevailed 1400 years ago with the same state of people it would fit like a glove however if you infer from it you should come to understand that it is saying if you are conducting a transaction where people are not knowledigble about it or do not know much about such financial transactions then increase the number of witnesses so later on you can prove the occurance of the situation as it was even if they did not understand what happened. 1400 years ago financial transactions were dominantly conducted by men so women getting involved meant it was unusual however today it is not.

This is my personal opinion though. It is not meant to blow away any scholars or those who differ with my understanding or way of coming to terms with Islamic principles and guidance as I infer it though.

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

Uh yeah!

Not everyone sits at home like you.

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?


Is it safe to say that your interpretation (literal for its time, allegorical for today) is not the prevailing opinion among Muslims? In a majority of my discussions/ reading of Musilm opinion (or FACT as it is usually presented), hadith is taken as its literal meaning for today. But RARELY do I see the opinion expessed that the *Quran *should be taken into context at times as well.

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Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?

I probably will stay away from making claims. For me I rarely have issues interpreting the Quran in a timeless way. Wisdom is eternal but not applicable to every event the same way. If you can extract the wisdom from something then it becomes timeless. People may sometimes shoot themselves in the foot by translating a literal description as wisdom.

There are something though that are literal because there wisdom is behind it when taken as literal. For me as a muslim the best example of that would be praying 5 times a day. For me the wisdom would be pray 5 times a day not pray irrespective of the number of times and at any time.

I think sometimes its hard to find that balance but trust me when I say this it does not come unless you study and debate it with yourself. For muslims when we say Quran carries an eternal message and then we run into a situation where applying it literally is contradicting itself then it probably means that we are not understnading what was meant by a verse in the Quran or we have narrowed our view of it by trying to match the scenario from 1400 years ago to one of present day. If you tried to understand the wisdom behind the scenario that has been stated from 1400 years ago and then try to apply it your present day scenario you would feel comfortable with it and not have conflicts within you.

Like the example I gave before about buying a from Amazon, the whole process literally has no witnesses other than the buyer himself. The witness has been replaced by a eletronic or paper receipt, which is universally accepted to some degree as a witness to a transaction that ocured in the judicial system prevailing. I would ask some of my fellow muslims is that transaction haram since we have no human witnesses conducting the contract, but infact just computers? The Quran states that there should be male or female witnesses to a transaction but there are none here. The grass roots problem is how people apply what they infer. 1400 years ago transaction rarely had paper trail and the only form of witnesses were humans and the judicial system back then was tuned to work with it. Todays judicial system and nature of transactions are different. We still have witnesses but they may not be of human form now infact they will not change their statements or have to remember what happen because they are spelled out for you in many cases as buying a simple book from Amazon.