Ala-Maududi
(60:12) O Prophet, when believing women come to you and pledge[18] to you that they
will not associate aught with Allah in His Divinity, that they will not steal,[19]
that they will not commit illicit sexual intercourse, that they will not kill their
children,[20] that they will not bring forth a calumny between their hands and
feet,[21] and that they will not disobey you in anything known to be
good,[22] then accept their allegiance[23] and ask Allah to forgive them.
Surely Allah is Most Forgiving, Most Compassionate.
18. As we have explained above, this verse was sent down some time before the conquest of Makkah.
After the conquest the Quraish started coming to the Prophet (peace be upon him) in large
numbers to take the oath of allegiance. From the men he took the oath himself on Mount Safa. As
for the women he appointed Umar to administer the oath to them on his behalf and to ask them to
pledge that they would refrain from the things mentioned in this verse. (Ibn Jarir, on the
authority of Ibn Abbas; Ibn Abi Hatim, on the authority of Qatadah). Then, on his return to
Al-Madinah he ordered the Muslim women of Al-Madinah to be gathered together in a house and he
sent Umar to take the oath from them. (Ibn Jarir, Ibn Marduyah, Bazzar, Ibn Hibban, on the
authority of Umm Atiyyah Ansariah). On the Eid day also, after his address to men, he went to
the assembly of women and in his sermon to them, he recited this verse and asked them to pledge
that they would refrain from the things mentioned in it. (Bukhari on the authority of Ibn
Abbas’s tradition). Apart from these occasions, at different other times also, the women came
before the Prophet (peace be upon him) individually as well as collectively to take the oath of
allegiance, as mentioned in several Ahadith.
19. In Makkah, when the oath of allegiance was being administered, Hind bint Utbah, wife of Abu
Sufyan, asked the Prophet (peace be upon him) its explanation and said: Messenger of Allah, Abu
Sufyan is rather stingy. Will it be sinful if I take out something from his wealth without his
permission to meet my own and my children’s needs. The Prophet (peace be upon him) replied: Nay,
but only, justly and lawfully; i.e. take only that much as may actually suffice for your needs.
(Ibn al-Arabi, Ahkam al-Quran).
20. This also includes abortion, whether it is abortion of the legitimate or of the illegitimate
fetus.
21. This implies two kinds of calumny:
(1) A woman’s accusing other women of having illicit relations with other men and her spreading
such stories among the people, for the women are generally prone to spreading such things.
(2) A woman’s delivering a child by somebody else and making her husband believe that it is his.
Abu Daud has related a tradition from Abu Hurairah saying that he heard the Prophet say: The
woman who brings such a child into a family as does not actually belong to it, has no connection
with Allah, and Allah will never admit her to Paradise.
22. In this brief sentence two important points of the law have been stated:
First, that obedience even to the Prophet (peace be upon him) has been restricted to “in what is
good”, although about the Prophet (peace be upon him) no one could imagine that he would order
somebody to do an evil. From this it automatically follows that no one in the world can be
obeyed outside the bounds of divine law. For when obedience to Allah’s Messenger himself is
conditional upon “in what is good”, who else can have a position to demand unconditional
obedience and require the people to obey and follow each of his commands, laws, rules or
customs, which are opposed to the law of Allah? The Prophet (peace be upon him) has stated this
principle, thus: There is no obedience in the disobedience of Allah; obedience is only in what
is good and right. (Muslim, Abu Daud, Nasai). Our great doctors have derived this very theme
from this verse, Abdur Rehman bin Zaid bin Aslam says:
Allah has not said that they should not disobey you (the Prophet) but that they should not
disobey you in what is good.
Then, when Allah Almighty has made obedience even to the Prophet himself conditional upon this,
how can another person have the right that he should be obeyed in anything but what is good?
(Ibn Jarir).
Imam Abu Bakr al-Jassas writes:
Allah knew that His Prophet (peace be upon him) never enjoined anything but what was good. Still
He restricted obedience to him only in what is good, so that no one ever may find a provision to
obey the kings when they enjoined something outside the obedience of Allah. The Prophet (peace
be upon him) has said: He who obeys a creature in disobedience to the Creator, Allah appoints
the same creature over him in power. (Ahkam al-Quran).
Allama Alusi says:
This command refutes the view of those ignorant people who think that obedience to the ruler is
absolutely necessary. Allah has restricted even obedience to His Messenger (peace be upon him)
only in what is good, whereas the Messenger (peace be upon him) never enjoins anything but what
is good. This is meant to warn the people that obedience to no one is lawful in disobedience to
the Creator. (Ruh al-Maani).
Thus, this command in fact, is the foundation stone of the rule of law in Islam. The rule is that
anything which is opposed to the law of Islam is a crime, and no one has the right to enjoin any
such thing on any one. Anyone who enjoins anything against the law, is a culprit; and the one
who obeys such a command is also a culprit. No subordinate can escape the punishment on the
basis of the excuse that his superior officer had ordered him to do something which was a crime
in the law.
The other thing which has great legal import is that in this verse after enjoining five
prohibitions only one positive command has been given, namely that the Prophet (peace be upon
him) will be obeyed in all good things. As for the evils, the major evils in which women of the
pre-Islamic days were generally involved, have been mentioned and a pledge taken from them to
refrain from them. But as for the good works, they have neither been mentioned nor any pledge
taken to observe them. The only pledge that has been taken is that they will have to obey the
Prophet (peace be upon him) in every good work that he enjoins. Now obviously, if the good works
be only those which Allah Almighty has enjoined in the Quran, the pledge should have been to the
effect: You will not disobey Allah, or You will not disobey the injunctions of the Quran. But
when the pledge taken was to the effect: You will not disobey any good work that is enjoined by
the Messenger (peace be upon him) of Allah, it automatically leads to the conclusion that the
Prophet (peace be upon him) has been given vast powers for the reformation of society, and it is
obligatory to obey all his commands, whether they are found in the Quran or not.
On the basis of this very legal authority the Prophet (peace be upon him) asked the women to
pledge that they would refrain from all those evils which were prevalent among the women of the
Arabian society at that time, and gave several such commands as have not been mentioned in the
Quran. One may study the following Ahadith in this connection:
Ibn Abbas, Umm Salamah, Umm Atiyyah Ansariah and others have reported that the Prophet (peace be
upon him) while administering the oath of allegiance to the women asked them to pledge that they
would refrain from mourning over the dead. These traditions have been related by Bukhari,
Muslim, Nasai and Ibn Jarir.
A tradition reported by Ibn Abbas contains this detail: The Holy Prophet appointed Umar to
administer the oath of allegiance to the women and commanded that he should forbid them to mourn
over the dead, for in the days of pre- Islamic ignorance women used to tear their clothes and
hair, scratched their faces and bewailed in aloud voice. (Ibn Jarir).
Zaid bin Aslam has reported that the Prophet (peace be upon him), while administering the oath of
allegiance forbade the women to scratch their faces, tear their garments, bewail and sing verses
while mourning over the dead. (Ibn Jarir). Another tradition bearing on the same subject has
been reported by Ibn Abi Hatim and Ibn Jarir from a woman who was among the women taking the
oath of allegiance. Qatadah and Hasan Basri say that one of the things that the Prophet (peace
be upon him) had made the women to pledge also was that they would refain from talking with the
other men freely. Ibn Abbas has explained it in a tradition, thus: That they would not talk with
the other men in private.
Qatadah has further explained it thus: Hearing this command Abdur Rahman bin Auf said: O
Messenger (peace be upon him) of Allah, sometimes it so happens that we are not present in the
house and somebody comes to see us. The Prophet replied: I do not mean this. That is, the woman
is not forbidden to tell the visitor that the master of the house is not present. (These
traditions have been cited by Ibn Jarir and Ibn Abi Hatim).
Abdullah bin Amr bin al-Aas has reported another tradition from Umaimah bint-Rugaiqah, maternal
aunt of Fatimah, saying: The Prophet (peace be upon him) made me to pledge that I would neither
bewail the dead nor display myself like the women of the pre-Islamic paganism. (Musnad Ahmad,
Ibn Jarir).
Salmah bint Qais, a maternal aunt of the Prophet (peace be upon him), says: I went before the
Prophet (peace be upon him) with some other women of the Ansar to take the oath of allegiance.
He made us to pledge that we would abstain from the things mentioned in this verse, and then
said: Do not defraud your husbands. When we were about to leave, a woman said to me: Go and ask
the Prophet (peace be upon him) what is meant by defrauding the husbands? When I went and asked
the explanation, he replied: This that you should defraud him of his money and expend it on
others. (Musnad Ahmad).
Umm Atiyyah says: The Prophet (peace be upon him) after administering to us the oath commanded us
that we would attend the Eid congregational prayers, but the Friday prayer is not obligatory for
us, and he forbade us to follow the bier. (Ibn Jarir).
The people who think that the constitutional powers and authority that the Prophet (peace be upon
him) possessed emanated from his position as a ruler instead of his position as a Messenger
(peace be upon him) of Allah, and say that since he was also the ruler at the time, whatever
commands he gave in that capacity were only meant to be obeyed during his time, say an absurd
thing. Consider the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) commands and instructions that we have cited
above. If these instructions given by him for the reformation of the woman had emanated only
from his position as a ruler how could these reforms then be introduced and enforced among the
women of the Muslim society of the entire world forever? Which ruler has there been in the
world, who might have had the position that a command issued by him just once for a reform might
have become enforced in the Muslim society everywhere in the world forever? For further
explanation, see (Surah Al-Hashr, ayat 7)
note 15.
23. Several authentic Ahadith show that in the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) time the procedure
of administering the oath of allegiance to the women was different from that to the men. For the
men the procedure was that the ones pledging allegiance would give their hand in the hand of the
Prophet (peace be upon him) and take the oath. As for the women; the Prophet (peace be upon him)
never took any woman’s hand in his own hand, but adopted other different methods. In this
connection, the following traditions have been reported:
Aishah says: By God, in connection with the oath of allegiance the Prophet’s (peace be upon him)
hand never touched any other woman’s hand. While administering the oath of allegiance to a
woman, he would only say to her: I have accepted your allegiance. (Bukhari, Ibn Jarir).
Umaimah bint Ruqaiqah has stated: I along with some other women went before the Prophet (peace be
upon him) to pledge allegiance, and ho made us to pledge according to this verse of the Quran.
When we said: We will not disobey you in what is good and right, he said: As far as it is in
your power. We submitted: Allah and His Messenger (peace be upon him) are more kind to us than
we could be to ourselves. Then we said: O Messenger of Allah, stretch your hand so that we may
pledge allegiance. He replied: I do not shake hands with women: I only make them take the
pledge. So he made us to pledge. In another tradition she has stated: The Prophet (peace be upon
him) did not take the hand of any of us in his own hand. (Musnad Ahmad, Tirmidhi, Nasai, Ibn
Majah, Ibn Jarir, Ibn Abi Hatim).
Abu Daud in Marasi has related this from Shabi: While administering the oath of allegiance to the
women, a sheet of cloth was stretched towards the Prophet (peace be upon him), which he took in
his hand and said: I do not take the woman’s hand in my hand. This same subject has been related
by Ibn Abi Hatim from Shabi, by Abdur Razzaq from Ibrahim Nakhai and by Saeed bin Mansur from
Qais bin Abi Hazim.
Ibn Ishaq, in Maghazi has related this from Aban bin Salih: The Prophet (peace be upon him) would
put his hand in a vessel full of water and then the woman also would put her hand in the same
vessel. In Bukhari, a tradition from Abdullah bin Abbas is to the effect: After giving the Eid
congregational sermon, the Prophet (peace be upon him) went through the rows of the men to the
place where the women were sitting. There, in his address, he recited this verse of the Quran,
then asked the women: Do you promise to act according to it? A woman from the assembly replied:
Yes, O Messenger of Allah.
In a tradition related by Ibn Hibban, Ibn Jarir, Bazzar and others, Umm Atiyyah Ansariah has
stated this: The Prophet (peace be upon him) extended his hand from outside the house and we
extended our hands from inside the house. But this does not prove that the women might have
shaken hands with the Prophet (peace be upon him), for Umm Atiyyah has not made any mention of
the shaking of hands. Probably on this occasion for the purpose of taking the pledge the Prophet
(peace be upon him) might have extended his hand from outside and the women their hands from
inside the house towards him without any of their hands touching his.