امرأتنا في الشّريعة والمجتمع

Imrāʾatunā fī al-Sharīʿa wa-al-Mujtamaʿ [Our Women in the Sharia and Society] was printed in Tunis by al-Matba’a al-Fanniyya (the Artistic Printing Press), located at No. 76 Church Street, in the year 1348 A.H., corresponding to 1930 C.E. The book comprises 140 pages and is divided into two main chapters.

The first chapter is legislative in character and addresses the status of women within the Islamic religious sciences ('Ulūm al-Dīn'): the Qur’an, Hadith, and Fiqh. To define and analyze this status, Tahar al-Haddad addressed issues relating to women’s civil rights as well as their rights within the family, such as marriage and divorce.

In this chapter, he adopted a maqāṣid or purposive-oriented interpretation: one open to the principle of historical development. He distinguished between the immediate meanings contained in the Qur’anic text and its ultimate purposes, which seeks to establish human values embodied in the noble virtues (makārim al-akhlāq): an ethical approach that is incompatible with relegating women to the inferior status imposed by rigid interpretations that were long upheld by the Islamic scholars.

The second chapter offers a detailed account of how traditions, customs, and patriarchal social relations strip women of their very self, their freedom, and their rights, including the right to education, training, and respect.

The theoretical introduction to the book, however, remains the key to understanding the positions articulated throughout its pages. As he wrote: “Woman is the mother of humankind”; she is therefore the origin. If our aspiration for Tunisia or for the East more generally is truly one of renaissance, then we must begin with the origin. To despise woman, he argued, “is to despise ourselves and to accept the humiliation and decline in which we live.”

For al-Haddad, the issue was not simply a social matter affecting one group, but a national and civilizational concern.

The Price of Intellectual Courage

Because of the bold and emancipatory ideas he advanced in this book, Tahar al-Haddad became the target of campaigns of both physical and moral persecution. These campaigns were orchestrated by a coalition of conservatives within the Old Destour Party, the guardians of Islamic orthodoxy and dogmatism, and influential figures in the Nadāra' Ilmiyya overseeing education at al-Zaytuna, all intent on excluding him both socially and professionally. He was made to feel estranged from his country, his friends, and his family; he was branded an unbeliever, and his ideas in defense of women and the principles of their emancipation were condemned as an undermining of doctrine and an affront to the Sharia.