through the verses of inheritance for several centuries. They allege
that the Noble Quran gives the female in general, and the wife in
particular, half of what it gives to the male in general and the
husband in particular, thereby usurping the right of the woman and
dealing with her wrongfully. In reply to this malicious allegation we
say:
First:The claim that in Islam, the share given from the inheritance to
a woman is less than the man, is invalid. Indeed, there are four cases
in connection with inheritance where the female's share is equal to or
even greater than the male's:
1.The first case: When the woman's share is equal to the man's, as it
is in the )half( brothers and sisters from the side of the mother,
each of whom takes one-sixth, whether they are male or a female, and a
group )of more than two( share the third equally, in which the
female's share is like the male's.
2.The second case: When only the female is the heir, and a cause of
preventing the male from inheritance. A typical example is a man/woman
who dies and leaves a daughter, a full sister, and a half-brother from
the side of the father. The daughter takes half the inheritance, and
the full sister the other half, and nothing is given to the
half-brother from the side of the father, since he is prevented by the
existence of a full sister, although he is a male and she is a female.
3.The third case: When a female takes more than what the male takes,
such as, when a person dies and leaves a full sister or a half-sister
from the side of the father; a mother, a paternal uncle or a
half-brother from the side of the mother. In this case, the full
sister takes half of the inheritance, the mother the third and the
remaining sixth is taken by the paternal uncle or the half-brother
from the side of the mother. Although in this case both the sister and
the mother are females, the share of each is greater than the male's,
i.e., that of the paternal uncle or the half-brother from the side of
the mother.
4.The fourth case: When a female takes half of what the male takes;
this happens in many instances, such as when the inheritors include a
daughter along with a son; a son's daughter along with a son's son; a
full sister along with a full brother; a half-sister from the side of
the father along with a half-brother from the side of the father; the
wife's share compared with the husband's: each female in those cases
takes half of what the male takes.
What is the wisdom that lies behind thisí Does this preference go back
to gender or is there another reason lying behind the preferenceí In
reply to these questions, let us say: This preference does not go back
to gender, since there are some cases in which the female's share of
inheritance is equal to the male's, and other cases in which her share
is greater than the male's, and many cases in which she prevents him
from inheritance, as we have previously seen. Whoever thinks that the
shares of the male and female heirs in the Quran are established only
on the basis of the difference of gender, i.e., masculinity and
femininity, has indeed fallen short of understanding the Quran. That
is because the Noble Quran has distributed the shares of heirs on the
basis of three criteria:
The degree of kinship between the heirs -- be they males or females --
and the deceased person: The closer the relation between them, the
greater the share of inheritance is, regardless of the gender of the
heirs.
The position of the generation of heirs in the sequence of
generations: The young generation, who are at the beginning of their
life and getting ready to receive its burdens, have shares of
inheritance that are greater than the older generations that are at
the end of their life and getting
The financial obligation enjoined by the IslamicSharee'ah)legislation(
upon the heir: That is the only criterion which raises the difference
of gender between the male and the female. However, this difference
inflicts neither oppression nor injustice upon the female. On the
contrary, it may be that the opposite is
This is why this disparity between the male and the female has not
been made general to all the heirs )in all cases( in the Noble Quran,
but just in some cases. The demands required of the son in life and
under the system of Islam are more than those required of )the
daughter who is( his sister. He is the one obliged, once he becomes
mature, to spend on and maintain himself, pay the dowry to his wife,
bear the marital expenditure, maintenance of children as regards
education, medication, clothing, etc. but the female usually gets
married and is not required to pay dowry or bear expenses, since her
maintenance is obligatory for her husband.
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