Thus, this shows that it occurred on Eid—whether Eid al-Adha or Eid al-Fitr—at the prayer-ground. It is clear to anyone of insight that this does not preclude its having occurred on an occasion other than Eid, as in the hadith of Abu Hurayrah, where it took place after he, peace and blessings be upon him, had finished the dawn prayer, while the women were in the mosque.

This refutes what appears in the book The Liberation of Women in the Age of the Message (1/276) concerning the statement, “deficient in intellect and religion.” Its author says:

“It came only once, in a context intended to draw attention and gently introduce an admonition specifically for women; it never came independently as a declarative statement.”

So he says! What astonishing audacity in figuratively reinterpreting the Prophet’s words, peace and blessings be upon him, and forcing upon them meanings they cannot bear! Shaykh al-Qaradawi endorsed this in his introduction to the book (p. 25), because both imagined that it diminished the value of women. Yet it is nothing of the sort whatsoever.

Their case in this regard resembles that of the Mu‘tazilites and those who negate the divine attributes, who figuratively reinterpret the verses and hadiths concerning the attributes on the claim that their apparent meanings imply corporealism and likening Allah to creation—something unbecoming Allah, Most High—and that figurative reinterpretation therefore becomes necessary. Ahl al-Sunnah’s response to them is well known: the error lies in deriving likening from those texts, and this is why they felt compelled to counter it through figurative reinterpretation. Thus, we say to them and to others like them who engage in such reinterpretation: Correct your understanding of the text, and you will be spared figurative reinterpretation and negation of the attributes.

The fundamental problem stems from faulty understanding or weak faith; and the two may be combined, as is the case with Shaykh al-Ghazali and his ignorant imitators who follow personal opinion. The present case is an example before us: when the author of The Liberation understood the hadith to diminish women’s standing, he figuratively reinterpreted it with a meaning it cannot bear, as quoted above. This even led him to deny that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said it on another occasion, and to deny that he was establishing a general rule! By Allah, this is the height of heedlessness—or stubborn denial!

That is because the hadith establishes an innate matter which no one can deny, even if he were an atheist: namely, that a woman menstruates and that her intellect is less than a man’s—this is how