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Have you seen Early Sufi Women yet? I've been eyeing it for a while but haven't sprung for it. It's the first english translation of an original 10th century AD manuscript by as-Sulami on pious women of the Salaf. Sachiko Murata gives it two thumbs up...
Some hawkish people have said that they never thought women should be in combat in the first place.
Beyond this, there are a variety of different factors to consider.
First, there's a question of whether the fighting is considered religiously/legally obligatory or not. The usual example of legally obligatory fighting is when the country is under attack. In this case, most scholars consider that every able-bodied man is required to report for service. Women are not required even in this circumstance to fight. This is part of a general rule in Islam that community obligations are not required of women. Other examples include congregational prayers and funeral processions. The reason for this, as I understand it, is women's duties in the home. A woman who has children to care for at home can't always leave them to go out and do something in the community. If she were required to go out into the community at a certain time or to do a certain thing, that would be a hardship on her and potentially cause harm to her children. So women generally are not required to fulfill any community obligations. They can if they want to, but they are not required to.
Next, there is the question of whether women should. If combat is not obligatory (for example, an expeditionary force of sufficient size has already been selected), then the Prophet's (pbuh) example is to excuse people with family obligations. For instance, men with elderly parents to care for were dismissed (references cited here). Women with children would also be excused.
In practical terms, especially in the past, these rules mean that the group of women who might be going out for combat are those who don't have small children at home. Conservative scholars tend to argue that even these women should remain in their homes, but others point out that women were actively involved in public affairs in early Islam and say that women should come out and be of benefit to their communities. The women who served as the support staff of the Prophet's (pbuh) army (mentioned in the original blog entry) are one example of this.
This brings us to the question of whether women should be limited to support roles or allowed to take combat roles from the beginning. There are various factors to consider including the physical demands of the combat position (since women are generally smaller and physically weaker than men), concerns about fraternization between men and women and its effects on morale (this is a concern even in our thoroughly modern U.S. armed forces, so you can imagine how much more of a concern it would be for socially conservative Muslims), and such-like.
I think we would really have to look at the specific circumstances and then make a judgment. I personally feel that women can and should be able to take part in combat if they are free from other personal and family obligations, if they can meet the physical demands of the job, and if they can be deployed in a way that doesn't cause trouble for them or for men. I think that women have the mental and emotional toughness that's necessary and that they can be fierce fighters when they need to be (it sounds like Private Lynch was taken down fighting when she was captured - good for her!)
I hope this is what you were looking for or that it helps you zero in on what you want to ask.
I hope this is what you were looking for or that it helps you zero in on what you want to ask.
It was very helpful, thanks so much! Actually, it inspired another question in my mind because of the part I quoted, regarding the obligations of women who have small children. This question might be even worse than the first, but would a nation acting in accordance with Islam have made the welfare reforms that the U.S. has?
Specifically, I am thinking of how women are required to work and to put their children into day care. I am not sure if the material support for children is a parental duty only, or a community obligation. If the former, I guess part of a single mother's job would be to go out and work, even if it means not tending her children the way she would prefer. But if the latter, the new welfare laws appear to be very contradictory to the Muslim belief that women's first responsibility is to be doing the caretaking of their children, and the community is responsible for material support.
Apologies if I completely misunderstood and twisted around the idea.
The first option would probably be for the woman to move in with her family, such as her parents, siblings, aunt or uncle. In some cases she might be able to turn to her in-laws of her late husband. Muslims are very strongly encourage to begin their charitable giving "at home", by providing for family members who don't have enough to support themselves. If for some reason she had no family at all to support her and was unable to remarry, then she could draw on Islam's version of "welfare", the zakat. This is money that the state collects from all citizens who have a certain amount of assets in excess of their needs and it is put in a treasury or fund so that needy citizens can draw from it.
There is nothing to stop a woman from working to support herself and her children, but most Muslims would want to make it possible for her to care for them herself and not have to work.
I have had the thought developing lately that the way capitalism and even liberal democracy are practiced in America does not seem altogether appropriate for Islamic nations.
I say this because the U.S. seems to put preeminent value on individualism and the right to be left alone, not requiring much in the way of imperfect duties of charity (particularly in the conservative view of the state). As the political philosophers might put it, we have great negative rights and no positive rights.
In contrast, Islam appears to be much more communitarian, more oriented toward requiring people to take care of each other, and not just to leave one another alone.
Most Americans see welfare reform and its requirement that women go out and work, even though it means leaving their children who often are quite young, as having been a great accomplishment.
While I am glad to see that welfare mothers are getting the support services they need to start working, such as job training and sometimes access to child care, our laws seem nearly draconian because they make work an absolute requirement. They clearly express the sentiment that the material support of the child (aside from education, which is provided by the public schools) is entirely the responsibility of the parent.
There is also, however, the question of whether and how much the government should implement this. Thinkers such as Imad ad-Dean Ahmad believe that most of this should be handled privately, not by the government. For Ahmad, Islam provides moral guidelines for how a society ideally should be run as well as laws that a government should implement. He sees the functions of the government as being strictly limited. Thus, Ahmad is a libertarian. His understanding of Islam is also more congenial to the American mind than other visions might be.
But it's also possible to believe that the government should handle this. As Kynn said in another thread, that would match more with the progressive political movement. Some people have even developed socialist visions of Islam and there have historically been a couple of fringe movements that believed all property should be communally owned with no private property at all.
I should also point out that we're looking here at economic systems. There are also differences of opinion among Muslims about how much the government should implement the moral rules of Islam. Should women be forced by the law to wear hijab?
As I hope is clear from my blog entries and comments, I very strongly believe in limited government in this area (see my post Islam and Individual Freedom for more). Many Islamist groups (or at least the ones that make the news) do not and that's one of the things that Americans find so threatening about Islam.
For reasons of consistency if nothing else, I tend to support the libertarian economic position as well but it would certainly be possible to want government involvement only in the economy (libertarian politically and progressive economically). I would be interested to learn more about Muslims who support this position.
Another theoretical possibility is to want government involvement in morality but not in the economy (hmm, sounds like the religious right in America...).
And of course, some of the Islamist groups may actually want government involvement in the economy as well as in moral issues, which is at least consistent.
We have four possible positions here. Two are internally consistent; they apply the same interpretation to both economic and political issues. Neither of these positions matches a major political party in America. Two of the positions are not internally consistent; they apply one interpretation to economic issues and a different interpretation to political issues. These are the two positions that most closely resemble the major political parties in America (the Democrats being the politically-libertarian and economically-progressive group and the Republicans being the politically-authoritarian and economically-libertarian group; and yes these are sweeping generalizations).
Perhaps analyzing it this way can help us better understand how political reform can be brought about in the Muslim world.