The Influence of Women: Either a Victory or a Defeat
Lyla Hamdan06/13/2025
“Righteous women are what help make and fix the generosity.” [ History of Damascus by Ibn Asaker – 154/22]
This is a fact confirmed by the scenes of history about believing women.
This is what history recorded in the biography of the lion of the desert and the sheikh of the mujahideen, Omar Al-Mukhtar. Where Italian occupiers killed his wife Fatima and burned her body inside his tent! Being the wife of a Muslim leader disturbed them and exposed their weakness. However, he kept fighting them with everything he could, to the last breath.
It is narrated that Omar Al-Mukhtar cried bitterly for her death, and he is the one from whom great patience and endurance were known in humiliating enemies, and when they asked him: What makes you cry? He said: Whenever I came to my tent, she raised the door of the tent for me to enter, so I asked her: Why are you doing that? She said: So that your head remains raised and only bends to God!
This is how this wise woman saw the factor of keeping her husband, the leader, determined and incited. This factor has an effect that cannot be hidden in his biography.
It is no wonder that he continued to conclude his epic by saying: “We do not give up, we win or die! And that’s not the end, you will have to fight the next generation and the generations that follow.”
The role of good women in the progress of the nation’s heroes and leaders is a role that has been immortalized by history in their husbands’ victories. How good they are in being role models and factors of stability and resurrection in the nation! The most prominent characters in them were exalting faith, being patient on the costs of this, and giving good company advice to the husband.
We need to highlight the life of the role models in the history of our nation, to feel the strengths in their lives and the details of their jihad. We need to present a realistic experience that dispels the illusion of helplessness and breaks the shackles of defeatism so that people learn how the leaders of Islam in history have been on their asceticism and the magnitude of the challenges in their reality. They are platforms that make an example of great heroism.
The influence of a woman in the religion and the energy of her husband cannot be overlooked, she is influential in it, for better or worse for sure. As we have seen examples of good women, that was the best support and assistance for their husbands, so they were able to provide the best. We also saw examples of women who were a disaster for their husbands, so they deviated from the path of greatness and virtue.
This is the story of Imran bin Hattan, he was one of the notables of Sunni scholars, but because of a woman he soon turned into one of the invented heads of Kharijites.
Ibn Sirin said: Imran married a Kharijite and said: I will return her, he said, so he turned into her doctrine. He became externally lost and deviated from the path of the first believers and formers. In his story like someone who turned into a Christian because of his attachment to a Christian woman, examples in history are not hidden from a researcher. Therefore, the predecessors choose the wife based on religion and alienate the innovator and the stray. Al-Hassan bin Ali, may God be pleased with them, was engaged to a woman, and he was told: She sees the opinion of the Kharijites, and there is no other defect in her. He said – may God be pleased with him -: I hate to hold one of the coals of hell to my chest.” As stated in the layers of Ibn Saad, 261
Translated by Yasmine
The original article is in Arabic: