Why Women Cannot Travel Without a Maḥram:

An important part of Uṣūl that is often misconstrued and conflated is the differentiation between ḥikmah (legal wisdom) and ʿilla (legal reason).

To give a simple example, alcohol is ḥarām. We can sit here and come up with all kinds of potential wisdoms behind the prohibition, such as the health problems it causes, and the societal issues that will arise from its widespread consumption. But neither of these is the ʿilla (legal reason) for its prohibition. Each of these may be a potential legal wisdom (ḥikmah) behind the legislation, but they are not the legal reason (ʿilla) of prohibition. The ʿilla for the prohibition of khamr is that it intoxicates.

Women traveling on their own has become a lot more common due to the rise in bint fiqh, contemporary sell-outs, distorters, etc. If the woman cares enough to try defending herself from an Islamic framework, she’ll probably cite you the horrible argument that “travel is safe now”. This safety argument is a load of nonsense because there have been cases of women getting r@ped on public transit and literally being set on fire, with everyone around them just watching. Even a maḥram does not guarantee safety, especially nowadays.

According to the overwhelming majority of scholars, the ʿilla (legal reasoning) of prohibition for women traveling without a maḥram is not limited to safety. There is no proof for such a specification. The ruling of prohibition is understood to be general, based on aḥādīth, and the understanding of these aḥādīth are agreed upon, as well as their general application.

The only exceptions to the general prohibition were for Ḥajj and/or ʿUmrah, and some of the scholars even said that the obligation of Ḥajj is waived off for the woman that doesn’t have a maḥram. Just take that in. And now these women today are traveling without a maḥram for “education”, “business”, and “girls’ trips”. I shouldn’t need to elaborate any further on this.

If you look at the statements of the classical scholars on this masʾala of women travelling without a maḥram, it is quite clear that safety was not their only concern. In fact, in most writings I have come across, it seems to not even be the main one. Safety of the woman is only a potential legal wisdom (ḥikmah).

The main issue with women traveling without a maḥram is their female behavior being left unchecked. There are tendencies and behaviors that women are prone to when they are not restricted and under the authority of a male guardian. Women naturally cause fitna and it is in their nature to crave attention. They are also very impulsive and reckless. I’ll leave it at that.

This is why even with the exceptions, like traveling without a maḥram for Ḥajj according to some scholars, you will see that the scholars specify that it must be with TRUSTWORTHY WOMEN (نسوة ثقات). I wonder how many women today even fulfill the criteria to qualify for such a title.

The reason why none of these contemporary sell-outs mention these details is because it completely goes against their modernization and “women’s empowerment” project. They make lots of money off of pandering to the overwhelmingly liberal Muslim populations of today, especially the old and bitter unmarried women who have tons of money to donate. They cannot risk offending or upsetting their source of income.

Once you actually delve into this masʾala, all the other rulings pertaining to women that these modern day “scholars” try to hide from the common people will start to make a lot more sense. In fact, you’ll probably start to come to those conclusions yourself through sincere contemplation, even if you haven’t heard of those other rulings before. The aḥkām pertaining to women leaving the house are all quite consistent :)

To summarize:

- He had some basic ghayrah and wanted to establish the necessary boundaries between his wife and non-maḥram men.
- He was being transparent about what she should expect in the marriage.
- She deemed this to be “insane & controlling behaviour”.
- She wasn’t raised properly and her family never gave her rules to follow, because they either didn’t know basic fiqh or just didn’t care enough to teach her any of it.
- She considers someone who believes in gender segregation and authority of the husband to be among those who “fundamentally misunderstands our religion”.

What does “a good guy” look like for women like this? 😂

Muslims in the West: “There is nothing wrong with living in Dār al-Kufr because we are able to practice Islām”.

Also Muslims in the West: “We need a whole new approach to fiqh because we are minorities living in Dār al-Kufr and cannot practice Islām properly here”.

This individual is boasting about how he convinced his friend, who initially had some healthy and necessary ghayrah, to let go and accept his wife working outside of the house and in a non-segregated environment. He refers to his friend’s prior ghayrah as “his fragile ego”.

I don’t know which is more disturbing:

1) The amount of positive engagement this disgusting post got.

2) The fact that this guy is using that atrocious paper on free-mixing to justify it.

Also, keep in mind that we don’t even know the extent of the ḥarām involved here since the exact career choice of the wife was not mentioned.

Imagine it’s nursing…