Women as witnesses
The claim — as circulated
Women cannot serve as witnesses in a Shari'ah court, and where they are permitted, a woman's testimony counts for half of a man's.
The rebuttal
Two claims travel together here, and they undercut each other. The first says women cannot testify at all. The second says their testimony is halved. The verse cited in support of both appoints women as witnesses.
The verse
Qur’an 2:282 concerns the recording of a debt. It directs the parties to call in two male witnesses, and if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her.
The claim that women cannot be witnesses is refuted by the text that is produced to prove it. The verse names them, qualifies them, and assigns them a function.
Scope
The arrangement in 2:282 is specific. Its clear text addresses economic affairs, and it extends to criminal cases where hudud (fixed prescribed penalties) apply. It is not a general theory of women’s credibility, and it was never treated as one.
The scope cuts the other way as well. In affairs concerning women exclusively, such as pregnancy, birth, physical defect, and puberty, the evidence of a single woman is sufficient. A rule that discounted a woman’s word by half could not produce that outcome.
What the claim omits
The stated rationale in the verse is reminding, in a commercial setting from which women were customarily excluded, concerning transactions they had little occasion to handle. Whether that arrangement should be applied to a contemporary courtroom, and how, is a live question that Muslim jurists discuss.
That is a real conversation. It cannot be had by anyone who has misdescribed the verse before it starts.
Sources
- Qur'an 2:282.
- Fatima Umar Naseef, Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations (IMMA, 1999), p. 139.