Anachronisms

“Head of the Household” (Qawamah)

It is anachronistic to refer to men as providers for women. That was certainly the case in the 7^th century but is no longer the case. The verse most often cited is 4:34:

Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband’s) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For Allah is Most High, great (above you all).

Qawamah translates as “guardians, protectors, or maintainers,” and is usually interpreted to posit male authority, responsibility, and a hierarchical relationship with men as heads of households.

However, our modern world often requires two household earners to pay for housing, health insurance, cost of transportation, communications, childcare, college education … the list goes on. The percentage of single earners has been in decline since WW11. Consider these five factors:

4:34 A. Yusuf Ali translation. “beat them” — The Arabic word ḍaraba carries over 25 distinct meanings, making it one of the most contested terms in Quranic translation. The eight scholarly translations catalogued on Quran.com render it variously as “beat,” “strike,” “hit,” and “scourge” — a range that itself testifies to the word’s irreducible ambiguity. Aisha College addresses this verse’s contextually and historically. For institutional purposes, however, the matter is unambiguous: American civil law expressly prohibits striking a woman or child under any circumstances, and Aisha College’s graduates are trained and ordained to serve within the framework of American law. This verse stands as a compelling illustration of why anachronism must be rigorously considered in Quranic interpretation — a 7th-century disciplinary norm cannot be transplanted unchanged into 21st-century American life without violating both the law of the land and the Qur’an’s own upward trajectory toward justice.

1. Rosie the Riveter — The Wartime Precedent World War II proved to the nation — and to women themselves — that women could perform any job. When six million women entered the industrial workforce between 1942 and 1945, filling factories, shipyards, and defense plants vacated by men at war, a psychological and cultural barrier was permanently broken. Women had tasted economic independence, and many refused to return to exclusively domestic roles when the war ended.

2. The Birth Control Pill (1960) The FDA’s approval of oral contraceptives in 1960 was perhaps the single most transformative development for women’s workforce participation. For the first time in history, women could reliably plan their families and time their pregnancies. This gave women control over the fundamental biological reality that had historically anchored them to the home, enabling long-term career planning, advanced education, and professional ambition on their own terms.

3. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 — Title VII Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibited employment discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, and national origin. This legislation gave women legal standing to challenge workplace exclusion and wage inequality. It also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce those protections, transforming what had been a cultural conversation into a legal mandate.

4. The Women’s Liberation Movement (1960s–1970s) Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) named what she called “the problem that has no name” — the quiet desperation of educated women confined to domestic life. The book ignited a generation. The broader feminist movement that followed challenged the notion that a woman’s highest calling was exclusively wife and mother, reframing professional ambition as a legitimate, dignified, and necessary expression of female personhood.

5. Economic Necessity As the American economy shifted through the 1970s and 1980s — with inflation, the decline of the single-income household, and the rising cost of education, housing, and healthcare — two incomes became not a luxury but a necessity for most families. Women did not simply choose the workforce; in millions of households, the workforce chose them by economic compulsion. This structural economic shift permanently embedded women as indispensable participants in the American labor market.

The Collapse of Qawamah’s Foundation

The theological doctrine of qawamah was never revelation in a vacuum — it was revelation in a context. Its premise was economic: men provide, therefore men lead. But the five forces catalogued above have permanently dismantled that premise in American life. When six million women entered the wartime workforce, when the birth control pill liberated female ambition, when Title VII made discrimination illegal, when Betty Friedan named the injustice, and when economic necessity made the two-income household the American norm — the financial foundation upon which male guardianship rested did not bend. It collapsed. A theological superstructure cannot stand when its economic foundation has been demolished by history.

If qawamah was conditionally granted on the basis of male provision, then in households — and in a nation — where women provide equally, the condition no longer obtains and the authority it conferred no longer applies. To insist otherwise is not fidelity to the Qur’an. It is fidelity to the 7th century — which is precisely the anachronism the Qur’an’s own upward trajectory was designed to correct.

Suffice it to say that what was true in the 7th century is no longer true today for the majority of households. What remains is women serving their husbands; what is lost are the manifold gifts Allah has bequeathed to women — gifts that are crucial to the wellness and balance of the human condition.

Examples:

Government

Gretchen Whitmer serves as Governor of the State of Michigan. As of 2026, 14 out of 50 state governorships are held by women — a record high.

Corporate Leadership

Mary Teresa Barra has served as Chair and CEO of General Motors since January 15, 2014 — the first woman to lead a Big Three automaker.

Finance

Jane Fraser serves as CEO of Citigroup, a Fortune 500 company managing trillions in assets — a woman leading one of the largest financial institutions in the world.

Dana Settle, co-founder of Greycroft, ranks among the most influential venture capitalists globally — deciding which companies get funded, which entrepreneurs get their shot, and shaping the future of technology and innovation.

New York Stock Exchange Muriel Siebert broke barriers by becoming the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange without completing college. She looked at the boys’ club that ran Wall Street and said, “I belong here too.” She was right.

Katharine Graham (1917–2001) became the first female Fortune 500 CEO, leading The Washington Post Company from 1972–1991. During her tenure, the Post published the Pentagon Papers and broke the Watergate scandal — journalism that brought down a president. That is the kind of courage female leadership brings. This is but a tiny snapshot, the list is too lengthy to record here.

Space Walks

On November 1, 2023, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara completed the fourth all-female space walk in history outside the International Space Station. Women — in space, doing repairs on equipment that keeps humans alive in the vacuum, making split-second decisions where mistakes mean death, conducting experiments that advance human knowledge. And the claim persists that women cannot lead a mosque?

Space Exploration

More than 100 women have left Earth’s atmosphere, worked in zero gravity, conducted scientific experiments, and returned safely home — representing a global effort across dozens of nations. Recently, Artemis II completed a 10-day voyage around the Moon. Astronaut Christina Koch and crew splashed down on April 10, 2026, in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego — directly paralleling Aisha College’s mission of opening leadership to women in realms long reserved for men.

U.S. Supreme Court

The highest court in the land includes distinguished female justices: Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — women deciding constitutional law, interpreting legal texts, and writing opinions that shape American society for generations.