The Four Perfect Women in Islam
All women are perfect, of course. But according to the Prophet M, there are four types who reach goddess status. Which one are you (or your dream woman) most like?
(*This article isn’t out to demean or objectify women. The Holy Q itself, by and large, preaches equality – it’s the men in Muslim nations that have twisted its words to keep women oppressed. All the quotes that appear in this article can be verified by the Hadith. I’ve used artistic licence to modernise them, but this isn’t the word of God I’m messing with here. The Hadith was penned by acquaintances who, given it was compiled 200 years after the prophet’s death, weren’t really acquaintances, so let’s just accept them with a pinch of hearsay. I’ve also resisted the temptation to write this in the outdated and obnoxious style of Lads’ Mags – although, for my sins, I have written for Nuts magazine. Think Shag, Marry or Kill. Because sometimes parody, as we know, only adds piss to the bonfire.)
This isn’t the one about how Muslim men can have four wives…
According to the Hadith, Prophet M hailed four women as “the best of women among the people of paradise”. While they’re all as beauteous, loyal and devoted as you may expect, they’re far from the docile, subservient women that tend to give the Hardcore Muslim Man the horn. Intelligent, self-sufficient and resilient, these women kick arse. All of them have faced prejudice, ridicule and the call to fight when necessary. Islam doesn’t do Goddesses, but these come as close as divinely possible in the hearts and minds of Shi’as and Sunnis the world over.
So without further ado, let’s hear it for the phwooar (sorry), four perfect ladies…
The one that pays the bills while her man is off saving the world
Any woman who has busted her butt working while her strapped-for-cash hubby suffers for his art will be able to relate to Khadijah, the prophet’s first wife, who he remained faithful to till her bitter end. After her wealthy merchant father passed on, she continued to run the business (it is said her caravan of goods were bigger than the ones of all traders from Syria to Yemen combined). Her generosity earned her the title ‘Princess of Quraysh’, but unlike other Qurayshis, she didn’t buy the whole worshipping dolls shtick. So when she heard one of her new hired hands, a lad in his mid-20s called Muhammad, wax lyrical about the teachings of Abraham, Moses and Jesus with his unique twist, she fell totally in love with him. Older than him by a good fifteen years, and having been married twice before, she just knew he was The One. Literally. Her immense wealth meant her toy boy had time to meditate and feel the force that primed him for the revelations he came to receive.
“I was chilling in the Cave of Hira, when an angel came to me and told me to recite the first revelation,” he told Khadijah after returning from one of his long man-cave trips. “And I kept telling him I can’t read but he just kept asking, it was getting pretty intense, so in the end, he told me to just remember everything he said. I feel, like, divinely inspired.”
“Ooh, they sound like the ones revealed to Moses,” Khadijah said to him, encouragingly.
Khadijah stuck with the newly ordained prophet through thick and, well, mostly thin. Friends and family stopped coming round, their four kids never got invited on playdates, some even plotted to kill him. “Your husband is a nutter,” they’d tell her wherever she went. “You go do your thing, darling,” she eventually said to Prophet M, and off he went to do his thing, while she paid for him and his posse, using her powerful, if rapidly dwindling, position within the community to constantly bail them out.
Soon, she too found herself banished – homeless and destitute. Yet through it all, she stuck by her man, never complained. During the three years they were holed up in the caves of Mount Thawr, hiding from bounty hunters, with anyone she could trust back in Mecca banned from bringing the fugitives food or medicine on pain of death, Khadija fell ill and most likely died of starvation and malnutrition.
The Prophet M never got over her. I mean, he went on to marry another eleven women, but he never had kids with any of them, which back then meant something.
The one that blesses you with the best son in the universe (even though you’re an absentee Dad)
Say what you like about Mother Mary, you can’t fault that woman’s parenting skills. A single mum, chastised by the community for having a child out of wedlock, Maryam only went and raised Jesus fucking Christ! The Holy Q mentions her by name at least seventy times (that’s more than she appears in The Bible), with an entire chapter, aptly title Surah Maryam, dedicated to her.
Maryam herself was born to the Big Al, after her mother Hannah made a bargain with the Almighty – gift me a child and that child will be all yours. Maybe Hannah wasn’t clear on her pronouns because she was kind of expecting a boy, but she still went ahead to “commend Maryam and her offspring to God’s protection from Satan the outcast.” Maryam grew up strong and independent, in the knowledge she didn’t belong to anyone but the creator, placed on this Earth to be a most righteous dudette. Her kindness, selfless deeds and spiritual awareness made Zakariya, the reigning prophet of the time, regularly come to her chambers to shoot the breeze on all matters divine.
Then, at the age of 15, a bunch of angels appeared to land her the bombshell: “You’re to give birth to the Messiah. Here’s a copy of the Torah and the Gospel for some bedtime reading.” The scandal is off-the-scale, but luckily, Jesus being Jesus, as a new born baby, tells the haters to “back off, mess with my mum, you mess with the Big Al himself”.
Maryam remained chaste her whole life. Poor old Joseph isn’t mentioned at all in the Holy Q, so at least there’s no threat of another man raising your son to worry about.
The one stuck in a toxic relationship with a bastard, who’s so lovely you can’t help but love her
Do not covet thy neighbour’s wife, unless the husband in question is the Pharaoh Fir’aun, a total prick if there ever was one. He fancied himself a God, turned all Jews in Egypt into slaves and, paranoid that one of their kids would take revenge one day, had every Jewish child born a boy in the land slaughtered. Even though his long-suffering wife Asiyah had no children of her own, she discovered baby Moses, cast into the River Nile by some poor terrified Jewish mother, and through incredible powers of persuasion, convinced her tyrant husband to raise him as their own.
When the young Moses started showing signs of his power, like a Compound V-charged superhero from the Amazon Prime show The Boys, the Pharaoh tried to dismiss his ability as parlour trick-style magic. Asiyah befriended all the actual magicians in Egypt, who gathered round to conclude: “Woah, this shit is for real.” The Pharaoh didn’t take this well and tortured her mercilessly. She never cracked, not once submitted, nor wavered from her support for her special little boy. The psycho perp eventually crushed her to death with a giant boulder. (He got his comeuppance, though, when good old Moses drowned him in the Red Sea. How’d you like that magic trick, Daddy-O?)
Despite being a Queen, Asiyah never cared for money, using her wealth only to help others. No amount of physical or mental torture could sway her from her path. Although like a lot of Egyptians back then, she was a bit of a goth obsessed with death, so here’s hoping the Big Al granted her greatest wish to live next door to him up in heaven.
The one that hero-worships you from Day One
The love for a female isn’t limited to her sex-appeal, of course, and there’s no greater love a man can feel than the one reserved for his baby girl. Fatimah was five-years-old when Daddy started having visions, and children being open to the idea of fairies and angels, totally believed him and fought against the bullies who tried to label her old man mental. She had to grow up fast, after her mum Khadijah starved to death while in exile. One day, when an idolater poured the intestines of a camel all over Prophet M in the streets, she rushed past the booing crowd to clean him up, thereby gaining the title “the mother of her father”. Daddy was equally protective, telling followers: “Fatimah is a part of me. Anyone who makes her angry makes me angry.”
To say she was reasonable would be an understatement. Once, after she married, with the chores getting too much for her to bear, she asked Daddy to hire her a helping hand, to which he said “I’ll give you a greater gift that’ll help you better than any helper. Say these prayers in bed and you’ll be fine.” “Cheers Dad,” she said, and went back to scrubbing the floors with a smile on her face.
So devoted was she to spreading her father’s word, that she would sometimes pray until her feet got swollen. Her son once caught her praying for everyone, and wondered why she didn’t include herself in the list. She responded: “My son, first others, then ourselves.” She’s one of the few Muslim women on record to have delivered a sermon in the Medina Mosque. “If she were a man, she’d surely be a prophet,” the congregation were unanimous in their verdict. Up in heaven, her role is that of the Commander of the Faithful, where, on the Day of Judgement, she’ll be the one that leads all the other perfect women to paradise.
You sort of have to feel bad for Prophet M’s three other daughters though (he never had a son). Must have been pretty tough growing up in the shadow of al-Zahra, the Shining One.