Prohibition of Women's Social Presence Narrations from a Fiqh Point of View

Women’s behavior model in the family and society is a controversial topic in Islamic Fiqh. Some believe that women must sit at home and be engaged in maternity responsibilities and that their presence in society is only allowed in necessary cases. Others criticize this approach and consider social presence of women as their legitimate right. Disagreement on this issue arises from the apparent contradiction in Quranic and Sunnah (narrative) evidence on the issue. Several evidence of Quran and Sunnah implies the legitimacy of women's social presence. Despite them, we also have several narrations about the need for a female be shut in at home. Many great fiqh scholars considered the latter narrations to mean that sitting at home being desirable not a must, to reconcile between the two category of evidence on the issue and thus they consider home sitting as the desired (Mustahab) model of behavior for Muslim women.The author's hypothesis is that the primary Hukm for Muslim women is permissibility of her social presence and sitting at home is not preferred in normal situations. Based on this hypothesis, narrations implying sitting at home of a woman observe on the secondary directions. While investigating the consequences of home-sitting of a woman grown in the modern society, this paper criticizes the ethical analysis of narratives indicating women's home-sitting and explains the secondary nature of the home-sitting Hukm.