“For What Sin Was She Killed?” - The Qur’anic Revolution Regarding Women

Epigraph

 The Qur’an paints one of the most haunting scenes ever revealed:

 ‎وَإِذَا الْمَوْءُودَةُ سُئِلَتْ بِأَيِّ ذَنبٍ قُتِلَتْ

“And when the buried girl shall be asked: for what crime was she killed?” (Qur’an 81:8–9)

 This is not poetry. This is the Qur’an holding a mirror before humanity: 

 “Explain yourselves.
Why did you crush her?”

 The verse was revealed about certain tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia who buried their daughters alive — out of shame, fear, societal pressure, and patriarchal honour constructs. But the verse is not limited to one region or one century.

 This verse is a moral X-ray of every society that kills a woman’s dignity, even if not her body.

 From Arabia to the Middle Ages to today, women have bled under different cultures in different ways, where they were labelled witches in medieval Europe and tortured, hunted, and burned, and labelled impure when menstruating, and being isolated, shamed, and treated as untouchable.

 Even blamed for “the original sin,” where Eve alone is considered to have misled humanity. There is no theological foundation in Islam that woman is the source of evil. None. The Qur’an corrects this misconception and states:

 Both Adam and Eve faltered together.
(Qur’an 2:36, 7:20–23)

 The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) gave women legal identity long before Europe even imagined it. Women were granted inheritance rights (Qur’an 4:7), the right to own property, the right to keep their wealth separate, the right to consent to marriage, the right to seek divorce, and the right to an independent economic identity.

 The Qur’an assigns a woman’s wealth as hers. She is not obliged to spend on the family. Man, as the husband is. That is why his inheritance share is larger, as he is obligated to provide for and protect. Hers is untouched security.

The Qur’an’s Verse (4:34) – A Bone Of Contention For The Feminists

 Every institution in the world has one head. God made the husband head of the institution of marriage, not because he is “superior” but because every institution needs a final point of responsibility, and the man is obligated to earn and maintain the household. This is an administrative role, not a dictatorship.

 The Qur’an demands mutual decision-making, consultation, kindness, and honour - a headship based on responsibility, not tyranny. Every institution has a head. Not so that the head may become a dictator, but so that the institution may remain stable, functional, and disciplined. The head is not the “most privileged.” The head is the most accountable.

 Marriage, in the Qur’anic worldview, is also an institution. Therefore, God assigns the husband as ‘qawwam’ (Qur’an 4:34), the one who carries the burden of provision, protection, and responsibility. This is not a license for domination. It is a burden of stewardship.

 The Qur’an does not say: “man is superior.” Rather, it says: man is responsible because he must earn and provide, and maintaining the household is his legal and moral duty. The husband and wife are to make decisions jointly, with mutual respect and consultation. This is the context of 4:34.

 Those who read “headship” as power have misunderstood it. It is actually an obligation. And to keep the marital institution from collapsing under rebelliousness, the Qur’an outlines graduated steps: talk, counsel, warn - not to harm, but to restore order. These are procedural safeguards, not tools of violence.

 The role of ‘qawwam’ makes the husband answerable before God. If he abuses his role, he will stand exposed in the Hereafter. His wife can take him to account before the Lord of Justice. That is a terrifying prospect. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) emphasized this responsibility when he said:

 “The best of you are those who are best to their wives and children.”
And he signaled with two fingers close together, indicating closeness with him in the Hereafter for the affectionate and just husband.

 So Qur’an 4:34 is not about male privilege. It is about male accountability. The husband’s role is to protect, provide, love, care, and uphold the dignity and well-being of the family. That is leadership in Islam. Not domination but responsibility with gentleness.

Conclusion

And yet women are still buried today. Not under sand. But under social pressure in joint families to carry all household labour, manipulative inheritance practices, legal or illegal, that push them out, cultural guilt for wanting their own careers, emotional gaslighting, honour-pressure, religious distortion, and the quiet suffocation of being told “this is your duty”.

They are still being quietly buried alive inside their own lives. The Qur’an came to unbury her.

Islam did not come to make women lesser. Islam came to lift them after the world had pushed them down. Islam came to speak for the girl who had no voice. Islam came to ask the question that shook centuries: “For what sin was she killed?”

 Every time we erase a woman’s right, crush her dreams, take her agency, shame her for existing, we step into the crime this verse condemns. The Qur’an defended her. Muslims who claim to be the bearers of the Qur’an today must do the same. A society is measured by how it treats the girl it once buried.

 May we not be the generation that buries her again, this time with culture instead of soil.

Aamir Yazdani
MPhil Islamic Thought & Civilization (Pakistan)
MSc Irrigation Engineering (UK)