How Distorted Guardianship Harms Rohingya Women and What the Qur’anic words “Qiwāma” Actually Demands
The Invisible Half • Article 1 of 5 “When Protection Becomes a Prison”
I. A Story That Begins With Love
Fatima was seven months pregnant when the bleeding began. It was late evening in the camp, and she knew something was wrong. Her husband was away, having gone to the aid distribution point. She needed to reach the health clinic which is a fifteen-minute walk across the camp but the cultural expectation was clear: a woman does not leave the home alone, and certainly not at night. She needed his permission. She needed an escort. She needed to wait.
By the time he returned and they reached the clinic together, the situation had become critical. The midwife would later note that the delay had made the difference between a manageable emergency and a life-threatening one. Fatima survived. Her child did not.
This story, a composite drawn from documented cases across the research literature is not a story about a cruel husband. By all accounts, he loved his wife. He had been raised in a community that taught him that protecting a woman meant controlling her movements, making her decisions, guarding access to her. He was doing what he believed guardianship required.
That is precisely what makes it so devastating. And so urgent for Muslim communities to understand.
II. What the Evidence Tells Us
A systematic review of 37 studies on Rohingya women’s experiences (2014–2025) reveals a consistent and troubling pattern: the structures that Muslim communities most often describe as ‘protection’ are functioning, in practice, as barriers to women’s survival, health, and dignity.
Guardianship as a Barrier to Healthcare
Research consistently documents that male gatekeeping , the requirement that women obtain male permission to access healthcare, reproductive health information, and emergency services is directly associated with preventable illness and death among Rohingya women in displacement settings.1
Studies found that women required their husband’s approval to access contraception, attend health clinics, and discuss reproductive health with providers. In one study examining contraceptive use in Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, both religious concerns and explicit male opposition emerged as primary barriers to women’s reproductive autonomy ; not women’s own reluctance, but male veto power over their bodies.
A 2025 study on maternal health inequalities found that women with lower education and less household decision-making power had significantly worse antenatal care outcomes which is not because services were unavailable, but because patriarchal household structures prevented access.2
Maternal mortality linked to restricted healthcare access was already documented in Rakhine State before the 2017 exodus with high death rates not because medicine was absent, but because women were systematically prevented from reaching it.3
Restricted Mobility and Information Deprivation
Women whose movement outside the home was restricted by cultural norms relied on male family members to access information about available services, healthcare, and rights. An intersectional study of COVID-19 information access found that women with restricted mobility were disproportionately dependent on male gatekeepers for information which make them vulnerable to misinformation and exclusion from services they were entitled to receive.4
Ethnographic research from within the camps found that male community leaders controlled not only movement but voice. Women’s limited representation in community decision-making meant that their needs, concerns, and perspectives were filtered through male intermediaries before reaching humanitarian organisations.5
The Intimate Partner Violence Connection
Intimate partner violence in the camps was documented at high rates, often normalized within communities as an acceptable expression of male authority. Qualitative research with pregnant women exposed to IPV identified patriarchal norms normalizing male control as a structural driver not individual pathology, but a community-wide belief system that legitimized violence as a form of guardianship.6
Women faced multiple barriers to seeking help: stigma, fear of family breakdown, economic dependence, and limited awareness of services. Many had never been told by their communities, their religious leaders, or their families that what they were experiencing was wrong.
The structures described as ‘protection’ were functioning as barriers to survival. The name had changed. The harm had not.
Critically, one study found a compelling counter-narrative within this same data: where couple communication improved, positive reproductive health outcomes followed. When husbands were engaged as partners rather than gatekeepers, women’s health improved. This is not a finding about female submission, it is a finding about what genuine partnership produces.7
III. What Islam Actually Teaches
Understanding Qiwāma
Any honest Islamic engagement with this topic must begin with the verse most frequently invoked to justify male gatekeeping:
ٱلرِّجَالُ قَوَّٰمُونَ عَلَى ٱلنِّسَآءِ بِمَا فَضَّلَ ٱللَّهُ بَعۡضَهُمۡ عَلَىٰ بَعۡضٍ وَبِمَآ أَنفَقُواْ مِنۡ أَمۡوَٰلِهِمۡ
"Men are the caretakers (qawwāmūn) of women, as men have been provisioned by Allah over women and tasked with supporting them financially." Qur'an 4:34
The Arabic root of qawwāmūn is q-w-m to stand upright, to maintain, to be responsible for the welfare of another. Scholars including Ibn Kathīr, al-Qurtubī, and al-Ṭabarī understood qiwāma as an obligation of financial maintenance and protective care not a licence for domination, surveillance, or control over women’s medical decisions.
Ibn ʿĀshūr, the twentieth-century Tunisian scholar and one of the most rigorous commentators on the maqāṣid (objectives of Islamic law), wrote that qiwāma exists for the maṣlaḥa (welfare) of both husband and wife and that any expression of qiwāma that produces harm to the woman is a perversion of the concept, not a realization of it.
This is a critical distinction. The verse establishes a structure of care not a mechanism of control. When ‘guardianship’ produces preventable maternal death, denied healthcare, and silenced voices, it has become the opposite of what the verse commands.
The Verse That Is Rarely Quoted
Yet qiwāma is not the only verse relevant to the relationship between men and women. There is another:
هُنَّ لِبَاسٌ لَّكُمۡ وَأَنتُمۡ لِبَاسٌ لَّهُنَّ
"They are garments for you and you are garments for them." Qur'an 2:187
A garment does not imprison the body beneath it. A garment covers, protects, dignifies, and moves with the person it serves. The metaphor is one of mutual embrace of enveloping care that serves the other, not constraint that restricts them. The verse is deliberately reciprocal: she is a garment for him, and he is one for her. Neither diminishes the other.
وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنَٰتُ بَعۡضُهُمۡ أَوۡلِيَآءُ بَعۡضٍ
"The believing men and the believing women — they are allies (awliyāʾ) of one another." Qur'an 9:71
The word awliyāʾ here translated as allies and carries the meaning of close friends, protectors, and supporters. Remarkably, this verse does not differentiate: men and women are awliyāʾ to each other. The direction of protection is not one-way. The responsibility of care is shared.
What the Prophet (ﷺ )Modelled
If we want to understand what Islamic guardianship looks like in practice, we do not look to cultural norms but we look to the Prophet (ﷺ) himself.
"The best of you are those who are best to their wives (ahlihim), and I am the best of you to my wives." Sunan al-Tirmidhī, no. 3895 — graded Ṣaḥīḥ
This hadith is not a general nicety. It is a standard of measurement. The Prophet (ﷺ )made kindness to one’s wife the benchmark of a man’s goodness not his piety in the mosque alone, not his standing in the community, but the quality of his treatment of the woman in his home.
He also modelled something that is perhaps even more challenging for some communities to absorb: he listened to women, consulted them, and was changed by their counsel.
At the Treaty of Ḥudaybiyyah, one of the most consequential moments in the early Muslim community when the Prophet (ﷺ ) faced a crisis of morale. His companions refused to slaughter their sacrificial animals in protest at the treaty’s terms. It was his wife Umm Salamah (رضي الله عنها ) who advised him to act first, without waiting for their compliance. He followed her counsel. The companions followed his example.
A man who would later be described as the leader of all humanity sought and acted upon the strategic advice of his wife. This is not a footnote in Islamic history. It is a model.
"Allah does not feel shy of the truth. Do not prevent women from coming to the mosques of Allah." Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 900 — graded Ṣaḥīḥ (authentic)
The women of the Anṣār are celebrated in the hadith literature for their boldness in seeking religious knowledge. ʿĀʾisha (رضي الله عنها) is reported to have said: ‘How excellent are the women of the Anṣār, shyness does not prevent them from understanding their religion.’ These women asked the Prophet (ﷺ) directly about menstruation, sexual relations, ritual purity, and matters of faith. They were not told to ask their husbands. They were given answers.
The Quran itself gives us perhaps the most striking example of a woman’s voice being taken seriously. When Khawlah bint Thaʿlaba (رضي الله عنها) came to the Prophet (ﷺ) disputing the harm her husband had caused her through an unjust pre-Islamic divorce formula (ẓihār), she was not turned away. She was not told to accept her situation. Allah responded to her with revelation:
قَدۡ سَمِعَ ٱللَّهُ قَوۡلَ ٱلَّتِي تُجَٰدِلُكَ فِي زَوۡجِهَا وَتَشۡتَكِيٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ "Indeed Allah has heard the speech of the woman who argues with you [O Prophet] concerning her husband and directs her complaint to Allah." Qur'an 58:1
The entire Surah al-Mujādilah (The Woman Who Disputes) takes its name from this woman’s act of speaking. Of challenging. Of refusing to be silenced. And Allah heard her.
Allah heard a woman dispute for her rights and responded with revelation. A community that silences women’s voices cannot claim to be following His example.
The Farewell Sermon and Women’s Rights
In his final public address to the Muslim ummah, the Prophet (ﷺ) delivered what amounts to a charter of women’s rights words spoken to over 100,000 Muslims, intended as a permanent guidance for the community that would survive him:
"Fear Allah regarding women. Verily, you have taken them as a trust from Allah, and intimate relations with them have been made lawful through the word of Allah... They have rights upon you and you have rights upon them." Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 1218 — from the Farewell Sermon (Ḥajjat al-Wadāʿ)
Two words stand out: taqwā (God-consciousness, here translated as ‘fear Allah’) and amāna (trust). Women are not property. They are not subordinates to be managed. They are a trust given to men by Allah and every trust will be asked about on the Day of Judgment.
IV. The Honest Conversation We Must Have
It is tempting, when reading the research on Rohingya women, to locate the problem far away in refugee camps, in extreme poverty, in displacement. But the patterns documented in Cox’s Bazar are not unique to stateless refugees. They exist on a spectrum that runs through Muslim-majority communities worldwide, including in the West.
The belief that a woman must have male permission to seek medical care. The expectation that a wife’s health decisions belong to her husband. The community norm that silences women from speaking about their pain, their bodies, or their needs in spaces where men might hear. The cultural equation of female mobility with female immorality. These are not teachings of Islam. They are cultural practices that have been given Islamic names.
The research on Rohingya women documents their consequence in their most extreme form: preventable deaths, unreported violence, untreated illness, and an entire gender systematically excluded from the information and services they need to survive. But the logic that produces these outcomes is the same logic dressed in different clothes that appears in every Muslim communities.
To Fathers and Husbands
The Prophet (ﷺ) described the man who prevents his wife from attending the mosque as doing something that will harm him before Allah. How much more, then, will he be asked about the man who prevents his wife from reaching a doctor? Who withholds information about her own reproductive health? Who treats his authority over her as the primary value, above her life and wellbeing?
Qiwāma is a responsibility, not a privilege. It is the obligation to maintain, protect, and provide — not to control, restrict, or withhold. When we mistake control for care, we have not fulfilled the Quranic command. We have inverted it.
To Mothers and Community Members
The transmission of harmful norms does not flow only through men. Mothers who teach their daughters that a good wife never questions, never seeks help without permission, never speaks of her pain are participating in a system that the research shows kills women. The question to ask is not ‘what will people say?’ but ‘what will Allah ask?’
To Imams and Islamic Educators
There is a gap between what Islamic texts actually say about women’s agency, knowledge, and rights and what is taught in many Friday sermons, parenting circles, and Islamic schools. The women of the Anṣār demanded religious knowledge and received it. ʿĀʾisha (رضي الله عنها) transmitted over two thousand hadith. Umm Salamah (رضي الله عنه) shaped military strategy. Khawlah (رضي الله عنها) disputed before the Prophet (ﷺ) and had her case taken to Allah.
Teaching these stories not as exceptions, but as the norm is not a concession to feminism. It is fidelity to the sunnah.
V. What We Can Do
The gap between what Islam teaches and what Rohingya women and countless Muslim women worldwide experience is not closed by knowledge alone. It requires changed behaviour. The following are concrete starting points.
1. Audit your own household for gatekeeping, not just control. Does your wife, daughter, or sister require your permission to seek medical care? To attend a class? To speak to a service provider? Ask honestly: is this Islamic guardianship, or is it something else?
2. Teach qiwāma correctly — as responsibility, not authority. When Islamic guardianship is discussed in your home, your masjid, or your school, ensure the full picture is taught: protection that serves the protected, consultation that values the woman’s voice, and maintenance that enables her flourishing.
3. Give Muslim women direct access to knowledge. Women should not need to filter their questions about health, rights, or wellbeing through a male intermediary. Islamic institutions should ensure women have direct, private, culturally-safe access to both Islamic knowledge and health information.
4. Name harmful practices as harmful. Imams and community leaders have a unique authority to reframe what guardianship means. Explicitly naming forced marriage, medical gatekeeping, and violence as un-Islamic with evidence from the sunnah is not cultural interference. It is religious leadership.
5. Support organisations working directly with Rohingya women. The research shows that midwife-led birthing centres, community-based referral systems, and psychosocial support groups save lives. Muslim communities globally can fund, advocate for, and raise awareness about these interventions. Our zakat and ṣadaqa can reach our sisters.
6. Listen to the women in your community. Not to manage what they say. Not to filter it through community concerns about reputation. To hear it the way Allah heard Khawlah (رضي الله عنها), the way the Prophet (ﷺ) listened to Umm Salamah (رضي الله عنها). Listening is itself a form of guardianship.
VI. The Trust That Will Be Asked About
Fatima’s story did not have to end the way it did. Not because her husband was a bad man. But because the community around both of them had taught him that love looks like control that protection means restriction that a woman who acts without her husband’s presence has done something shameful, even when she is bleeding and her child is dying.
Islam did not teach him that. Culture did. And we, as a Muslim community, have been complicit in teaching it alongside him in our homes, our mosques, our silences.
The Prophet (ﷺ) told us that women are a trust given to us by Allah. On the Day of Judgment, every trust will be accounted for. The question will not be whether we provided for our women financially, though that matters. The question will be whether we enabled them to live with dignity, with knowledge, with access to the care Allah provided and the rights He decreed.
Guardianship, properly understood, is not the story of a gate that closes. It is the story of a garment that covers and moves and serves — that enables the person within it to flourish, not to shrink.
Rohingya women are paying with their lives for the gap between those two understandings. The question is whether we, as their brothers, sisters, and fellow believers, will close it.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
The Invisible Half is a five-part Islamic educational series drawing on a peer-reviewed systematic literature review of 37 studies on Rohingya women's experiences (2014–2025). Each article translates research findings into Islamic ethical reflection and community action.
REFERENCES
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2 Zakaria, M., Islam, M. S., & Hossain, M. B. (2025). Inequality in receiving maternal health care among Rohingya women living in Cox’s Bazar refugee camps and its associated factors. International Journal for Equity in Health, 24, Article 13.
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4 Parray, A. A., Sultana, R., Semonti, S. R., & Haque, M. E. (2022). “Younger women had more access to COVID-19 information”: An intersectional analysis of factors influencing women and girls’ access to COVID-19 information in Rohingya and host communities in Bangladesh. PLOS Global Public Health, 2(5), Article e0000459.
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