They Enslaved Your Women

Last updated on December 23rd, 2024 at 10:40 am

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وَيَسْتَحيُوْنَ نِسَآءَكُمْ

Surah Baqarah, Aayat 49

“And they (Fir’oun and his soldiers) kept alive your women.”

Istihya (the root of Yastahyoona) can mean ‘keeping alive’ and it can also mean ‘enslaving’. Fir’oun and his people turned the Bani Isra-eel women into slaves. This is also ‘keeping them alive’.

Nisa is the plural of Mar-ah.

Nisa actually denotes mature women, not minor girls.

Nisa was mentioned here, whereas they did this with the minors, for the following reasons:

1. They (the minors) were called women in view of them becoming women in the future. By leaving them alive, they would attain puberty and become grown up females.
2. They would keep alive the minor girls together with their mothers. The word Nisa can apply collectively to grown up women and minor girls when they are together.

A question here is: Slaughtering the boys is understood to be a terrible persecution, but why is “keeping their girls alive” described as “persecuting terribly”? This is safety and gratuity!?

The response to the question is that they would keep them alive to enslave them, humiliate them, and impose upon them hardships.

Furthermore, girls remaining alive (for the enemy to rape and enslave) is extremely hard upon the menfolk, all the more so after the boys have been slaughtered.

It has also been said that Yastahyoona means ‘dishonouring’ the women by looking if they were pregnant or not.

(At-Taiseer)