I hear many women distressed over this hadith:
The Prophet (ﷺ) said: “I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful.” It was asked, “Do they disbelieve in Allah?” (or are they ungrateful to Allah?) He replied, “They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good (charitable deeds) done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, ‘I have never received any good from you.
Women question: why aren’t men mentioned? There are plenty of ungrateful men.
The answer is this: the Quran, Sunnah, our Deen in general – it addresses those who tend to be most negligent in a matter.
For example: we see children are reminded about doing good to their parents, whereas birr – the act of doing/being good is not limited to parents but it is for parents to be good to their children as well.
Why? Because most parents naturally do birr to their children but children are more naturally negligent and so they need reminders.
This hadith – about women being in hell because of ingratitude to their husbands – is because we have a tendency to make our husbands ‘0’ when we get resentful.
As I mentioned in a previous email: the cause of punishment is not: “being female + ingratitude.” It is simply ingratitude—regardless of gender.
This is not my interpretation or a ‘western/feminist’ interpretation but this is what I heard from Sh.Naeem al-Arqsusi – shaykh of hadith – in his class on the commentary of Sahih Bukhari in Damascus – a class given to Syrians – not westerners.
This idea – that women “score” differently is confirmed by the book Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, by John Gray:
When the score is 40 to 10 in favour of the woman, she may begin to feel very resentful. Something happens to a woman when she feels she is giving more than she is getting. Quite unconsciously, she subtracts his score of 10 from her score of 40 and concludes the score in their relationship is 30 to zero. This makes sense mathematically and is understandable, but it doesn’t work.
When she subtracts his score from her score he ends up with a zero, and he is not a zero. He has not given zero, he has given 10 When he comes home she has a coldness in her eyes or in her voice that says he is a zero. She is negating what he has done. She reacts to him as if he has given nothing-but he has given 10
The reason a woman tends to reduce a man’s points this way is because she feels unloved. The unequal score makes her feel that she isn’t important. Feeling unloved, she finds it very difficult to appreciate even the 10 points he can legitimately claim.”
So you see we have a tendency to this – and that’s why the warning came for us – not to put us down, but to it is true nasihah – sincere advice from our Prophet salla Allahu alaihi wasallam to highlight an issue we have so we can be weary of it and rise above it.
Alhamduli Allah for our Prophet ﷺ always and -*especially* – looking our for the us 🙂 alhamduli Allah.
In my Islamic Marriage course – I’m going to go over so many hadiths – but in a way you have never heard before.
And these are not new interpretations – it’s just closer to the Prophetic Marriage but these are texts that even most teachers are unfamiliar with.
