which apportions to women one third in inheritance. However, most of the rulings concerning social life are in accordance with the majority, and mostly a women finds someone to protect her. As for the man, she will be a burden on him and will have to combine efforts with someone else who will leave her her means of subsistence. Thus, in this form, if a woman takes half of the father’s legacy, her husband makes up her deficiency. But if the man receives two parts from his father, one part he will give to maintaining the woman he has married, thus becoming equal with his sister. The justice of the Qur’an requires it to be thus. It has decreed it in this way. [^9]

[^9]:This is part of my court defence, which was the supplement for the Appeal Court and which silenced the court. It is appropriate as a footnote for this passage. I told the court of law: Surely if there is any justice on the face of the earth, it will reject and quash an unjust decision which has convicted someone for expounding a most sacred, just divine rule which governs in the social life of three hundred and fifty million people in the year one thousand three hundred and fifty, and in every century, relying on the confirmation and consensus of three hundred and fifty thousand Qur’anic commentaries, and following the beliefs of our forefathers of one thousand three hundred and fifty years.

Fourth Principle: Just as the Qur’an severely prohibits the worship of idols, so it forbids the worship of images, which is a sort of imitation of idol-worship. Whereas civilization counts the representation of forms as one of its virtues and has attempted to dispute the Qur’an in this matter. But represented forms, whether pictorial or concrete, are either embodied tyranny, or embodied hypocrisy, or embodied lust; they excite lust and encourage man in oppression, hypocrisy, and licentiousness. Moreover, the Qur’an compassionately commands women to wear the veil of modesty so that they will be treated with respect and those mines of compassion will not be trodden under the feet of low desires, nor be like worthless goods for the excitement of lust. [^10] Civilization, however, has drawn women out of their homes, rent their veils, and corrupted mankind. For family life continues through the mutual love and respect of man and wife. But immodest dress has destroyed sincere respect and affection and has poisoned family life. While worship of the human form in particular has shaken morality in appalling fashion, causing the abasement of the human spirit. This may be understood from the following: to look lustfully and desirously at the corpse of a beautiful woman who is in need of pity and compassion destroys morality; so too, to look lasciviously at the representations of dead women, or of living women for they resemble little corpses, shakes the elevated human emotions to their very roots, and destroys them.

[^10]:The Twenty-Fourth Flash of the Thirty-First Letter about the veiling of women has proved decisively that Islamic dress is natural for women, and that to cast it aside is contrary to women’s nature.