Explaining the permissibility of a man teaching the religious knowledge to his household and pointing out some violations committed by some women, including the prohibition of acting like men and learning professions specific to men.

The Shaykh : In this hadith, there is a call to attention to a matter in which people often become confused, which is the education of women. In this hadith, there is an explicit statement regarding the recommendation for a man to teach his slave woman, his maidservant, or his female slave. So, is it not more fitting and more fitting for a man to teach his free wife? There is no doubt that the answer is that it is more fitting and more fitting. If the matter is so, then no one should doubt it. And I say, with regret, that this is not because Muslims have become well-versed in their religion, but rather because the turbulent waves that sweep away everything and come from Europe have caused the Islamic world today to have women accept education like men, with no difference. They did not take this direction due to the guidance of such a hadith, but rather they took this direction in response to these waves coming to us from Europe. Otherwise, if the Muslims today’s turn to caring about teaching women knowledge were because the Wise Lawgiver encouraged it in hadiths, and this is one of them, they would have responded to the Lawgiver also in defining the levels of knowledge and in defining the types of means that women should adhere to if they wish to learn knowledge, because the Wise Lawgiver encouraged it. The fact that women in the present era are not bound by such means and limits imposed by the Lawgiver is evidence of what I said, namely that this direction of women toward knowledge today is not because the Lawgiver encouraged them to do so, but because the fashion, the current, is like that, so they say.
So this hadith contains an explicit encouragement for a man to teach his household, even if it is his slave woman, and it is good for him to teach her, and so on. And so we find the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), as we found him, having applied the last clause regarding one who frees his slave woman and that he has two rewards, by applying that to Safiyyah, for he freed her and married her. Likewise, we find the Messenger (peace be upon him) having directly encouraged his wives to learn in another hadith: "And one day a noble Companion woman named al-Shifa' entered upon him (peace and blessings be upon him)." She was one of the few women who could be described today as educated and cultured, good at reading and writing. I say: few; because men in that era were few in number who were educated and cultured, given that the Arabs at that time were an unlettered nation. For example, if a man today were to study engineering, he is an engineer; if he studies law, he is a lawyer, and so on of the sciences. It is not permissible for a woman to approach them absolutely, because this contradicts Allah’s command for her that the principle for her is to stay in her home . The sciences studied today in universities by men are many and very many, and yet women have come to participate with men in all these sciences. This is knowledge, but this type of knowledge is not for a woman to engage in or practice. The knowledge that it is good for a woman to learn and become cultured in is that which rectifies her creed, that which educates her, helps her understand the rulings of her religion, and what she uses to rectify her character and self, and finally to raise her children. Within these limits, it is good for a woman to learn and become cultured. As for learning these sciences that men learn, which are of the nature of men, for example to become a deputy, in its linguistic meaning, not its technical meaning, this is of course not permissible, because this knowledge requires her to go out for the slightest occasion and to mix with men, and finally to deserve the curse of Allah when the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: But the Shari'ah pointed out that a woman and a "rajalah" are opposites that never meet in Islam. So the Messenger (peace be upon him) cursed the men-like women. Who is she? She is the one who walks in the road and takes the center of the road, the middle of the street, whereas in Islam, Allah is the Greatest. The woman in the early era would walk along the wall, her jilbab touching the wall, to the right or to the left. But today, if there is a row of men and one woman cuts through this row and does not care about it because of her boldness and lack of modesty, this is acting like a man. And I am sorry to say that even Muslim women have been mixed with much of this acting like men, in varying degrees, of course. Therefore, believing women and girls should strive, among the things they strive in, to avoid acting like men as much as they are able to do so.