Islam cares for the dignity and honour of women. Because of women’s weakness and vulnerability to being targeted by vile men, Islam is keen to close the doors to such situations by insisting that a women should not travel long distances or stay away from home by herself unless she has taken adequate safeguards in order to ensure her own protection.
So, if a Muslim woman has a genuine reason to travel and there is no mahram who can accompany her, then she is allowed to travel without a mahram — provided that she has taken all the necessary precautions for her safety and security during the course of her journey.
Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states the following: There is no harm in traveling in pursuit of studies as long as we are reasonably certain of a lady’s safety and security, both during the duration of her travel and her residence in the city of her campus.
The Prophet’s interdict against women’s travel was specifically made in the context of the pre-Islamic state of anarchy and chaos that prevailed in the Arabian Peninsula where tribalism was the norm. In this milieu there was absolutely no guarantee of women’s safety and security. Islam came to bring peace and restore law and order and security of life and property. The Prophet’s (peace and blessings be upon him) intention to establish the safety of women as a priority of his program is clear in the prediction he made in Makkah: “I will continue to struggle with this mission until a woman can travel freely all by herself without fear of molestation or assault on her person from any quarter!”
When we take this statement of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) into due account, it is safe to conclude that the Prophet’s interdict against women’s journey without a < span>mahram was specifically intended to guarantee her safety and protection, and that as such it was based on a rationale which can be discovered by human reason. In other words, it is not a cultic ritual that we must apply, regardless of the circumstances. It is for this reason that scholars and jurists have differed about this issue considerably; most of them, especially in later times, emphasizing relative safety as the primary condition for relaxing the rule.
Today’s international travel conditions by air, land, and sea are relatively safe and secure by any standards as compared to the volatile conditions of travel in the desert in pre-Islamic times. Therefore, there is no need to be unduly concerned about women’s safety especially in countries where there is rule of law and order. By making this statement, of course, we do not mean to state that women can be either complacent or slack in taking all precautionary measures that are possible by human standards.
As long as such measures are taken, there is no need for us to be rigid about the rules of travel for women. The juristic principle which states that “fatwa changes according to time and place” is especially worthy of remembering in this respect.