More Women in Hell than Men (JBJ)

This is an opinion article from a user of WikiChristian.

According to hadith, Muhammad had a vision of hell where he observed "the majority of its dwellers were women." This is a grave accusation that women go to hell more than men, concluding that women are more prone to sin than men.

Text

This hadith is confirmed by many collections. Additional sources can be found on a related page on AnsweringIslam.org.

" . . . I also saw the Hell-fire and I had never seen such a horrible sight. I saw that most of the inhabitants were women." The people asked, "O Allah's Apostle! Why is it so?" The Prophet replied, "Because of their ungratefulness." It was asked whether they are ungrateful to Allah. The Prophet said, "They are ungrateful to their companions of life (husbands) and ungrateful to good deeds. If you are benevolent to one of them throughout the life and if she sees anything (undesirable) in you, she will say, 'I have never had any good from you.'" 2.18.161

Sahih Bukhari

• 1.6.301
• 2.18.161
• 2.18.161
• 2.24.541
• 4.54.464
• 7.62.124
• 7.62.125
• 7.62.126
• 8.76.456
• 8.76.554

Sahih Muslim

• 1.142
• 36.6596
• 36.6597

Counter Arguments

Meaning of "Majority"

It might be thought that "akthar," the word translated "majority" can mean any number over half, that Muhammad meant that 50.1% of hell was women, hardly sexist. This is impossible for many reasons.

• Sheiks understand this to mean the vast majority.
• Muhammad did not have numbers, only his vision. He could only observe the majority of hell were women if it was a substantial majority.
• To say that women were a small majority in hell makes the hadith meaningless.

More Women Born than Men

Some Muslims say that more women are born than men, thus statisticaly there should be more women in hell than men. Thus there are also more women in heaven than men.

Not only does simple observation show there are about the same number of women as men, no record of birth rates supports this. However, the lack of evidence has not stopped many well meaning Muslims from believing this false statistic.

External Links

• The Majority in Hell are Women from AnsweringIslam.org
• Birth Rates Information on the population of females versus males.

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Return to Apologetics: Women in Islam (JBJ)