The fatwa below addresses the issue of why a Muslim man may marry a non-Muslim woman (Jew or Christian), but a Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man. The fatwa quotes numerous highly-respected Muslim imams, both classical and modern (including Yusuf al-Qaradawi and al-Azhar University), and really makes it difficult to doubt the fact that Islam, or at least mainstream Islam, does indeed forbid the Muslim woman from marrying a non-Muslim. It also lays out the reasons for why this is so, the most important of which, in my opinion, is Islam's view that the man has wilaya wa-qiwama (guardianship and trusteeship) over his wife, and that the "wife must obey her husband." Since Islam must be always be supreme--or in the words of Shaykh al-Qaradawi below, al-Islam y'alu wala y'ali 'alayhi (Islam is exalted over all, and nothing is exalted above it)--therefore the Muslim woman cannot be in a state of inferiority, i.e. married, to an infidel.
This is also interesting in the context of a fatwa from an officially-sponsored Kuwaiti journal which I translated and posted a couple of days ago, which says that, "Among the clearest evidences of Islam's tolerance and guaranteeing of freedom of conscience, is its permitting marriage to a non-Muslim woman from the People of the Book." If that's so, then this fatwa would seem to contain one of the clearest evidences of Islam's supremacist and intolerant attitudes.
Translated from the Islamic Fatwa Council of Jerusalem, 17 February 2009:
Q: What is the ruling on a Muslim woman marrying a non-Muslim man?
Date: 17 February 2009
A: In the name of Allah the most merciful.
Praise be to the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon our lord Muhammad, and upon his family and companions.
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