Thus, when the Quran warned believers not to “pass on your wealth and property to the feeble-minded (sufaha),” the early Quranic commentators—all of them male—declared, despite the Quran’s warnings on the subject, that “the sufaha are women and children … and both of them must be excluded from inheritance” (emphasis added). When a wealthy and notable merchant from Basra named Abu Bakra (not to be confused with Abu Bakr) claimed, twenty-five years after Muhammad’s death, that he once heard the Prophet say, “Those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity,” his authority as
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