dukelondon
Senator (1k+ posts)
A Comparative Study On The Islamic And Other
SYSTEMATIC DOCTRINES ON WOMENS ISSUES
By
SISTER BINTA YARO ZAKARI
Department of Chemical Engineering, A.B.Univ.,Zaria
Being a Paper presented at Arewa House, Kaduna, Nigeria on 7th July,2007 to Commemorate the birth of Az-Zahraa(AS).
INTRODUCTION
A woman at any given time and circumstance belongs to at least one of the following categories; a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother and a free individual that has certain rights and responsibilities in the society. As such, womens issues can be categorically placed or regarded to be those related to their family, social and or civil, and political rights and responsibilities in the society.
To discuss these issues therefore, systematic doctrines can not be restricted to the technical meaning of the term signifying a body of ideas particularly in religion but its broader meaning as a rule or principle that forms a basis of a belief, a theory or policy. This way it will be possible to incorporate all systems, ideologies, cultures, etc that have nothing to do with religious belief but have a sound historic base regarding womens issues.
The article therefore, first discusses the Islamic doctrines on womens issues then considers other systematic doctrines including religious beliefs, policies and systems in a comparative manner. It is concluded by considering current situations of womens issues and a proposal for moving them forward.
ISLAMIC DOCTRINES ON WOMENS ISSUES
Womens issues have been rightfully placed and well treated over 1400 years ago in Islam. Islam has given women right and privileges which no other religious and or constitutional system, civilization, culture or society has ever done in the past and none has been able to do to date.
Islam has called for women to be honoured, affectionately treated and cared for in an unprecedented way. Their status is unique, unprecedented and realistically suitable to their nature. Their rights match beautifully with their duties in a way that has no similarity in any other system.
The fact that Islam gives women equal but not identical rights, with those of men shows that Islam takes women into consideration, acknowledges them and recognizes their independent personality. Islam has established for women, what suits their nature, gives them full security, and protects them against disgraceful circumstances and uncertain channels of life. Islam is most concern with the integrity of women, with the safe guarding of their morals and morale and with the protection of their character and personality.
In the Islamic society women enjoy special respect, love affection and gentle feelings which they deserve most. The Quran says; and treat them (women) kindly (4:19). When a tradition of the prophet (S.A.W.A) speaks of women and their social position, it surrounds them with a frame of love, endearment and affection especially when it speaks of the mother, the wife and the daughter.
Imam Abu Al-Hasan Al-Rida (A.S.) is quoted to have said; the prophet (S.A.W.A) said Allah the exalted is more kind to females than males. Whoever brings pleasure to a woman of his close relatives, Allah will please him on the judgement day.
Imam Sadiq (A.S.) also said sons are a favour and daughters are good deeds, Allah questions about the favours but rewards the good deeds.
Also when asked about who a child should be most obedient, the prophet (S.A.W.A) said your mother, when asked again he repeated your mother and again he still repeated your mother three times before saying your father when asked for the fourth time. This shows that the high regards given to the woman as a mother is by far greater than what she enjoys today.
Based on these principles Islam grants women equal rights with men except where there are natural differences connected to the physical, psychological and sexual constitution. Otherwise they (men and women) are made of and from the same thing. Allah says Oh mankind! Verily we have created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other(Quran 49:13). They are equal to men in bearing personal and common responsibilities and receiving rewards for their deeds. Allah say and their Lord has accepted (their prayers) and answered them (saying): never will I cause to be lost the work of any of you, be he male or female; you are members, one of another (3:195). It was never said that any woman (or women in general) is responsible for anyones sins (or a source of evil) just as no one will be responsible for any bad deeds she might have committed.
They are equal to men in pursuit of education and knowledge. Fourteen centuries ago, prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.A.) declared that the pursuit knowledge is incumbent on every Muslim male and female. There was no indication of any restriction on the level or depth and or nature or type of knowledge exclusively for men and not allowed for women.
They are entitled to freedom of expression as much as men. It is reported in Islamic history that women not only expressed their opinion freely but also argued and participated in serious discussions with the prophets of Islam as well as other Muslim leaders. There is an excellent example of Zainab (A.S.) daughter of the prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.A.) who confronted the caliph (the king or supreme leader) of her time and told him how wrong he was about a certain issue. Likewise women have legal and civil rights as men, such that they have a right to vote and be voted for and there is no difference in legal issues between them and men.
Historical records show that women participated in public life with early Muslims especially in times of emergencies and in the battle fields. Although women are economically secured and financially provided for, they are also allowed to be engaged in any job they wish to do and be paid for. Islam grants them equal rights to contract; to enterprise, to earn and posses any property independently. They are only restricted by the nature of the jobs or other things attached to it. For example they may not be allowed to do a job that could harm their health or one that insults their dignity like those involving the exposure of their nakedness.
Islam has further given women a right to inheritance such that they are entitled to inherit their relatives (like husbands or fathers) properties just as the relatives will inherit theirs. Women are generally exempted from all financial liabilities in Islam. Based on this no matter how rich a woman is, it is the responsibility of her husband to take care of all her financial needs unless if she relieves him of it out of her own kindness.
There is no issue concerning the women which Islam has not considered and provided a lasting solution.
OTHER SYSTEMATIC DOCTRINES ON WOMENS ISSUES
Under the non-Islamic civilizations, cultures, societies and religions women were not so much considered with any respect or honour. For example, in the Arabian society during the period of ignorance (pre-Islamic period) women were regarded as shame, their existence was so much hated to such an extent that some used to bury their new born daughters alive. They became a commodity or a property to the extent of allowing a son to marry his stepmothers. Women were considered a source of evil in this world, a cause of sin and a filth from which one needs to purify one self.
History also showed that in the past civilizations and cultures like the Greeks and Romans, women were deprived of their civil rights and were subjected to maltreatment by their fathers and husbands and treated like slaves or prisoners. In fact, in the olden Greece Athens, around 450BC women (together with slaves and foreigners) were denied citizenship. Whereas under Roman law, which influenced later European and American law, husband and wife were regarded as one, with the woman the possession of the man. As such, a woman had no legal control over her person, her own land and money, or her children. According to a double standard of morality, respectable women had to be chaste but respectable men did not.
Also according to the old Jewish concepts, women were looked upon as a cause of sin, regarded as an inheritable property and as a saleable commodity.
In Christianity as explained by a Christian scholar Gray Sustam: a woman is an unavoidable evil, a desired plague, a danger to the family and home, a murderous beloved and a gilded calamity. She is considered to be responsible for the original sin which according to Christian belief everyone has inherited his own share. It was also a common believe among protestant ministers claims that men deserved greater privileges than women because of their superior intellect and because God had chosen Jesus Christ to take the form of a man.
Even in the so-called developed countries where women are made to believe that they are free and liberated, the status of women before they were liberated was not better than those of the above mentioned cultures and civilizations. There have been a lot of movements and struggles for the change of the unfair treatments of women in the society.
Such struggles and movements by feminist organizations like the women's rights movement, also known as feminism and women's liberation, first discernibly arose in Europe in the late 18th century and are still active because certain issues are yet to be resolved.
The following part of a keynote address by an American social reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the first womens rights convention in the United States, held in Seneca Falls, New York (July 19, 1848) highlights the status of women there and then. Cady Stanton demanded equality under the law for women, including the right to own property and the right to vote.
we are assembled to protest against a form of government existing without the consent of the governedto declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love; laws which make her the mere dependent on his bounty. It is to protest against such unjust laws as these that we are assembled today, and to have them, if possible, forever erased from our statute books, deeming them a shame and a disgrace to a Christian republic in the nineteenth century
Following this and with the introduction of Women and the Law, a law was established that addresses the way in which legal ideology and practice affects women. It was then that campaigns were successful in respect of womens right to own property and in legislation against wife-beating. One milestone in the fight for equal rights was the Married Womens Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, which allowed women to retain and acquire assets independently of their husbands and for the first time eradicated the notion that a wife was the property of her husband.
As a result of similar a movement for civil rights and civil liberties of women, formal limits on womens civil rights were removed but it was not until the 20th century that women won the right to vote and the right for their gender to be considered irrelevant.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) founded in 1966, is another American association supporting equality for women. The organization works to eliminate discrimination and prejudice against women in government, industry, religion, education, medicine, law, and labour unions because prior to the movement, women were hardly allowed to work and suffered discrimination in everything.
Despite the NOWs efforts, women were only allowed to work as much as a man (with minimum restrictions) as a result of the very difficult economic situation and very high demand for consumer goods after the World War II. Even then, their wages were by far, less than mens (with equivalent jobs) wages, before the equal pay Act was established. Despite the equal pay concept (established in 1970 and amended in 1983), average male wages in the United Kingdom are (as of the year 2001) about one-third higher than womens; in 1965 average male wages were double those of women.
Contrary to Islamic laws where a wife is entitled to inherit her husbands property just like he can inherit hers, the wife according to old English laws is not recognized as having any status regarding what her husband left behind. This law stands no matter how long or committed the relationship, if the partner (husband) dies without leaving a will. The only basis for a legal claim is where the wife can show that she was financially dependent on the deceased person immediately before the death. It was not until 1975 that the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act provides for some claims in these circumstances.
Despite all the efforts and the so-called progress achieved, womens issues are yet to be resolved in these societies and the status of women is nothing compared to their status in Islam.
CHALLENGES AND WAY FORWARD
Although by the 1970s the feminist movements or movements for women liberation was popular throughout the world and most women gained many rights according to law, the complete rights remain to be achieved. The movements have however established one of overall assertion: the idea that all women share a common oppression, which is not experienced by men, and of which men generally are the political, social, emotional, and economic beneficiaries.
One can confidently say needless of any statistical data as a proof that on the average women world over are not really in a happy position. They suffer oppressions of different kinds and degrees depending on their cultures and nationalities and in most cases regardless of their religious beliefs unfortunately including the Muslims. Such oppressions range from deprivation of basic rights like rights to education due to economic hardship in some areas to physical violence in some cases. For example, Irene Khan the secretary general of Amnesty International said in a recent interview broadcasted by CNN, that 1 in every 3 women is violated world over. Even in the USA the worlds giants of women liberation statistics showed that a woman is beaten by her husband every 1.5 seconds.
Generally in the western world where women are made to believe that they are more privileged than other women in the rest of the world because they are liberated, they suffer a kind of psychological enslavement though some may not believe it and some did not know it. They are made to think, to live and to behave just as men wished to see them do. They enjoy a kind of liberty which has made them commercial commodities in life and a means of pleasure usually when they are young and beautiful and disregarded when they are old. They are surrounded by insecurity and uncertainties courtesy of being liberated. Cases of women who have been raped and or murdered are almost normal daily news all in the name of freedom. They have no option but to be financially productive because neither their parents nor their husbands can ensure them financial security. They have to work and support themselves and their children socially, financially and morally single-handedly (because they are free to be single parents) and still be taxed just like men because they are equal with men. But such equality is not and can not be seen in political offices, government and economic sectors. The miseries and setbacks that encircle them as a result of the so-called freedom can not be over emphasized, for it has become the cause of their disgraceful circumstances and destroyed their human nature. They are however made to accept that and believe it is the best for them.
John Stuart Mill, in his article the subjection of women said, the rule of men over women differs from all others in not being a rule of force: it is accepted voluntarily; women make no complaint, and are consenting parties to it. They are so far in a position different from all other subject classes, that their masters require something more from them than actual service. Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely for maintaining obedience, on fear; either fear of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose. ... And, this great means of influence over the minds of women having been acquired, an instinct of selfishness made men avail themselves of it to the utmost as a means of holding women in subjection, by representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all individual will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of sexual attractiveness.
One may wonder what do women want? And where could it be found? For example, whereas a woman in the west would tell another woman who happens to be financially provided for, that you are lucky you dont have to work, another woman aspiring to be free like the western woman may say you are lucky you are allowed to work. Then which is which?
The truth is that only Islam provides for women what they really want. Despite all the efforts by western media to paint Islam as black as they could in which being unfair to women is their greatest point of attack; current situations are proving how futile their efforts have been. It has been reported once and again that in recent years, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the U.S and in Britain and a higher percentage of the converts to Islam are women. The liberated women are turning to Islam for sincere freedom.
However, in the Islamic societies women are facing problems due to localized cultures which overtime are portrayed as being Islamic in origin. Most of these cultures have succeeded in affecting the independence of thought of most women. As a result of this, a higher percentage of Muslim women today do not bother to pursue any matter objectively to understand its Islamic rulings. Instead, they accept what ever the society offers and be contented with it even if that happens to be against their wish.
The greatest and most important challenge is for Muslim women to know what Islam has provided for them and demand that it should be given to them. This requires great commitment by the women and support by the leaders in the society. Secondly, the importance of mass media in making their efforts a success has to be realized and utilized. Only then, can Muslims let the whole world know and appreciate the valuable status of women in Islam and let them know that it is what the women need for them to be happy and satisfied. Finally they have to look at ways in which women might use motherhood as a source of strength and as a way of influencing future generations, to handle womens issues the best way it could be handled the Islamic way.
SYSTEMATIC DOCTRINES ON WOMENS ISSUES
By
SISTER BINTA YARO ZAKARI
Department of Chemical Engineering, A.B.Univ.,Zaria
Being a Paper presented at Arewa House, Kaduna, Nigeria on 7th July,2007 to Commemorate the birth of Az-Zahraa(AS).
INTRODUCTION
A woman at any given time and circumstance belongs to at least one of the following categories; a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother and a free individual that has certain rights and responsibilities in the society. As such, womens issues can be categorically placed or regarded to be those related to their family, social and or civil, and political rights and responsibilities in the society.
To discuss these issues therefore, systematic doctrines can not be restricted to the technical meaning of the term signifying a body of ideas particularly in religion but its broader meaning as a rule or principle that forms a basis of a belief, a theory or policy. This way it will be possible to incorporate all systems, ideologies, cultures, etc that have nothing to do with religious belief but have a sound historic base regarding womens issues.
The article therefore, first discusses the Islamic doctrines on womens issues then considers other systematic doctrines including religious beliefs, policies and systems in a comparative manner. It is concluded by considering current situations of womens issues and a proposal for moving them forward.
ISLAMIC DOCTRINES ON WOMENS ISSUES
Womens issues have been rightfully placed and well treated over 1400 years ago in Islam. Islam has given women right and privileges which no other religious and or constitutional system, civilization, culture or society has ever done in the past and none has been able to do to date.
Islam has called for women to be honoured, affectionately treated and cared for in an unprecedented way. Their status is unique, unprecedented and realistically suitable to their nature. Their rights match beautifully with their duties in a way that has no similarity in any other system.
The fact that Islam gives women equal but not identical rights, with those of men shows that Islam takes women into consideration, acknowledges them and recognizes their independent personality. Islam has established for women, what suits their nature, gives them full security, and protects them against disgraceful circumstances and uncertain channels of life. Islam is most concern with the integrity of women, with the safe guarding of their morals and morale and with the protection of their character and personality.
In the Islamic society women enjoy special respect, love affection and gentle feelings which they deserve most. The Quran says; and treat them (women) kindly (4:19). When a tradition of the prophet (S.A.W.A) speaks of women and their social position, it surrounds them with a frame of love, endearment and affection especially when it speaks of the mother, the wife and the daughter.
Imam Abu Al-Hasan Al-Rida (A.S.) is quoted to have said; the prophet (S.A.W.A) said Allah the exalted is more kind to females than males. Whoever brings pleasure to a woman of his close relatives, Allah will please him on the judgement day.
Imam Sadiq (A.S.) also said sons are a favour and daughters are good deeds, Allah questions about the favours but rewards the good deeds.
Also when asked about who a child should be most obedient, the prophet (S.A.W.A) said your mother, when asked again he repeated your mother and again he still repeated your mother three times before saying your father when asked for the fourth time. This shows that the high regards given to the woman as a mother is by far greater than what she enjoys today.
Based on these principles Islam grants women equal rights with men except where there are natural differences connected to the physical, psychological and sexual constitution. Otherwise they (men and women) are made of and from the same thing. Allah says Oh mankind! Verily we have created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other(Quran 49:13). They are equal to men in bearing personal and common responsibilities and receiving rewards for their deeds. Allah say and their Lord has accepted (their prayers) and answered them (saying): never will I cause to be lost the work of any of you, be he male or female; you are members, one of another (3:195). It was never said that any woman (or women in general) is responsible for anyones sins (or a source of evil) just as no one will be responsible for any bad deeds she might have committed.
They are equal to men in pursuit of education and knowledge. Fourteen centuries ago, prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.A.) declared that the pursuit knowledge is incumbent on every Muslim male and female. There was no indication of any restriction on the level or depth and or nature or type of knowledge exclusively for men and not allowed for women.
They are entitled to freedom of expression as much as men. It is reported in Islamic history that women not only expressed their opinion freely but also argued and participated in serious discussions with the prophets of Islam as well as other Muslim leaders. There is an excellent example of Zainab (A.S.) daughter of the prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.A.) who confronted the caliph (the king or supreme leader) of her time and told him how wrong he was about a certain issue. Likewise women have legal and civil rights as men, such that they have a right to vote and be voted for and there is no difference in legal issues between them and men.
Historical records show that women participated in public life with early Muslims especially in times of emergencies and in the battle fields. Although women are economically secured and financially provided for, they are also allowed to be engaged in any job they wish to do and be paid for. Islam grants them equal rights to contract; to enterprise, to earn and posses any property independently. They are only restricted by the nature of the jobs or other things attached to it. For example they may not be allowed to do a job that could harm their health or one that insults their dignity like those involving the exposure of their nakedness.
Islam has further given women a right to inheritance such that they are entitled to inherit their relatives (like husbands or fathers) properties just as the relatives will inherit theirs. Women are generally exempted from all financial liabilities in Islam. Based on this no matter how rich a woman is, it is the responsibility of her husband to take care of all her financial needs unless if she relieves him of it out of her own kindness.
There is no issue concerning the women which Islam has not considered and provided a lasting solution.
OTHER SYSTEMATIC DOCTRINES ON WOMENS ISSUES
Under the non-Islamic civilizations, cultures, societies and religions women were not so much considered with any respect or honour. For example, in the Arabian society during the period of ignorance (pre-Islamic period) women were regarded as shame, their existence was so much hated to such an extent that some used to bury their new born daughters alive. They became a commodity or a property to the extent of allowing a son to marry his stepmothers. Women were considered a source of evil in this world, a cause of sin and a filth from which one needs to purify one self.
History also showed that in the past civilizations and cultures like the Greeks and Romans, women were deprived of their civil rights and were subjected to maltreatment by their fathers and husbands and treated like slaves or prisoners. In fact, in the olden Greece Athens, around 450BC women (together with slaves and foreigners) were denied citizenship. Whereas under Roman law, which influenced later European and American law, husband and wife were regarded as one, with the woman the possession of the man. As such, a woman had no legal control over her person, her own land and money, or her children. According to a double standard of morality, respectable women had to be chaste but respectable men did not.
Also according to the old Jewish concepts, women were looked upon as a cause of sin, regarded as an inheritable property and as a saleable commodity.
In Christianity as explained by a Christian scholar Gray Sustam: a woman is an unavoidable evil, a desired plague, a danger to the family and home, a murderous beloved and a gilded calamity. She is considered to be responsible for the original sin which according to Christian belief everyone has inherited his own share. It was also a common believe among protestant ministers claims that men deserved greater privileges than women because of their superior intellect and because God had chosen Jesus Christ to take the form of a man.
Even in the so-called developed countries where women are made to believe that they are free and liberated, the status of women before they were liberated was not better than those of the above mentioned cultures and civilizations. There have been a lot of movements and struggles for the change of the unfair treatments of women in the society.
Such struggles and movements by feminist organizations like the women's rights movement, also known as feminism and women's liberation, first discernibly arose in Europe in the late 18th century and are still active because certain issues are yet to be resolved.
The following part of a keynote address by an American social reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the first womens rights convention in the United States, held in Seneca Falls, New York (July 19, 1848) highlights the status of women there and then. Cady Stanton demanded equality under the law for women, including the right to own property and the right to vote.
we are assembled to protest against a form of government existing without the consent of the governedto declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love; laws which make her the mere dependent on his bounty. It is to protest against such unjust laws as these that we are assembled today, and to have them, if possible, forever erased from our statute books, deeming them a shame and a disgrace to a Christian republic in the nineteenth century
Following this and with the introduction of Women and the Law, a law was established that addresses the way in which legal ideology and practice affects women. It was then that campaigns were successful in respect of womens right to own property and in legislation against wife-beating. One milestone in the fight for equal rights was the Married Womens Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, which allowed women to retain and acquire assets independently of their husbands and for the first time eradicated the notion that a wife was the property of her husband.
As a result of similar a movement for civil rights and civil liberties of women, formal limits on womens civil rights were removed but it was not until the 20th century that women won the right to vote and the right for their gender to be considered irrelevant.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) founded in 1966, is another American association supporting equality for women. The organization works to eliminate discrimination and prejudice against women in government, industry, religion, education, medicine, law, and labour unions because prior to the movement, women were hardly allowed to work and suffered discrimination in everything.
Despite the NOWs efforts, women were only allowed to work as much as a man (with minimum restrictions) as a result of the very difficult economic situation and very high demand for consumer goods after the World War II. Even then, their wages were by far, less than mens (with equivalent jobs) wages, before the equal pay Act was established. Despite the equal pay concept (established in 1970 and amended in 1983), average male wages in the United Kingdom are (as of the year 2001) about one-third higher than womens; in 1965 average male wages were double those of women.
Contrary to Islamic laws where a wife is entitled to inherit her husbands property just like he can inherit hers, the wife according to old English laws is not recognized as having any status regarding what her husband left behind. This law stands no matter how long or committed the relationship, if the partner (husband) dies without leaving a will. The only basis for a legal claim is where the wife can show that she was financially dependent on the deceased person immediately before the death. It was not until 1975 that the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act provides for some claims in these circumstances.
Despite all the efforts and the so-called progress achieved, womens issues are yet to be resolved in these societies and the status of women is nothing compared to their status in Islam.
CHALLENGES AND WAY FORWARD
Although by the 1970s the feminist movements or movements for women liberation was popular throughout the world and most women gained many rights according to law, the complete rights remain to be achieved. The movements have however established one of overall assertion: the idea that all women share a common oppression, which is not experienced by men, and of which men generally are the political, social, emotional, and economic beneficiaries.
One can confidently say needless of any statistical data as a proof that on the average women world over are not really in a happy position. They suffer oppressions of different kinds and degrees depending on their cultures and nationalities and in most cases regardless of their religious beliefs unfortunately including the Muslims. Such oppressions range from deprivation of basic rights like rights to education due to economic hardship in some areas to physical violence in some cases. For example, Irene Khan the secretary general of Amnesty International said in a recent interview broadcasted by CNN, that 1 in every 3 women is violated world over. Even in the USA the worlds giants of women liberation statistics showed that a woman is beaten by her husband every 1.5 seconds.
Generally in the western world where women are made to believe that they are more privileged than other women in the rest of the world because they are liberated, they suffer a kind of psychological enslavement though some may not believe it and some did not know it. They are made to think, to live and to behave just as men wished to see them do. They enjoy a kind of liberty which has made them commercial commodities in life and a means of pleasure usually when they are young and beautiful and disregarded when they are old. They are surrounded by insecurity and uncertainties courtesy of being liberated. Cases of women who have been raped and or murdered are almost normal daily news all in the name of freedom. They have no option but to be financially productive because neither their parents nor their husbands can ensure them financial security. They have to work and support themselves and their children socially, financially and morally single-handedly (because they are free to be single parents) and still be taxed just like men because they are equal with men. But such equality is not and can not be seen in political offices, government and economic sectors. The miseries and setbacks that encircle them as a result of the so-called freedom can not be over emphasized, for it has become the cause of their disgraceful circumstances and destroyed their human nature. They are however made to accept that and believe it is the best for them.
John Stuart Mill, in his article the subjection of women said, the rule of men over women differs from all others in not being a rule of force: it is accepted voluntarily; women make no complaint, and are consenting parties to it. They are so far in a position different from all other subject classes, that their masters require something more from them than actual service. Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely for maintaining obedience, on fear; either fear of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose. ... And, this great means of influence over the minds of women having been acquired, an instinct of selfishness made men avail themselves of it to the utmost as a means of holding women in subjection, by representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all individual will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of sexual attractiveness.
One may wonder what do women want? And where could it be found? For example, whereas a woman in the west would tell another woman who happens to be financially provided for, that you are lucky you dont have to work, another woman aspiring to be free like the western woman may say you are lucky you are allowed to work. Then which is which?
The truth is that only Islam provides for women what they really want. Despite all the efforts by western media to paint Islam as black as they could in which being unfair to women is their greatest point of attack; current situations are proving how futile their efforts have been. It has been reported once and again that in recent years, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the U.S and in Britain and a higher percentage of the converts to Islam are women. The liberated women are turning to Islam for sincere freedom.
However, in the Islamic societies women are facing problems due to localized cultures which overtime are portrayed as being Islamic in origin. Most of these cultures have succeeded in affecting the independence of thought of most women. As a result of this, a higher percentage of Muslim women today do not bother to pursue any matter objectively to understand its Islamic rulings. Instead, they accept what ever the society offers and be contented with it even if that happens to be against their wish.
The greatest and most important challenge is for Muslim women to know what Islam has provided for them and demand that it should be given to them. This requires great commitment by the women and support by the leaders in the society. Secondly, the importance of mass media in making their efforts a success has to be realized and utilized. Only then, can Muslims let the whole world know and appreciate the valuable status of women in Islam and let them know that it is what the women need for them to be happy and satisfied. Finally they have to look at ways in which women might use motherhood as a source of strength and as a way of influencing future generations, to handle womens issues the best way it could be handled the Islamic way.
