Woman in Islam

The role of women in Islam has been misunderstood in the West because of general ignorance of the Islamic system and way of life as a whole, and because of the distortions of the media.

The Muslim woman is accorded full spiritual and intellectual equality with man, and is encouraged to practice her religion and develop her intellectual faculties throughout her life. In her relations with men both are to observe modesty of behavior and dress and a strict code of morality which discourages unnecessary mixing of the sexes. Her relations with her husband should be based on mutual love and compassion. He is responsible for the maintenance of the wife and children, and she is to give him the respect due to the head of the family. She is responsible for the care of home and the children’s early training. She may own her own property, run her own business and inherit in her own right.

She may not be married without being consulted and is able to obtain divorce. The system of limited polygamy can be seen to have its uses which may be in the interests of women as well as men. Finally she can look forward to an old age in which she is respected and shown every care by her children and by the society as a whole.

It would appear therefore that the Islamic system has achieved the right mixture of freedom and security that women seek and that is in the interest of the society as a whole. [As I mentioned at the start of this paper,] I have given the relevant quotations directly from the Qur’an and hadith since these are obviously the most authentic sources. If at different times and in different places these principles and laws have sometimes been distorted, ignored or flouted, it is not the principles and laws which are at fault, but man’s selfishness which sometimes leads them to distort, ignore and flout what they do not like, and turn aside from the truth.

Fortunately no one has changed or can change the words of the Qur’an, and the regulations for the protection of women which were revealed in the 7th century can be easily verified by anyone in the 20th century, as we have just been doing. I believe that these laws and social regulations regarding women contain certain fundamental truths which will benefit whoever applies them. The present time of widespread rethinking of the role and rights of women is perhaps the appropriate time to look with fresh eyes at the Islamic point of view, which has contributed to the formation of stable societies in both sophisticated and underdeveloped peoples in vast areas of the world over the past fourteen centuries, which has retained the continuity of its principles, and from which the Western world may have something to learn.