Islam Respects Women as Equals
The Myth:
The Quran
places men and women on equal foundation before Allah and each other. Women have equal rights under
Islamic law.
The Truth:The Quran says that men and women will be judged by Allah. This does not mean that they have equal rights and roles, or that they are judged by the same standards.
There is
no ambiguity in the Quran, the life of Muhammad, or Islamic law as to the
inferiority of women to men despite the effort of modern-day apologists to
salvage Western-style feminism from scraps and fragments of verses that have
historically yielded no such progressive interpretation.
After
military conquests, Muhammad would dole out captured women as
war prizes
to his men. In at least one case, he advocated that they be raped in front
of their husbands. Captured women were made into sex slaves by the very
men who killed their husbands and brothers. There are four Quranic verses in which "Allah" makes clear that a Muslim master has full sexual access
to his female slaves, yet there is not one that prohibits rape.
The Quran
gives Muslim men permission to beat their wives for disobedience, but nowhere
does it order love in marriage (although it does say that "love" exists). The
verses
plainly say that husbands are “a degree above” their wives. The Hadith says
that women are intellectually inferior, and that they comprise the majority of
Hell’s occupants.
Under
Islamic law, a man may divorce his wife at his choosing. If he does
this twice, then wishes
to remarry her, she must first have sex with another man. Men are
exempt from such degradation.
Muslim
women are not free to marry whom they please, as Muslim men are. Their
husband may also bring other wives (and slaves) into the marriage bed. And
she must be sexually
available to him at any time (as a field ready to be “tilled,” according to the
holy book of Islam).
Neither do
Muslim
women inherit property in equal portion to males. (This is somewhat
ironic given that Islam owes its existence to the wealth of Muhammad's first
wife, which would not otherwise have been inherited by her given that she had
two brothers and her first husband had three sons).
A woman's testimony
in court is considered to be worth only half that of a man’s, according to the
Quran. Unlike a
man, she must also cover her head - and often her face.
If a woman
wants to prove that she was raped, according to strict Sharia, she must have four male witnesses corroborate her account. Otherwise she can be jailed or stoned to death
for confessing to “adultery.”
Given all
of this, it is quite a stretch to say that men and women have “equality under
Islam” based on obscure theological analogies or comparisons. This is an
entirely new ploy designed for modern tastes, and it disagrees sharply with the reality of Islamic law and history.
[The World Economic Forum conducted a global survey to determine each country's gender gap with regard to health, education, economic participation and political empowerment. Muslim nations made up 13 of the lowest 14. Only one country, Albania (in Europe), scored in the top 64. Survey Graphic]
Further Reading from the
Quran:
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