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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.
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