WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN ISLAM (PART 1)

The issue of women in Islam, is topic of great misunderstanding and distortion due partly to a lack of understanding, but also partly due to misbehavior of some Muslims which has been taken to represent the teachings of Islam. The standard according to which Muslims are to be judged are based on the Glorious Quran and Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet, SAW).

According to the Quran, men and women have the same spirit, there is no superiority in the spiritual sense between men and women. [Quran 4:1, 7:189, 42:11]

The Quran makes it clear that all human beings (and the phraseology doesn't apply to men or women alone, but to both) have what you might call a human;

He "breathed some of My spirit into divine touch. When God created him"(or her in this sense). [Noble Quran 15:29 See also Quran 32:9]

Some of His spirit here means not in the incarnational sense, but the pure, innate spiritual nature that God has endowed her or him with.

The Quran indicates again that one of the most honored positions of human is that God created the human, means both sexes, as His trustee and representative on earth. There are many references in the Quran that reaffirm this.

Nowhere in the Quran do we find any trace of any notion of blaming Eve for the first mistake or for eating from the forbidden tree. Nowhere, even though the Quran speaks about Prophet Adam (AS), Hawau (Eve), and the forbidden tree, but in a totally different spirit. The story is narrated in Quran 7:19-27, and it speaks about both of them doing this, both of them are told that both of them disobeyed, both of them discovered the consequences of their disobedience, both of them seek repentance and both of them are forgiven. Nowhere in the Quran does it say woman is to be blamed for the fall of man. Furthermore, when the Quran speaks about the suffering of women during the period of pregnancy and childbirth, nowhere does it connect it with the concept of original sin, because there is no concept of original sin in Islam. The suffering is presented not as a reason to remind woman of the fall of man, but as a reason to adore and love woman or the mother. (…..to be continued).

BIBLOGRAPHY

Adapted from <http://www.islamswomen.com/articles/do_muslim_women_have_rights.php>