woman rights in Islam

In the name of God

Islam and woman rights

Islam appeared at a time when the society was denying the humanity of women. The woman was considered as a thing created for the humble service of the man. Islam has done a great service to woman. It gave woman freedom, personality and independence of thinking and opinion. while the western woman, till the end of the 19th century was denied the most elementary human rights, Islam has given these rights many years ago. For example the right of having property for self, which has been recognized by Islam from the very beginning, did not exist in western countries till recently centuries.
No doubt the recent movements in western countries have rectified many grievances of woman, but it has also brought many misfortunes to her. Why? Has she no way out of this vicious circle? She was suffered in the past mostly because it was forgotten that she was a human being. She is suffering now because her womanhood, her inborn requirements and her special capabilities have been ignored.
During the women's liberation movement attention was not paid to the point that, besides equality and liberty, there existed other questions also. Liberty and equality are no doubt essential, but they are not all in all everything in entirety. Equality of rights is one thing, but the similarity of rights quite another. The equality of man's and woman's rights from the viewpoint of material and moral values is quite different from the uniformity or similarity of their rights. During this movement, intentionally or unintentionally, equality has been used in the sense of similarity and thus quality has overshadowed quantity. It was stressed that a woman is a human being, but it was forgotten that she is a woman too.
So there are two basic differences between the steps taken by Islam and what is happening in the West and is being followed by others.
The first difference concerns the psychology of man and woman. Islam has done and revealed wonders in this respect.
The second difference is that, while Islam made the women aware of their rights and gave them an identity, a personality, freedom and independence; it did not instigate them to revolt and harbour malice against the male persons. It did not put an end to the respect in which the daughters held their fathers and the wives their husbands. It did not upset the basis of the family life and did not make women suspicious of their responsibilities in regard to their fathers and husbands. It did not snatch away the wives from their husbands and the daughters from their parents .
By this revolutionary changes in the west , the home wich is the basis of our social organization, the conjugal system , which prevented debauchery and gave stability to family life have been upset .
There the paternal protection has vanished. No one knows what to do with all the corruption that is rampant, with the ever-growing cases of infanticide and abortion, with 40 per cent illegitimate children and with those new-born infants whose fathers are not known and whose mothers do not want to have anything to do with them, because they were not born in lawful wedlock. The mothers of such children simply hand them over to some social organizations and then never come back to inquire about them.
In fact, this indifference was not the outcome of mere haste; there were other factors also, which impelled the exploitation of woman in the name of liberty.
One of them was the excessive greed of the industrialists, who wanted to lure woman from her house to a factory, in order to exploit her economic potentiality. For this purpose, they advocated woman's rights, her economic independence and her liberty and equality of rights with those of man
female workers were cheaper and the employers preferred them to strong-headed and costly male workers.
Obviously all these things have been done in the name of freedom for women and their equality with men and I think this is the problem of non divine laws.