It is Wednesday morning and Anan has just finished her breakfast. She double checks the content of her back pack and heads out for classes. Just like every other day. Originally from Amman, Jordan, Anan is a 19-year-old young woman attending the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. She is also Muslim. In the university owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where 98.5% students are Mormon, she is one of the few Muslim students. Two of her friends, Dina and Karma join Anan on her way to class. They talk and laugh in their native language, Arabic. After they separate, Anan is stopped by one of the university students who asks her where she is from. Assuming the person heard her speak Arabic, she answers and they make …show more content…
Contrary to what a lot of people believe, women in Islam are not oppressed; they are not victims of their religion and culture. “It is really frustrating to see how people perceive women in Muslim religion; how they are portrayed as prisoners of their lives, which is not true. Back home, women have as much freedom as men do. I mean, Jordan has a queen. That’s how much freedom women have” says Anan. It would be a lie to say that women in Arab world were not treated as objects, possessions of, first, their parents, and later their husbands. However, that was before Islam arrived in the Middle East. When asked, Karma, one of Anan’s friends who also attends the Brigham Young University says “the biggest issue is the fact that a lot of people confuse Muslim religion with Arab culture.” Islam is the second largest religion in the world, having almost 1.6 billion members and only 15% out of all of them are Arab. Recognising that, in some Arab countries, women are still treated as servants, however, Islam has nothing to do with it. Quite the opposite actually, in the Qur’an women are portrayed in an utterly positive way. They are described as equal to men. Women and men are both friends and partners in …show more content…
“Islam has always treated women and man as equals. There was never a different way. If it did not, I would not be here, getting a degree in college. What would be the point of it?” asks Dina, another friend of Anan. To prove her point she mentions the first two wives of the prophet Mohammad. They were both educated working
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 placed an ideological wedge that created an increasingly pervasive rift in gender equality that is now only gradually being successfully challenged and correct upon.
In the Middle East it was male-dominant, male’s had all the control in the family. Women’s rule in life was to give birth too many children to continue the family blood line and take care of them, while the men go to work and come home find something for them prepared to eat. Men were the head of the house, whatever they said, had to be obeyed. Women were limited in their rights, even in marriage they weren’t asked for their opinion, “Would you like to marry this guy?” But rather they were forced by their family members to participate in arranged marriages. In this story we see that the slave woman had no rights, this woman obeyed them without saying a word. In addition, to this she was a slave, and slaves had no rights when it came to their master’s commands. She didn’t have a choice but rather obeyed what the master said even if she didn’t agree. Women were mistreated sometimes by men. "Bring the mule’s nose-bag along with you," he added to the groom; "she has not finished her feed, I think; when we get to the palace, put the bag on her again—she can eat the rest of her fodder while I am with the caliph. “Hear and obey," said the groom "(Portland, Maine: Wheelwright, 1955, p 310-313). One can see in this quote that they placed a bag over the girl and limited to when should she eat. The woman was treated as if she was a toy, played with for a while and then placed to the side when they were
One of the most famous contemporary ethnographic studies of women and gender within Islam is Erika Friedl’s Women of Deh Koh, in which her main concern seems to be providing he...
Do you believe that the women of Islam are oppressed or do you believe that these women are treated equally? The question has arisen whether there is true equality between men and women in the Islamic community. There are many different positions and views regarding this topic. It is especially apparent more recently that women are striving and doing all that they can to have equality. “The past twenty years have been some of the darkest in women’s lives. With the anti-secularist backlash, the rise of political Islam, and efforts over the past two decades to impose religion on the people thousands have been executed - decapitated or stoned to death- and medieval laws to suppress women have been revived.” A source from http://www.famafrique.org says. This articles goes on to say that the media portrays a different image than how things really are.
The first religion and its views on women that will be discussed in this essay is Islam. Islam is a religions founded in Saudi Arabia almost two thousand years ago, by the prophet Muhammad. In fact, Muhammad dedicated much attention towards women in the Koran, the holy book of Islam. However, even though much was dedicated to women in the Koran, it was not dedicated to them in the sense of equality. Women in Islamic culture were apparently much lower on the totem pole than men, "The men are made responsible for the women, since God endowed them with certain qualities, and made them the bread earners...If you experience opposition from the women, you shall first talk to them, then [you may use such negative incentives as] deserting them in bed, then you may beat them (129)." Excerpt...
The World’s Religions by Huston Smith is a novel based on the different religions found around the world. The main area of focus within this book was to expand the knowledge of different cultures and their religions. The chapters that were specified to focus on include Islam, Judaism, Christianity and the Primal Religions. Go into detail about each religion. Smith goes into great detail about each religion, concentrating on the teachings and essential elements of each religion, important people that helped form the religion, and traditions. He specifically discusses how these three religions are very similar rather then how different they are, with the main studies on Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad. Finally he discusses the Primal Religions – meaning the traditions that are passed down through oral communication.
Middle Eastern women need to stand up for their rights and get educated to reverse the notion that they are servants and properties of their men. Furthermore, they need to rise up to their potentials and prove beyond doubt that they are equal to men. This practice would lead the path for future generations to follow and protect the inalienable rights of women. Finally, these women need to break the cycle of oppression by addressing these deeply rooted beliefs, gaining the tools to fight back, and joining forces to make lifelong changes.
In discussing the role of women in contemporary society there are three main areas that can be addressed. The perceptions of woman within contemporary Muslim societies. The status, position and role of woman in the Qur'an and in early Islam
E. Anway, Carol, L (Dec 95) Daughters Of Another Path: Experiences Of American Women Choosing Islam. Missouri: Yawna Publications.
Smith, Jane I. “Women’s Issues in American Islam.” The Duncan Black MacDonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. Hartford Seminary, Hartford CT, 2002. http://macdonald.hartsem.edu/smithart1.htm.
The prophet, Muhammad, said that “The pursuit of knowledge is a duty of every Muslim, man and woman,” this gave people the motivation to educate themselves, regardless of their gender, which was originally frowned upon (Angha). Since women are now able to educated themselves, they have the necessary knowledge to take advantage of their new freedom, joining the workforce. By joining the workforce women in the Islamic culture can really feel a sense of freedom because they are no longer expected to just sit at home and take care of the house and children, while their husband is at work. Women’s education and work abilities also helps further push for equality and allows them to join “reformist efforts to challenge the control of the male clerical elite over social life” (Fisher). The women in the Islamic culture have become empowered to make changes by being allowed to gain further education. In pre-Islam, women could not purchase their own property, but with women not being able to work, they would have never had the funds to purchase the properties. Today in Islam, women can work and use the money to purchase their own property, another step in making women equal to
“Women’s rights in Islam” is great controversial topic going on nowadays. The world is colored with different cultures and religions. Most people come up with different thoughts for other religion’s people by just having one look on them. Veil is obsession for some people, whereas, being bald is freedom in some people’s point of view. There are lots of misconceptions about women’s rights in Islam among non muslims. If women are covering their body or if they like to stay at home, people think that they don’t have any freedom in this religion and women are obsessed. But this is not reality. A person cannot point out anything wrong and blame other’s religion just because of his own confusion. He needs to study thoroughly and then come up with opposing viewpoints. Therefore, the misconception about women’s rights in Islam should be removed because women have equal rights, veil is for their protection, and they have freedom of speech and expression.
In today’s globalized world, women’s studies is emerging as a fast growing discipline which is not restricted any more to the academia but is significantly capturing the attention of the civil society. The way civil society responded to “Nirbhaya” gang-rape case of December, 2012 in Delhi; the way people came on the streets in protest against this horrific and barbarous crime committed against a 23 year old woman; this people’s movement has undoubtedly engineered the emergence of a new consciousness among us about the need for a realization of women’s honour and dignity in the society. There have been serious debates on the issue of whether more stringent laws (in the line of Shari’a law) be implemented in our Indian society so that such heinous crimes against women can be prevented. However, the aforesaid incident is only one among many hundred other such crimes happening everyday in almost every corner of the globe. Many such incidents of crime are either suppressed or do not come to limelight. The following analysis is a humble attempt to deal with the status of women (especially in Islam) in a globalized world.
Women who have the misfortune of living in predominately Muslim societies often are confronted with adversities concerning their rights in marriage, divorce, education, and seclusion. Consequently, many Westerners seeing a lack of equality towards women in these societies consider it as a confirmation of their own misconceptions about Islam itself. Islam is often rejected as being an intolerant and violent religion that discriminates against and subjugates women, treating them as second-class citizens. From a Muslim’s perspective, Islam’s stance on women can be approached by two opposing views. Scholars amongst the Muslim apologists have claimed, “The verses in the Qur’an represented Muhammad's intention to improve a debased condition of women that prevailed during the Jahiliya, the time of ignorance before Islam came into being.” (Doumato, 177) If inequalities still exist between men and women, they cannot be attributed to Islam, but are a result of the misinterpretation of Islam’s true meaning. Others have entirely denied the notion of inequality between men and women in Islam, claiming that the alleged inequalities “are merely perceived as such by foreign observers who confuse seclusion and sex difference with inequality.” (Ibid.) Many Muslim apologists defend the Koran as noble for the very fact that it raises women to an equal status of men despite their inferiority.
...el the status of women in the Muslim world today as "Islamic" is as far from the truth as labeling the position of women in the West today as "totally liberated and equal".