Status Of Women In Islam Essay

The value and status of women have been an issue in every society that has existed over time. The issue has never been something that a society successfully resolved, but it has evolved over time to cater to the society’s view of the time. The position of women, in particular, in Islam has been viewed with the least objectivity by the world, and societies over time. Muslim women are always viewed as oppressed individuals by people who aren’t much familiar with the practices of Islam. There are certain stereotypes associated with women in Islam, none of which actually reflect what Islam aims to establish or the actual value and status placed on women in Islam. At the time Islam was introduced, baby girls used to be buried alive at birth because they were considered a shame and if left to live were considered as a property of their fathers and allowed to be sold, were not allowed to have any rights or opinions in what was done with their lives. Islam was a revolutionary force in a time like this, it elevated women’s status in the society, provided them protection from the harsh realities of their society, gave women rights and identified them as human beings with equal rights to that of men. Since then, the value of women in society has changed dramatically, with significant differences in the status, value and role of women between pre and post Islamic periods. (Badawi, n.d.) (Why Islam, n.d.)

Gender Equality
It is a wide spread believe that women’s liberation and equality is a fairly new concept which has just evolved over the last century or so but the fact is that Islam gave women equality and rights in the seventh century, years before it became known as one of the western’s society movements. Islam was the first religion...

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...lam and provide a negative image of the treatment of women in Islam. (Smith, n.d.)
As discussed above, Islam was the first religion that gave women status equality and rights that were otherwise enjoyed and reserved for men only. Islam not just established gender equality but also human, education, political, economic and social rights for women, raising women to a status and position unmatched by any another societies across time. Such rights have been the entitlement of Muslim women for the past fourteen centuries whereas the western civilization realized and established these rights fairly recently, particularly at the end of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Islam was a revolutionary religion in a lot of ways, in particular for women rights, providing women a status and rights which the non-Islamic civilization is still catching on to.
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