must heal themselves, and ultimately their nation, by rediscovering
their identityas empowered, dignified Muslim women.
To many, such an assertion seems like an exact reversal of the truth.
After so much suffering, some think, the last thing these women need
is more of what apparently caused it. However, a brief look at history
and women's rightsthrough a correct understanding of Islam paints
quite a different picture.
It was Islam, in the 7th century, that established women's spiritual
and intellectual equality with men. Muslim women were granted the
right to vote, own property, inherit, receive a higher education and
even run a business in which men were subordinates.
These teachings were immediately put into practice, where 1,400
yearsago women played an active political role, not only voting for
their leader,but also advising him. The Prophet Mohammed's
wife,Khadijah, was one of the most successful businesswomen in Mecca,
employing many men, including at one point the Prophet himself. Aisha,
whom the Prophet marriedsome years after the death of Khadijah, became
a scholar of Islam. A man of the time described her by saying, "I have
not seen a greater scholar than Aisha in the learning of the Koran,
shares of inheritance, lawful and unlawful matters, poetry,
literature, Arab history and genealogy." It was not surprising, then,
when the world's first institution of higher education -- Al-Azhar
Islamic University, founded in Cairo in 969 A.D.-- was named after a
woman, Fatima al-Zahraa.
In fact, Islam gave women rights centuries ago not enjoyed by them in
our country today. For example, a Muslim woman is a totally separate
entity from her husband, not onlykeeping her family name as well as
all property she owned before marriage, but also maintaining total
ownership of any money or property she acquires after marriage. In
contrast, the general law in most states considers any wealtha woman
obtains during marriage as jointly owned by her and her husband.
Since Afghanis are predominantly Muslim, onewould expect their customs
to already reflect Islam's reverence of women. However, 20 yearsof war
has created a culture of force, where the physically weaker sex is
abused and seen as inferior, and where Islamic teachings are
superseded by tribal traditions.
The suppression of women's rights in Muslim countries is, of course,
not unique to Afghanistan, and neither are the reasons for it. Women's
oppression in many parts of the Muslim world is actually just one
symptom of a widespread decay of Islamic ideals and the subsequent
regression to pre-Islamic tribal culture.
This spiritual cancer has also resulted in the rise of corrupt
tyrannical rulers, the proliferation of usury inMuslim economies, the
growing gap between rich and poor and the emergence of nationalism.
Due to this misrepresentation of Islam,some have dismissed it as a
solution to the problems of women in Afghanistan. Instead, they argue
that this country is a hundred years overdue for a healthyhelping of
Western feminism. Many are under the impression that women's
liberation was a 20th-century Western development, and that gains in
women's status in other parts of the world are primarily as a result
of Western influence.
Certainly no one can deny the progress Western women have made since
the days of the English Common Law, which regarded a woman as the
legal property of her husband, barring her from owning property,
entering into contracts or even keeping her name. After centuries of
struggle, American women gained the right to vote in 1920 and British
married womengained the right to own property in 1935. Laws for equal
access to education and the workplace followed.
This relatively recent change in laws makes it quite clear that far
from being the pioneer of women's liberation, the West was actually a
thousand-years-late newcomer to this Islamic movement. What's more,
when laws in the West were finally corrected to give women their
equality, society was late to follow. It took generations to
alterpeople's beliefs about the status of women and affecttrue social
change.
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