الاثنين، 24 مارس 2014

Women and Islam

Women and Islam.
I. Introduction
The status of women is one of the most controversial issues in the West when dealing with Islam. The West has a negative image of the Muslim woman (as, in fact, of lot of issues related to Islam). The image is that of an oppressed woman in the name of that religion.
One cannot deny that, effectively, 
a lot of Muslim women are oppressed, but this is not due to Islam. On the opposite, it is due to the fact that Muslim societies have deviated from the Islamic precepts concerning so many aspects of their lives for so long. There is a wide gap between what Muslims are supposed to believe in and do and what they actually practice. This gap is not a recent phenomenon. It began centuries ago and it has been widening with the time. This widening gap has had disastrous consequences on the Muslim world manifested in almost all aspects of life: political tyranny and fragmentation, economic backwardness, social injustice, scientific bankruptcy, intellectual stagnation, women oppression, etc…
The general non-Islamic status of women in Muslim world today is merely a symptom of a deeper illness. The Muslim World is in need for a change that will bring it closer to the ideals of Islam and not further from them. To sum up, the notion that the present poor status of Muslim women is due to Islam is an utter misconception. All the problems of Muslims are the results of a long and deep detachment from the principles of Islam and not, as Westerners may think, from a too much attachment to Islam.
 Muslims live now, mostly, in the underdeveloped world, with all the misery and the material problems people live in every second of their lives. The Globalization, a Western creation, will only worsen their conditions of living. There, not only women but also men are oppressed and deprived from their basic human rights. This includes Muslims, Christians, Buddhist, Hindus, Animists, etc… Muslims live in so vast geographic area that any generalization would be too simplistic. 
II. Normative teaching of Islam
Now, let us see the normative teachings of Islam with regard to the status and role of women in society. We will have thus the criteria by which one can judge the practice of Muslims and evaluate their compliance with Islam.
The principles extracted from the verses of the Quran and the words of the Prophet are in themselves, for Muslims, absolute, but the way they are implemented can differ to suit the diverse times, places, needs, the historical situations and 

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