How Islam Led the World with Women’s Rights.

Today, the world looks at Islam and jumps to the conclusion that there are no rights for women in Islam. Therefore, this week, as part of Women’s Week on Radio Islam, we will take a look women’s rights in Islamic history. As we go through the discussions, you’ll will come to learn that not only did Islam give women their rights, but these rights were given before the west even understood what is women’s rights.

Islam gave women their basic rights centuries before the West did

“Women in 7th century Arabia had rights not extended to most women in the West till recent centuries over 1,000 years later,” writes Huffington Post’s Jim Garrison.

Women in pre-Islamic Arabia were reportedly barred from basic human and civil rights. They were considered inferior to men, and therefore treated as property. Women had very little control over their marriages and could not inherit property.
When Islam was introduced in the sixth century, women’s status improved substantially. Islamic law made the education of girls a sacred duty and gave women the right to own and inherit property. Islam also imposed women’s consent as a condition for legitimate marriage contracts.

If we compare Islam to other religions that were centered around one individual, Confucius barely mentioned women at all and assumed in all his teachings that they we subordinate to men within a patriarchal order. Buddha taught that women could become enlightened but he had to be pressured three times before allowing women to become nuns, and then only on the condition, as he put it, that the highest nun would be lower than the lowest monk.

Nabi S.A.W. was fundamentally different. He both explicitly taught the equality of women and men as a fundamental tenet of true spirituality, and he took numerous concrete measures to profoundly improve the status and role of women in Arabia during his own lifetime. Nabi S.A.W. was sensitized to the plight of women because he was born poor and orphaned at a very early age. He was also unlettered. He knew as few did what poverty and social exclusion meant.

Prior to Nabi S.A.W.’s prophethood, the dowry paid by a man for his bride was given to her father as part of the contract between the two men. Women had no say in the matter. Nabi S.A.W. declared that women needed to assent to the marriage and that the dowry should go to the bride, not the father. Up until the 1960’s, the husband’s family used to demand dowry from the wife in places like India.

Nabi S.A.W. himself was often seen doing “women’s work” around the house and was very attentive to his family. His first marriage to Khadija was monogamous for the entire 15 years they were married, something rare in Arabia at that time.
In his Farewell Sermon delivered shortly before he died in 632, Nabi S.A.W. said to the men, “You have certain rights over women but they have certain rights over you.” Women, he said, are your “partners and helpers.” In one of the sayings of the Hadith, Nabi S.A.W. says, “The best men are those who are best to their wives.”

So unique were Nabi S.A.W.’s reforms that the status of women in Arabia and early Islam was higher than any other society in the world at that time. Women in 7th century Arabia had rights not extended to most women in the West until recent centuries over 1,000 years later.