ABUSE OF WOMEN IN ISLAM

STATUS OF WOMEN IN ISLAM
Introduction
Modern apologists for Islam claim that it guarantees total equality for women and quote Qur’anic texts as evidence. However, the Qur’an has contradictory texts on the subject, and the apologists ignore the ones negative to women’s rights.

Hadith has an even more derogatory view of women, and shari‘a, based on Qur’an and Hadith, tends to discriminate against women in several areas. Thus, in traditional Islam, women are definitely discriminated against.

In Muslim states where modernizers sought to mitigate shari‘a in favour of women’s equality, like Tunisia and recently Morocco, state laws are more lenient than shari‘a. However, these are opposed by traditionalists and Islamists who seek a literal return to shari‘a. Islamists, while often claiming that Islam provides equality to women, then go on to elaborate the traditional rules that disadvantage women. When once achieving power they always implement discriminatory shari‘a laws that negatively affect women.

While Muslim apologists in the West claim that Islam offers women equal status to men, and while some Muslim women of the secularised western elites do enjoy such status, most women in the Muslim world still suffer from legal and cultural discrimination, restrictions on personal freedoms and are treated as second class citizens.
Civil and criminal codes in most Muslim countries use shari‘a as a main source of legislation and have a discriminatory impact on women’s rights in the name of Islamic values. This is especially severe in countries that operate shari‘a courts in addition to the secular court system and even more so in Islamist countries that operate only under shari‘a law.

Women have fewer rights than men in divorce and custody cases. Their witness in court is worth only half that of men.

In many countries women need their husband’s permission to work or to travel abroad. Child marriages, forced marriages, female circumcision, polygamy, rape, honour killings and violent abuse by husbands are still fairly widespread.
While the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was an extreme example of brutality against women, UN and other human rights organisations have consistently reported on gross violations of the human rights of women in Muslim states.

Some Muslim women are campaigning for a reinterpretation of shari‘a rules on the status of women, but it is an uphill struggle with little impact so far.

Muslims generally prioritise the community and its needs over the individual and his rights. Obedience and duty, not individual rights, are the basis of the Muslim view of a just social order under God.