Introduction ............................................................ 1
A. Women in the Teachings of Hinduism ................. 4
B. Women in the Old Testament ........................... 12
C. Women in the Teachings of Christianity ............. 20
D. Women in Contemporary Times ........................ 32
1. Infidelity .............................................. 35
2. Teenage Births .................................... 36
3. Sexual Harassment .............................. 38
4. Single Parent Family ........................... 39
5. Violence against Women and Children ... 40
E. Islamic View of Women ................................... 46
1. Women in the Qur'an ............................ 48
2. Women in the Teachings of the Prophet ... 52
3. Women and Education ......................... 53
4. Polygyny in Islam ................................ 54
5. Who is Benefiting from Monogamy? ....... 59
6. Separation is better .............................. 61
F. Western Women Accepting Islam ..................... 67
Conclusions ......................................................... 73
References ............................................................. 76

I am very grateful to Allah the Almighty for His

guidance and infinite bounties. Without His gener-
osity, inspiration and infinite bounties, I would be

helpless.
My sincere thanks are due to those many
people who helped in turning the compilation of this
book into existence among whom are the oneís
below:
My sincere brother Dr. Abdallah Abu-Ishi for
his effort in reviewing the final draft. His moving
words of encouragement and guidance were of
great help.

Sister Om Muhammad for her very accu-
rate effort in spotting the smallest of mistakes and

patience in following the thread of arguments. May

Allah reward her for the tiring and the time consum-
ing task!

My loving thanks to the women who inspired
the writing of this book and were always there to

give all the needed support and dua': my late grand-
mother, my mother Fatimah, my wife Aysha, my

sister Amra, my two daughters Areej and Fatimah ,
and Mona, my sister in Islam.

DEDICATION
I dedicate this second edition of my

book, Women's Rights: A Historical Per-
spective, to the man who was behind the

publication of the first edition of this
book. He is living in our world no more
but his efforts in informing people about
Islam are still very salient. I ask Allah
to reward him abundantly for his great
efforts and gather us with our Prophet
in Paradise.

Womenís Rights: A Historical Perspective Womenís Rights: A Historical Perspective 2

Different societies have now been forced to take a po-
sition regarding the stakes of their women. It is hardly ever

mentioned in the literature that Islam had addressed the
subject of women's rights over 1400 years, long before it
became a serious preoccupation in many other cultures,
especially in the west recently.
The issue of women's rights received much attention
in western and western-like societies for the past number of

decades. Only prophet Muhammad (S.A.A.W.), through Di-
vine revelation, was able to restore dignity and rights to

women who were living in very degrading circumstances
centuries before women in other nations were given parts
of their rights.
Many feminist writers are enthusiastic in condemning

the treatment of Muslim Women. Sometimes, they mix be-
tween the pure Islamic teachings and the irresponsible per-
sonal or cultural practices of some Muslims. However, some

may have been intentionally prejudiced due to the publicity

their works receive and probably the high income they re-
ceive as revenues for the sales of their books. This busi-
ness is prospering nowadays while the Islamic fundamen-
tal teachings are being unfairly attacked. Such works have

not paid attention to the teachings of Islam on the subject.
As a result, they make no attempt to distinguish between
the behavior of some Muslims and of the religion of which
they may be very ignorant.

Feminist scholarship would have done better by focus-
ing on the miserable situation that women, children and the

family are going through all over the world, including west-
ern countries. Regardless of the very tiring efforts by west-
ern women to win and secure their rights, recent statistics

and academic research only expose frustrating results of
molestation and discrimination against women and children.
The unjust competition between men and women in a male
dominated work world has had a negative result in the most
important institution, the family. In modern societies, a
woman is entitled to honor and respect only to the extent to
which she succeeds in performing the functions of a man
while at the same time exhibiting her maximum beauty and
charm to the public. The result is that the role of the two
sexes in contemporary societies is thoroughly confused1 .
One of the main rationales behind assuming this search

was the unjust misrepresentation of Islamic teachings re-
garding women by a number of writers. They only focused

on excerpts that were taken out of both text and context. Or,

they blamed unacceptable practices by some ignorant Mus-
lims on Islam. Most of those writers have not objectively

conducted serious objective comparative study regarding

1 - Maryam Jameelah. Islam in Theory and Practice. H. Farooq Associ-
ates Ltd: Lahore,

the position of women in the teachings of Islam and in other
religions and ideologies. Via the information present in this
research, the readers will be able to deduce by themselves
the strong correlation between the genuine teachings of
these sacred books and doctrines and the mistreatment that
women have been experiencing in these societies over the
ages. Simply, because women have been manipulated by

man while being blamed on God; and therefore called 'Di-
vine'. When it comes to Islam, the equation is reversed. The

Islamic teachings are not reflected on the wrong practices
by some Muslims' treatment of women. Nevertheless, they
were blamed on Islam. Edward Said alluded to this unfair
allegation by saying in reference to V. S. Naipaul's biased
writings about Islam: "For Naipaul and his readers, 'Islam'

somehow is made to cover everything that one most disap-
proves of from the standpoint of civilized and Western ratio-
nality.2 "Allah did not give man the full liberty to legislate. He

instead, provided very well defined guidance to protect hu-
man beings from going astray and hence violating others'

rights.

The purpose of this book is to provide a historical over-
view of the rights of women in the major religions of the world.

More attention will be given to the status of women in con-
temporary western societies with comparison to the Islamic

view regarding women. However, I do not intend to provide
an extensive account of such a novel topic but rather present
a general framework in which a complete picture regarding
women in a historical perspective can be drawn.
2 - Edward Said, Covering Islam. Vintage, 1997, p.8. Said has also
mentioned that ' Assiduous research has shown that there is hardly a
prime-time television show without several episodes of plenty of racist
and insulting caricatures of Muslims and Islam in general.

A recent report disclosed by the UN mentioned that
women in India are facing a number of problems including
malnutrition, poor health care and lack of education. This is
reflected on the ratio of the number of men to women, 960
women for 1000 men3 . Another problem is that men are
demanding high dowry from the bride's family, which has
put a lot of economical pressure on the bride's family4 . Such
unfair practice was one of the factors behind the escalating

rates of infanticide. Female children face a higher probabil-
ity of abortion at late pregnancy due to the ability to diagnose

the sex of the baby via ultrasound. Selective abortion is also

done because of preference to male babies. Female infan-
ticide has become a common practice. As a matter of fact,

the burning of the widow Sati alive after the death of her

 Women’s Rights: A Historical Perspective