Due to the broad spectrum of women’s rights in Islam¹ we will be looking at the issue in three separate sections. The first section will be a short introduction to Islam and women’s rights and will move into looking at women’s rights in several different Muslim countries, those being; Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia.

The second section will be looking at what the Qur’an says about women with the role of an Islamic society and the more personal rights of a woman being a wife and mother.

Finally in the last section we will look at the reasons behind the current treatment of women in Muslim countries and the role of culture rather than religion in them that leads to mistreatment on women in not only Muslim countries but that of most middle eastern countries.

Current views of women in Islam

The subject of women in Islam has very often been the centre of much debate. Islam's portrayal of women to western eyes has usually been a poor one. Many people when they think of women in Islam have these visions of a woman tied to a sink at home having to do what ever her husband commands her to do. This vision is usually accompanied by the vision of a woman who is not allowed to choose who she is to marry and a life that includes beatings from the husband, a women hidden from the world by a niqab² or burqa³, a woman with no rights who at any moment could be divorced with no notice, with a husband who could marry another woman with out even telling her till it is done, a woman who has had her genitals mutilated as a baby and can not leave the house with out a male relative’s presence or permission.

These views are usually based on things picked up from what they see in the papers, or on T.V or what people tell them face to face. People with these views tend to have never really looked into Islam or reads books on the subject, or even spoken about these issues with a Muslim. It is a great shame to hear people speaking bad about Islam when they have not, themselves, read the Qur’an⁴ or Ahadith⁵. Many of them may have never really spoken to a Muslim properly. Has any one of the people who believe these views gone up to a Muslim woman and asked about these issues?

Though a lot of these things are easy to blame on just the media portrayal of Islam and lack of knowledge about Islam, it does not mean that it can all be put down to just media coverage and ignorance from the non Muslim side. Muslims themselves can be blamed for this negative image due to the silence that prevails after women’s rights are abused and brought to light. For example much good would come from having an Alimah⁶ or an Imam⁷ appearing on TV pointing out that this is not an Islamic action. People have to understand that most 'Islamic' countries are lead by regimes or governments that say they are following the true Islamic way of life but are actually drawn to the power of being in charge of people. An easy way to prove this is to look at all the Islamic countries and spot the differences between them. In some of these so-called Islamic countries it is ok for women not to wear niqab while in others they must wear it. Another example can be found by looking at Iran and Saudi Arabia: In one, women can drive, while in the other, they can not.

If they are all following the Qur’an and Ahadith as they say they are, then surely they would all have the same, or at least very similar, laws but this is not the case.

That being said there are other issues to take in to consideration before blaming Islam for female abuse and lack of rights. Here is a short list of some key points:

These are all important questions and issues that have to be considered before someone can label Islam as being a religion that teaches oppression of women. This entry has been written to look at these questions and show how women are meant to be treated in Islam and so that those who wish to learn the truth about Islam and woman can do so.

To do this we will be looking at what Muslims would call the best evidence of all to how women should be treated, The Qur’an and the Ahadith.

Women’s rights in Muslim countries

To ease us in to the flow of things, let's take a look at some 'Islamic' countries and the laws in place there for female Muslims. After taking a look at the rights granted to women in modern day Muslim countries we will then move on to see what the Qur'an and Hadith actually say about these laws and take a look at other issues on this subject.

Egypt

The beginnings of women’s rights in Egypt can be traced back to the 1950's when the Women’s Rights Union⁹ started to have an impact on the ruling class of Egypt. After mounting pressure and a long struggle the Egyptian government finally signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) bill in 1981. This constitution and the many signings since then on International Labour has resulted in giving women equal access to education, employment and work opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and social security. Egyptian civil law, in accordance with Islamic law, gives women the right to possess and control property, and to inherit. Unfortunately women’s rights are still not being seen there due to the customs of tradition, the government’s lack of implementation and backing up of these laws and women’s own lack of awareness of their rights, usually because the only way to find out about them is to be educated about them, which does not happen in the schools. Unfortunately as Egypt has an inadequate public education, and a population largely disengaged from political life men and women are poorly informed about women's rights. However, an ongoing media revolution led by the growth of satellite television is helping to better inform Egyptians of women's rights.

Mai Nabil Mohamed Dawoud, a 23 year old Muslim girl living near Alexandria, has this to say on women’s rights in Egypt " no I never did learn or know my rights while at school, but I know we (women) have the right to own property and (the right) to ask for divorce from the government". An on the subject of female genital mutilation ¹⁰ she says that to her knowledge "no body does that at all here anymore, the practice is Haram¹¹"

As for the rights for women to work take the case of Hayat Samir a 26-year-old Egyptian woman, who is a university graduate with a law degree who works as a cleaning lady. This is what she has to say about her rights in Saudi Arabia "Here I am with a law degree and I am cleaning bathrooms. Even if they are the bathrooms of a decent organisation, they are still bathrooms. If I were a man, I would have had a much better job as a sales assistant or a cashier in a store at least,"¹²

This lack of education has led to women, who are legally able to, being refused ownership of livestock, land etc, and the right to divorce. At the moment continued pressure by women’s rights groups and Islamic scholars is slowly changing this.

Saudi Arabia

"Women in Saudi Arabia, whether Saudi Arabian or foreign, emerge time and again as victims of discrimination and human rights violations because of the gender bias in law, social mores and traditions. While women have gained some ground in terms of economic rights, their civil and political rights are systematically violated.
Equal treatment for women and men is a fundamental principle of international human rights standards. Yet in Saudi Arabia discriminatory practices against women are not only prevalent, they are also in some cases required by law." states the Amnesty international report on Saudi Arabia.

Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive, leave the country without authorization from the husband or farther, leave the house not in suitable attire¹³. As well as being deprived the right to high ranking jobs, or to be an active member of the governments leadership. In fact it was not until 2000 that they where allowed there own I.D. cards, before that they where put down on their farther or husbands I.D. card. Laws that are applicable to both men and women seem to only have women punished for it, such as adultery, and when are carried out are not investigated properly and instead based on confessions gained from the use of torture.

Pakistan

Pakistan is arguably viewed as one of the worst offenders of women’s rights in the Islamic world. Pakistan is a vast country with many laws in place to protect women's rights, unfortunately out side of the big cities, Pakistan is generally under tribal law rather than governmental law and this is where abuse of women’s rights take place. Regardless of laws against crimes against women, most of them are ignored, for example 'honour killings'. So called honour killings are where a family member kills a daughter or sister on the suspicion of some immoral act. Such as a girl who has been seen in the company of a boy she is not closely related too. One case of this involved an eighteen year old girl suspected to have had sex with a seventeen year old boy simply because they said hello to each other. She was killed by her farther and brother for this unproven alleged crime. Honour attacks, including killings are illegal officially in Pakistan law. Unfortunately these crimes still happen and when they do there are basically three responses:

1. They are not reported or 'goes unnoticed' by the authorities.
2. They go ignored by the governmental police, saying it is a personal issue not a state issue.
3. The guilty party receive reduced sentences, if a case actually reaches court.

Not all girls are punished to death though, some get acid splashed into their face instead scarring them for life and in some cases causing blindness. You can decide which punishment is worse and more barbaric. Let’s give an example from the following link:

Zahida Perveen's head is shrouded in a white cotton veil, which she self-consciously tightens every few moments. But when she reaches down to her baby daughter, the veil falls away to reveal the face of one of Pakistan's most horrific social ills, broadly known as "honour" crimes. Perveen's eyes are empty sockets of unseeing flesh, her earlobes have been sliced off, and her nose is a gaping, reddened stump of bone. Sixteen months ago, her husband, in a fit of rage over her alleged affair with a brother-in-law, bound her hands and feet and slashed her with a razor and knife. She was three months pregnant at the time. "He came home from the mosque and accused me of having a bad character," the tiny, 32-year-old woman murmured as she awaited a court hearing ... "I told him it was not true, but he didn't believe me. He caught me and tied me up, and then he started cutting my face. He never said a word except, "This is your last night." (Constable, "The Price of 'Honour'," The Gazette (Montreal), May 22, 2000.)

For more information then go to "Honour" Killings and Blood Feuds.
This on its own is bad enough, but it gets worse. Pakistani legislation for example defines both adultery¹⁴ and rape¹⁵ as "sexual intercourse without been validly married" and does not draw the distinction that the only difference between the two is that one is forced while the other is not.
Under current Pakistan law if a women is raped and reports the crime or gets pregnant, she has to prove that she was raped. What constitutes proof in Pakistan is the man admitting to the crime, or four witnesses who saw the man force her into having sex. If she can not prove this she is charged with having an illicit sexual relationship with someone and is punished. Because of this rape victims are punished for reporting there crime, and because men can get away with it, there has been an increase in rapes every year.

You would think that being charged and punished for having sex out side of marriage when reporting rape would be enough, but sadly it does not stop there. Say a rape victim knows who raped her and tells the police. If he does not admit to it, and she has not got four witnesses then he will be free, and she will then face an additional charge of falsely accusing someone of having sex out side of marriage. This is due, sadly, to the fact that Pakistan does not have the people or equipment to do a proper forensic examination and so it comes down to witnesses or confession. Unfortunately this has led to women not bothering to report rape crimes and just hoping they are not pregnant as it’s the only guarantee of a good life in the future. An example of this laws unfairness and brutality is as follows in this real life incident; in 1985, Safia Bibi, a sixteen-year-old nearly blind domestic servant reported that she was repeatedly raped by her landlord/employer and his son, and became pregnant as a result. When she charged the men with rape, the case was dismissed for lack of evidence, as she was the only witness against them. Safia, however, being unmarried and pregnant, was charged with zina and convicted on this evidence

On top of all this is the blood feud which is common amongst the suburbs and small villages. These involve 'compensation' given for some crime against another village or tribe. This has involved the murder of whole families, rape/mutilation of women and girls forced in to marrying a boy from the tribe calling the blood feud or the whole girls family will be killed.

Girls in Pakistan generally do not have much input as to when they get married, and in some cases to whom they are going to married, in fact in these cases they are married of to cousins or into families that will improve family image or mentioned above as a compensation to some crime to another village or tribe, regardless of what the girls wishes maybe on the subject. In some cases of forced marriage physical abuse is used, but generally the most popular method is through emotional black mail and making the girl feel she is displeasing God by not marrying who her parents want. In some cases death threats have been issued to stop girls marrying boys they wish to marry and they are carried out in some cases under the by now familiar honour killing principle.

Moving on from this, women in Pakistan are generally only educated to a high standard if from a wealthy family back ground, and while around 87 percent of men work only 5 to 7 percent of women work in rural areas and in the remote regions this is only low paid jobs available to women, such as sowing, due to the segregation of women and men in these areas.

Just over 50 percent of the population in Pakistan is made up of women, yet the majority of the time women are keep on the side lines of political life. Though there are women in high places of employment in the major cities.

Indonesia

When people think of Islamic countries they seem to forget about Indonesia even though it has the highest population of Muslims of any other country in the world.
Indonesia is not as bad as the other countries listed here as in fact it is a very moderate country in a lot of areas, but it still has its problems with women’s rights. Women in Indonesia have the rights to own and sell property and live stock, to work, to choose who and when they get married and they have the right to divorce.

Hapsarina Dianti has lived in Indonesia all her life and says this about life as a women in Indonesia, "We have similar rights to those of the men" and that "Indonesia is more cultural than Islamic, for example in the Padang tribe, its the women who propose for marriage to a man, while men can not propose at all. In the Java tribe, men are like gods, but its modern times now and so women do not generally agree with it, those kind of rules are decaying now. Abuse does happen to women in the home though still, such as women being hit, and women are raped over here, but that happens in all societies. People who do rape and adultery will be in jail over here if caught by the police. Some people, especially families of rape victims, complain about the length of jail time a rapist gets. Men who have raped for the first time get less a sentence that people who agree to have sex out side of marriage, it don't make sense. People here do not like that. If the rapist has committed the offence more than once, or has killed his victim then he will get a longer sentence. Rape victims over here are seen not to be blamed for what has happened and are free to go." She goes on to say "Female circumcision does happen over here as well, but these days it’s done very carefully by doctors, it don't make it right though."

As can be seen in the above, women in Muslim countries are not exactly treated as equal members of society. By now many people would be thinking that it must be a problem within the teachings of Islam, but is that a fair accusation to make? At the moment it could be likened to us the reader being a detective finding the culprit to a crime. As such we have viewed the evidence at the crime scene, that being Muslim countries and spoken to some of the witnesses. But before we charge anything for the crime we have to question the suspect. So let’s see what the Qur'an and Ahadith has to say about women in Islam as we move in to the second section.