Lauren Southern heads to the UK: Asking Feminists: Women's Rights or Islam?

When confronted with the issue of women’s plight in Muslim countries, Muslim apologists insist that their religion has been misunderstood and that Islam actually grants women certain rights. They blame tradition and tribal societies for the low status and oppression of women.



Since Islam exerts absolute power over every aspect of Muslim society, from diet to relations between the sexes, why has it failed in fourteen centuries of its existence, to eradicate injustices against half of its adherents?



Turkey’s women are the most liberated in the Muslim world. This was achieved not through Islamic reformation but through secularisation established by the founder of the modern Turkish republic Kemal Ataturk. Kemal was the product of secular education and had always admired Western culture. He pursued a program of westernisation that affected all aspects of Turkish life – women were granted the vote and veiling was prohibited. If the Turkish system were to collapse and replaced by an Islamic theocracy we can be certain that women’s progress will be reversed and women will be at the mercy of the mullahs. In countries where there has been a raise in fundamentalism and reversal to strict religious law such as Pakistan, Sudan and Afghanistan women are targeted with vengeance and brutality.



Some Muslim scholars agree that Mohammed did proclaim some rights for Muslim women. For example he abolished the pre-Islamic Arabian custom of burying alive unwanted female infants. He also decreed that women could own and inherit property, and that women have the right to enjoy sex!



However, he did enshrine women’s inequality and inferior status in immutable Quranic law accepted by Muslims as the infallible word of God.



“Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because men spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those among you who fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.” Sura 4:34



“…Women shall with justice have rights similar to those exercised against them, although men have a status above women. God is mighty and wise.” Sura 2:228



Under Shari’a – Islamic law – a man can marry up to four wives. He can divorce his wife or wives by saying “I divorce you” three times. For a wife to obtain a divorce is usually very difficult. Muslim apologists claim that Muslim women have the right to divorce and that in Islam the mother is revered and respected. Upon divorce, fathers win custody of boys over the age of six and girls on the onset of puberty. Many women would be reluctant to divorce violent or polygynous husbands for fear of losing their children. Despite the exaltation of motherhood – Mohammed once told a follower that paradise is found at the feet of the mother – children are considered the property of the father with the mother being merely the caretaker. How is it possible for a Muslim man to respect his mother when immutable religious law proclaims women’s inferiority and inadequacy?



Under the Shari’a, compensation for the murder of a woman is half the amount of that of a man. A woman’s testimony in court is worth only half of a man’s. Women are entitled to only half the inheritance of males; the reason given for these is that males have families to provide for. In sura 4:34 men are granted superiority and authority over women because they spend their wealth to maintain them, this implies that women are a burden on society and that their work in caring for children, household and livestock is insignificant and trivial.



Girls as young as nine can be married off by their father even if the mother disapproves of the marriage, often they end up as second or third wives of much older men – here is a way to instantly eradicate illegal paedophilia! Conservative clerics have resisted moves to raise the minimum age for girls. One of Mohammed’s wives, Aisha was seven when she was betrothed to Mohammed and nine when the marriage was consummated, Mohammed was in his fifties with several wives.



Any attempts by various governments to give women more freedoms, greater property and marriage rights have been vehemently opposed by conservative Islamists, who insist that the reforms are against Islam.