Woman in Society

45-55 Woman Between Islam And Western Society CHAPTER 2 Woman in Society WOMEN IN ANCIENT SOCIETY In almost every inhabited corner of the globe, the societies of ancient times regarded the status of women as being inferior to that of man. “In Athens,” says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “woman’s status had degenerated to that of slaves. Wives were secluded in their homes, had no education and few rights, and were considered by their husbands no better than chattels ... In ancient Rome, a woman’s legal position was one of complete subordination, first to the power of her father or brother and later to that of her husband, who held paternal power over his wife. In the eyes of the law, women were regarded as imbeciles.”1 The reason for the ill-treatment of women in ancient times was the prevalence of superstition. There were, in fact, very few matters upon which irrational beliefs of one sort or another had not been adopted. Such perverted thinking became elevated to the status of religion and, as such, had a pervasively baneful influence upon all human relations. Speculation was another mode of thought which produced strange, and often pernicious results. Ridiculing the thought processes of the ancient Greeks, Bertrand Russell writes: “Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wive’s mouths.”2 Christianity did little to improve this situation, having attached great importance to the erroneous belief given in the very first book of the Bible, that it had been Eve’s wrongdoing which had caused Adam’s ejection from the garden of Eden. Referring to women in general in this context, the Encyclopaedia Britannica says: “[Accord­ing to Christianity] they were regarded as temptresses, responsible for the fall of Adam, and as second class human beings.”3 With such a myth ever-present in the collective consciousness of society, it is little wonder that women were allotted an inferior position in both religious and secular matters. In the first letter addressed to the Corinthians, St. Paul says: “For the man is not of the woman; but the woman for the man.”4 In this, St. Paul is simply reaffirming what is laid down as gospel truth in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. WOMEN’S STATUS IN ISLAM In ancient times, thanks to the unreasoning and unreasonable approach fostered by superstition, speculation and other forms of irrational thinking, woman came to be considered inferior, one distressing result of which was that she was deprived, among many other things, of the right to inherit property. She was not even entitled to a share of family