UNNATURAL EQUALITY

UNNATURAL EQUALITY Selected readings from the Qur’an were prepared in English by the English Orientalist, Edward William Lane, and were first published in London in book form in 1843. In his foreword, Lane wrote that “the fatal point in Islam was the degradation of woman.” Since then this remark has been regularly taken up as a stick with which to beat Islam. In fact, whenever Islamic affairs were mentioned, it became such a common observation, that not only the enemies of Islam, but also relatively fair-minded writers such as the historian, J.M. Roberts, who did justice to Islam in pointing out its virtues, mentioned it as if it were an established fact. We have shown in detail, at another point in this book, that this allegation is entirely baseless. The facts are quite the reverse. Islam has, in actual fact, raised the status of woman. If the truth were told, woman’s degradation has come about at the hands of two major civilizations, one ancient and polytheistic, the other modern and atheistic. The former has been culpable both in theory and in practice, while the latter has been so in practice, despite it’s theorizing to the contrary. We must never lose sight of the fact that what governed the ethics and lifestyles of ancient polytheistic civilizations were myths. Certain highly fanciful, but obviously baseless suppositions were believed in as truths, and all aspects of human existence were subordinated to them. For instance, ancient man regarded certain natural phenomena, such as the sun and the moon, with the awe of ignorance, and venerated them as deities. Conversely, he supposed certain other phenomena to be inferior, therefore, undeserving of respect. It was into the latter category that women fell, possibly because menstruation and their inability to fight alongside their men folk were interpreted in an adversely superstitious manner. Woman was regarded as the inferior sex and, therefore, deserving of degrading treatment by men. Modern western civilization has hardly produced a better result in ostensibly exalting the status of women. It may have pronounced men and women equal in every respect and decreed that all work that can be done by a man can be done by a woman too: it may have encouraged women to come out of their homes and try to find a position equal to a man’s in every department of life (hence the slogan, “Don’t make coffee, make policy”); but, in practice, this concept of equality has done more to degrade women than any traditional view could have done. The next chapter deals with this topic in detail. What is the reason then for this state of affairs? The reason, to put it briefly, is the erroneous concept of absolute equality in western countries. For example, equality between men is held to be an indisputable fact. But if this equality between men is taken to mean that in every field every man can compete with every other man, the upholder of such an unnatural concept should be able to take an Einstein to a boxing ring and expect him to put up a good fight against the heavyweight champion. Conversely he would also expect the boxer to be able to hold his own while presiding over international, scientific conferences. This may seem laughable, but that is what absolute equality would mean. The