FOREWORD

Foreword ~ 12 ~ continues to be made that Islam has ‘degraded’ woman. For instance, the Indian freedom fighter, S.M. Joshi, who was interviewed in connection with a government-sponsored scheme to record the voices of freedom fighters for posterity, stated that “the Shariat of the Muslims and the Manusmruti of the Hindus — followed by both Communities for centuries — were equally socially reactionary.”3 Such remarks are made so indiscriminately and so frequently that it is high time we concerned ourselves less with our own sense of injury and more with the possible root causes. The main reason is that the results of research on the differences between man and woman have remained only an academic finding and have not yet formed the basis of a popular intellectual revolution. The social penetration of these ideas will have to take place in the same way as monotheism replaced polytheism, that is, through the kind of intellectual revolution set in motion by the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions with the special succour of God. Such an intellectual revolution in our own times is certainly not far-fetched, since modern science has