FOREWORD

Foreword ~ 9 ~ Let us suppose that a doctor tells his patient that his eye is a very delicate organ of the body, to be treated gently and with great care, unlike his fingernails, which can be cut and filed, if necessary. The doctor’s instruction does not mean that he is degrading the eye vis-à-vis the nail. He is only pointing out the difference between the nail and the eye. If all the laws relating to men and women in Islam are based on this fundamental reality that men and women are of two different sexes, it is because distinctive differences between man and woman are established biological facts. This being so, male and female spheres of activity cannot be one and the same, whether in family or in social life. There must necessarily be differences in the kind of work that they do, and also in their places of work. All the revealed scriptures have held the same concept of woman, and thousands of years have passed without its ever having been doubted. It is only in Modern times that it has been challenged by the women’s liberation movement, which holds that