Unnatural Equality

UNNATURAL EQUALITY Selected readings from the Quran were prepared in English by the English orientalist Edward William Lane and were first published in book form in London 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. Whenever Islamic affairs were mentioned, it became such a common observation that not only the enemies of Islam but also relatively just 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. This allegation is entirely baseless, and the facts are quite the reverse. Islam has, in actual fact, raised the status of women. If the truth were told, women’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 in theory and practice, while the latter has been so in practice despite its theorizing to the contrary. 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 a man can do 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