Progress of Women: An Islamic Perspective

WOMEN IN HISTORY AND TODAY and compassionately while complete care is taken to ensure they are not deprived of their rights or oppressed. Women have all along belonged to the weaker section of humanity. As such, a society that tries to uplift the status of women and installs them on the pedestal of dignity, looking after their welfare and making provisions for their protection, can be considered a just society. In the 21st century, would it not be worthwhile to examine, in short, whether we have tried to grant women the rights that may lead them to a better future, to a more peaceful, just and dignified coexistence with all human beings? The modern world may be more concerned about women and make very fair promises to them. It promises them freedom from slavery, from male domination, even from the established institution of marriage, from the boredom of being a housewife to a much more glamorous world. It promises them freedom from the burden of birth pangs and the pains of rearing a family. But instead, what does it have in store? Nothing but exploitation, injustice, oppression, aggression, harassment, neurosis and indignity. In the name of emancipation, women today have to bear with rape, mutilation, abuse, inequality, discrimination and harassment. Coming nearer home, we find that the apparent glamour of the feminist movement has overawed us. We have our roots in the culture and religion embedded in our soil, but we try to unquestioningly imitate the West in as much of our activities as possible. On the one hand, our women,