Women are One of the Finest Blessings in This World

One of the most striking examples of the lovelessness and harshness of the fanatic mindset is these people’s attitude towards women. Because of all the superstition they fabricate, fanatics, who regard women as an inferior species, exclude women from society and are unable even to bear the sight of them on the streets. In the pages that follow we shall be setting out the fanatic attitude toward women, citing various fabricated hadiths on the subject, and then seeing how their false perspective is diametrically opposed to the Qur’an and the true word of our Prophet (pbuh). The fabricated hadiths in question will give a much better idea of the utterly immoral way in which women are oppressed in many Muslim countries.

Underlying the fanatic perspective toward women is the idea that women are deficient in faith and mind. The idea that women are semi-people and need to be governed and directed therefore prevails. For people who think like that, even the very existence of women is a menace and a cause of anger; they therefore feel the need to keep them covered up, excluded from society, deprived of all rights and declared non-persons to the maximum extent possible. They foolishly turn women into second-class citizens and prevent them from making decisions and becoming involved in social matters, and seek to turn them into a community under their own dominion because they know full well that women are quite capable of thinking in great detail, making rational judgments and drawing accurate conclusions by analyzing fine detail. Excluding women by false means has also made it possible for some fanatical types to spread their own falsehoods very easily.

Yet God has revealed that there is no differentiation between men and women in terms of piety and that men and women have equal responsibilities when it comes to doing good works, striving to disseminate moral virtues and waging an intellectual struggle on His path. According to the Qur’an, men and women are equal in terms of responsibility; however, the Qur’an also regards women as superior to men in terms of solicitude and worth, taking great care of them. Some verses which various fanatics and enemies of Islam always seek to portray as evidence against women are actually verses that reveal the superiority of women and the importance and value that our Lord attaches to them. We shall be looking at these verses in detail in due course.

One comparison that our Lord makes regarding women in the Qur’an shows how much He values them; He compares woman to a delicate plant, or a flower. This description of Mary (pbuh) is an explicit corroboration of the importance and value attached to women:

Her Lord accepted her with approval and made her grow in health and beauty [like a beautiful plant] .... (Qur'an, 3:37)

Caring for a lovely flower calls for the very greatest sensitivity. A lovely plant is delicate and valuable and requires great care and attention. That beauty of a flower, its delicacy, the care it needs and its value and importance neatly describe the place of women in the Qur’an. It is a fact that God has created all the plants and flowers in the world as elements of beauty, as delightful blessings, as symbols of cleanliness and beauty and as marvels of creation. The use of such an expression of beauty to refer to women, the way that God compares women with a symbol of cleanliness and beauty, is an excellent representation of the value attached to women.