The Opponents Of Women’s Equal
Rights To Education And Employment As Men This Day Are The Belated
Proponents Of The Pre-Islamic Jahiliya And Thus Enemies Of Islam
This essay is complementary the following article but honed for its abrasive but honest title: ‘The Opponents of the Right to Universal Education (RTE) To the Muslims Are the Enemies of Indian Muslims
By Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam
November 06 11 13
Co-author (Jointly with Ashfaque Ullah Syed), Essential Message of Islam, Amana Publications, USA, 2009
The Qur’anic Perspective on Advancement of Knowledge
The Qur’an tells us
that in the divine creative scheme, humankind is appointed God’s
representative (Khalifah) on earth (2:30, 6:165, 27:62, 35:39) and
endowed with the intellectual faculty (‘aql) to identify and
characterize every object individually (2:33) and articulate his
observations in coherent speech (55:4). He is granted special ‘favours’
above much of the creation (17:70), is fashioned in the finest model
(95:4) and whatever is in the heavens and the earth is made serviceable
to him (31:20, 45:13). Humankind is thus programmed to acquire knowledge
and this goes for both the sexes.
The Qur’an does not
provide any basis to connect the divine blessings with the masculine
gender or to restrict women from acquiring education. In fact any such
restriction will stifle a woman’s capacity to act as the Auliya of man
(9:71), have an independent income (4:32) claim her lawful rights as a
woman (share in inheritance, dowry at the time of marriage, maintenance
upon divorce for example) and transmute Islam from a religion of women’s
rights [1] to a religion of men’s unilateral rights and over lordship
over women that it came to abolish.
In light of the
foregoing Qur’anic pronouncements, there can be absolutely no Qur’anic
basis to bar Muslim girls from acquiring universal education to the
highest possible level as their circumstances and external environment
permit.
Patriarchy Casting Its Long Shadow over Islam
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