Women in the West and in Qur’anic Civilization

 

By www.MalaysiaNur.com

 

Women’s liberation is a much discussed subject, can you compare the attitudes of materialist Western civilization and Qur’anic civilization towards women and demonstrate where true freedom for women lies?

It may clear from the descriptions in the first and second sections above that the aim of materialist Western civilization is not to fulfil the needs of human nature, but rather to exploit that nature in whatever ways it can in order to perpetuate itself despite its rotten foundations. The position of women in the West is truly grievous. Their true nature and role in the family and home are being systematically destroyed. They are the main sacrificial victims to the voracious idol of the consumer society.

The system demands that their bodies are exploited for advertising purposes. And besides exciting the greed and lust of others, they themselves are under constant pressure to spend and acquire ever more in the way of possessions and luxuries for the home. The inducement of fashion is utilized to astonishing degrees in the West, so that women are encouraged not only to buy more and more in the way of clothes and to follow fashions in make-up and the like, but also to change all the furnishings in their homes, down to even their bathrooms, every year or two. Of course, all this means that they have to abandon their homes and families and go out to work.

These developments are portrayed as progress and liberation for women, as the gaining of equal opportunities with men in the field of work and the professions. The false concept of equality is taken as the aim. Totally contrary to human nature, women are encouraged to seek equality with men in every field, from work to the home. But in fact this unachievable aim is cynically put forward to deceive unfortunate women and to cloak the ugly reality of the situation.
While feminists in the West have reacted strongly against the exploitation of women in maintaining the capitalist system, in fact, they support many of these developments since they encourage the ‘liberation’ of women from the ‘slavery’ of their role in the home and family. ‘Sex roles’ being an artificial device engineered to perpetuate that ‘slavery’. However, they themselves are calling women not to freedom but to even greater slavery. For what they are calling them to is the rejection of their own natures for the sake of some ill-defined ‘rights’ that consist of absolute freedom to follow their own whims and what they imagine to be their own interests unrestricted by the rights of others.

How can women stripping themselves of their womanhood be seen as freedom? They are making a very bad bargain, their compassionate natures and exalted position in the scheme of things in return for total enslavement to their own individual whims and desires.
How different is the attitude of Qur’anic civilization towards women! The mercy that is Islam recognizes the manner in which they have been created and ensures through Islamic dress and other requirements that they are able to carry out their duties with their children and in the home protected and in perfect dignity.
Islamic dress and the ‘position of women’ generally in Islam are much misunderstood in the West, but as the many thousands of women brought up in Western society testify, Islamic dress is in complete accord with their natures and gives them the protection and ease of mind that that nature requires. And they find that indeed ‘the woman’s place is in the home,’ that it is not a prison-sentence but on the contrary is a most gratifying duty and service of the greatest responsibility since it entails the bringing-up of the succeeding generation. Islamic dress is a safeguard for this vitally important role, indicating to its importance and protecting women from any kind of indignity and exploitation.
The contradictory position of feminists is very apparent here, for they vigorously oppose the exploitation of the female body for advertising and other purposes while at the same time seeking ‘freedom’ or to get rid of any sort of restriction on women’s dress and behaviour. However, what becomes apparent to the many ‘new’ Muslim women is that to expose their bodies at all to men outside their families is to both exploit themselves and to be exploited. To act as a means of exciting the lust, desire, and greed of strangers is to be exploited and for women to take pleasure in thus doing is to exploit and to degrade themselves. It is not freedom but once again to enslave themselves to their own individual desires and the desires of others.

What is freedom for women, then? Freedom for women lies in recognizing their true nature, in recognizing what teaches them what that nature is and then _ protects and safeguards it. God Almighty’s final revealed religion of Islam does this in the most perfect form. And what does that mean? It in fact means abandoning their own desires and recognizing that they are not beings with ‘rights’, but creatures with duties, like all the beings in the universe, and that happiness and freedom are only to be found in the performance of those duties.

And if they are creatures with duties, then that happiness and freedom will increase in proportion to their learning to know the Giver of those important and pleasurable duties, the Single All-Wise and Compassionate Creator. For the more they learn about the Giver of the duties, the more they will learn what the duties truly consist of. The more they can abandon their own wishes and desires the more they may draw closer to conforming to the will and wisdom of the One Who plans and runs the whole universe, which are so apparent from its order, balance and harmony. This is where true freedom lies. In belief and in submission to a Single All-Wise and Compassionate God Who thus orders and administers the whole universe as a unified whole and employs all the creatures in it according to His absolute wisdom. Freedom lies in Islam, therefore, which is that belief and which protects and safeguards those who recognize and adhere to it.

At the same time it is essential to point out here that this duty of women should not restrict the development of their intellectual and other abilities. Rather, the one should complement the other. If women are truly to carry out their duties in bringing up their children, they have to continuously study and develop their belief. In other words, as human beings their primary duty is to develop their belief in God, as women their duties are in the home. These complementary duties are essential to each other, one should never be an obstacle to or prevent the other.

Meryem Weld