Women in the Quran

Women in the Koran

The year Prophet Muhammad received his first revelation in Mecca is 610 AD. This was not only the starting point for tremendous changes in the Arabic world as a whole, but also for the status of women in this world. Until 600 AD, new born female children were often killed to avoid the shame their birth signified to their fathers. The status of women in the Arabic world before 600 was that of mere "sexual existences, not human beings. A woman had no right in deciding about marriage and once she was married, she couldn't inherit or hold any property." (http://www.mtsu.edu/~msa/women2.htm).

The Koran gives women the basic rights their husbands always enjoyed, such as the right to inheritance (even if only one half of that what a son would be entitled to), to have possessions of their own, to get an education or to divorce. The Koran states that "men and women were created of a single soul." The Koran emphasizes the importance of women as mothers, wives and daughters. The very wives and daughters of the Prophet Muhammad are an example of the way Muslim women should be treated. It is true that one has to draw a line between the way Muhammad's wives compared to any other Muslims' wife were supposed to conduct themselves in the society due to their very special status as wives of the Prophet among the believers. Nevertheless, the way the Prophet himself related to the women in his own family and generally, to the women in his society has to be an example of how the Muslim believers are expected to treat the other gender. Muhammad often turned for advice and listened to his wives' advices. He enjoyed their company, treated them with respect and gave them the right to speak, to have opinions and even let them be a part in decision making regarding the life of the family and of the society.

Through Muhammad's words, the Koran states: "And the believers, men and women, are friends one of another. They enjoin good and forbid evil and keep up prayer and pay the Zakat, and obey Allah and His Messenger. As for these, Allah will have mercy on them.... Allah has promised to the believing men and the believing women, gardens wherein flow rivers, to abide therein... that is the grand achievement." (Koran, 9:71-72)

According to the Koran, a woman cannot be forced into a marriage she has not consented to. Women are responsible for a harmonious life in their family and are entitled to the respect of their husbands, sons and daughters. They are guardians of the Islamic law within their family and bear the same responsibility as the men in their families before God.

Women as mothers are especially high prized by the Prophet in his words and writings. As a direct receiver of God's words for the faithful people of Islam, Muhammad's words show the role women have or should have in the Islamic world. The moral conduct towards God is placed in the same phrase as the moral conduct towards one's parents in the Koran: "Your Lord has decreed that you worship none save Him, and that you be kind to your parents..." (Quran 17:23). The woman as a mother is entitled to the same love and respect from her children as her husband is, in the eyes of God. In the Koran, Muhammad is advising some who want to join the war against the pagans to stay by their mothers and go on in taking care of them, assuring them that it is as worthy in God's eyes as fighting for Him in a battle.

By the time Muhammad had his first revelations, Islam came as a tool of God imposing social justice in a world that was divided between tribal wars where women were simple objects in theirs husbands' and fathers' hands. Social justice is also including a fair attitude toward them and it is acting like a book that guarantees their fundamental rights for the first time in the Arabic world, long before they got any rights in the Western world.

It is true that polygamy was allowed by the Koran, but one has to envision it in the frame of a world divided by tribal fights and, after Islam, by fights to conquer new territories and to protect their own. Women needed protectors in a world where there were few chances of survival without them and the only way to have one was by marriage. The Prophet himself married several of his wives only by political means, to create alliances, or to protect the women left with children and no man to support them.

There are words in the Koran that advice men how to conduct themselves with women that must be seen as completely opposed to the way the Arabic world pre-Islam viewed women. According to the Koran where women and men believers are seen as equals in God's world, women have to be treated with kindness, men are not allowed to take hold of their inheritance against their will and they are expected to treat women righteously.