THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN ISLAM UNDERMINED BY THE MUSLIMS THEMSELVES

Abstract

The author here evokes the place and the role of women throughout the history of Islam since the time of the Messenger and the first centuries of Islam when the Muslim community represented the true umma, the righteous community of it’s both male and female members, under the rule of Medinite democracy, when she could be simultaneously a mother and a pedagogue as well as a scientist, an army leader, a counsellor or a ruler or anything else that was defined in the community as private or public office or service, when no one had an authority to deprive her of her right to public speech, or of her freedom, dignity, independence, or her right to have a choice, or her right to education - the times when even the throne was not beyond her reach, to the times of the Muslim political despotism when she became deprived of all these rights, banished from the public sphere, the freedom of public speech was taken away from her, her freedom of movement was conditioned and all of these took place namely in the very cradle of Islam. Today’s women of Islam, as compared to women who enjoy the fruits of Western democracies, regardless of imperfections of those democracies, are deprived to such an extent, that they simply should not, moreover must not hesitate to use all the available means in order to recover her dignity and the rights that Islam grants her. The author hopes that throughout the desolation of contemporary Muslim despotisms the scent of “the spring” of irreplaceable Medinian democracy, to which modern Muslim societies nolens volens have to and must retrieve, would someday spread afresh.