Women in Early Islam

O mankind!

We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female,

and made you into nations and tribes,

that you may know each other.

Verily the most honored of you

in the sight of God is (one who is)

the most righteous of you.

And God has full knowledge and

is well acquainted (with all things).

[ Quran 49:13 ]

Her position in early Islam was really an exemplary one, one that should be studied and known by every woman as well as every liberationist in the twentieth century, in Canada as well as in the Muslim World. The Muslim woman, if she is true to the principles of her religion, has lessons in equality to teach the Westerner, and her descendants in the East have to learn anew the role demanded of them by their religion. Orientalists and orientals zealous for modernization should cease to put the blame on Islam, a blame which instead deserves to fall on their own ignorance of the faith and on the political and social decline which their nations suffered in the past.