WOMAN'S status and position in Islam can be understood correctly only in the light of her position in
pre-Islamic religions and civilizations. However, at the very outset, the bitter fact must be candidly
recognized that Muslim women's actual and factual position and condition in most Muslim countries of
South Asia, including Pakistan, is quite different from her ideal legal status in Islam.

Majority of Muslim women in our country, especially those belonging to middle, lower middle and lower
classes, are at the mercy of man, be he father, husband, brother or son. Reading the daily papers,one is
shocked to know cases of women being killed brutally, being axed to death or burnt alive by husbands or
in-laws or by family enemies. Women are being subjected to rape and gangrape. The latter is a new
phenomenon emerging during the last few decades. In some parts of the country women have been
dishonoured by being made to parade, even dance, naked in public just to shame one's opponents.

However, the blame does not lie at the door of Islam but it lies at the door of the Muslims and their
feudal-tribal socio-economic set-up. Feudal and tribal traditions and customs, such as karo-kari, are
un-Islamic and inhuman. Denial of womens' share in family property is totally un-Islamic; this custom is
common in Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab and Pakhtoon areas.

Those who demand enforcement of Islamic order and Shariat do not talk of Muslim women's rights
under Islam. In the matter of marriage, woman is not even consulted and she is given away in marriage to
any one chosen by the father, the brother or the guardian in case she is an orphan.

Muslim woman's position today has been largely determined by the feudal heritage of Muslim land-owning
class, and by the expedient and obscurantist opinions and verdicts of mediaeval Muslim scholars who
gave their interpretation of Quran and Sunnah in conformity with the desires of Muslim kings and in
keeping with the dominant milieu; and finally by non-Islamic customs and traditions and legal norms which
non-Arab Muslims brought with them from their former religions and cultures and grafted them on
Islam.Majority of Muslims of the subcontinent were converts from Hinduism. "I am in a country", wrote
the famous English Muslim, Marmaduke Pickthall, "where, among Muslims, woman is emphatically not in
her Islamic position, and where men are generally indifferent to the wrongs done to her. The status to
which the great majority of Muslim women in India (and Pakistan) are reduced today is a libel on Islam, a
crime for which the Muslim community as a whole will have to suffer."

The end of the early republican Caliphate (Khilafat-i-Rashida) was the beginning of all kinds of deviations
from the ideal democratic and egalitarian Islamic society and polity. The political system, represented by
the early Caliphate, based upon the democratic principles of the consent of and consultation with the
people and upon the principle of the rule and supremacy of law and justice, was replaced by hereditary
kingship. And the early socio-economic system, based upon the principles of equality, austerity and
simplicity, was replaced by the aristocratic system based upon pelf and pomp and upon social-economic
inequality.

Let us now examine woman's position, condition and status in pre-Islamic religions and civilizations, such
as the Chinese and the Indian, the Greek and the Roman, and the mediaeval Christian. Women in ancient
China occupied a low and subordinate position, the wife serving only as organism for human reproduction,
and the concubine alluring and diverting the sensual Chinese male who showered silks and jewels on her.
Even Confucius was no kinder to women and excluded them from his aristocratic ordering of society.

Woman's position in ancient and mediaeval India under Hinduism has been an old and long tale of woe
and pity. Till the enactment of independent India's Constitution, Hindu woman had no legal, social and
economic rights to property, to divorce and to remarriage in case of widowhood. Under the ancient Hindu
Code, the Laws of Manu (Manu-Smitri) woman was accorded a very low position. Hindu custom and
mores permitted the inhuman custom of Satti which required a widow to throw herself upon the funeral
pyre of her husband and become ashes with him.

The Budhist view of woman was no improvement on Hinduism and was no better and higher. Budhism
gave no position to women in public life, but it granted to them the right to the monastic life founding an
order of nuns as for monks; but a nun, according to a rule ascribed to Buddha, must salute every monk in
the most reverential manner and show him due honour by remaining standing in his presence and by raising
folded hands.

The Buddhist view of woman was expressed by Buddha himself in reply to a question of his favourite
disciple, Ananda in these words: "Women, Ananda, are hot-tempered; women, Ananda, are jealous;
women, Ananda, are envious; women, Ananda, are stupid." The Buddhist view of woman, based upon
Buddhist lore, has been interestingly described by a very distinguished scholar of Buddhism in these
words: "Unfathomably deep, like a fish's course in the water, is the character of woman, robbers with
many artifices, with whom truth is hard to find, to whom a lie is like the truth and the truth is like a lie":
(Ananda Coomaraswamy).

The position of woman in ancient Greece and Rome was no different from the woman of the East, and it
was low and degraded, and was not equal to that of man. The concept of man and woman as equal mates
and companions was unknown both in the East and in the West. In ancient Greece there were two classes
of women, the wife and the 'hetaera' (like the Japanese geisha), the wife was confined to the home as
housekeeper and as rearer of children and as helper of her husband. The hetaera or the mistress subsisted
on her physical and intellectual charms as friend of statesmen and philosophers, like the famous Aspasia.
"Among the Athenians", writes Justice Syed Ameer Ali, "the wife was a mere chattel marketable and
transferrable to others... She was regarded in the light of an evil, indispensable for the ordering of a
household and procreation of children. An Athenian was allowed to have any number of wives; and
Demosthenese gloried in the possession by his people of three classes of women, two of which furnished
the legal and semi-legal wives." Apart from these, female slaves formed the third category of women.

In the Roman society also, like the Greek, there were three classes of women: patrician wives, concubines
or courtesans, and slave women. In legal and respectable matrimonial relationship the patricians followed
the system of monogamy, but outside marriage proper concubinage or prostitution was common. From
the Romans the system of monogamy passed to Christian Europe and later to modern West. However,
the legal status of Roman patrician woman was not equal to that of patrician Roman male. "The legal
position of the Roman wife", writes W.E.H. Lecky, "was for a long period extremely low. The Roman
family was constituted on the principle of the uncontrolled authority of its head, both over his wife and
over his children, and he could repudiate the former at will... the father disposed absolutely of the hand of
his daughter... the absolute power passed into the hands of the husband, and he had the right, in some
cases, of putting her to death": (History of European Morals). Socially, the Roman wife was more free
than the Greek. The Roman wife attended feasts and public festivals and spectacles with her husband, but
legally she was not equal to her husband who had absolute power over her person and property.

Next comes Pauline Christianity, which not only did nothing to improve woman's lot but further degraded
her by making her accomplice of Satan in the legend of the Fall of Man (Adam). Under mediaeval
Christendom woman's position was extremely low and degrading. St. Paul taught the Christians: "Let your
women keep silence in the Churches for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded
to be under obedience, as also saith the Law": (1-Corinthians-xiv. 34). The Church Fathers and Saints put
all the blame on Woman (Eve) for the Fall of Man (Adam), and considered woman as the most deadly
weapon in the armoury of Satan against the virtue of man.

The very word 'woman' itself is traceable to and derived from the word 'woe' which means misery, grief,
sorrow, misfortune, a burden. 'Woe-man' finally changed to woman. She was regarded as the author of all
human ills, as the Greeks regarded Pandora as the cause of all earthly ills. As against Christian version of
the Fall, Quran places the blame equally on Adam and Eve.

In the neighbouring empires and civilizations of Byzantine and Persia woman's position and condition was
no better. The pre-Islamic pagan Arabs were notoriously known as hard-hearted towards women; they
buried alive their infant daughters. Woman among these Arabs was a piece of property tranferrable to his
sons. Such was the condition of woman at the time of the advent of the Prophet.

As against the ancient, and mediaeval Christian degradation of woman, Islam raised her to the heights of
dignity and respect. Three sayings of the Holy Prophet are significant in regard to woman. No prophet or
philosopher before or after Muhammad (peace be on him) paid such a high tribute to woman as mother
when he said that paradise is under the feet of mother. Of all things in the world, he said, the best is a
virtuous woman. He also said that he loved three things out of this world, one of which was woman.

For the first time in history, Islam recognized an adult woman's mastery over herself, recognized her
independent individuality and her legal status fully competent to enter into contracts such as contract of
marriage, to hold property in her own right, to claim share in family property, to earn a living and her
earnings were hers as the earnings of man were his: "Unto men a fortune from that which they have
earned, and unto women a fortune from that which they have earned": (Al-Nisa, 32). A Muslim adult
woman can marry with free choice, will and volition. She can remarry in case of widowhood or divorce.
 

In the matter of obligatory religious exercises and in the matter of moral imperatives Muslim man and
woman stand at an equal footing. She has similar rights and moral and religious duties as man, the same
standards of right and wrong. Religious and moral equality of man and woman has been clearly declared in
Sura: Al-Ahzab, verse 35. The blame for Muslim woman's un-ideal condition in South Asian countries
does not lie at the door of Islam but at the door of Muslims and their feudal-tribal-capitalist
socio-economic order, in which order money and worldly goods are valued, and human values are
devalued. Islam accords to woman the same dignity and human rights as to man: "Verily you have got
certain rights over your women and your women have certain rights over you."

Impartial and objective scholars and historians recognize the last Prophet as the liberator and benefactor
of two oppressed classes, women and slaves. "Then came Mohammad", writes Clarence K. Streit, "to be
hailed as a liberator, and first by the slaves, and first of all by woman... He freed the girl-child from burial
alive, and her mother from slavery, and through him tens of millions of women received economic rights
that Christendom did not allow until modern times... He freed woman from the burden of original sin,
placing it equally on Adam and Eve." (Union Now).

"The Prophet Muhammad", writes Shaikh Mushir Hosain Kidwai, "effected over 1356 years ago a series
of revolutions... But no revolution of that long series in all the walks of human life was so strange for the
time and so far advanced and far-sighted as one in the conception of religion and the other in the treatment
of women... He gave legal rights to women which would have staggered the juris-consults of Rome and
Greece and Iran": (Pan-Islamism and bolshevism).

"The Teacher", writes Justice Syed Ameer Ali, "who in an age when no country, no system, no community
gave any right to woman, maiden or married, mother or wife, who, in a country where the birth of a
daughter was considered a calamity, secured to the sex rights which are only unwillingly and under
pressure being conceded to them by the civilized nations in the twentieth century, deserves the gratitude of
humanity... If Mohammad had nothing more, his claim to be a benefactor of (womankind) would have
been indisputable": (Spirit of Islam).