Misconceptions about Women in Islam

Basically, every Islamic nation has its own unique culture and all these cultures, national heritage, political systems, historical backgrounds, political systems and geographical nations of countries that practice Islam and people who support the religion cannot all be brought together to represent Islamic religion. Every nation that practice Islam and every nation have its own characteristics. All these characteristics vary from one nation to another. Most misconceptions about the women of Islam are caused by confusion with political and cultural practices and customs in other regions or countries of the world but not based on Islam. Moreover, those who take advantage of these misconceptions use them to suppress feminism in the society. This is clearly evident from the way some Muslim women have successfully accomplished a lot in different fields.

Additionally, the oppression of women in the Islamic religion is encouraged by the West and they believe that women should be treated as less equal than their male counterparts in Islam. This is however believed to be based on the perception of the media. The media has given so much misinformation and a lot of negativity directed towards Islam. Equality of women with men in Islamic religion can be seen in the manner women are granted equal rights when it comes to divorce and inheritance. In fact, women have been denied their inheritance through the writing of a will. This makes Islamic laws on inheritance to be far much better than the Western laws that depend on the will to grant women their rights of inheriting their relatives’ property.

According to the common belief of the western culture, burkas or hijabs are oppressive to women in the Islamic religion. On the contrary, Islamic religion does not dictate for the Islamic women the choice of their coverings to wear. However, Islamic religion teaches about the need for modesty in the religion for women’s own purity particularly during their prayer times (Varshney & Farhat pg 238). This is quite contrary to the Islamic teachings that advocate for payment of dowry on any woman before official marriage. This granted freedom to the female slaves who were married and taken advantage of before the introduction of Islamic religion (Maryam pg 1038). This is quite contrary to the misbelief that Islamic religion treat women as the as ways to achieving men’s pleasure and they should be mutually shared and inherited in the society.

Islamic laws establish women’s rights and they are not in any way treated in. besides, there is a common misconception of forced marriages in Islam where women’s choices of marriage are determined by their parents and the society rather the Islamic women themselves. The west misbelieves that Islamic women are not allowed and always denied opportunities of accessing education. This is quite far from the truth. Moreover, the wife of Islam prophet by the name Khadija was a very successful businesswoman. Therefore, women are highly encouraged in Islam to excel in their areas of expertise and interests. Basically, Islamic religion devotes the role of women to themselves in the sense that women are encouraged to teach one another both within their culture and in their academics.

The prophet would even stand to welcome. All these cannot happen in a religion that encourages the oppression of women in the society as widely believed in the Western culture. Islam is a religion that respects and values the role of women in the society. It can be concluded that there is a lot of influence from the Prophet’s teachings on the advancement of women civilization. The humankind history, human rights particularly women’s rights based on strengths, integrity, divinity, beauty, manipulations and strategic gains have never been this advanced like in Islamic religion. "Women In Islam. " Issues In Women’s Rights: A Practitioner’s Resource Book 1 (2014): 238. Copsey, Nigel, and John E. Richardson. "Women, the BNP and Islam. " International Journal of Advanced Biotechnology and Research, Vol 7, Iss Special Issue, Pp 1030-1038 (2016), no.