The Women of Islam

Executive summary about women in Koran by Lisa Beyer

Women had been treated as possessions of their husbands; Islamic law made the education of girls a sacred duty and gave women the right to own and inherit property. Muhammad even decreed that sexual satisfaction was a woman's entitlement.

As Riffat Hassan, professor of religious studies at the University of Louisville, puts it, "The way Islam has been practiced in most Muslim societies for centuries has left millions of Muslim women with battered bodies, minds and souls."

Even as Muhammad proclaimed new rights for women, he enshrined their inequality in immutable law, passed down as God's commandments and eventually recorded in scripture. Under Shari'a, compensation for the murder of a woman is half the going rate for men. In many Muslim countries, these directives are incorporated into contemporary law.

Family law in Islamic countries generally follows the prescriptions of scripture. In Islam, women can have only one spouse, while men are permitted four. The legal age for girls to marry tends to be very young. In Iran the legal age for marriage is nine for girls, 14 for boys. An attempt by conservatives to abolish Yemen's legal minimum age of 15 for girls failed, but local experts say it is rarely enforced anyway.

Forced marriages may still take place in certain Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, but would be anathema to Muslim women from other backgrounds. Afghan women educated before the Taliban rule know that banning girls from school is forbidden in Islam, which encourages all Muslims to seek knowledge from cradle to grave, from every source possible. Man and woman, it says, "were created of a single soul," and are moral equals in the sight of God. Women have the right to divorce, to inherit property, to conduct business and to have access to knowledge.

Though in most Muslim states, divorces are entitled to alimony, in Pakistan it lasts only three months, long enough to ensure the woman isn't pregnant. Fear of poverty keeps many Muslim women locked in bad marriages, as does the prospect of losing their children.

Women's rights are compromised further by a section in the Koran, sura 4:34, that has been interpreted to say that men have "pre-eminence" over women or that they are "overseers" of women.

The veiling of Muslim women is a more complex issue. In practice, most modern Muslim women appreciate attractive and graceful clothes, but avoid dressing provocatively.

Sexual intimacy outside marriage is forbidden in Islam, including sex before marriage, adultery or homosexual relationships. Contrary to Christianity, Islam does not regard marriages as "made in heaven" or "till death do us part". Similarly, in marriage, a woman's salary is hers and cannot be appropriated by her husband unless she consents.

A good Muslim woman, for her part, should always be trustworthy and kind. While the spirit of Islam is clearly patriarchal, it regards men and women as moral equals.

Women may not be equal in the manner defined by Western feminists, but their core differences from men are acknowledged, and they have rights of their own that do not apply to men.

Anti-Muslim crusaders make millions spreading fear

Executive summary about Islam by Bob Smietana

Steven Emerson has 3,390,000 reasons to fear Muslims. That's how many dollars Emerson's for-profit company — Washington-based SAE Productions — collected in 2008 for researching alleged ties between American Muslims and overseas terrorism. Leaders of the so-called "anti-jihad" movement portray themselves as patriots, defending America against radical Islam. One national consultant testified in an ongoing lawsuit aimed at stopping a new Murfreesboro mosque.

The Secular Talibans in France

Executive summary about Islam by Dr. Habib Siddiqui

The French Republic is a far cry from Hobbes's notion of freedom. Last week, neo-Taliban Sarkozy's government gave birth to two new crimes: hiding one's face in public and encouraging another to hide her face. Sarkozy has made it clear that Muslim women who hide their faces are not welcome in France. The French government believes that "to hide the face breaches minimal needs of social life." So hiding one's face in public is now a misdemeanor, with a EUR150 fine and civic training to teach the criminal the need to show her face. It clearly targets the few Muslim women who wear the niqab. According to the prime minister's circular, women who hide their faces wear a badge of inferiority that is "incompatible with the principles of liberty, equality and human dignity affirmed by the French Republic." By refusing to interview and listen to the voices of women who wear niqab, the French government showed how narrow-minded and Taliban-like it is. The new law violates a fundamental principle that defines a free society. In a free society the individual should not be crushed by the majoritarian opinion, allows full expression of individuality, even signs and symbols that may offend some. There are limits that the society often imposes if unbridled freedom can cause harm.

It is simply absurd to believe that those Muslim women who wear niqab are a threat to public and national security, and neither the French police nor the president and French legislators have offered a shred of evidence suggesting any such connection. The French government claims that the new law had everything to do with women's equality, liberty and human dignity. These secular fanatics, closet bigots and xenophobes of the French Republic may like to read John Stuart Mill's short essay "On Liberty," published in 1859.
The new French law does not mesh well with the principles laid out by either Mill or Hobbes.

As I have noted elsewhere, niqab is practiced by a very small fraction within the Muslim community. The Islamic law concerning modesty in women's dress is found in the Qur'an and Sunnah. Imam Zamakhshari offered a very rational interpretation about the exemption. A woman may reveal the face and the hands in her salat, while she must cover the rest of her body. Then Allah commanded them to cover those parts with the khimar.Ó.

A reading of the tafsirs of the Qur'an from the early scholars of Islam makes it quite clear that covering the face was not something that was probably meant in the Qur'an. If a Muslim woman today wears niqab and burqa out of her sense of piety and interpretation of the divine text it is still her right to do so. No state authority should punish them for wanting to hide their faces in public when their conduct presents no danger to the public. The secular fanatics in France aught to measure their conducts against the very precepts of a free society that they claim to uphold. Shame on France and its French-fried-Talibans for enacting laws that epitomize bigotry and chauvinism!

A Basic Guide to Prayer in Islam

Executive summary about Muslim women by Asma bint Gary Dee Rice

It's a major misconception in Islam, that muslim women pray different than men. Outside of the dress code, women do not pray different than men. Men and women pray equally in the same manner.

Seeing-eye horse guides blind Muslim woman

Executive summary about Muslim women by Ben Leubsdorf

Mona Ramouni rides a SMART bus to her job with her guide horse, Cali, in Lincoln Park, Mich; lost her sight soon after birth, but she can't use a guide dog. Many Muslims consider dogs unclean, and Ramouni respects her parents' aversion to having one in their home. The solution, she hopes, is Cali, a miniature horse who stands 30 inches tall and is being trained to help Ramouni through her daily routine.

Seeing-eye dogs are a nonstarter among many Muslims who consider the animals unclean, but a horse the size of a dog just might work. "This is a really awesome little horse," Mona Ramouni said this week as she put Cali, a 3-year-old miniature horse, through her paces and rode the bus to work with her for the first time.

Ramouni, a proofreader of textbooks in Braille, wanted more independence, but a traditional guide dog wasn't an option. The answer, she hopes, is Cali, short for Mexicali Rose.

There are only a handful of the miniature animals trained as guides for the blind in the United States. Ramouni paid for the horse, $450 a month for Arste's training and other expenses out of her savings.

Since Ramouni had never used a dog, she had to learn how to control a guide animal, took on responsibility for caring for the animal as Cali led her through her daily routine. Additional training may take an additional two months before Cali can join Ramouni for good, taking up residence in a newly erected shed on Ramouni's lawn.

Ten Proofs that Muhammad is a True Prophet

Executive summary about Muhammad by Shaykh `Abdul Rahman `Abdul Khaliq

My brothers and sisters everywhere! Muhammad, the son of `Abdullah is Allah's Prophet and the Final Messenger Sent by Allah to the Inhabitants of Earth. You should know that the Messenger, Muhammad the son of `Abdullah is Allah's Messenger in reality and truth.

Among these proofs:

1. Muhammad was raised illiterate, unable to read, and remained like that till his death. Revelation then came to Muhammad with the Koran that we now have between our hands.

2. Muhammad brought an Arabic Koran that is the peak of eloquence and clarity.

3. Allah instilled great love for Muhammad in the hearts of all who believed in and met him. Till today, those who believe in Muhammad honor and love him.

4. All of history has not preserved the biography of any person in the manner it has preserved the life of Muhammad, who is the most influential human in history. Upon remembering Muhammad, the believers in him will greet him and ask Allah to bless him.

5. Indeed in all aspects of their lives, the believers in Muhammad adhere to the teachings he spread among them and the path that he traveled upon during his life. During every generation, from his day till our time, the believers in this Noble Prophet have fully adhered to his teachings.

6. There has never been nor will there ever be a man anywhere upon this earth who has received such love, respect, honor, and obedience in all matters-small and large alike-as has this Noble Prophet.

7. Indeed many of the followers of this Prophet, chose to follow him during the time when Islam was weak, when there were few Muslims, and when there was severe persecution of his followers on earth. Most people who have followed this Prophet have done so not to acquire some material benefits. My brethren! All of this clearly indicates to anyone possessing any sense, that this Prophet was truly and really Allah's messenger and that he was not just a man who claimed prophethood.

8. Muhammad came with a great religion in its credal and legal make-up, described Allah with qualities of complete perfection, and at the same time in a manner that is free of ascribing to Him any imperfection.

9. It is impossible that any person conceive wisdom, morals, good manners, nobleness of characters as what this honorable Prophet brought. In a full and complete manner, Muhammad spread a teaching regarding character and manners toward one' parents, relatives, fiends, family, humanity, animals, plants and inanimate objects.

10. The legal and credal make-up of the religion that the Messenger, Muhammad, brought resembles the engineering of the heavens and the earth. The degree of inimitability of the Divine law that was sent down upon Muhammad is to the same degree of inimitability of the Divine creation of the heavens and earth. For just as humanity cannot create this universe, in the same manner humanity cannot bring forth a law like Allah's law that He sent down upon His servant and messenger Muhammad.

Basics of Islamic Finance

Executive summary about Islamic law by Christine Benlafquih

The basic principles of Islamic finance and economics are grounded in Islamic law known as shariah. Included in shariah's comprehensive directives are Islamic finance laws called Fiqh al-Muamalat.

While the number of Islamic banks and financial institutions operating in Europe and America remains small, their interest free banking and financial products are in high demand among Muslims. Products and services include non-interest-bearing savings and checking accounts, interest free credit and loans as well as halal options for Islamic investments and insurance.

Among the financial products of greatest interest to Muslims are Islamic mortgages and Islamic home financing. As banks clearly would not offer Islamic financing if they didn't profit, Muslims interested in taking out Islamic mortgages or purchasing other types of interest free Islamic financial products should not do so casually.

Halal Eating and Drinking

Executive summary about Islamic law by Huda

Muslims are allowed to eat what is "good" - that is, what is pure, clean, wholesome, nourishing, and pleasing to the taste; enjoined by their religion to abstain from eating certain foods.

AL-QAEDA AND THE HOUSE OF SAUD

As recently as July (2005), the US government suggested that wealthy Saudi individuals remain "a significant source" of funds for Islamic terrorists around the world, despite widely publicized efforts to shut down these channels.
In August 1995 and December 2004, even bin Laden himself called for internal reform within the Saudi government rather than revolution from below. In the meantime, al-Qaeda-affiliated cells in Riyadh and Jeddah have periodically singled out Westerners for execution.
No one now seriously doubts the Saudi regime's commitment to hunt down and kill individual militants who have al-Qaeda cells that appear to be avoiding directly attacking the Saudi royal family. Yet, the line between that "truer" Islam and al-Qaeda's proclaimed ideology is becoming increasingly blurred.
The al-Saud's secret strategy is to put out the message that it is okay to attack "infidels" in Iraq, but not in Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda recognizes the basic rules, targeting foreigners. Hence, no direct attacks on members of the House of Saud itself.
The al-Saud regime further muddies the water with its campaigns of outright misinformation. A radical Saudi Islamist group affiliated with al-Qaeda claimed they blew up a car in December 2003 in Riyadh belonging to Lieutenant Colonel Ibrahim al-Dhaleh, a senior Saudi security officer who escaped by the skin of his teeth.
Bin Laden's new tack is a shift in al-Qaeda tactics, reversing his and others' edicts from the 1990s that made oil facilities in the moslem world off-limits to attack. In Saudi Arabia, these pipelines have become the obvious new targets for the Saudi jihadis. Saudi Arabia has more than a quarter of the world's known oil reserves, and even an abortive attack on the Saudi petroleum network would raise oil prices.
A confidential Interior Ministry document obtained by a London-based Saudi dissident group apparently acknowledges that 200 Saudis may have already returned to the kingdom in the wake of bin Laden's call. There are troubling signs; the tactics employed by the Iraqi insurgents are evident in the attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia. By remaining complicit with the regime, particularly at a time when Saudi citizens remain oppressed, unemployed and in some cases even impoverished, Washington is essentially allowing the kingdom to become a recruiting ground for al-Qaeda.

Moslem Brotherhood

The Syrian Moslem Brotherhood base in Aachen kept close relations with their Egyptian counterparts. According to a senior German intelligence official, at least nine out of nineteen organizations belong to the Moslem Brotherhood. The German press has recently investigated the Zentralrat president, Nadeem Elyas, a German-educated Saudi physician and an official of the Islamic Center of Aachen. Many German politicians are uninformed about Islam and do not understand that the view and the interpretation of Islam that the Zentralrat expresses, as does the IGD and Milli Görüş, is that of the Moslem Brotherhood and not that of traditional Islam. Moderate German Moslem Groups lack the funding and organization of Moslem Brotherhood-linked groups. Saudi officials and Saudi-run nongovernmental organizations continue to groom Moslem Brotherhood Organizations.
In France, the extremist Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) has become the predominant organization in the government's Islamic Council. Because the Moslem Brotherhood provides the bulk of FEMYSO's constituent organizations, it provides the "de facto voice of the moslem youth in Europe." Moslem Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna dreamed of spreading Islamism throughout Egypt and the Moslem world.