The word “oppression” means unjust treatment or control. Western societies see Muslim women as an oppressed gender by their religion Islam. These societies think that they should save these women from the unjust claws of religiously enforced laws. Islam forces women to wear the hijab, to stay at home, and are not allowed to choose who they wish to marry. They have no right to education and many more reasons to raise voice for them. Nobody wants to ask these women that if they feel the same way. Do they think that their religion is suppressing their identity? If the answer is no, then who is to blame for their oppression? If Islam is not the reason then who is? Is it those Muslim men who interpret the teachings of the Quran for personal gains,
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To acquire a complete picture, one has to dig deeper to reach the root cause of these misconceptions. To get an honest and true picture of Islam, one must know what Islam truly is? Like all major religions, Islam also preaches peace and equality, and its teachings are universally applied irrelative of the gender. While it asks the women to cover their beauty from strangers, at the same time advise the men to lower their gaze when they come across a woman other than their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. Moreover, It asks the Muslims to acquire knowledge, regardless of gender. Islam does not solely ask men to seek knowledge and prohibit women to do the same. Instead, it asks them both to go any length to satisfy their thirst of knowledge. The problem arises when people misread the teachings of the verses from The Quran: the holy book, and manipulated them for their own benefits. Sheikh Muhammad Akram Nadwi explained about the Quran, “People just use it for whatever point they want to make. They come to it with their own ideas and look for verses that confirm what they want to hear.” (Power, 2015, para. 5) Some ignorant Muslim men treat Muslim …show more content…
Think of Catholic nuns and their outfits that cover them from head to toe, and even of Catholic women who, at least historically, would wear a scarf over their heads to church. These women were not forced to wear this dress but did so out of religious devotion. Besides, in Qatar, and many other Arab countries, men also cover their heads with a guttara (a long white or white-and-red-checkered scarf) and wear a thobe (a full-length white shirt-like robe that covers the legs and arms).(Sloan, 2011, p.2) So, if a Muslim woman wears a hijab it is a sign of oppression, and if the same scarf is worn by a Catholic nun, what would the modern societies name this? No religion exploits the rights of women, but it is the manipulative minds of few who take advantage of the situations. For example, in France, they passed a law to ban women from wearing scarfs, and the argument was provided that, “veiled women cannot be understood to have freedom of conscience since their agency or subjectivity has been mutilated by familial or communal forms of gender oppression.” Even though, young women insisted on their choice to wear the
To acquire a complete picture, one has to dig deeper to reach the root cause of these misconceptions. To get an honest and true picture of Islam, one must know what Islam truly is? Like all major religions, Islam also preaches peace and equality, and its teachings are universally applied irrelative of the gender. While it asks the women to cover their beauty from strangers, at the same time advise the men to lower their gaze when they come across a woman other than their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. Moreover, It asks the Muslims to acquire knowledge, regardless of gender. Islam does not solely ask men to seek knowledge and prohibit women to do the same. Instead, it asks them both to go any length to satisfy their thirst of knowledge. The problem arises when people misread the teachings of the verses from The Quran: the holy book, and manipulated them for their own benefits. Sheikh Muhammad Akram Nadwi explained about the Quran, “People just use it for whatever point they want to make. They come to it with their own ideas and look for verses that confirm what they want to hear.” (Power, 2015, para. 5) Some ignorant Muslim men treat Muslim …show more content…
Think of Catholic nuns and their outfits that cover them from head to toe, and even of Catholic women who, at least historically, would wear a scarf over their heads to church. These women were not forced to wear this dress but did so out of religious devotion. Besides, in Qatar, and many other Arab countries, men also cover their heads with a guttara (a long white or white-and-red-checkered scarf) and wear a thobe (a full-length white shirt-like robe that covers the legs and arms).(Sloan, 2011, p.2) So, if a Muslim woman wears a hijab it is a sign of oppression, and if the same scarf is worn by a Catholic nun, what would the modern societies name this? No religion exploits the rights of women, but it is the manipulative minds of few who take advantage of the situations. For example, in France, they passed a law to ban women from wearing scarfs, and the argument was provided that, “veiled women cannot be understood to have freedom of conscience since their agency or subjectivity has been mutilated by familial or communal forms of gender oppression.” Even though, young women insisted on their choice to wear the