Unsymmetric treatment of women.

Submitted by George Walters (United States), Feb 13, 2009 at 22:33

Actually, no one in their right mind will say that all Muslims mistreat their women. But many of us find unsymmetric treatment of women by Islamic societies a little unacceptable:

1. Polygamy is permitted, polyandry is not.
2. Rules about who can marry whom are certainly biased against women.
3. Women are subjected to hijabs while men --who make the hijab necessary-- are left alone.
4. Child brides are not a problem (recent example in Soudi Arabia). I do not know the status of child grooms.
5. A lot of Islamic literature exists that seems to imply that women are entities to be maintained by men.
6. Who can pray where and who can lead the prayers is also biased.

Most ancient societies have been unkind to women, but they are changing and certainly they do not insist that their ancient scriptures are words of God to be ilteraly followed and not subject to interpretation.

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