The Status of Women in Islam

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Recommended: The early women’s rights movement

Introduction:
In today’s globalized world, women’s studies is emerging as a fast growing discipline which is not restricted any more to the academia but is significantly capturing the attention of the civil society. The way civil society responded to “Nirbhaya” gang-rape case of December, 2012 in Delhi; the way people came on the streets in protest against this horrific and barbarous crime committed against a 23 year old woman; this people’s movement has undoubtedly engineered the emergence of a new consciousness among us about the need for a realization of women’s honour and dignity in the society. There have been serious debates on the issue of whether more stringent laws (in the line of Shari’a law) be implemented in our Indian society so that such heinous crimes against women can be prevented. However, the aforesaid incident is only one among many hundred other such crimes happening everyday in almost every corner of the globe. Many such incidents of crime are either suppressed or do not come to limelight. The following analysis is a humble attempt to deal with the status of women (especially in Islam) in a globalized world.
The discourse on the status of women and their struggle for liberation in the society and in literature, however, is not new. Women’s liberation movement, popularly known as ‘feminist’ movement, started with an aim of establishing and defending equal rights and opportunities for women. Until late eighteenth century, women, whether of Europe or non-Europe, did not raise any voice to claim their rights in the society. With the publication of the British feminist writer and advocate of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft’s revolutionary work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), there emerged a women’s...

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...rmonious healthy society to our globalized world.

Works Cited

Eagleton, Mary, ed. Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader, London: Blackwell, 1997.
Hawthorn, Jeremy. A Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory, London: Arnold, 2000.
Pathan, Moulana Md. Mofiz Ullah (trans.). Mishqat Sharif, Bangla Wanubad, vol. 1-11, Dhaka: Emdadia Library, 2005.
Pickthall, Marmaduke M. (trans.). The Holy Qura’n, New Delhi: Idara Isha’at-E-Diniyat, 1988.
Satchidanandan, K. “Towards a Critique of Globalization and Culture Industry,” in Together We Survive. Delhi: FOSWAL, 2010.
Showalter, Elaine, Ed. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Boston: Thomas and Andrews, 1792.
Zakaria, M. M. (trans.). Sahih Muslim Sharif (All in one volume), Dhaka: Mina Book House, 2008.

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