Introduction

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful, praise be to Allah, blessings and greetings be on His Messenger and his family, his Companions and whoever flows his guidance. It is common talk that women constitute half the society and that the society should not neglect them, leave them idle, maltreat them nor dissolve their rights.

This is all true. It may as well be argued that although women constitute half of the population, their influence exceeds their number, since women, for good or ill, influence their husbands and children. The poet Hafiz Ibrahim struck this note when he described the woman as a whole school, the sound management of which leads to the production of a noble society.

For these reasons scientists, thinkers, leaders, reformers, preachers and educators have all shown interest in the case of the woman. They have called for doing her justice, treating her with respect and for the abolition of forms of unfairness and repression towards her so that she can have her rightful access to learning, work, responsibility and choice in marriage. Some did not find this enough; they wanted to give her the right of sexual permissiveness, homosexuality, unrestricted abortion, rebellion against the family, and disregard of values of religion and society.

These were some of the aims the International Conference on Women in Peking 1995 impelled. It has provoked a lot of controversy in the Islamic and even Christian worlds. We Muslims have a divine document that truly honours women and treats her with justice; it is a document that rescued her from the gloomy injustice of Pre-Islamic darkness. This document of The Noble Qur'an-honours the woman as a human being, as a feminine being, as a daughter, wife, mother and, no less, as a full member of her society. True, some Muslims have wronged women in different ages by depriving her of her right to solid religious knowledge and her right to work. They have even forbidden her from going to the mosque for worship or leaming, compelled her to marry someone she did not like and confined her to her home. But this has happened in the absence of any sound religious awareness. Nor did it prevail everywhere; there have always been Muslims willing to reject this, something we have seen happening in rural areas.

Islam's true stance on the status of the woman is what this small treatise seeks to make clear. Although the issues relating to women and the family are dealt with in some of our previous books, particularly The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam (Al-Halal wal-Haram fil Islam) and Contemporary Legal Opinions (Fataawa Muserah), the reader may find in these pages a light that guides the way to knowledge of the correct opinions on this critical issue, between harsh austerity and excessive indulgence. "And my guidance cannot come except from Allah, and in Him I have put my trust and unto Him I repent.'' [Surah 11:88]