WOMEN IN ISLAM

Everyone, the world over, condemned the Taliban’s abominable treatment of women in Afghanistan, but oppression of Muslim women happens everywhere. It’s usually more subtle—sometimes so subtle that even the women don’t know they’re being oppressed— but it’s just as oppressive. Thank God we were blessed to receive the purified message, and we have an easy-to-read-and-understand English translation of the Quran. So, we know that God says that men and women are equal and “oppression is worse than murder.”

Since we know the truth and since it’s so distorted in most of the world, how do we get the message across? In this time when more and more people are expressing interest in Islam and the Quran, how do we reach people, especially women, with the truth?

It’s so important for people to realize that Islam as it’s traditionally practiced has virtually nothing to do with Islam as it was revealed. And it’s more than just terrorism that’s false; it’s more than the fundamentalists who have it wrong. Unfortunately the majority of average people in the world, who claim to be Muslims, have serious misconceptions about the True Islam. Because of the distorted view of Islam by so-called religious scholars who make references to man-made sources, the Muslims en masse are essentially unaware or ignorant of the beautiful message in their Holy Book, the Quran.

Into this time of heightened awareness, Lisa Spray has written a delightful book addressing the discrepancies between women’s rights as set forth in the Quran and as practiced by Muslims today.

She calls it Heart’s Surprise: A Personal Reconciliation of Women’s Rights and the Quran and Islam. Everyone who reads the Perspective or accesses the Submission web site knows someone who should read and learn from this book. It’s light and clear and very perceptive.

I have found that often when the practice of some Muslims does not mesh with my understanding of the Quran, the issue is one of culture…. It is very human to accept that people eat food very different from what we enjoy, listen to music that puts our nerves on edge, and then still expect them to have the same spiritual reality we do. This is very human, but very unrealistic. In many ways our spiritual reality is at the core of our culture, and thus at the core of ourselves. How can we expect it to be the same for every one?...

Cont’d on Page 2