To Muslims, and even to some non-Muslim apologists, Islam is the only religion that has given women their due rights, equality and dignity. It can’t be otherwise: How can then Islam, as Muslims claim, be the perfect, the best and the final religion of God?And Muslim women got due equality and rights alongside men despite the fact that (a) Muslim women have no individuality and independence for themselves as Allah has placed them under the charge of men, who may beat them or deal with as the wish, not vice versa [Quran 4:34]; (b) women are worth only half the men [Quran 2:282]; (c) women can inherit only half that of men (i.e. brothers inherit double that of sisters) [Quran 4:11,4:176]; (d) women are same as slaves and camel, according to an authentic sacred tradition of the prophet [Dawud 11:2155]; and many other such gross discriminations and injustices.
While these references from Islam’s sacred texts make it clear that Muslim women, far from being equal, are an inferior being to men, the grossest of indignity that Allah has reserved for them is His allowing Muslim men only to marry up to four women at a time [Quran 4:3, 70:29-33, 4:24], meaning that a woman is worth only one quarter that of a man.
And that’s not enough, Allah the barbarian par excellence even allowed men, on top of taking four wives, to keep unlimited number of sex-slaves, who can be procured, according to Allah’s sanction [Quran 33:50], by attacking non-Muslim communities and wholesale enslavement of their women. Notably, Prophet Muhammad himself, when became powerful, had captured women of the tribes of Quraiza, Khaybar, Mustaliq and Hawazin etc. after attacking those communities and slaughtering their men.
While it would sounding utterly idiotic to seek to find equality between men and women or high dignity to women sanctioned in Islam, it is easy to say that Allah, the man-god, the alter-ego of Muhammad, has rewarded Muslim men richly at the expense of women. For fourteen centuries, Muslim women have suffered under the degrading status and treatment at the hands of men as per sanctions of the Islamic God.
But no unjust system, whether sanctioned by a purported God or dictatorial men, can last for ever; the oppressed and wider humanity will rise up and challenge it one day. Many religions have reformed their unjust institutions and doctrines to survive in the modern civilized world, while the tyranny of Hitler or Stalin has been put to rest.
Although Allah’s injustice upon women has lasted fourteen centuries, the oppressed Muslim women have started challenging the unjust status quo of Islam.
As of latest, a Saudi female journalist, Nadin al-Badir, has added voice to well-known courageous critics, namely Taslima Nasrin, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish et al., against the injustices of Islam.
And al-Badir’s challenge is quite unique, unheard of, coming from a Muslim woman: She has taken on the highly trumped-up Muslim claim, that only Islam gives due rights and equality to women, in an article, published in the Egyptian Al-Masri al-Yaum newspaper, by demanding that Muslim women, like men, be allowed to take multiple husbands. Well, indeed, that would reflect true equality between men and women in Islam.
And why not! Muslims claim that polygamy is allowed to men only, because they only have the ability to support multiple partners financially. But today, many well-educated Muslim women are becoming confident and pursuing rewarding careers, thus, gaining ability to support multiple sex-partners through legitimate income, unlike Muhammad’s and his companion’s barbarous means of earning livelihood through decoity, raids and wars.
I have been told by well-educated Muslims, to support polygamy in Islam, that only men can sexually satisfy multiple sex-partners, not women. While that’s true for certain men, it can well be true of certain women, too. There are prostitutes, predominantly women, all over the world satisfying multiple men on a daily basis.
We come across news of gang-rape all the time, more frequently in Islamic countries and communities, in which multiple men get sexual satisfaction from one single woman within a short time. We don’t here gang-rape of men by women; and one wonders how many men will be able to sustain such assaults by multiple women at a time.
The said journalist, for sure, did not earnestly mean to have polyandry for Muslim women, alongside polygamy for Muslim men. Instead, it is obviously an effort to highlight the “unjustness” of Islamic institutions concerning women.
What is stunning is the fact that this demand is coming from the pen of a Saudi woman, the community of Muslim women in the world, worst-affected by the cruel institutions of Islam in the most provocative manner.
Seeking polyandry for women, not for men, is adultery in Islam, which is punished by stoning to death in Saudi Arabia.
If she is living in Saudi Arabia, this column may well bring her death by stoning for questioning an unquestionable divine institution of Islam. This also proves that not all Muslim women, even from Saudi Arabia, are willing to suffer Islam’s gross violation of human rights and equality of women anymore lying low; they are ready, even, to embrace death in order to put an end to Islam’s lasting injustices.
And, quite understandably, the article also elicited angry responses from Muslims, particularly clerics. One Egyptian Member of Parliament, according to BBC, has already filed a lawsuit against the newspaper for publishing the provocative article.
Surprisingly, however, one cleric has also defended the article, saying that it aimed to highlight the sufferings of women under Islam, not than seeking to promote polyandry among them.
Is window of change for Muslim women in the offing? Well it might if voices like al-Badir’s keep joining the growing club of courageous Muslim women, willing to challenge the status quo of Islam’s unjust institutions and doctrines concerning them, some even seeking to put an end to Islam, a scourge of humanity, altogether.
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