Page 242 - Bigotry: The Dark Danger

Bigotry:
The Dark Danger

The Defamatory Idea that Women Are Second-Class
Citizens and that God Has Left Women Backward

Since God has left women backward, you
must leave them backward, too. (al-

Tabarani)

If I were to command anyone to prostrate

anyone else, I would command women to
prostrate their husbands, for God has invest-

ed the latter with rights in respect to the for-

mer. (Nahj al-Fasahah, p. 119)

The hatred of women that has persisted for hundreds of years in
the fanatics' mentality has brought a great mass of people to slander

God and our Prophet (pbuh). Notice that there is no reference in
these false hadiths to women enjoying equal rights with men accord-
ing to the Qur'an, superiority lying not in gender, but in mind and
conscience and in fear of God; neither is there any mention of the
existence of Qur'anic verses in which the rights enjoyed by women
are protected.

These commandments and accounts are deliberately avoided,
and there is never any mention of women being entities who are glo-
rified in the Qur'an. Therefore, these words that have deceived Mus-

lims for hundreds of years, and alleged to be the words of our
Prophet (pbuh) himself, have led to a perverse mentality becoming
ascribed to Islam. In this way they have defamed Islam and our
Prophet (pbuh) for hundreds of years.

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