Page 103 - Mary: An Exemplary Muslim Woman

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is wrong is to encourage women to spend their lives within these bound-
aries and thereby limit their ideals. All human beings will be either re-

warded or punished on the Day of Judgment according to their efforts,
or lack thereof, to win Allah's good pleasure.
Unbelieving women have one fundamental character flaw: their de-
sire to enjoy only the pleasures of this world and to live accordingly, be-
cause everything they have (e.g., prestige, status, friends, family, or chil-
dren) are all destined to disappear. The only thing that remains forever
is Allah. Therefore, people should choose their personality, morals,

lifestyle, ideals, and everything else in order to win His good pleasure.
Otherwise, people will find themselves imprisoned in their own little
lives and in their own little worlds, and then meet with eternal suffering
and regret in the Hereafter.
No doubt, many women are dissatisfied with their place in society
and thus continue to question and escape the ideal woman tradition. They
often achieve visible success in their chosen fields and point out the
wrongness of their soceity's stereotypical views of women. But because
they continue to live by their unbelieving society's values and do not

adopt the character that would win them Allah's good pleasure, they fail
to get what they truly seek: true respect and their society's trust. Even if
they seem to have realized their goals, they remain unhappy and dis-
contented because they know that they have not truly and permanently
achieved them.
People who blindly adopt their society's stereotypes have some ex-
cuses for their behavior. First of all, they believe that these social creeds

prevent women from discarding the character type envisaged for them.
They fear that society will criticize or accuse them, or even make them
outcasts. Therefore, they prefer to live according to their unbelieving so-

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar)