The west misunderstands Muslims on many things, and the rights of women and their ill-treatment is one of them. It is a fact that in the recent past years the status of women in many parts of the Muslim world has not been very good, but if we look at the times of Islam as a whole and we compare the status of women before Islam and with the genesis of Islam, we get to the clarity of the things in a better way.
The west, the Arabs, and the whole world were in the dark before Islam. Scandinavians, Nordic people, Vikings, and all were butchering each other. The females of Vikings used to give birth to newborn babies on the battlefield, and all they knew was wars and bloodshed. The Arabs had a custom of looking down upon women, and burying newborn girls was a normal thing amongst Arabs. When Islam came, and as Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was in Medina, Arabia, he pointed out the heinous custom of burial of newborn baby girls and called it a curse. With Islam, the women of Arab society got elevated their status, their respect, their right to do business, their ranks, their honour, and everything.
Women of the entire world were treated as an object of sex and were looked upon as sex slaves but Islam gave them their rights and the honour of women was uplifted. It is the era of Islam under which the women of Arabia came out as great warriors, leaders, and businesswomen. The west was illuminated with the light of Islam very much after, but still, they were illuminated, and if they have had come out of the dark times, and dark ways of life, it is due to Islam.
If we look into the contemporary era, we come to find about the lives of Muslim women under radical groups such as ISIS and many others mostly in the Middle Eastern parts of the world and the western media does the propaganda of their ill-treatment due to Islam, while a sensible person can look into the matter objectively and can easily clear the fact that that ill-treatment is not in the ideology of Islam, but of course the interests and ideology of those radical groups out of whom many have been classified as Khawarijites by scholars of Islam.
Islam has always taught the respect, due freedom, and rights of women, and has given them respect with the relationship of a mother, sister, and wife.
AWISRA SARWAR & FAISAL KHAN
Islamabad
