Chowrangi

Equality is a slick and catchy slogan. But what does equality actually mean?

If men and women are equal, then a woman can do anything a man can do and vice versa. You can substitute one for the other everywhere. Thus a woman can be a truck driver, a coal miner, a prison guard etc. Similarly a man can become Mr. Mom, replacing the mother in taking care of the children.

Anyone who knows the biological and psychological differences between men and women will know the question is absurd. Yet this is precisely the direction that the so called gender equality campaign has blindly taken. It aims at replacing the complementary relationship between men and women with a competitive one. The result can only be a social upheaval of unprecedented scale.

Some people in the societies that for centuries refused to consider women as human beings or to give them any rights have gone to one extreme from the other. Islam has nothing to do with such nonsense. When women had no rights in the world, it declared: “And women shall have rights, similar to the rights against them, according to what is equitable.” [Al-Baqarah 2:228]. That remains its command today and forever. Similar rights, not same rights.

Both men and women are equal in their humanity, in their accountability before Allah, in their responsibility to perform their assigned tasks and be judged based on their performance. But their assigned tasks are not the same. They have been given different capabilities by the Creator and the tasks based on those capabilities. This differentiation is not an error that needs to be corrected. It is the only basis for building a healthy and prosperous society.

Islam liberates a woman from the modern tyranny of having to become a man in order to get a sense of self worth and achievement.

Other posts by Mohammad Yusha

• Haunted - October 2nd, 2008
• Demons, Ghosts and Spirits - October 2nd, 2008
• Fajr Prayer - September 30th, 2008
• Power of the soul to destroy Black Magic - September 30th, 2008
• Wazeefas - September 29th, 2008
• How Sifli Amal is done and dangers associated with it - September 29th, 2008
• Magic using personal information - September 27th, 2008
• Spend on your wife and kids - September 17th, 2008
• Fathers with a dictatorial personality - September 17th, 2008
• The Custom of Joint Families - September 17th, 2008