Woman in Islamic Shari‘ah
Foreword
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continues to be made that Islam has ‘degraded’
woman. For instance, the Indian freedom fighter,
S.M. Joshi, who was interviewed in connection with
a government-sponsored scheme to record the
voices of freedom fighters for posterity, stated that
“the Shariat of the Muslims and the Manusmruti of
the Hindus — followed by both Communities for
centuries — were equally socially reactionary.”
3
Such remarks are made so indiscriminately and so
frequently that it is high time we concerned
ourselves less with our own sense of injury and
more with the possible root causes. The main reason
is that the results of research on the differences
between man and woman have remained only an
academic finding and have not yet formed the basis
of a popular intellectual revolution. The social
penetration of these ideas will have to take place in
the same way as monotheism replaced polytheism,
that is, through the kind of intellectual revolution
set in motion by the Prophet Muhammad and his
Companions with the special succour of God.
Such an intellectual revolution in our own times is
certainly not far-fetched, since modern science has
