Woman Between Islam and Western Society
2. Woman in Society
~ 88 ~
experimentation with the old order of values,
sweeping away traditional moral precepts and
“restrictive” conventions. All of this was done
under the banners of “reason,” “empiricism,”
“logic,” “liberalism,” and so on, but, in actual fact,
the whole “liberation” movement has been
swamped in a welter of emotion, creating a number
of social problems.
UNNATURAL EQUALITY
Selected readings from the Qur’an were prepared
in English by the English Orientalist, Edward
William Lane, and were first published in London
in book form in 1843. In his foreword, Lane wrote
that “the fatal point in Islam was the degradation
of woman.” Since then this remark has been
regularly taken up
as a stick with which to beat
Islam. In fact, whenever Islamic affairs were
mentioned, it became such a common observation,
that not only the enemies of Islam, but also
relatively fair-minded writers such as the
historian, J.M. Roberts, who did justice to Islam in
pointing out its virtues, mentioned it as if it were
an established fact.
