Woman Between Islam and Western Society
2. Woman in Society
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an adversely superstitious manner. Woman was
regarded as the inferior sex and, therefore,
deserving of degrading treatment by men.
Modern western civilization has hardly produced a
better result in ostensibly exalting the status of
women. It may have pronounced men and women
equal in every respect and decreed that all work
that can be done by a man can be done by a woman
too: it may have encouraged women to come out of
their homes and try to find a position equal to a
man’s in every department of life (hence the slogan,
“Don’t make coffee, make policy”); but, in practice,
this concept of equality has done more to degrade
women than any traditional view could have done.
The next chapter deals with this topic in detail.
What is the reason then for this state of affairs? The
reason, to put it briefly, is the erroneous concept of
absolute equality in western countries. For example,
equality between men is held to be an indisputable
fact. But if this equality between men is taken to
mean that in every field every man can compete
with every other man, the upholder of such an
unnatural concept should be able to take an Einstein
