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Islamic law introduced to raise women's status

Ontario sharia tribunals assailed

Letter, May 22, 2004

As Canadian Muslim women following the sharia, the recent accusations that we are being left to the "mercy of a fundamentalist religion" (Rosie DiManno, May 24) are offending — especially since we follow the Islamic law, secure with a perfect sense of equality between the sexes.

The sharia cannot be classified as "evil'' just because chauvinistic governments, with intent to raise their self-worth rather than strictly follow the sharia's injunctions, misuse it. Nor can the sharia laws be judged according to the opinions of some women unfortunate enough to have been mistreated under a dictatorship claiming to be Islamic. Beating or hurting one's wife is not permitted in Islam; only a slight tap that doesn't cause any pain with a miswaak (toothstick) is allowed; anything further is reprehensible.

In a time dubbed the "Age of Ignorance," when women in Arabia were little less than slaves to be gambled away and traded, property to be handed down through a line of sons or daughters buried alive because they were not male, Islam and its sharia came down and gave women the right to vote, own property and dispose of it as they desired. It gave them the right to reject or accept their suitors, more than a millennium before the first feeble cries of the suffrage movement started asking for these basic rights. After all, it is for a reason that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, and that most of its converts are women.

So, even if you don't believe in Islam, please show a little respect to the religion that raised the status of women from the position of "mindless possessions of men'' to their "twin halves" (Prophet Muhammad).

Khansa Muhaseen and Nabila Haque, Toronto