🚀 go-pugleaf

Jonathon Williams, The Morning News, 4/18/03
http://www.nwaonline.net/283702058639901.bsp

FAYETTEVILLE -- The religion of Islam granted social and property rights to 
women centuries before non-Islamic Western nations and is undeserving of 
its stereotype as the world religion least friendly to women, speakers at 
the University of Arkansas said Thursday.

Aicha Elshabini, a Muslim and the chair of the department of electrical 
engineering at the university, said women who are oppressed in some Islamic 
nations suffer because of politics or culture, not because of religion.

"Islam acknowledges women as equal partners to men in fulfilling God's 
mission for us on this Earth," she said.

Elshabini spoke with two other Muslim women as part of a panel discussion 
about Women in Islam in the Arkansas Union. The discussion was sponsored by 
Al-Islam, a student organization founded after the terrorist attacks of 
Sept. 11, 2001, to foster peace among different religions and cultures.

The increased American interest in the Middle East has flooded people with 
media reports about the repression of women in Islamic nations, symbolized 
by the image of women wearing the traditional Muslim veil, speakers said.

Salma Ghania, a Muslim from Philadelphia, said she is "shocked and 
outraged" to see reports of how women are treated in some Islamic nations, 
but that oppression is not from the teachings of the Koran or the Islamic 
prophet Mohammed, she said.

Islamic scriptures allowed women to inherit property and choose and divorce 
husbands centuries before Western nations, she said. Men are instructed 
repeatedly throughout Islamic holy texts to respect and honor their 
mothers, daughters and wives, she said.