Muhammad Was A Feminist

Discussion in 'Women's Rights' started by Space_Time, Oct 29, 2016.

  1. Space_Time

    Space_Time Well-Known Member

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    Was he really?. If that's the case how come the state of women's rights in the Islamic world is so bad? Is the author giving us the whole story?

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-garrison/muhammad-was-a-feminist_b_12638112.html

    THE BLOG
    Muhammad Was A Feminist
    10/28/2016 05:42 pm ET

    Jim Garrison
    Founder and President, Ubiquity University

    WITOON MITARNUN VIA GETTY IMAGES
    The prophet Muhammad would be appalled by how current Islamic Fundamentalists are treating women under their control. This suppression is done in the name of Islamic Law, known as Sharia. But the current suppression of women is shaped by cultural and history. It has little basis in the Quran and it is certainly not consistent with anything we know about what Muhammad taught or how he treated women. Of all the founders of the great religions - Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Islam and Judaism — Muhammad was easily the most radical and empowering in his treatment of women. Arguably he was history’s first feminist.

    This is of critical importance because if there is one single thing that Arabs and Muslims could do to reform and re-vitalize their crisis ridden cultures, it would be to liberate their women and provide them with the full rights women are enjoying in more and more countries around the world. Women’s equality is key to a real Arab Spring.

    Among the founders of the great religions, Confucius barely mentioned women at all and assumed in all his teachings that they we subordinate to men within a patriarchal order. Buddha taught that women could become enlightened but had to be pressured three times before allowing women to become nuns, and then only on the condition, as he put it, that the highest nun would be lower than the lowest monk. In the Gospel accounts, Jesus did not explicitly comment on the status of women, although he did associate with women of ill repute and with non Jewish women. Moses was thoroughly patriarchal and there is virtually nothing in the Torah that indicates specific concern about women’s rights.

    Muhammad was fundamentally different. He both explicitly taught the radical equality of women and men as a fundamental tenet of true spirituality, and he took numerous concrete measures to profoundly improve the status and role of women in Arabia during his own lifetime. Muhammad was sensitized to the plight of women because he was born poor and orphaned at a very early age. He was also illiterate. He knew as few did what poverty and social exclusion meant.

    Confucius was born into the gentry scholar class of ancient China. Buddha was born a wealthy prince in Nepal. Jesus was born the son of a carpenter with royal lineage and within a tightly knit Jewish community in Palestine. Moses was born into a Hebrew family and raised in the palace of the Pharaoh of Egypt. Muhammad had none of these advantages. Thus while other religious leaders seemed strangely silent about the oppression of women, Muhammad dramatically raised the status of women as a matter of religious conviction and state policy. Consider the following:

    During seventh century Arabia, female infanticide was commonplace. Muhammad abolished it. A saying in the Hadith (the collection of sayings of Muhammad) records that Muhammad said that the birth of a girl was a “blessing.” Women in Arabia at that time were essentially considered property and had absolutely no civil rights. Muhammad gave them the right to own property and they were extended very important marital and inheritance rights.

    Prior to Muhammad, the dowry paid by a man for his bride was given to her father as part of the contract between the two men. Women had no say in the matter. Muhammad declared that women needed to assent to the marriage and that the dowry should go to the bride, not the father; furthermore, she could keep the dowry even after marriage. The wife did not have to use the dowry for family expenses. That was the responsibility of the man. Women were also given the right to divorce their husbands, something unprecedented at that time. In a divorce, the woman was empowered to take the dowry with her.

    Women were extended inheritance rights as well. They were only given half as much as their brothers because the men had more financial responsibilities for family expenses, but with Muhammad, women became inheritors of property and family assets for the first time in Arabia. At the time, this was considered revolutionary.

    Muhammad himself was often seen doing “women’s work” around the house and was very attentive to his family. His first marriage to Khadija was monogamous for the entire 15 years they were married, something rare in Arabia at that time. By all accounts, they were deeply in love and Khadija in fact was the first convert to Islam. She encouraged Muhammad from his very first encounter with the angel Gabriel and the recitation of the first suras that were to become the Quran.

    After Khadija’s death, Muhammad married 12 wives. One was Aisha, the daughter of his closest friend and ally Abu Baker. The rest were nearly all widows, divorced women, or captives. He preached consistently that it was the responsibility of men to protect those women who had met with misfortune. This was one of the reasons polygamy was encouraged. Even with female infanticide, women in seventh century Arabia far outnumbered men because so many men were killed in the inter-tribal warfare of the day. Several of Muhammad’s wives were poor and destitute and he took them in, along with their children, into his household.

    In his Farewell Sermon delivered shortly before he died in 632, Muhammad said to the men, “You have certain rights over women but they have certain rights over you.” Women, he said, are your “partners and helpers.” In one of the sayings of the Hadith, Muhammad says, “The best men are those who are best to their wives.”

    His wife Aisha took a leadership role after his death in bringing together the Hadith and another wife played a leading role in gathering together the suras that comprise the Quran. Each of the 114 suras that comprise the Quran with the exception of sura 9 begin with the words Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim. Translated most commonly as “In the Name of God, all compassionate, all merciful,” the deeper meaning of this phrase is “In the Name of the One who births compassion and mercy from the womb.” This invocation of the feminine aspect of Allah is key to an Islamic Renaissance.

    Finally, there is nothing in the Quran about women wearing the veil, the Hejab. That was certainly the custom in Arabia at that time and Muhammad’s wives wore the Hejab to designate their special status as “Mothers of the Believers,” but the only thing the Quran says directly is that women should dress “modestly.” Muhammad said the same thing to men. For him, modesty of dress was expressive of modesty of the heart. Muhammad himself, even when he was supreme leader, never wore anything more than simple white woolen attire.

    So radical were Muhammad’s reforms that the status of women in Arabia and early Islam was higher than any other society in the world at that time. Women in 7th century Arabia had rights not extended to most women in the West till recent centuries over 1,000 years later. The fact that women have ended up in such a degraded position in many contemporary Arab/Muslim counties is a tragedy and needs to be rectified if the Islamic culture and civilization is to flourish again as it did during the Abbasid Caliphate from the 8th - 13th centuries when Islamic civilization was a shining light to the world. Liberating women would have profound effects politically, economically, culturally, artistically, and religiously. It would take the Arab Spring to a whole new level, which is what is so desperately needed in those countries that suffered the first Arab Spring as a stillbirth.

    It is time for Islam to liberate women fully and do so upon the example of Muhammad and the authority of the Quran that holds compassion and mercy as the first and foremost attributes of Allah.

    Written with Banafsheh Sayyad, author, Dance of Oneness
     
  2. Maccabee

    Maccabee Well-Known Member

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    Muhammad a feminist. BUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
     
  3. Brewskier

    Brewskier Well-Known Member

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    He treated his 6 year old wife with the utmost respect. He waited 3 long years before deflowering her! What a swell guy!

    Isn't it telling how an Islamic apologist would appeal to the left-wing with this article, though? Wouldn't they already have a good opinion of Islam, anyway? He's preaching to the choir.
     
  4. Windigo

    Windigo Banned

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    Well thats a load of crap.
     
  5. YouLie

    YouLie Well-Known Member

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    The first witness of the resurrected Christ was a woman. A woman's testimony would've been worth squat then.

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    Jesus stopped the crowd from stoning the woman saying, "He that is without sin..."
     
  6. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Its absolutely true.........

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    Its true.. They had the right to buy and sell, write their marriage contracts, inherit, divorce.. It just that the West is so ignorant about Islam.

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    Read the Koran for yourself.. You are simply dead wrong.
     
  7. YouLie

    YouLie Well-Known Member

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    Mary is the only woman in the Quran mentioned by name.
     
  8. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    If muslim women were concerned about being treated better they would kill the men who oppress them.

    The Bible has a lot of stories about men oppressing women. Only one woman in the Bible had the guts to kill her oppressor.

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    The age of consent was 7 in the US in 1895. Before that there was no minimum.
     
  9. YouLie

    YouLie Well-Known Member

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    I want to see your proof the age of consent was 7 in the U.S.
     
  10. Brewskier

    Brewskier Well-Known Member

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    http://www.answering-islam.org/Silas/childbrides.htm

    I'll let people decide for themselves if this information is more persuasive than your unsubstantiated say-so and denial.

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    Muhammad is supposed to be the perfect model of human behavior.

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    Isn't it funny how these religion hating left-wingers never let an opportunity go by to defend Islam and Muslims from any and all criticism?

    "Yes Muhammad raped a 9 year old but let me change the topic to something else!"
     
  11. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    Bukhari lived in Persia 200 years after the death of Muhammed.. The fact is that Aisha was born before the Call and would have been 17 yrs old a a minimum......................
     
  12. Brewskier

    Brewskier Well-Known Member

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    Again, I'll let people decide for themselves how persuasive your unsubstantiated say-so is. I have my own opinion of it.
     
  13. YouLie

    YouLie Well-Known Member

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    He thought so much of women he wouldn't name a single one, except Mary.
     
  14. Maccabee

    Maccabee Well-Known Member

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    BUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh wait, you're actually serious. BUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

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    Oh please prove it.

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    Quote it for us.
     
  15. GeddonM3

    GeddonM3 Well-Known Member

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    If Mohammed was a feminist then Hitler was a really a civil rights activist.
     
  16. Margot2

    Margot2 Banned

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    I have posted links to the historical proofs maybe 40 times. You didn't read it then and you wouldn't read it now.. The idea of Aisha being a little girl is too titillating for you.
     
  17. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    As late as 1895 the age of consent was 7 years in the US, specifically in the State of Delaware. http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230?section=primarysources&source=24 You can find your own link if you don't like this one. There's a ton of them. Before they raised the age to 7 there was no minimum, especially during slavery. The brothels were full of ten year old hookers.

    BTW, Delaware was the first State in the United States.

    So every time people start flapping their jaws about Mohammed banging a 6-9 year old Arabian girl in the 7th Century they should remember what was going on in America in the 19th Century with their own immediate ancestors.
     
  18. Jonsa

    Jonsa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The status of women in Islam is a classic example of how tribal customs can corrupt the original intent of any scriptural admonition. Fact is 7th century arabia was a warrior dominated tribal culture and Ol' mo was kinda radical in his attitudes towards women's rights, so it didn't take much longer than a generation or two after his death for the letter and the reality to bifurcate.
     
  19. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    What about where the Koran green-lights wife beating if the husband suspects disobedience, polygamy, or where women are allowed to be taken as sex slaves (v33:50)?
     
  20. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    Is there a valid equivalency between a nation-state and founder of a religion, or is this some sort of brainless what-aboutery that doesn't even apply to those outside the US?
     
  21. TCassa89

    TCassa89 Well-Known Member

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    for the 7th century probably, for the year 2016 definitely not
     
  22. CJtheModerate

    CJtheModerate New Member

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    The pagans in Rome beat him to that by about 240 years.

    I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that was the case, but I'm still curious as to how they know that. I don't think the pre-Islamic Arabs left very many records.

    Where does it say that in the Qu'ran. All of the verses I've seen talk about a man divorcing his wife, not the other way around.

    Unless she did not have sex with her husband prior to the divorce, in which case she was only entitled to half of it.

    Muhammad's first wife, Khadija, was a wealthy merchant. If pre-Islamic women really were as oppressed as Muslims say they were, how did Khadija acquire so much wealth?

    Qur'an 24:31: "And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of] their headcovers over their chests and not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands' fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers, their brothers' sons, their sisters' sons, their women, that which their right hands possess, or those male attendants having no physical desire, or children who are not yet aware of the private aspects of women. And let them not stamp their feet to make known what they conceal of their adornment. And turn to Allah in repentance, all of you, O believers, that you might succeed."

    That doesn't change the fact that Muslims consider his hadith to be authentic.

    Islam was founded in 610, and Muhammad married Aisha in 618. I'm not the best at math, but I don't think 18-10=17.
     
  23. Wrathful_Buddha

    Wrathful_Buddha Well-Known Member

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    When I saw the title of this thread I thought for sure you must be talking about Muhammed Ali or something.
     
  24. YouLie

    YouLie Well-Known Member

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    The source, cited over and over wherever you can find this BS about adults having sex with children in the U.S., is from a "must read" author for "any aspiring gay and lesbian scholar."

    There is no original source document, only a table the author created, from what only God knows.

    You're seriously misunderstanding the nature and purpose of age of consent laws. They came about to protect girls from rape, not to sanction adults having sex with children. If there was any evidence people were raping kids, the history revisionists would've long ago discovered it, and it'd be as famous as Jefferson's slave mistress. Instead you have a book written by an obviously homo guy trying to justify sex with kids.

    Just because girls were betrothed doesn't mean they were having sex. They weren't usually married until they could reproduce.
     
  25. juanvaldez

    juanvaldez Banned

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    Muhammad was a pedophile.
     

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