Revolution the World Forgot:
How Islam Saved Women
Woman: Root of All Evil?
Time was, in the Sixth Century AD, when women everywhere were male property and plaything.
Kings and commoners alike despised and abused women in every way they could.
Religion and religious leaders often treated women worse. They denied women were even people or they had a soul.
They went about saying it was woman who got man kicked out of Paradise, where God Almighty had put both man and woman when he first created them.
They called woman Gateway to Hell.
They called woman the Instrument of the Devil.
Religion and religious leaders more or less blamed woman for all of man’s troubles on earth.
And there were those in this world who did something about it.
They acted upon their beliefs.
They acted on their belief that women were not only inferior to men, but they were a mark of shame and humiliation for men.
So they decided to kill women.
It was a crowning moment in male misogyny. Like no other.
It was one of the darkest chapters of shame and ignominy in human history.
Burying Their Own Daughters Alive
Pre-Islamic Arabs, being the kind of action-prone people that they were, led the others in this barbaric behavior.
They took their innocent little daughters and buried them alive beneath the blistering sands of Arabia.
No one anywhere said a word. No one anywhere launched a protest movement.
No one anywhere did anything to stop this barbarism from happening.
Religious leaders everywhere watched in silence.
They all looked the other way.
They said not a word when these lovely little girls were so brutally and barbarically murdered – buried alive – by their own fathers.
Islam and Qur’an to the Rescue
And then came Islam, the great message of hope for humanity.
And Islam came bearing the gift of Qur’an, the divine manifesto for human liberation on earth.
And Islam and the Qur’an were ushered into this world by Prophet Muhammad,Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, the great liberator of the world – and in particular the liberator of women.
Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, not only preached and taught Islam and the Qur’an to the world, he also practiced and modeled them in his own life.
And he also persuaded some of the most wonderful and sensible people in the same Barbaric Arab society to accept Islam and embrace the Qur’an and to follow him.
And he did so using nothing but the gentlest and the most beautiful of means and methods to convince them. And to persuade them that what they did to their little girls was wrong and shameful.
And that it was immoral and indecent and cruel and inhuman to kill them.
He taught them that they, as fathers, should protect their little girls, not kill them.
He made them see that God gave them little girls to cherish and to honor, and to nurture and to educate.
God did not give little girls to them so their own fathers will murder them and bury them alive.
A Society Built on the Bedrock of Female Liberation
And Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, built a whole society based on this new culture of life and liberty.
He thus ushered in a new era of liberation and emancipation in the world.
Not just for men, but also for women.
And especially for little girls whose own fathers took them into the deserts of Arabia and buried them alive.
Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, thus, created a most powerful social revolution in the world.
He set women free from the bondage kings, commoners and religious leaders had imposed upon them.
And he saved little girls from being buried alive by their own parents.
Wa idhal mau-oodatu su-ilat, thundered the Qur’an, meaning: “And then on that day when the little girl who had been buried alive in this world will be resurrected by God and asked.”
And the Qur’an demanded: Bi-ayyi dhanbin qutilat, meaning: “She will be asked, for what sin or fault of hers was she so brutally killed?”
Glorifying the Killing of Kids
And then the Qur’an declared: “Their friends and associates made the killing of their own children appear like a beautiful and glorified act in the eyes of many of the Mushriks.”
Wa kadhaalika zayyana likatheerim minal mushrikeena qatla aulaadihim shurakaa-uhum, is how the Qur’an puts it.
Paraphrase: “And so also, their partners and associates beautified and glorified in the eyes of the Mushriks the killing of their own children.”
The Qur’an uses the expression Mushrik to refer to those who claim to believe in God but who divide up their real loves and loyalties among all kinds of others.
And You Thought You Invented Ultrasound
And then how amazingly the Qur’an is ahead of all the modern sciences and trends in nailing human perversities as they relate to the killing of their kids!
And that includes Ultrasound techniques that give parents advance notice of the likely gender of their child.
The Qur’an says: Wa idhaa bushshira ahaduhum bil unthaa, zwalla wajhuhoo muswaddanw wahuwa kazweem.
Paraphrase: “When one of them is told that he is the father of a female child, his face darkens and he seethes with inward rage and grief.”
Yatawaaraw minal qawmi min soo-i maa bushshira bihi, a-yumsikuhoo alaa hownin am yadussuhoo fitturaab.
Paraphrase: “He tries to hide from his people on account of the terrible news that reached him. He is conflicted and confused whether he should keep this female child or bury it in dust.”
Those of you today, who use Ultrasound to kill females, eat your heart out. There were people like you in this world before the world even learned to read and write.
And the Qur’an was on to them.
And the Qur’an and Islam and Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, changed and reformed these brute men and turned them into guardians of life and liberty and of women’s honor and dignity throughout the world.
A Most Glorious Social Revolution
What a glorious social revolution this was that Islam, the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, bestowed upon the world: in the beginning of the Seventh Century.
Those words of the Qur’an still live today.
Today, the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, are household names.
And their message of female liberation has saturated the world, even though no one gives Islam or Muslims or the Qur’an or Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, any credit for that most glorious of all human revolutions.
And today, there are no less than a billion and half of people in the world who call themselves Muslims.
And yet, today, even as we write this column, middle of November, 2011, millions upon millions of little girls are murdered by their parents before they are even born.
Stop the Violence against Women
Female infanticide and feticide have reached epidemic proportions in both China and India. Parents ultrasound their pregnancies and abort them if results show a female child in the making,
And yet, as this Barbarism is practiced in broad daylight, the world watches in silence.
Cruel, culpable, criminal, complicitous silence!
It is time for Muslims to act to stop this violence against women – One More Time!
The way Muslims did it in the beginning of the Seventh Century.
It is time for the world to launch a comprehensive movement to stop the killing of female infants and fetuses wherever that occurs, whether it is in India, China or somewhere else.
It is time to reintroduce the world to the social revolution of female liberation that Islam, the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, unleashed upon our world 1400 years ago.
END
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