UNNATURAL EQUALITY
Selected readings from the Quran were prepared in English by the English orientalist Edward William Lane and were first published in book form in London in 1843. In his foreword, Lane wrote that “the fatal point in Islam was the degradation of woman.” Since then, this remark has been regularly taken up as a stick with which to beat Islam. Whenever Islamic affairs were mentioned, it became such a common observation that not only the enemies of Islam but also relatively just writers such as the historian J .M. Roberts, who did justice to Islam in pointing out its virtues, mentioned it as if it were an established fact.
This allegation is entirely baseless, and the facts are quite the reverse. Islam has, in actual fact, raised the status of women. If the truth were told, women’s degradation has come about at the hands of two major civilizations, one ancient and polytheistic, the other modern and atheistic. The former has been culpable in theory and practice, while the latter has been so in practice despite its theorizing to the contrary.
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 a man can do 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 her than any traditional view could have done.
What is the reason, then, for this state of affairs? The reason, to put it briefly, is the erroneous concept of sexual equality held in Western countries. Even the equality that allegedly exists between men, which we tend to take for granted, needs careful examination. Let us suppose that equality truly exists between one man and another. We should then be able to take an Einstein, put him in the boxing ring with the world heavyweight champion, and expect him to last at least for several rounds. We should also expect the boxer to be able to hold his own while presiding over international scientific conferences. This may seem laughable, but that is what absolute equality would mean. Obviously, there are degrees of equality and different varieties of equality, just as there are degrees and kinds of excellence. When we want an accurate picture of equality, we have to think in terms of status and not the workplace. Equality does not mean that the president should be interchangeable with the dustman. Instead, it means that every man should be looked upon with the same respect and should be able to expect the same treatment, legally and morally.
The error into which the West has so lamentably fallen is its attempt to establish an unnatural equality of the workplace for men and women. The result is as might have been expected: the greatest inequality in human history has developed between men and women. If men and women are of two different sexes, they were created to serve separate purposes and roles. Place them then in their respective fields, and they will be equally successful in various ways. But if they are placed in the same field, neither men nor women can make the best use of their creative faculties and general abilities. In such a situation, the women will inevitably find themselves forced into inferior positions.
