Had Islam gauged woman to be a complete human being...

Had Islam gauged woman to be a complete human being, it would not have provided for polygyny, it would not have given the right of divorce to man, it would not have made the witnessing of two women equivalent to that of one man, it would not have given leadership of the family to the husband, it would not have made a woman’s inheritance one half of the inheritance of a man, it would not have countenanced that a woman be ‘priced’ in the name of a dowry, it would not have provided for her economic and social independence, and it would not have made her a ‘pensioner’ of man who is obliged to ‘keep’ her.

From the aforesaid thing, they say, it is inferred that Islam has humiliating views about woman, and has taken her to be just a means to procreating more people, and a necessary prerequisite for that. They add that although Islam is a religion of equality and has maintained real equality in other situations, in the case of woman and man it did not observe it. They say that Islam has provided discriminative and preferential rights for men.

If it did not have in view discriminative and preferential rights for men, it would not have ordained the above laws. If we resolve the argument of these gentlemen into an Aristotelean logical pattern, it would have the following form: If Islam had considered woman a complete human being it would have ordained equal and similar rights for her, but it has not ordained equal and similar rights for her. Therefore it does not consider a woman a complete human being.

Equality or identicalness The basis point which is used in these arguments is that the necessary result of men and women’s sharing in human dignity and honor is that their rights should be the same and the identical. Now, the thing on which, philosophically speaking, we should put our finger is to determine exactly what is the necessary result of man and woman’s sharing in human dignity.

Is the necessary conclusion that each of them should have rights equivalent to the other, so that there should be no privilege or preference in favour of either of them, or is it necessary that the rights of man and woman, besides having equivalence and parity, should also be exactly the same, and that there should be no division what so ever of work and duty.

No doubt the sharing of man and woman in human dignity and their equality as human beings demands their having equal human rights, but how can there be identicalness of rights?