Women's Rights in Islam and Feminism

Feminism emerged in the beginning of the seventeenth century as a movement to vindicate the women's rights. However, instead of defending the women's real rights, misused them as a means and had ungracious presuppositions like belittling the essence of women’s characters, believing in women's manhood, eliminating men from the society and transferring their affairs to women which all revealed a state of radical feminism that has threatened the women’s community. This study is to examine the abovementioned viewpoints and determine their possible weaknesses. In addition, it reviews the status of women and their real rights in religion in order to present the dominant situations in a large part of our rural and urban areas with an inappropriate culture of gender discrimination exerting the men’s dominance and treating women with a lot of authority and dominance. Meanwhile, many of the women’s legal and absolute rights are neglected.Demonstrating innumerable injustices against the religion and creating an improper image of women’s restrictions in religion have aroused serious doubts as to their legal laws or injunctions, including inheritance, legal custody, testimony, blood-money, and etc. This study sets out to briefly examine the aforementioned rights so that the Muslim women can precisely figure out the philosophy of these rights, regarding their spiritual rights to achieve their relief and respects, and maintain their dignity. More importantly, they can emancipate from the wrongdoers’ carnal desires and feministic thoughts.