remove the specter of negative stereotyping that surrounds the existence of Muslim women in the West or to learn about the inner lives of Muslim women the world over.  The images that you see in print or on CNN are not even remotely reflective of the lives of Muslim women in general.  Media unfortunately has been responsible for presenting a garbled image of Muslim women, providing negative portrayals and sensationalist propaganda for the masses.  Let me assure you that books like Not without my Daughter by Betty Mahmoody do not portray the lives of a majority of Muslim women but are based on limited personal experience.

There is enormous plurality in the Muslim world and major differences in the traditions of African Arab, Asian, or European Muslims. Muslims live in almost 60 different countries of the world so they reflect a rich diverse cultural mosaic.  Like the differences in our language, food and clothing from one region to another, Muslim women are diverse. Stereotypical assumptions about us as women in black shrouds are as inaccurate as the assumption that all Canadian women are personified by the bikini-clad photos in the Toronto Sun newspaper.  

Dr. Laila al Maryati, President and spokesperson for the Muslim Women’s League in California, says that the Western press' obsession with Muslim women is not surprising, since the press in general, tends to view Muslims simplistically.  Headlines in the mainstream media have reduced Muslim female identity to an article of clothing--"the veil."  It’s rare to have a conversation about Muslim women without using the four letter word "veil".  Dr. Maryati explains that the word "veil" does not even have a universal meaning.  In some cultures, it refers to a face-covering known as niqab; in others, to a simple head scarf, known as hijab. Other manifestations of "the veil" include all-encompassing outer garments like the ankle-length abaya from the Persian Gulf states, the chador in Iran or the burka in Afghanistan.

Modern, successful Muslim women are routinely excluded from  mainstream media. It’s unfortunate that the achievements of many Muslim women today are buried under an avalanche of misinformation by media in projecting them as third class citizens or non-contributing members of society.   The media can’t seem to comprehend that a head covering doesn’t make anyone brain damaged and that majority of Muslim women aren’t FORCED to cover up.

Let me share with you a personal anecdote from my recent trip to Dubai in the Arabian Gulf.  What struck me first and foremost is that majority of the women in that part of the world are covered –they wear long loose clothes and cover their hair.  Of utmost significance is the fact that these women cover by choice and NOT by force. I also found them very confident, content and in some ways more liberated on a spiritual and intellectual level than you or I. They do everything we do here and more – they work outside their homes, they are educators, politicians, leaders and also sit in a tent by the beach in the evening and smoke a  flavored hubbly bubbly - something we can only dream off!

What this did was reiterate what I’ve always believed – that, despite numerous obstacles, Muslim women are active, assertive and engaged in society.  In Qatar, women make up the majority of graduate-school students. The Iranian parliament has more women members than the U.S. Senate and currently there is major discussion and debate taking place amongst the educated women of Iran.  According to a book called Islam and Gender, by Professor Ziba Mir Husseini, law professor at New York University, a paradox has occurred in Iran where women are questioning the clergy about their rights and are looking for venues to prove that the general message of the Koran is one of egalitarianism.  The book proves that many Muslim women in Iran are highly educated and professionally trained; they participate in public debates, are often catalysts for reform and champions for their own rights.  

Let me tell you about another set of Muslim women, closer to home. Virginia Woolf writes as a woman I have no country - as a woman my country is the whole world. This stands  true of the Muslim women who came as pioneers to Canada - a foreign and cold land -  in the early 1900's.  They came to support their families, many of them with no language abilities and some who had never seen snow.  But they went far north and weathered more than the winter.  When the men failed to build a mosque, it was a small group of women from these early settlers that petitioned for the first mosque to be created in Edmonton. They went door to door on Jasper avenue, convincing people to join in their campaign and in 1938 the first mosque in Canada, the Al Rashid mosque, was named.  In 1982, Dr. Lila Fahlman founded the first registered national Muslim women’s organization called The Canadian Council of Muslim Women, which has taken great strides in helping Muslim women assimilate into Canadian life. These women are fortunate that they were in Canada so they were able to follow their passions and achieve personal satisfaction whereas there are millions of Muslim women right now, who live in abject poverty and terror. These women are the forgotten legacy of the world. They are the mothers in Bosnia who watched their daughters being brutally raped; they are the daughters in Kashmir who see their entire family slaughtered; they are the wives and children in Iraq living with internal strife and external sanctions against medicine and daily amenities; they are the mothers of Palestine striving for peaceful co-existence and today they are  women of Afghanistan who are still struggling to liberate their land and their bodies. Since September 11, Muslims and especially Muslim women have been under a microscope.  Front and center have been Afghan women.  It’s an anomaly when Western feminists want to liberate Afghan woman by removing their burka (outer covering) which to them, has become a symbol of repression. The burka was never their major focus of concern. Their priorities are more basic, like feeding their children, becoming literate and living free from violence. Nevertheless, recent articles in the Western media suggest the burka means everything to Muslim women, because they routinely express bewilderment at the fact that all Afghan women didn't cast off their burkas when the Taliban were defeated.  

Dr. Riffat Hassan is professor of religious studies at the  University of Louisville and founder of The International Network of Rights for Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan.  A trail blazer in the field of women’s rights, she says  "God who speaks through the Qur'an, is characterized by justice, and it is stated with the utmost clarity in the Qur'an that God can never be guilty of unfairness or tyranny...hence the Qur'an as God’s word cannot be made the source of human injustice, and the injustice to which Muslim women have been subjected cannot be regarded as God-derived."

Constant exploitation of women in Islamic societies is not religious, but cultural.  This springs from ignorance of Qur'anic injunctions and blatant misinterpretation of Islamic commands and has been routinely ignored by the Muslim community at large. If we were to construct a society on the true basis of Islam, men and women would be equal in the sight of God. 

Judith Tucker's rewarding study of Islamic law in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Syria and Palestine titled "In the House of the Law,"  talks about a period when Muslim legal thinkers gave considerable attention to women's roles in society, and Tucker shows how fatwas, or legal opinions, greatly influenced these roles. She challenges prevailing views on Islam and gender, revealing Islamic law to have been more fluid and flexible than previously thought. In the book Tucker studies court records from Ottoman-Syria and concludes:  

1. The Shariah courts were available and popular with women
2. The courts took upon themselves the task of defending women's Islamic rights against the vagaries of custom. For example they would insist on her right to a share of the inheritance or her right to refuse a marriage proposal against her family's or communities desires.

3. obtaining a divorce was easy for women who could prove one of the following:

•  mental abuse

• sexual incompatibility

•  the mistreatment of her family

•  abandonment  for a year's time

These conditions are no longer applied in the modern shari'a family courts.

Ironically, discrimination and victimization of women began with colonization because western institutions would not allow women to open bank accounts without a male counter signature so their assets were frozen and they felt the deprivation of their rights.  Also, western ways of life and modes of modernity were not compatible with the Islamic system. Social, political and economic causes also added to the cause, but religion became the raison d'etre that men used to legitimize their crimes.  What is truly at fault is a misguided, narrow interpretation of Islam designed to serve a rigid patriarchal system.

Professor Amina Wadud, is currently Assistant Professor,  Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, has taught at Harvard University and is the author of a controversial book titled Quran and Woman.  Daughter of a Baptist preacher, Professor Wadud is an African American convert to Islam and explains that as a western woman, she would never have accepted a faith that is unfair to women.

Qur'an and Woman  is a unique look at the status of women in Islam - a more equal and just status.  For 14 centuries the Qur'an as the guiding book for Muslims, was interpreted solely by men.  Everything was filtered through male intellect - even women's issues.  So, for a long time, men have told Muslim women about being women.  This has led to western misconceptions about the roles and status of women in Islam, and also set a poor record of human rights abuse in many Muslim countries. 

Some Islamic practices have continuously troubled feminists, outside observers and Muslims.  Issues relating to Polygamy, inheritance, women's rights, unequal witnessing laws and other injunctions that seem to discriminate against women.   However, a new and deeper look at the verses in the Qur'an pertaining to these injunctions, the context in which they were revealed,  the spirit in which they were intended plus grammar and language variances, does much to clear up these doubts and misunderstandings.

One of the reasons Dr. Wadud sees acceptance of her variation in the interpretation of certain verses of the Qur'an, is that in the last two decades many issues have come up that were never imagined or addressed at the time of the revelation of Islam e.g. rape as a weapon in war.

Social and cultural traditions as well as economic circumstances are the cause of distortion and misinterpretation of the Qur'an which has hurt Muslim women a great deal.  Many female Muslim scholars like Dr. Hassan and Dr. Wadud have initiated groundbreaking steps towards setting the record straight and their work is referred to as Gender Jihad (Jihad being a struggle to 
overcome injustice).

Having discussed women in Islam from a political, social, economic and intellectual perspective, let me now touch upon the religious and spiritual perspective because it’s important to tie this in with the former.

The Qur'an says : "I shall not lose sight of the labor of any of you who labors in My way, be it man or woman; each of you is equal to the other (3:195)

Spiritual equality, responsibility and accountability for both men and women is a well-developed theme in the Qur'an. Spiritual equality between men and women in the sight of God is not limited to purely spiritual, religious issues, but is the basis for equality in all temporal aspects of human endeavor

The concept of gender equality is best exemplified in the Qur'anic rendition of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an states that both sexes were deliberate and independent and there is no mention of Eve being created out of Adam's rib.  

Having discussed women in Islam from a political, social, economic and intellectual perspective, let me now touch upon the religious and spiritual perspective because it’s important to tie this in with the former.  

The Qur'an says : "I shall not lose sight of the labor of any of you who labors in My way, be it man or woman; each of you is equal to the other (3:195)

Spiritual equality, responsibility and accountability for both men and women is a well-developed theme in the Qur'an. Spiritual equality between men and women in the sight of God is not limited to purely spiritual, religious issues, but is the basis for equality in all temporal aspects of human endeavor

The concept of gender equality is best exemplified in the Qur'anic rendition of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an states that both sexes were deliberate and independent and there is no mention of Eve being created out of Adam's rib.  

Having discussed women in Islam from a political, social, economic and intellectual perspective, let me now touch upon the religious and spiritual perspective because it’s important to tie this in with the former.

The Qur'an says : "I shall not lose sight of the labor of any of you who labors in My way, be it man or woman; each of you is equal to the other (3:195)

Spiritual equality, responsibility and accountability for both men and women is a well-developed theme in the Qur'an. Spiritual equality between men and women in the sight of God is not limited to purely spiritual, religious issues, but is the basis for equality in all temporal aspects of human endeavor

The concept of gender equality is best exemplified in the Qur'anic rendition of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an states that both sexes were deliberate and independent and there is no mention of Eve being created out of Adam's rib.  

The Prophet of Islam, remained concerned all his life about the status and treatment of women, because at the time of the revelation of the message of Islam, women were buried alive, treated as chattels and at one point considered to be inhuman without a soul.  In his last sermon, the Prophet clearly asked men to treat women with kindness because due to economic conditions, men were responsible for the well being of their women.  The Qur'an says in 2:228: “and they (women) have rights similar to those of men over them...treat them in a just manner.”

Let me tell you about some early Muslim women who have become role models for us.  The Prophet’s first wife, Khadijah was a successful business woman who was  22 years older than the Prophet and sent a proposal of marriage to him. His second wife, Lady Ayesha actually led a war and rode into combat on a camel. It has been  narrated that when the Prophet’s daughter Fatema entered the room, the Prophet stood up in respect.  Fatema was a mesmerizing public speaker and her sermons have been recorded.  Also noteworthy is Rabia of Basra – the first mystic of Islam.

In the present time, given the opportunity, Muslim women, like women everywhere, will become educated, pursue careers, strive to do what is best for their families and contribute positively according to their abilities. How they dress is irrelevant. It should be obvious that the critical element Muslim women need is freedom, especially the freedom to make choices that enable them to be independent agents of positive change. Choosing to dress modestly, including wearing a head scarf, should be as respected as choosing not to cover.

With regards to what the final solution must be and what needs to be done in areas of helping Muslim women, especially in Afghanistan, I’ll quote from a paper written by Dr. Layla al Mariati. She says: Traditional Muslim populations will be more receptive to change that is based on Islamic principles of justice, as expressed in the Qur'an, than they will be to change that abandons religion altogether or confines it to private life. Muslim scholars and leaders who emphasize Islamic principles that support women's rights to education, health care, marriage and divorce, equal pay for equal work and participation in public life could fill the vacuum now occupied by those who impose a vision of Islam that infringes on the rights of women.

The worth of a woman--any woman--should not be determined by the length of her skirt, or the covering on her head: but by her wisdom,  spirituality and the dedication, knowledge and skills she brings to the task at hand. Because our strength lies not in our way of adornment, but deep in our ruh, our soul - which for the interest of feminists, has no gender.