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Saturday, February 4, 2012

Gender roles in Islam

The Quran expresses two main views on the role of wome. It states that women are not equal to men in terms of  inheritance, but men and women before God are equal in terms of their religious duties ( i.e. belief in God and his messenger, praying, fasting, paying zakat (charity), making hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah/Median) and places them "under" the care of men (i.e. men are life, but not identical. Surah An-Nisa' 4:1 states that men and women are created from single soul (nafs wahidah). One person does not come before the other, one is not superior to the other, and one is not the derivative of the other. A woman is not created for the purpose of a man. Rather, they are both created for mutual benefit of each other.

Also, in the Quran it's indicated that all of mankind is made from a single soul. Also, they were equal in destiny when they were ordered by God not to eat from the forbidden tree, which resulted in their exile from heaven because of the temptations of the devil "Satan", not by the temptation of EVE.