Patriarchal prejudice prevents womens rise in Muslim society
Muslim men and women have equal rights to contract marriage as well as to dissolve it based on the precondition of a mutual agreement, which was a concept ahead of its day where contracts were rigorously used as partnership documents.
However, women's rights activist Zaitun Mohamed Kasim said that women today are not even told about this.
"It baffles us that instead of informing and empowering women, some religious personalities will instead 'teach' the husbands how to contract polygamy instead.
"Although equality and mutual consultation are repeatedly found in the Koran again and again we are fed the doctrine that men are more superior and always heading households," she said in her paper entitled "Roles of Muslim women in the family and society: rights and responsibilities".
Zaitun, representing Sisters in Islam, a group of Muslim women professionals promoting women's rights within the framework of Islam, believed the Koran addressed men and women explicitly without discriminating either.
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