Status of Women in Islam

In many societies, a woman is still regarded as a second-class citizen 
and deprived of various basic rights enjoyed by the male population. 
Deeply resenting this discrimination, they have championed a fight to 
obtain for themselves an equal status which unfortunately to date 
eludes them in the more modern Western states. Whereas the 
pendulum has swung to the extremes and has opened the way to 
licentiousness in the modern society, the West has often regarded 
Islamic women as being backward in a male-dominated world. 
On the contrary, Islam was the first religion formally to grant the 
women a status never known before. The Holy Quran, the sacred 
scripture of Islam, contains hundreds of teachings, which apply both 
to men and women alike. The moral, spiritual and economic equality 
of men and women as propagated by Islam is unquestionable. The 
specific verses of the Holy Quran, which address themselves to men or 
women, deal with either their physical differences or the role they each 
have to play in safeguarding the moral fibre of the society Islam 
envisages.