The struggle for women's rights within the religious framework: the experience of sisters in Islam

Abstract

Let me state the problem baldly. Today's women in countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, that are fast modernising and industrialising will no longer accept their inferior status, not even when it is justified in the name of religion. Today's women will not accept that Islam actually promotes injustice and ill-treatment of half the human race. Today's Women are challenging the values of patriarchal society where power and authority reside exclusively with the husband , father, brother to whom the wife, daughter and sister owe obedience. For too long, men have defined for us what it is to be a woman, how to be a woman and then to use religion to confine us to these socially constructed limitations that reduce us to being the inferior half of the human race.