Beijing+25: Has the Mask of Gender Equality Fallen?

TALK 4: Educating a Woman is Obligatory in Islam, not an Imaginary Right that the Beijing Declaration Claims

by Dia Najjareen -  Hizb ut Tahrir / Wilayah LEBANON

(Translated)

In order to make its civilization a model and to spread its concepts to be global for the world’s countries to follow its path, the West turned towards the issue of women's liberation, empowerment and equality with men and emphasized the necessity of changing the stereotypical view of women and their role in the family and society.

The education of women is one of the most important topics discussed, such that international conferences and agreements have affirmed on the need to implement it in order to obtain women’s rights and be equal to men. Therefore, the Beijing Declaration obligated the governments of Muslim countries to take the necessary measures to achieve this. So schools were established and the movement for modernization of education increased in order to keep pace with the scientific development and technological progress achieved by the West. These governments sent missions to the countries of the West, which encouraged this to allow them to absorb its culture, thereby ensuring a graduated batch of well-known and smitten by the West thinkers who staunchly defended the West (and their culture) and spread their concepts in their societies.

Mixed education was also imposed on them (Muslim governments). Education curricula have been devoted to the implementation of these goals, which work first to change the habits, customs and traditions that stand in the way of equality in education between men and women.Accordingly, they viewed it necessary to change the teaching curricula, integrate the concept of gender in school textbooks, and reinforce the idea of the importance of a woman’s employment in providing a decent life, in order for the educated girl to make work an important goal in her life so that she will not yield, and until she is certain that she has the capabilities and aspirations no less than the boy, and that the qualities of boldness and proactivity are not limited to him.

Can the West commit the governments of Muslim countries to what is best for them while leading a war of civilization against Islam and Muslims? Is it expected that the enemy brings goodness?!

Women in the West have been presented as role models, and women in Muslim countries, in particular, must follow their example. Therefore, international agreements and conferences have called on the governments of these countries to change the patriarchal discourse dominating their societies and to make this change in their educational policies, leaving no room for differentiation in the roles between the sexes.

So the call for the liberation of women, their education and equality with men, is one of the most important Beijing's policies and other international agreements. They have worked to generalize it in all countries of the world, especially in Muslim countries, so that it changes the lifestyle of their societies and makes them like the Western lifestyle. However, it met obstacles and failures, making it reconsider its actions and develop them in an attempt to achieve its goals.

The Beijing document, for example, attributed the failure to implement its policies regarding the education of women to the concepts of "retroactivity" prevailing in Muslim countries, which they claimed still considers the education of women a definite loss, as they will eventually marry and therefore do not need this education. As you can see, their form of education will make the girl less subject to the orders of her guardian, so she will rebel and disobey him. This is in addition to these traditions standing in front of equality between the boy and the girl, widening the chasm between them, and making the male society dominant that abhors and diminishes her abilities.

Did the educated woman really achieve the gains promised by these agreements and raised in the slogans of the associations? Did education enable women to overcome poverty and actually contribute to economic development, or did unemployment that increased refute these allegations? Its proportion among females is twice than of males.

Did the woman actually achieve her self-worth and become independent from man, or did she suffer from more problems as a result of the calls for emancipation from his authority, and her continuous pursuit of equality with him? She was exposed to sexual harassment by mixing with him, as indicated by the statistics issued by the Sawa Center specializing in dealing with issues of violence against women, which show an increase in the number of sexual harassment incidents every year, which are reported on the dedicated hotlines in the center (Arab Regional Resource Center on Violence against Women- [AMAN]).

Physical violence has mushroomed, differences have increased and divorce rates have increased in the societies as a result of the spread of concepts that differ from the Islamic culture of these societies. The relationship between spouses is no longer of love and mercy but rather a struggle and competition, and the woman's perception of her job and her relationship with the man has changed.

In order for you, a Muslim woman, to be free and march on the path of the Western woman, you must refuse your natural job that is natural to you as a “wife and mother”, reject it and even despise it and live for yourself only and do not think of a family and if you formed one, let your ambition be achieving your success at the top of your interests.

Thus, feminist societies managed to penetrate into societies to blow the toxins of these malicious ideas into the daughters of Muslims to make them reject marriage and pant behind the illusion of success and self-realization to find themselves as new figures in unmarried women’s statistics. These associations and organizations raise slogans defending the woman and the girl, and demand that the age of marriage is raised on the pretext that early marriage is unfair to her and a violation of her right to education and to achieve her self-worth. In reality, it is a pursuit of birth control and a reduction in the fertility rate. Perhaps one of the most prominent concepts that it advocated its consolidation in schools and universities and among housewives and working women is the concept of gender, and employed educational and media curricula for that and prepared programs and activities to install it in societies through various women's organizations and societies funded by the West which boasts a significant development in the number of educated women in the Arab world.

Also, the West poisoned the educational curricula, corrupted the media, and made them all work to polish the image of the Western women as a model that Muslim women should follow. In reading texts, they abolished everything related to the role of the mother, the home, and the raising of children, so the difference in gender roles in the curricula of education was not taken into account and they sought to mix and make them one. They imposed the model of the liberal woman who does not care for the husband nor the children. If there is a conflict between their interests and work and achieving her self’s worth, she will not hesitate to oppress them all and perhaps even abandon them if they represented a danger to her work in order to achieve her success. It made her a distorted version of the Western woman and made her rebel against her instinct.

In such measures, there is a great danger to societies where roles overlap, intertwine and the scales are disrupted, so that the world becomes one gender, which would eliminate the human species. Many in the West and the East recognized the seriousness of that. For example, Gorbachevwrote in his book Perestroika, “We recognize the services provided by the Russian woman to the socialist revolution, but we must remember also the defects in the Russian society that occurred in the family as a result of the fact that they left the house and left the generations, and we must note that the crime rate increased because the generations became dysfunctional... There are social issues and problems that we began to feel and suffer from."  The Western civilization - by eliminating the difference between the sexes - is a civilization that annihilates humankind and eliminates humanity, a civilization of a few that possesses and controls most of the world's wealth, so it has no concern except achieving its interests. It is a civilization that leads a war of survival or death that seeks to destroy the concepts it opposes. Therefore it dilutes the doctrines and empties the minds of sons of all meanings and values that they were brought up with in order to prepare a growing generation devoid of religion, astray and at loss, for whom the West is its example, and hence it follows the West in everything it does.

Today, they made Muslim girls question their religion and they raised the status of education to make it their new, developed and modern religion, by which they can live a strong, free and empowered life. It is their weapon "against the treachery of time" by which she overcomes all difficulties, and through which she feels she does not need a man and dispenses of his guardianship, whether he is her father, brother or husband. She trusts in education blindly, so there is no doubt about its ability to protect her. So what will she do today? She is old and unemployment is widespread in all countries, so there is neither marriage nor work? Who will protect her, while she starts to feel a sense of independence and self-realization, and while she dispensed of the man and announced that she does not need him? Will she throw all that out, return to what she was created for, and recognize with certainty that she needs him as he needs her, and that their relationship is one of complementarity and harmony, not conflict and rivalry?

These measures implemented by these governments, as dictated by the agreements and treaties, have failed and did not achieve the desired and expected success because they are foreign to the belief of societies. They are wrong solutions to worsening real problems. Solutions that cannot get these societies and women in particular out of the problems of life that increase every day because they are solutions proposed by a corrupt system that only brought misery, hardship, poverty, wars and unemployment.

A system that raises the slogan of literacy eradication and disseminates it with its education policies that it imposes and the curricula that it obliges governments to implement. These aim to produce ignorant generations and stuff their brains with useless information. It tries the failed policies on them, out of hate and hostility, so that they are lost and the nation whose future is lost by their loss.

It is a system in which Islamic perceptions have changed and was replaced by some social traditions, customs and traditions that prevent women from education and have no connection with Islam. It is a system in which wars and conflicts abounded, and the fear of parents overwhelmed them over the safety of their children, especially for girls, so they prevent them from education for fear of abuse, such as what is happening in Palestine from the occupation soldiers, terrorizing children and killing girls are not invisible!

The Capitalist system did not give justice to the Western woman, but was the cause of her agonies and calamities, and she lives under its shadow in all forms of oppression, violence and marginalization. A simple look at the terrifying numbers issued by its human rights organizations, governmental or non-governmental, are enough to convey a clear and real picture of this woman's suffering. How can a person who does not provide rights to a woman under him, gift it to the Muslim women? Or do you see a gift with a deadly poison in its fold? Didn't the Muslim woman realize that the West is only working to restrict it to the net of its corrupt concepts and drown her in the seas of its false kaffir civilization, claiming to deliver her salvation and defending her?!!

Does she still have any doubts that the Law of her Lord, who warned her against the malice and deception of this West, is the only one that can guarantee her rights and a decent life?

What they claim are lies and falsehood! Islam did not deprive a woman of education nor does it view it as just a right, but rather it is an obligation on her. Islam urged her to seek knowledge and did not associate this with a specific age. «طَلَبُ الْعِلْمِ فَرِيضَةٌ عَلَى كُلِّ مُسْلِمٍ»“To seek knowledge is an obligation on every Muslim.” And it encouraged her to learn from the various forms of Islamic law and education in order to understand her Deen and learn what is necessary to raise her children and build her society.

Education and learning are necessary for a woman to gain the knowledge based on her Islamic belief to follow in her life and her family’s life and contribute to the development of her society. Islam permitted her to reach the highest levels of knowledge, adhering to the necessary Shariah rules and it opened the door for her to innovate and participate in various fields of life.

Among them were the hard-working scholars, the mother of the believers, Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her, and the scholar Karima Al-Maroiuziah, who was described by Al Hafith Az-Zahabi in Siyar A’lam An-Nubala as Sheikha, the scholar with transmission.

As for the worldly sciences, the distinguished scholar Amatulwahid Sutayta Al Mahamli excelled in mathematical studies. And in the field of medicine and nursing, Rufaida Bint Ka’b Al Aslamiya (ra) was the first nurse in history. Women held important positions, for example in the judiciary, such as Al-Shifa: a female Hisba judge during the Khilafah (caliphate) of Omar Bin Al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him.

Women were scholars, inventors, astronomers, and designers, like the legendary "Astrolabe" inventor, Mariam Al-Astrolabiya Al Ajeela. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the history of Islam, which is filled with the names of thousands of female jurists, politicians, and scientists in language, literature, mathematics, astronomy, and various sciences, doctors, nurses, military, heroines, and mujahideen. ["I thought I might find 20 or 30 women," says Muhammad Akram Nadwi, a Muslim scholar from India. To date, 8,000 have been found over 1,400 years, and his dictionary now fills 40 volumes.] (Excerpt from Secret History published by Carla Power in The New York Times, February 25, 2007).

Islam obligated the state to provide high-quality education to every one of its citizens (including girls and women) as a basic right regardless of their religion, race, gender, or level of wealth. It is obligated to provide enough primary and secondary schools for all citizens of the state and provide them with everything they need to achieve the goals of the education policy free of charge, which allows everyone, who wants to gain education, to do so.

Therefore, upon the establishment of the Khilafah state (Caliphate), it will be obligated to organize methods of education to provide girls and women with this knowledge, and it will strive to remove all traditional attitudes or cultural barriers that undermine female education or prevent girls from exercising their educational rights. It will not allow women to live in fear or according to obsolete customs and traditions. This will improve people's perception of women. In light of the justice of Islam, women’s prestige and dignity will be restored.

Also, there will be no mixing between males and females in schools and places of education, whether between students or teachers, and whether in state schools or private schools. Mixed education will disappear with all its negative and corrupting consequences that we see now, and which the West imposes on us by all means, even though many voices in the West advocate the importance of separating boys and girls in education. Supporters of this trend are increasing day by day due to the social and moral suffering caused by the mixing of the sexes in schools.

The Khilafah will also provide postgraduate studies for free  because it is necessary for the state, such as in Islamic sciences, medicine, engineering, and other general and military sciences. “It is an obligation upon the State to teach every individual those matters that are necessary for the mainstream of life, male and female, in the primary and secondary levels of education. This must be provided free of charge to everyone, and the state should, to the best of its ability, provide the opportunity for everyone to continue ​​higher education free of charge.” (Article 178 of the Draft Constitution of the Khilafah State of Hizb ut Tahrir).

In order for the Khilafah State to be a world leader in science, medicine, technology, industry, and other fields, as required by Islam, it must search for excellence in education. It will encourage women to enter postgraduate studies and facilitate their specialization in various fields, including Islamic specializations, medicine, science, languages ​​and engineering, which will ensure the educational aspirations of girls and women.

This atmosphere of learning and study emanating from the implementation of the Islamic system ensured the prosperity of women's education under the Khilafah and it will return, Allah willing. When it is established again and the Islamic system to run life according to Allah’s law returns, it will guarantee women and men their rights and will restore to them the relationship of kindness and mercy and make them compete to obtain goodness and obedience of the Lord of the heavens and Earth.

O Allah, make its establishment soon so that we both, women and men, may enjoy its glory in all fields.

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