The biggest lie that Feminists tell is that they are fighting for equality between Men and Women. Complete and utter lie, they do not want equality, they want identicality.
I once asked a question to a lawyer friend of mine. I asked him, if Titanic was to sink today, and two brothers were on board, and the crew of Titanic decided what they decided back in 1912, i.e. Women and Children first. Both brothers were denied to board life saving rescue boats as preference was given to women over men, one of the brothers survived while the one other one froze to death. Now the brother who survived sues the Titanic company for discrimination and the judges now have to decided whether it was correct to disallow men ‘Right to Life’ (the most fundamental of human rights) because they are men. How would they decide? Would judges decide, that grieving brother is correct and say Titanic management was wrong? This would open floodgates to more discrimination where all discrimination would be justified in terms of identicality, an example would be Indra Sawhney decision of Supreme Court of India, where court decided that ‘equality is among equals’, those in position of strength are not equal to those who are weak. Or, would the judges decide that crew of Titanic was correct and men and women are not identical, and women needed to be given a priority given men had a better chance of survival in those conditions than females. My friend’s answer was that it is a very difficult case and decision, and joked that he is happy not to be judge in this case.
The problem with the word equal is that most people who want equal rights for men and women do not understand what equality means or worse, they know what it means and are intentionally deceiving others because others are naive in understanding what equality means. What feminists are really asking for is identicality of rights, not equality of rights. Hence they never want to argue why women should compete with men in sports, because they know that men and women are not identical, the 10th fastest man in the world is faster than the fastest woman in the world. Men and women are not identical hence their rights should not be identical as well, because identical rights are assigned to those with identical resources. Resources that men have are different from women, not just physiological differences, nature (or character) of men and women are different. Men have more physical strength than women. Women on the other hand are more emotional and benevolent than men. Asking for identical rights for unidentical groups is simply and plainly wrong, and hence no one is able to find a single feminist who advocates that men and women should compete against each other in sport, because even the most ardent feminist knows that it is unfair for men and women to compete together in sports because they are not identical.
Islam recognises these differences and thus does not give men and women identical rights, in Islam men and women are equal an overall level, but not identical. There are places where women have an advantage, while there are other place men have an advantage. The problem with this situation of where should women have advantage and where should men have advantage, it is something that you can’t let men or women decide. If men were to decide, they would want to trample over what rights women must have, and if women were given the power they would want to trample over rights that men must have. Only God Almighty can justly decide who gets what, as He has created both of them and is unimaginably just., hence God Almighty is The Only One who can decide on this matter fairly. Obviously those who do not believe in God Almighty will find this problematic and that is ‘the problem’ with many societies. Most societies want to be their own masters, create their own rules which are convenient for them and ignore what was commanded by God Almighty, which also muddles the debate around equality of men and women, and their rights.
One of the favourites arguments of feminists against Islam is the share of inheritance between brother and sister, and I have written a whole blog about it. I have described in detail why a brother should and must be given a larger share because the responsibilities brothers have are far greater than responsibilities sisters have. Another claim of feminists is position of wife vis a vis her husband, but they a mother is three times more deserving of love and companionship than the father, so if women are in a distinct disadvantage in one place, men are in distinct disadvantage in another. In Islam there are lots of places where women have advantage over men. For example, after divorce mother’s have the right of custody of children under seven years of age, while their father will pay all expenses. Divorced mothers also have a right not to care for any of the children if they don’t want to, children are ultimately father’s responsibility. Another distinct advantage comes in case of mother’s death, the first right to raise the baby is not with the father but maternal aunt, preference of female over males. Similarly, in case of man slaughter, the right to forgive the accused rests with the mother of the victim not the father (if both are alive). One hadith says that heaven is under the feet of mothers, while another says that the one who raises daughters with love they will be his shield from hell fire, the same is not true for fathers or sons. The list of such examples is too extensive to discuss here.
As Muslim I have never bothered to ask why is heaven not under father’s feet or why wouldn’t sons be shield against hell fire? The reason is that I understand that men and women are equal, but not identical, which also means that I recognise that rights of men and women should be equal but not identical. There would be places where men have an advantage, and there would be places where women have advantage.
One last point is that many societies today are on a complete different footing than Islam, because they are individualistic societies, an individual is the most basic structure of these societies. Hence they believe that rights of individuals should be identical irrespective of the gender and the role a person plays in the society. In Islam and some other societies, not an individual but family is the basic unit. Although during the Day of Recompense individual is the most basic unit even in Islam, but here on Earth the basic unit of society is family. Hence everything in Islam, rights of children, parents, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives and everyone else is based on the family structure. And the family structure itself is based on 3 ‘R’s; Resources, Roles and Responsibilities, meaning whoever has whatever resources or abilities will get roles and responsibilities according to them. But there is an interdependency in three ‘R’s. One’s resources decides their roles and responsibilities in the family; or one’s role in the family decides what their resources and responsibilities they need to be provided and back to where we started whoever has whatever resources or abilities will get roles and responsibilities according to them.
The Khalafzaee Blog 