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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Do you know who Leila Ahmed? She is an Egyptian American writer on Islam, women's studies professor at Harvard Divinity School, and recipient of the 2013 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for her analysis of the 'veiling' of Muslim women in the United States. She has a doctorate degree from University of Cambridge, had a professorship in Women’s Studies and Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and then had a professorship in Women's Studies and Religion at the Harvard Divinity School. She is a well known scholar in Islamic studies and, in particular, women's rights.

Read Women and Islam from Oxford Islamic Studies online. Here's what her research shows in response to the point you are trying to prove above:

"The Qur??n, Islam's holy book, changed women's status considerably from that of the pre-Islamic (j?hil?yah) period. Before Islam, both polyandrous and polygamous marriages were practiced, and matrilineal, uxorilocal marriages in which the woman remained with her tribe and the male either visited or resided with her were also quite common. [b]Many women selected and divorced their own husbands, and women were neither veiled nor secluded; some were poets and others even fought in wars alongside men. As Leila Ahmed observes, while these “practices do not necessarily indicate the greater power of women or the absence of misogyny, they do correlate with women's enjoying greater sexual autonomy than they were allowed under Islam” (Ahmed, 1992, p. 42). Islam took away polyandrous marriages, and limited the number of female spouses to a maximum of four (Qur??n 4:1) as early Arabian Muslims gradually moved from a matrilineal to a patrilineal society. The pre-Islamic practice of female infanticide was outlawed by the Qur??n (81:8–9). The dower (mahr), which in pre-Islamic times was paid directly to a woman's male guardian (wal?), was now made payable directly to the woman (4:3), who was also given the rights to inherit property (4:7)."[/b]
[/quote]

Well.  Since you are now all about Dr. Ahmed - and in fact, it is difficult to find fault with her scholarly qualification - it seems only fitting that the women of DCUM find out what Dr. Ahmed really says - and not what you say she says.  Here is the quote from her seminal book "Women and Gender in Islam", chapter 3, p. 41 - the whole works can be viewed here http://books.google.com/books?id=U0Grq2BzaUgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false   I bolded some sections for ease of reference.

"Neither the diversity of marriage practices in pre-Islamic Arabia nor the presence of matrilineal customs, including the association of children with the mother’s tribe, necessarily connotes women’s having grater power in society or greater access to economic resources. Nor do these practices correlate with an absence of misogyny; indeed, there’s clear evidence to the contrary.  The practice of infanticide, apparently confined to girls, suggests a belief that women were expendable…(citation of a Quranic verse follows).

However, the argument made by some Islamists – [b]that Islam’s banning of infanticide established the fact that Islam improved the position of women in all respects, seems both inaccurate and simplistic[/b]. In the first place, the situation of women appears to have varied among different communities of Arabia. Moreover, although Janilia marriage practices do not necessarily indicate the greater power of women or the absence of misogyny, they do correlate with women’s enjoying grater sexual autonomy than they were allowed under Islam. [b]They also correlate with women’s being active participants, even leaders, in a wide range of community activities, including warfare and religion. Their autonomy and participation were curtailed with the establishment of Islam, its institution of patrilineal, patriarachal marriage as solely legitimate, and the social transformation that ensued.[/b]

The lives and marriages of two of Muhammad’s wives, Khadija and Aisha, encapsulate thei kinds of changes that would overtake women in Islamic Arabia. Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife, was a wealthy widow who, before her marriage to Muhammad, employed him to oversee her caravan, which traded between Mecca and Syria. She proposed to and married him when she was forty and he twenty five, and she remained his only wife until her death at about 65. She occupies a place of importance in the story of Islam because of her importance to Muhammad: her wealth freed him from the need to earn a living, and enabled him to lead the life of contemplation that was the prelude to his becoming a prophet, and her support and confidence were crucial to him in his venturing to preach Islam. She was already in her fifties, however, when Muhammad received his first revelation and began to preach, and thus it was Jahilia society and customs, rather than Islamic, that shaped her conduct and defined the possibilities of her life. [b]Her economic independence, her marriage overture, apparently without a male guardian to act as intermediary, her marriage to a man many years younger than herself and her monogamous marriage all reflect Jahilia rather than Islamic practice.[/b]

In contrast, [b]autonomy and monogamy were conspicuously absent in the lives of the women Muhammad [/b]married after he became the established prophet and leader of Islam, and the [b]control of women by male guardians and the male prerogative of polygyny were thereafter to come formal features of Islamic marriage[/b]. It was Aisha’s lot, rather, which would prefigure the limitations that would thenceforth hem in Muslim women’s lives: she was born to Muslim parents, married Muhammad when she was nine or ten, and soon thereafter, along with her co-wives, began to observe the new customs of veiling and seclusion. The difference between Khadija’s and Aisha’s lives – [b]especially with regard to autonomy[/b] – foreshadows the changes that Islam would effect for Arabian women. Aisha, however, lived at a moment of transition, and in some respects her life reflects Jahilia as well as Islamic practice. Her brief assumption of political leadership after Muhammad’s death doubtless had roots in the customs of her forebears, as did the esteem and authority the community granted her. The acceptance of women as participants in and authorities on the central affairs of the community steadily declined in the ensuing Islamic period. "

But maybe she's just trying to tarnish the image of Islam, that damn woman.  Maybe you should write to her or something. [/quote]

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