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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was just reading this article about Islam written by a convert:

http://www.arabnews.com/news/460671

I heard about a great opportunity through Ohio State University. So I transferred, and enrolled in summer semester classes there. At that time I was required to take a foreign culture course. I could have chosen any geographical location; I chose the Middle East because I didn't know a lot about it. One day an American Muslim woman came in and did a lecture on Islam, the faith of most people in the Middle East. She highlighted some very interesting aspects of the religion and corrected many of our misconceptions. Her presentation was called 'The place of women in Islam.' [b]She explained how Islam had safeguarded women's rights and privileges well before the Women's Rights movements of the previous century (in US). [/b]She explained the special position and role of women in Islam. Over 1400 years ago, [b]Islam granted women novel powers and privileges, like the rights to buy and sell property, to work and make a living, to keep their names, save money, refuse a marriage proposal, inherit from deceased relatives, do business, get an education, express themselves, stand witness in trial, and even to make their own prenuptials! [/b][b]Islam put an end to the oppressions like wife-beating[/b], female infanticide, and the custom of automatically inheriting a dead man's widow, which could have numbered in the hundreds. Islam limited the number of wives to four and even then with strict obligations. The vast majority of Muslim men marry only one anyway. She said Muslims also venerated Mary the mother of Jesus, calling her the most pious of women.

Considering the verse that give men permission to beat their disobedient wives, how did Islam put an end to wife-beating?

If Islam is what gave women the right to buy and sell property, work, do business, etc., how is it that Khadija was a rich business woman (who inherited the business) BEFORE Islam even came to be?

I don't understand how, if someone has studied Islam, can say that it's because of Islam that women have these rights...[/quote]
This is a well-known condition called Convertitis Ordinaris.  Women seem to manifest it in stronger forms than men.

Islam did grant women SOME rights but most certainly not on par with men, a distinction very well preserved in contemporary Islamic discourse.  I can take apart any of the rights she said Islam gave women but don't have time right now.

I'll leave you with this morsel: Islam "allows" women to retain their maiden names because paternal links are viewed as permanent and marital links as temporary.  A woman remains forever a daughter of her father; that she is her husband's wife is a temporary condition. A misbehaving woman is sent back to her "father's house", and a cheating wife is brought to her father to discipline her, not her husband.

Not because it's somehow repressive to take your husband's last name.[/quote]

Actually that's not true. Retaining a woman's maiden name is an Arab practice that predates Islam. It has to do with focus on geneology in Arab culture. The concept of a women changing her name to her husbands family which she is genetically not related to, is simply a foreign idea. So no its not because she "belongs" to her father nor is it because it is "repressive" to take your husbands last name. [/quote]

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