were considered property; men could inherit a woman and
all that she owned; and women could be forced into
prostitution. The Koran condemned all of these practices
and enjoined justice in inheritance rights (see Suras 4:7;
4:19; 24:33).
While these teachings of the Koran may have been
revolutionary in seventh-century Arabia and may have
corrected the most inhumane practices toward women and
children, Islam has not progressed much further in its
treatment of women.
Some Muslims, however, attempt to make Islam’s
teaching about women acceptable to modern sensibilities by
claiming that the Koran teaches the equality of the sexes:
‘‘Men, have fear of your Lord, who created you from a
single soul. From that soul He created its mate, and through
them He bestrewed the earth with countless men and
women’’ (Sura 4:1).[49] Similarly, Allah adds that ‘‘I will
deny no man or woman among you the reward of their
labours. You are the offspring of one another’’ (Sura 3:195).
There are a number of elements of the Koran’s teaching
about women that probably raised no eyebrows when
originally formulated yet which are disquieting in a
modernday context. The treatment of women in Islamic
countries is consistently shocking to modern Westerners. A
notorious example of this occurred in the Muslim holy city
of Mecca in March 2002, when fifteen girls perished in a
school fire. The Saudi Arabian religious police, the muttawa,
would not let the girls out of the building: in the female only
school environment, they had shed the all concealing outer