The Qur'an - Channel 4 (on women and the Qur'an)

Channel 4s two hour documentary on the Qur'an was aired tonight. An interesting conversation about the Qur'an and it's attitude towards women:

Interviewer - 'As you read the Qur'an you don't feel it relegates women to an inferior status?'

Muslim Woman - 'Not at all.'

Interviewer - 'Really?'

Muslim Woman - 'If there is any disempowerment in this part of the world, it is entirely cultural - it's nothing to do with religion - the Qur'an dignifies women - I feel that every day.'

Narrator - 'Men and women entirely equal in Islam? Any disparities cultural and nothing to do with Islam? Let's hear some of those verses from the Qur'an.'

'Men are the managers of women's affairs in that God has preferred one over the other.'

Dr Souad Saleh (Dean, Islamic Jurisprudence, Al-Azhar University) herself a woman, in response - '...meaning that man is financially responsible for the family and supplying all their needs.'

Narrator - 'Men are a degree above women.'

Dr Souad Saleh - 'But the woman is equal to the man in everything that touches human feelings - love, trust, confidence, pride, respect and honour.'

Narrator - 'Those wives you fear may be rebellious, admonish, banish to their couches and beat them.'

Dr Souad Saleh -'Islam says through the Qur'an that beating is appropriate for a certain type of woman. Not all women. This teaching applies to the woman who disobeys her husband, and refuses to live in her house, and refuses to raise her children, and wants to go out whenever she pleases, and wants no one to control her, and is unwilling to fulfill her duties.'

Narrator - 'Your wives are land to be tilled, so till your land when and how you will.'

Dr Souad Saleh - 'This is an honouring of women. Women are not the property of a man - they are like the fertile land that a husband takes care of and doesn't exhaust.'

It is worth noting that Dr Souad Saleh has received death threats for her interpretation of the Qur'an.

The program seems to be slightly better fare that the usual wimpishness served up by the unBritish Broadcasting Corporation that seems to be too frightened to represent any critical views of Islam.

Also from the documentary - if liberals in the UK have any doubts about what some Muslims think about us, the following quote from a Muslim leader should suffice:

'Circumcision [female genital mutilation] is the reason Muslim women are virtuous, unlike Western women who run after their sexual appetite in any place, with any man. I hope I don't insult or embarrass the English nation , where adultery occurs on a large scale - with circumcision it would refine, rectify, purify.'