WOMEN RIGHTS

By Nimra Arshad

In this art project, I drew something representing women rights; that they have equal rights as men, which a lot of Muslim cultures do not understand. I got inspired by the painting of Rosie the Riveter. I did sketching and used color pencils on an A4 sized paper.

 

Many Muslims today have a misconception about Islam regarding most of the things. I’ll be talking about one of these misconceptions, which is forcing a marriage onto your daughters.

It’s said in the Qur’an that have a sense of awe towards the wombs; this means that anything that has something to do with the womb we have to respect it. This is the reason why we have great respect for our mothers and our family relationships. It is also said in Qur’an, “…and they have taken a strong pledge from you?”; here, it basically means that women have taken a very strong and heavy contract from men (husbands), that it was their decision to get married to a specific person. Whereas in many Muslim cultures, unfortunately, giving women the choice to marry who they want is being stripped from them. The families put psychological or emotional pressure on their daughters, physically abuse them, and forcefully marry them to someone who they’re not willing to marry. They think it’s an insult to them, their relatives or to their community, and also that their daughters have no rights to marry someone who they want, and that this is not allowed in Islam or haram.

In my opinion, this is a very wrong act; everybody should have the right to marry the person they want, because in the end, it is them who have to spend their lives with their spouses and not their families or relatives. 

Once, a lady went over to the house of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and said that her father had forced her to marry someone she did not want to, and so the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) told her the\at the father had no rights to marry off their daughter to the people they did not want, then he said to her “Your marriage is invalid, go marry whoever you want.”

So not only did the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) allowed women to come over to his house and speak to him directly, he also affirmed their rights constantly, even if that meant going against the will of their families, and this is how Islam treats women.

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My name is Nimra Arshad, a third year student in the American University in Dubai. In my free time I mostly sketch, watch movies or listen to some good music.