Islam Essay, Research Paper

This incident reflects typical crimes and injustices against women in the Third World countries. Crimes against women include abuse, slavery, false imprisonment, murder and rape. In these countries, women are considered to be inferior to men and are not granted equal rights or protection under the laws. The governments, religions and cultures of these countries support the inequalities, thus allowing vicious crimes against women to continue without any recourse by the victims. The phrase women’s rights refers to the basic human rights that are withheld from women simply because they are women. Women s rights promote political, social and economic equality for women in a society that traditionally confers more status and freedom to men. A basic right is for girls to grow up to be women: today twelve percent of the females born worldwide are missing, many of them victims of infanticide. Other women s rights include: the right to live free of physical abuse, the right to live free of sexual exploitation, the right to health care and nutrition, the right to an acceptable standard of living, the right to chose her own partner, the right to vote, the right to control property, and the right to equal treatment before the law along with freedom of speech. Women in Third World countries do not have the rights that American women enjoy. In most of these countries, women do not even have rights equivalent to those of American women in the nineteenth century. For example, the women have arranged marriages, have very limited access to education and are abused by their arranged husbands. In these countries, women work twice as many hours as men for one-tenth of the income. The inequities vary from country to country, but one thing is in common; the inequalities are all being committed against women. This paper will explore the condition of women in three Third World Countries: Afghanistan, China and Iran.

Iran is an unusual country. Religion has always been important to Iranians, but since the revolution of 1979, Iran has become a religious state, where religious rules are state rules. It is the teachings of Islam that determines every aspect of daily life, customs, laws, and government. Thus, when contemporary women s rights in Iran are analyzed, one refers to the fundamental Muslim views regarding women. In a local hadith Islamic class in the year 1,000, the question was asked, Are women basically good or bad? The answer was, I was raised up to heaven and saw that the denizens were poor people: I was raised into the hellfire and saw that most of its denizens were women. This quote demonstrates that men think poorly of women in Iran. In the Islamic culture, women are considered to be the property first of her guardian (usually her father) and then ownership over her is transferred to her husband.

Iranian women actually many more rights and freedoms than some other countries in the Middle East. Girls are allowed to go to school and learn, although the schools are segregated according to sex to keep up with the Islamic beliefs. Before the 1970 s, only 34 % of the girls attended primary school and even fewer went to universities. (www.geocities.com/ Irrc/Women/iman.htm) Today children between the ages of six and twelve must go to primary school, but not all parents send their daughters to classes. Women of Iran do not own the clothes that they wear. They have no rights over the children and little protection against a violent husband. If a husband kills his wife, her family must pay a considerable amount for his death sentence. If they cannot meet the cost, he goes free. A husband can order his wife out of the house. He can divorce her without telling her, and he can have up to four wives. Iranian women have also been pushed out of the work force. All women have been forced into part-time work so that nothing hinders their holy duty of motherhood.

In Iran, the women have arranged marriages. The husband is normally chosen by how large a dowry the woman s father will provide. Ninety percent of the time, there is no way to get out of an abusive marriage. Abusive behavior is tolerated and goes unpunished.