Is Muslims’ Treatment of Women Islamic?

On March 11, 2002, fire struck a girls’ school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The religious police locked the schoolgirls inside the inferno rather than let them escape without their head-to-toe cloak. The firemen were prevented from entering the school for fear that the girls would be seen without their covering. Fourteen young girls were burned to death and dozens more were injured. 
Is this treatment Islamic?
To answer this question, a comparison will be made between the fine treatment that the Prophet Muhammad reportedly accorded to His first wife Khadija and the treatment of women that evolved under Sharia (Islamic Law).
We are told that Khadija was the best born, a rich businesswoman who employed Muhammad, proposed marriage to him when He was 25 years of age. She was 15 years his senior and twice a widow. For the 25 years of their marriage, the Prophet remained monogamous. Khadija was the one person to whom He turned for advice. She was the first convert to Islam.
The difference between the Prophet’s treatment of Khadija and the treatment of women under Sharia Law is stark.
The Quran subordinates women to men [see, for example, Verses 2:228 (Chapter 2, Verse 228], 4:34, and 18:46). It decrees that one man is equal to two women when bearing witness in a legal setting (2:282), that a male’s share in inheritance is equal to that of two females (4:11), that a man can have up to four wives simultaneously, on condition of equitable treatment (4:3), that a husband can divorce his wife without giving reason, though the Prophet reportedly discouraged divorce.
Allowing the Muslim male to marry four wives simultaneously and divorce any one of them without giving cause is synonymous with unlimited polygamy.
Additionally, Shii clerics interpret Verses 4:4 and 4:24 as if men are allowed a temporary marriage contract, called Mut’a, for which a payment to the woman is made for her temporary companionship.
Sunni Ulama sanction the Misyar marriage. Here, the couple lives apart; the woman relinquishes her right to have financial support and accepts the man’s visits in her family house. Misyar has been sanctioned by the Islamic Jurisprudence Assembly on April 12, 2006 and by the Grand Muftis of Saudi Arabia and Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo.
Misyar and Mut’a marriages represent sanctioned adultery.
The Prophetic Sunna (sayings and acts attributed to the Prophet) contains Traditions unflattering to Women too. Al-Bukhari attributed to the Prophet saying that most of those who are in hell are women, that women’s lack of intelligence is the reason why a woman’s testimony in an Islamic court of law is equal to half that of the Muslim male, and that the reason why Muslim women are prohibited from praying and fasting during menstruation is due to them being deficient in religious belief. Al-Nasai attributed to the Prophet saying: People who entrust the management of their affairs to a woman will fail.
Sharia Law is not applied uniformly in Muslim countries. In Saudi Arabia, Sharia means, among others, strict segregation of the sexes at work, schools, hospitals, shops, public parks, elevators, let alone guardianship by the male in the family. Al-Bukhari’s attributions became a common popular Saudi proverb: “women are light on brains and religion.”
Saudi Sharia eliminates the potential political opposition of one half of the population to the government.
By contrast, in Muslim non-Arab Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey, Sharia means that women can be presidents and prime ministers.
Harmonizing Sharia with the Sunna is critical. Tenth century Ulama turned the Sunna into a source of Sharia equal to the Quran.
In June 2006, Turkey formed a committee of thirty-five scholars to study the removal of Prophetic attributions that encourage violence against women.
For more on this issue, please see: 
http://journals.aol.com/eeh100/daring-opinion/

To 1dree5

  Okay, let me understand your logic.

  Because we have some psychotic sociopaths committing rapes and horrendous crimes to women here in the USA, that this somehow prohibits we here as human beings not to be outraged when a Saudi 18 year old girl get whipped then put in jail by her own government for BEING RAPED? 

Sorry, but your convoluted logic loses me in the clouds.  And the fact that you, as a citizen, can complain and voice your opinion about woman being mistreated in our military should tell yourself that our rights here and our information about these situations are far more out in the open than in some repressed Feudal Arab Shiekdom ruled land.

Put your sister or your daughter in this situation then tell me we shouldn’t speak out for human rights in backwards countries.

Nuff said, and peace to you my friend.

Wow, and people say the Saudi’s have no compassion.

Remember, this is the same nation that allowed a number of girls to BURN TO DEATH rather than escape their burning school because they were not covered properly. I try to be culturally open and sensative, but sometimes I feel there are nations not worth it, and the Saudis keep pushing themselves to the top of that list.

Saudi Arabia is the true fount of terror, it was funded there, the religous certitude that makes crazy people think it is right to kill people just because they can was paid for with Saudi Royal Money. The Saudi’s have never reacted to track and punish terror except when their own Frankenstien’s monster turns around occasionally to bit them.

Freedom of Religious belief yes, but not freedom to kill people for trumpted up reasons of supposed morality that is in fact encouraging behavior “rape”, “murder” of the supposed “moral Moslems”. We need better enforcement of the Bill of Rights in this country, not just against Islam, but also those Christian Fundamentalists who say they must ignore the Consitution and the Bill of Rights when their religous certitude and deluded conversations with God tell them too. The Bill of Rights is not suggestion, it is the Law. Stop supporting the Saudi’s who are most responsible for 9/11

Minister Al-Sheikh seems to be a day late, and a dollar short in his sudden pardon of a young innocent rape victim, brought about purely by the adverse publicity that was spanning the globe.

Many of the Arab states, even ones we consider allies, still live in an archaic and primatively abysmal cultural system that ignores the human rights of the have nots, women, and children.

It sickens me that we line the pockets of these barbaric leaders with all our oil money, and then provide them with military support when they conduct themselves in this manner.

Hopefully the evolution of the Middle East is just over the horizon, and the general public will demand better rights and freedoms of expression.  These places are hardly democracies, and are run more like feudal states.  You have to travel back in time to the Middle Ages to relate to these folks.