Asghar Ali Engineer Quotes

Sixty-three percent of our university students are female. But you still see violations of women's rights in Iran. A Muslim man can have up to four wives. He can divorce his wife without offering any reason, while it is quite difficult for a woman to get a divorce.

Muhammadan law in its relation to women, is a pattern to European law. Look back to the history of Islam, and you will find that women have often taken leading places - on the throne, in the battle-field, in politics, in literature, poetry, etc.

Women's value has been under-recognized for far too long.

By and large, women in New Zealand are fortunate compared with some other countries, including many in our own region. But there is still progress to be made.

As is the case with many Middle Eastern nations, women are nowhere near equal to men when it comes to basic freedoms and rights that we take for granted every day.

I don't think we really think about where we get our equality from. There is a sense of feminism and women become passe, in my opinion.

For most inhabitants of the Arab world, the prevailing cultural attitude toward women - fed and encouraged by Wahhabi doctrine, which is based on Bedouin social norms rather than Islamic jurisprudence - often trumps the rights accorded to women by Islam.

A second cause of our present apathy is the terrible position of Moslem women. There is absolutely nothing in Islam, or the Koran, or the example of the first two centuries, to justify this terrible and cancerous growth that has for nearly a thousand, years eaten into the very vitals of Islamic society…. the present system … means the permanent imprisonment and enslavement of half the nation. How can we expect progress from the children of mothers who have never shared, or even seen, the free social intercourse of modern mankind? This terrible cancer that has grown since the 3rd and 4th century of the Hijra must either be cut out, or the body of Moslem society will be poisoned to death by the permanent waste of all the women of the nation.

Women who chose to fight for their rights in the context of Islam and its teaching are breaking new paths that had been barred to them for over a millennium. The process has been slow and hard and different in different countries. Throughout, the most effective strategy has been to insist that Islam does not recognize intermediaries between God and the believers, and each Muslim has the right to discover her/his faith and engage with it through the very words of God as recorded in the Koran.

Not a single Arab country ranks in the top 100 in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, putting the region as a whole solidly at the planet’s rock bottom. Poor or rich, we [Arabs] all hate our women.

Islamic Law [Sharia] … gives men the right to marry more than one woman, and refers to women as “complementary” rather than “equal” to men.

A number of women have reportedly been victims of what appear to be discriminatory decisions taken by Sharia councils, and that is a significant concern.

In Saudi Arabia - recognized as one of the worst violators of women's rights - women outnumber men on university campuses and yet are treated like minors who need a male guardian's permission to do the most basic things.

In Saudi society, women are extremely respected. I never had an issue with that at all.

The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not.

I think in the United States we have a different standard for what equality means for women that isn't really that comparable to that in the Middle East.

Women's empowerment for me means knowing your rights, having the facts, knowing the truth about what is happening out there, here in our own country and the condition of women throughout the world.

Inequality of women concerns both India and France, though it might have different manifestations in both the countries.

It's about women. It's about power and it's about women and you just hate those two words in the same sentence, don't you?

I HAVE REALIZED THAT FIGHTING FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS HAS TOO OFTEN BECOME SYNONYMOUS WITH MAN-HATING. IF THERE IS ONE THING I KNOW FOR CERTAIN, IT IS THAT THIS HAS TO STOP.

If you're fighting to limit other women's rights, then you can't really call yourself a feminist.

the position of women, that sad and well-nigh universal blot on civilizations, was never far from her mind.

The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. Among savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christianity she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and greater liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to develop as an equal human being.

Women have to define themselves in the eyes of men. They have to fight for their rights, especially in a society that will pretend that there is no fight or no battle, that it's a cliché, that feminists are reactionary, all these things.