ABSTRACT
Women such as Khadījah and ‘Ā’ishah, wives of the Prophet Muhammad, and Rabī‘ah al-‘Adawiyyah from Basra (the outstanding woman Sufi) figure significantly in early Islam. None the less, Islamic tradition has, by and large, remained strongly patriarchal up to today. This means, amongst other things, that the sources on which the Islamic tradition is based, mainly the Koran (which Muslims believe to be God’s Word transmitted through Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad), sunnah (the practice of the Prophet Muhammad), Hadith (the oral traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), and fiqh (jurisprudence), have been interpreted only by Muslim men who have arrogated to themselves the task of defining the ontological, theological, sociological, and eschatological status of Muslim women. It is hardly surprising that up till now the majority of Muslim women who for centuries have been kept in physical, mental, and emotional bondage, have accepted this situation passively. A very pertinent fact in this context is that while the rate of literacy is low in many Muslim countries, the rate of literacy among Muslim women, especially those who live in rural areas where most of the population is to be found, is amongst the lowest in the world.
