ABSTRACT
Many religions take a patriarchal attitude to the comparative roles of men and women. It is often argued that Islam has a very different attitude to sex as compared with many forms of Christianity, in that there is generally taken to be nothing at all wrong with it, but it needs nonetheless to be controlled, and one way of controlling it is through control of women. So there are a number of practices in the Islamic world that tend to diminish the role of women and elevate the role of men, and a basis for these can be found in the Qur’an and especially in the hadith literature, which bristle with critical remarks on women. On the other hand, in recent years there has emerged an interesting discussion about whether it is appropriate to criticize the role of women in many Islamic communities, since is this not a form of cultural colonialism, and who is anyone to denigrate different ways of doing things from what may be regarded as the norm? Are things so ideal in non-Muslim society for women and should not religious groups be allowed to arrange their own affairs in whatever way they wish? In fact, since women seem to have a difficult time everywhere, the identification of the Muslim world as being especially bad for women is perhaps problematic.
