By Shelina Zahra Janmohamed
It is without doubt that Islamic ideology was pioneering in its re-assessment of women’s role and status in society and in its restructuring of social relations between men and women.
It broke away from two distinct heritages which immediately surrounded it. The first was Arabian pagan culture where women were considered chattel. They were items of property that belonged to their fathers and then their husbands, reminiscent of Europe till the 19th and even 20th...