Part 1
Introduction

Part 2
The Inheritance of Women Before and After the Advent of Islam
Women Under The Indian Civilization
Women Under Chinese Civilization
Women under Greek Civilization
Women Under The Roman Civilization
Women In Early Christianity
The Position of Women in Europe
Women In The Post – industrial Europe

Part 3
Feminist Movement and The Tragedy of Western Women
The Inheritance of Women under Jewish Laws

Part 4
The Inheritance Of Women In the Western World past and Present
The Inheritance of Women in The Jahiliyya period

Introduction 

One of the unique features of Islam is that words are matched with action. When Islam preaches kindness and tenderness towards the poor, Zakat is made compulsory in order to translate that preaching into actual reality. 

When equality is advocated Islam makes As-salah (prayer) mandatory so that the strong and the weak, the affluent and the indigent, the leader and the led stand shoulder-to-shoulder, practicalising the dictum. Similarly when Islam calls for fair treatment towards women and their right to inheritance, female heirs are stated and their respective shares spelt out. Words, therefore, are in all these instances, matched with action. No system on earth can compete with Islam on this. 

Liberal democracy and other world systems are never known to have accorded women any dignified status, let alone putting into practice what they preach in theory. For example, under liberal democracy, freedom of religion is advocated but in actual reality a particular religion i. e. materialism, is enforced on all, completely negating what is being preached theoretically. Similarly right to basic necessities of life is trumpeted while practically monopoly, profiteering and hoarding are sanctioned.

As this world is sometimes funny a system which is saint in theorizing but devil in practice is now attacking Islam. Products or rather advocates and novices of the former, who are the liberal democrats, allege that Islam has been unjust to the woman as if they have always been fair to her. While Islam has given her a share of inheritance and deny it to the cats and the dogs they give it to puppies and kittens and disinherit the woman.

This argument over who gives women what and who doesn’t has now become preponderant in most academic discussions at various local and international fora. 

It has now become a fashion and an exercise of freedom of opinion to deliberately criticize and attack Islam and all its values, alleging that it violates one kid of human right or the other. The present world order allows every riff-raff to dump his refuse on Islam. 

Somebody from a community which sees nothing wrong in burning a woman on her husband’s death¹ can attack the Islamic system of divorce for what he claims as downgrading woman. An adherent of a religion which regards woman as “a necessary evil, a desirable calamity, a deadly fascinator and a painted ill”² is at liberty to cry wolf whenever Islam calls for separation of the sexes. A citizen of a country which only recently granted woman financial independence about 1400 years after Islam has decreed her the same³ freely condemns the Islamic system of polygamy even though, as admitted by one scholar: 

Their monogamy with a blended mass of prostitution is mostly hypocrisy and more degrading than a limited polygamy and deliberately fails to look at what lies behind it (their monogamy) in the west – the frightful degradation of women who are thrown into the streets when their first protectors, weary of them, no longer give them any assistance⁴

In the same vein, when we come to the local level, somebody from a community where woman’s inheritance of a very meager portion is subject to her being of  a good behavior⁵ and another from a tribe which excludes all female blood relatives, including mother, grand mother, sister, etc. from inheriting⁶ can ironically shout all jumbo-mambo on the Islamic system of inheritance as it relates to women. 

Feminist movements, under various names, are shouting at the top of their voices that there is no justice in allotting a woman half of what is allotted to a man as decreed by Islam in the distribution of inheritance, overlooking either knowingly or unknowingly, the many favours which Islam confers on women in inheritance the similar of which man does not enjoy. It is unfortunate that some of our women seem to be substantially carried away and influenced by this propaganda. 

Most of our women, and our men also, who are educated or, preferably, who are instructed in the western way appeared to have put their trust and confidence in liberalism and liberal democracy as their emancipator and abode of comfort and peace. Some of them even go to the extent of trying to harmonise Islamic teachings with liberalism. Tracing the origin of liberalism Ali Shari’ati observes: 

Western liberalism perceives itself as the principal heir of the philosophy and culture of historical liberalism, envisioned as a continuous flow of culture and thought flowing from ancient Greece and reaching its relative perfection in present day Europe.

Western humanism rests firmly on the foundation of that mythological perspective unique to ancient Greece, where between heaven and earth (the world of the gods and the world of men), competitiveness,  opposition and even a sort of jealousy obtain, and the gods are anti-human forces whose every inclination and striving is to rule tyrannically overhumanity and discourage it from attaining self-awareness, independence, freedom and sovereignty over nature. Any human who sets foot upon any of these paths has perpetrated a great sin-has risen in rebellion against the gods- and is condemned to the most severe tortures and punishments in their after life. Humanity, we may say, is constantly seeking its liberation from this captivity. It strives to attain independence through the acquisition of divine powers, in order to free its destiny from the grasp of the god;s omnipotence and bring it within reach of its own freewill and choice⁷.

 In most of the international and local fora and media agencies nowadays the muslim woman is intentionally made an object of ridicule and caricatures; that as far as her person is concerned she is, according to her religion, half of a man economically actualized in inheritance where she gets half the share of a man as her share of inheritance. Continued...

Part 1
Introduction

Part 2
The Inheritance of Women Before and After the Advent of Islam
Women Under The Indian Civilization
Women Under Chinese Civilization
Women under Greek Civilization
Women Under The Roman Civilization
Women In Early Christianity
The Position of Women in Europe
Women In The Post – industrial Europe

Part 3
Feminist Movement and The Tragedy of Western Women
The Inheritance of Women under Jewish Laws

Part 4
The Inheritance Of Women In the Western World past and Present
The Inheritance of Women in The Jahiliyya period