Women’s rights in Turkey

In Europe it is generally thought that Islam is repressive to women and any rights Muslim women have are due to Western influence. The writer of this article, a Turkish female political analyst, explodes this myth. First, she gives the source of the Women’s rights:

Turkish women have enjoyed equality in the law of marriage since Ottoman times. The “Islam” which is the root of modern Turkish social norms is a religious, not a traditional conservatism; ours is rooted in the Qur’an, not in Bedouin social customs.

And then explains that these rights were acquired not from the West but from Islam.

One might think that the free women of Turkey owe these democratic rights to feminist activism. However, the women of Turkey attained equality through the morality of Islam.

She then compares when women in different countries were given these rights and says:

Turkish women first exercised the franchise in 1930, but these rights were given to women in 1923, decades before women in Quebec (1941), Japan (1947), Mexico (1947), Belgium (1948), greater Canada (1950), or Australia (1961).

One can see that this is the age of the jihad of the pen as it is by use of the pen that we will correct such misconceptions against Islam.