How Did Islam Give Women Their Independence?
When I wrote the first part of this article, some readers responded by saying that women are oppressed in Islamic society. But I did not say otherwise. The purpose of what I am writing is to respond to the political attempt to discredit Islam by portraying the conduct of a large section of Muslims as a true expression of the principles of Islam, when it is not—particularly when this political campaign comes from those who claim that Islam is incompatible with the Judaeo-Christian values in which they believe, while being unable to explain to us what the Judaism of Moses (peace be upon him) or the Christianity of Jesus (peace be upon him) has to do with any of Europe’s conduct during five centuries of invasion, ethnic cleansing, colonisation, enslavement, and the plundering of the wealth of the indigenous peoples.
My endeavour is to demonstrate a number of the lofty principles and rules brought by Islam, and to show how political efforts in Europe, over the course of centuries, sought to distort them in order to justify Europe’s aggression against Muslims in particular and the peoples of the earth in general.
In the first part, I began by clarifying the fact that women, contrary to what Zionism propagated in Europe, received education under Islam, thereby disproving the Zionist claim that Islam deprived women of it. Indeed, I pointed out that the early Muslims studied at a university founded by a Muslim woman in 859 AD, whereas the first woman entered Oxford University in 1920.
Today, I write about how Islam gave women their independence.
It is beyond dispute that, throughout recorded history, all societies were built upon the basis that men worked to earn a livelihood while women remained at home to manage the household and raise the children. This reality prevailed in almost all societies, regardless of the political system prevailing in the country, and the change in this state of affairs did not begin until the advent of the Industrial Revolution.
The consequence was that women became financially dependent upon men, relying upon them to provide for their lives and needs. This dependence was a stark reality that led to the enslavement of women, since their conduct was governed by their need for men in order to survive. When a woman left her father’s house, it was generally to enter the house of her husband, who took her father’s place in exercising financial control over her.
Since Europe is the one that today lectures the world and distributes approval or disapproval as it pleases, I shall set out the condition of women as it once was, so that I may later compare it with the condition of women under Islam. But to discuss the whole of Europe would be too broad and perhaps of little benefit, because of the similarities involved, which would mean merely repeating the same examples. I shall therefore examine how the position of women developed in Anglo-Saxon society, whose people today are among the world’s most prominent preachers of women’s freedom and rights, and of human rights generally.
When William the Conqueror landed on the coast of England in 1066 AD and succeeded in taking control of it, he declared himself owner of the entire island and then divided it into feudal estates among his principal commanders. From that day there emerged the primogeniture system under which land was inherited by the eldest male of each generation. Thus, for example, the Duke of Westminster today still possesses the estate of his ancestor, which means that no woman of that family has inherited a single inch of land in any generation. This established the subordination of the Anglo-Saxon woman to the man who controlled her, because she had no ability to own anything that could enable her to achieve independence for herself.
The laws governing property and inheritance subsequently passed through a series of changes whose full explanation would be lengthy, but their principal features may be summarised as follows:
- From 1066 until the seventeenth century: The fundamental feature of this period was the inheritance of wealth by the eldest male, with women excluded from the right of individual ownership and inheritance. A widow depended primarily upon her dower for her livelihood, together with a right to reside in part of her deceased husband’s land, but without owning it. If a woman married, anything she might have owned before marriage became, upon marriage, the property of her husband, just as she herself became his property by taking his name. The woman was considered chattel, so that if her husband became bankrupt, she was subject to the same treatment as his movable property
- From the eighteenth to the nineteenth century: The courts of equity attempted to alleviate this situation, allowing women, through the rules of equity, to acquire property by means of a will, thereby granting them a right of ownership which the common law had denied them.
- The nineteenth century: The real change in women’s rights to inheritance and ownership began in earnest during the nineteenth century. The Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 allowed married women to retain for themselves some of the wealth they acquired. The Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 went further, allowing a married woman to own and retain property independently in her own name, as though she were unmarried. Thus the position of women with regard to inheritance and ownership changed: property belonging to a woman before marriage remained hers after marriage, contrary to the practice that had prevailed until that time.
- The twentieth century: The real transformation in property and inheritance took place in the twentieth century, when The Law of Property Act 1922 and The Law of Property Act 1922 altered women’s property rights, placing them on an equal footing with men and thereby enabling them to inherit from men as men inherited from them.
What happened in the twentieth century was not merely the granting to women of a right of inheritance. More importantly, the law gave women legal independence through the right to own property in their own right—something they had not possessed for centuries. In other words, what happened in the twentieth century was that women in Anglo-Saxon society acquired political independence for the first time through financial independence.
Where, then, does Islam stand in all this?
Women’s right to own property and inherit was known among the Arabs, though it varied according to the tribes and states by which they were influenced. Evidence of this is found in the fact that Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, the wife of our Noble Messenger (peace be upon him), possessed wealth and engaged in trade, supporting the view that women had rights of ownership and inheritance.
Islam then came and established new rules governing ownership and inheritance, confirmed by Qur’anic text, which have not been superseded for fourteen centuries. They may be summarised as follows:
- Establishing the legal right to property ownership.
- Recognising a woman’s right to inherit as an obligatory right.
- Determining the shares of heirs through clear textual provisions.
- Giving daughters, wives, mothers, and sisters prescribed shares that vary according to the presence of other heirs.
- Prohibiting the deprivation of women of inheritance merely because they are women.
And this was in the early seventh century AD.
Islam therefore did not merely give women an established right of inheritance; it granted them the legal right to personal ownership. In doing so, it gave them the political independence that follows from financial independence.
Islam went beyond granting women the right to property and inheritance. It prevented the accumulation of wealth in the hands of men, which itself led to the growth of the capitalist system.
So, who is the Misogynist? Is it the Anglo-Saxon who deprived her of the right to independence for centuries, or the Muslim who granted her the right to ownership and inheritance from the seventh century?
Abdul-Haq Al-Ani
26 July 2026