By Cyril Anderson

Introduction: Misconceptions About Islam and Women’s Education

Many non-Muslims, and unfortunately, many Muslims, have grave misconceptions about the importance of education for women in Islam.  Bad examples such as the Taliban, who regularly kept women from getting an education, give a bad name to all Muslims.  Uninformed observers who hear of such news often assume that such barbarism is part of the teachings of Islam.  But little could be farther from the truth.

Education as a Fundamental Right and Duty in Islam

The prophet Muhammad (saws) has been famously recorded as saying: “Learning is encumbent on every Muslim man and woman.”  (talibil i'lmi fareedun li kulli muslim wa muslimat)  This in itself makes it unmistakable that in Islam, education of women is a must.  Islam brought a great revolution in this regard to a world that at the time tended to see women as little more than a sort of domestic beast of burden, particularly so in the Arabian peninsula of the 7^th century to which Muhammad (saws) brought the message of Islam.   Islam recognized 14 centuries ago that the education of women plays an essential role in a healthy, strong society, and plays an essential aspect of justice to women.

Mothers as the Teachers of the Next Generation

At a bare minimum mothers need to have proper education to know how to properly care for their children, to keep them healthy, and to be the first teachers of the children. Typically, mothers spend much more time than fathers with the children when they are young. For those who would try to take away the ability of a young woman to be educated, it should be asked: how can a child get a good head start on life intellectually if the mother he spends most of his time with doesn't know how to read or do math, as is the case in many parts of the world, including, most sadly in some parts of the Muslim world?  Without intelligent, educated women, the next generation suffers by missing out in its education in its most formative years.  Such madness as this is the way that societies destroy themselves.  Such wrongdoing has nothing to do with Islam as taught by the prophet (saws) and his family, and those who try to justify such actions in the name of Islam will have much to answer for in the next life before the One who created both men and women.  

Education as a Building of Human Potential

A second reason for the necessity of women’s education is that education is needed for a woman’s spiritual development, as well as her personal development as a human being.  Men and women are different physiologically and psychologically, with differing strengths, but we know from the spiritual teachings of Muhammad (saws) and the spiritual leaders from his family that the spiritual potential of both men and women is the same.  Both can reach the same high stations.  It is therefore the greatest of injustices in Islam, even from a religious perspective, to deny a woman the right to education, seeing that this would involve a voluntary hindering of her spiritual potential as a human being.

The Example of the Great Women of Islam

The examples of famous women from the family of Muhammad (saws) demonstrate concretely the importance of educated women as teachers of the community and leaders for other women.  First of all is the example of Fatimah az-Zahra (as), the daughter of Muhammad (saws).  She demonstrated her intelligence and wit when she spoke against the violations of the rights of her and her husband, Ali ibn Abu Talib (as) in front of Abu Bakr, the caliph at the time of the Muslims.  She was also, at the time of her father, and afterwards, the teacher of the women in the community.  In addition, Zainab ibn Ali (as), daughter of Ali and Fatimah, was also a teacher before, and even more so, after the tragedy of Kerbala in which her brother, Hussain ibn Ali (as) and his companions were slaughtered on the order of the tyrant caliph Yazeed ibn Muawiyya.  She, along with her nephew, Ali ibn Hussain (as), the 4^th imam, taught the community in the aftermath of the tragedy of Kerbala; he teaching the community as a whole, and she helping the women.  In particular, she took a strong role in the direct aftermath of Kerbala, when her nephew, the imam, was incapacitated by sickness.  Her eloquence in the courtyards of Kufa and Damascus, speaking out forcefully against the crimes inflicted upon her family by a crooked and inhuman leadership, preserved even today in writings, are reminiscent of the eloquence of her father, Ali ibn Abu Talib.  These and other examples from the Classical Islamic period demonstrate clear precedents giving religious support for the idea of educating women.

There are those at this point who will say, “yes, this is all well and good, but what about today?  You may have these teachings, but they aren't implemented in the Muslim world today, so what's the good of it?”  While it is true, as I have acknowledged earlier in this article, that there are grave shortcomings in this regard in many parts of the Muslim world, it is likewise true that it is a grave distortion to pretend that this is universally true across the Muslim world.  Indeed, in most of the Muslim nations that have been allowed to develop to a reasonable extent economically, women's education on a level equal with that of men is the norm.  One bright example in this regard is the Islamic Republic of Iran, where in recent years the percentage of women in universities has come to exceed that of men, with large numbers of women even in traditionally male dominated fields such as mathematics, physical sciences, and engineering.  The sort of factors that lead to women being denied education in parts of the Muslim world can be traced to the same roots that lead to hindrances of women's education in general globally: poverty, backwardness, and ignorance.  All of these factors tend to diminish dramatically  when real economic development is allowed to occur.