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Summary: The article explains that claims that Islam gave women rights are misleading, asserting that the religion’s legal and theological structure ultimately places women under male authority and limits their autonomy despite granting certain conditional rights.
Muslims, especially “Muslim feminists,” love to claim that Islam “gave women rights” long before “Western” feminism. They claim that it protected women spiritually as equal to men, and that its family law is rooted in mercy and justice (referencing societies like the Vikings and Celts). They talk about Khadijah, about rights like inheritance, education, finance, like these things absolve everything, like they are enough to make Islam feminist.
However, the structure is clear: Islam is not a feminist system. It is a legal-theological system that grants women rights only within a structure in which men serve as their guardians, interpreters, and enforcers.
From a lived experience as a “Muslim” feminist who had been intensely engaged in conversations in both Islamic circles and with non-Muslims to demonstrate Islam as a feminist and has given women “rights” before any civilisation, I understand how this narrative is allowed to fly against the backdrop of the in-depth scrutiny of the historical realities of the “so-called women’s rights.”
When I was a muslim, I researched and produced an undergraduate essay titled “Women in Public Space Under Islamic Law,” and in hindsight, I realised that the essay exhibited “feminism lite” and that though I wanted to prove women rights in Islam, I attempted to do the impossible; harmonising Shariah law with feminist ideals and instead, I simply hollowed out feminism to sound palatable within Shariah dictates.
Protecting Muslim women from racism is necessary. It is non-negotiable. Bigotry against Muslim women is real. But protecting doctrine from scrutiny is not feminism. Solidarity against racism cannot require intellectual silence about patriarchy. If a legal-theological system encodes male authority into its foundation, feminism has a duty to say so.
The law does not just allow men to dominate. It is written that way from the ground up. You hear them fetishise Khadijah as the ultimate proof of women’s empowerment in early Islam: a wealthy, independent businesswoman who owned trade caravans, who hired Muhammad and then proposed to him. They tell you this story to show that Islam elevated women, that it improved their status from the “backward” Jahiliyyah period. But this narrative falls apart the moment you ask one basic question: how did Khadijah inherit, how did she own those caravans, how did she operate as a powerful merchant if women were so degraded in Jahiliyyah that Islam had to come and “save” them?
If Quraysh as a society had truly despised women so much that they could not own property, travel, or trade, then Khadijah’s entire story becomes a myth. The argument that Quraysh oppressed women so brutally in Jahiliyyah collapses under its own contradiction: a woman so rich, so powerful, so respected that she is choosing her own husband before revelation came. Islam’s portrayal of Jahiliyyah as uniquely evil, uniquely oppressive to women, is a rhetorical device. It is the story of the hunter told by the hunter, not the hunted. The Quran and later tafsir paint Jahiliyyah as a time of pure darkness to make Islam look like a feminist saviour.
However, when real women like Khadijah and Umm Qirfa (Fatimah bint Rabi’ah), a chieftain of the Banu Fazara tribe, existed despite that “darkness,” the narrative cracks. Islam doesn’t just oppose patriarchy; it reframes it, whitewashes its own misogyny, and projects the same patriarchal ugliness onto another society. It demonises Jahiliyyah for the very things it later codifies in fiqh: male guardianship, male control over women’s bodies, male entitlement to women’s labour and sexuality. The story is written by the conquerors, and the conquered, as women, become the moral lesson, not the subjects.
The law itself does not wait for “bad practice” or “culture” to make women dependent; it writes dependency into their lives from the start. Women have “rights,” but they may need a male guardian’s permission to move, travel, or marry their chosen partner.
How can a woman “own her money” if she cannot move freely to earn it, manage it, or defend it without male approval? The law is not granting genuine autonomy; it is granting conditional permission and placing the key to a woman’s door in a man’s hand.
They can inherit, even though classical fiqh often gives a woman half what her brother receives, even when the brother is a child and the woman is an adult. The justification is that men have a “duty” to support women financially, so they “deserve” more. But how does a male child, barely old enough to walk, take care of his adult sister? In reality, it is often the sister who supports him, feeds him, raises him, and pays his bills. The law imagines an abstract “male provider” and builds an economic structure on that myth, while ignoring the actual labour and financial responsibility women already carry. The inheritance formula is not justice; it is a patriarchal accounting trick that keeps women’s wealth smaller and more manageable while men hold the keys.
Women can marry, but a man can end a marriage with a single word: talaq. Divorce right is limited for women as she must pay, negotiate, beg, or appear before a court to prove that her reason for wanting divorce is “valid.” If she goes for khul’, she surrenders the mahr, that same mahr that Muslim women are told is such overwhelming proof of Islam “giving women rights.”
The same mahr celebrated as a “right” becomes the ransom she must pay to escape abuse. What looks like rights on paper becomes phantom rights in practice because their enjoyment depends on male consent, benevolence, or tolerance. The law is not giving women equality; it is giving men exit power and women conditional permission.
The Quran states that men are qawwamun, guardians, over women (Q4:34), and classical fiqh builds an entire architecture of male authority on top of this verse. Classical Hanafi, Shafii, and Maliki schools insist that a woman’s marriage must be concluded by a wali, even if she consents, and men can marry without consent or wali from anyone. The Quran speaks of women’s rights similar to those of men in marriage, but in the same vein, men have a degree above them, which positions men in a position of power and control over women (Q2:228).
This control extends into the body. A hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari states that if a man calls his wife to his bed and she refuses, the angels curse her until morning. Another version adds that a woman should not refuse her husband’s sexual call even if she is “on a donkey” or “cooking in the oven.” A woman’s fatigue, her work, her bodily boundaries, even her danger, are less important than her husband’s demand. This is not “marital duty”; it is the codification of non-consent. Men are rarely framed as having an equal, reciprocal duty to satisfy their wives; the law speaks of the husband’s right, not the wife’s autonomy.
Women cannot be an Imam, cannot be appointed to leadership roles, because of a hadith that curses a nation headed by a woman. The mosque is structurally segregated, men in front, women behind, with the excuse that it is to avoid “fitna,” as if women’s bodies are permanent moral hazards. It does not matter if the person leading is your son or your little brother; he is still allowed to lead you in prayer because of his gender. The positioning is not about piety; it is about power. A hadith cited in sermons says that if God had wanted humans to bow to one another, He would have ordered wives to bow to their husbands. This is an inversion of spiritual equality into a hierarchy. If men and women are spiritually equal before God, why does the law frame the husband’s authority as so absolute that it is compared to prostration, an act otherwise reserved only for God? This rhetoric turns marriage into a one-sided posture of submission, where the wife’s body, time, and will are treated as permanent resources for the husband’s comfort.
Classical fiqh describes menstruation as a state of impurity, wherein women cannot pray, fast, or touch the Quran, or enter the mosque. Today, apologists call this “mercy.” But the early language was not mercy; it was ritual pollution. Women’s bodies were framed as sources of impurity, so they were excluded from physical interaction with sacred texts and spaces, while men moved freely through the mosque and into religious life.
Quranic verses on hijab (Q24:31, Q33:59) are interpreted by early tafsir as ways to distinguish free women from slave women. Mujahid and al-Tabari report that free women were told to cover, while slave women who wore the same covering were beaten for “imitating” their free counterparts. Hijab began as a status marker and a tool of social distinction, not a “feminist choice.” In later fiqh, women’s bodies are treated as public threats to men’s morality; the responsibility for “fitna” is placed on the woman’s perfume, her clothes, and her face. Some scholars claim certain styles of hijab can send a woman to Hell, while men’s gaze is rarely policed with the same intensity. The body that is supposed to be a site of dignity becomes a site of suspicion.
Quran 65:4 speaks of women who “have not yet seen menstruation,” and classical tafsir such as Ibn Kathir and Al-Jalalayn explicitly interpret this as including pre-pubescent girls married before menstruating. The verse is used to structure the waiting period (idda) for young girls, turning child marriage into a regulated category of marriage, not an exception. The law can count a girl’s waiting period before she is biologically mature, but it cannot grant her the autonomy to refuse; her body is treated as a marital object before she is fully recognised as a human subject.
Classical fiqh recognises concubines and sex slaves; an enslaved woman has no right to refuse her master’s sexual demands, just as a wife has little right to refuse her husband. The same theology that frames men as “guardians” over free wives also frames them as absolute owners over enslaved women’s bodies. An enslaved woman cannot say no; a free wife’s “no” is framed as sinful. The difference between a slave and a wife is not autonomy; it is the degree.
Quran 4:34 prescribes a three-step process for dealing with fear of “disobedience” (nushuz): admonish, separate in bed, then strike them (fa-dribuhunna). Classical commentators such as al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir affirm the literal meaning of striking, while limiting it to a “light” hit that does not leave a mark. They insist the husband should not “harm” her, but they still defend his right to hit. This is not “mercy;” it is codified domestic violence. An all-knowing, all-wise God could have prescribed mediation, counselling, marital therapy or conflict resolution instead of striking, yet the text and mainstream interpretation stop at the permission to hit. The law regulates how lightly the blow must fall, not whether it should be allowed at all.
Testimony law compounds the hierarchy. Quran 2:282 instructs that in financial contracts, one man and two women may testify so that if one forgets, the other reminds her. A hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari describes women as deficient in intellect and religion, linking intellectual deficiency directly to testimony. In the same narration, women are described as the majority of Hell’s inhabitants because they curse and are ungrateful to their husbands. As if cursing and ingratitude are uniquely female traits. As if men are moral saints.
And every time these issues are raised, the defence rotates. Interpretation. Context. Language. Authenticity. If a hadith is too disturbing, it is declared weak. If a verse is too explicit, it is a metaphor. If a ruling is too unequal, it was progressive for its time. But Islamic jurisprudence is built on the Quran and hadith together. The five daily prayers, the structure of fasting, and the majority of its rituals are all transmitted through hadith. You cannot dismiss hadith selectively without destabilising the foundation of the legal system itself.
Does feminism consist of granting women “rights” while denying them autonomy over exercising their rights? Does it consist of praising hijab as a symbol of choice while ignoring its history as a status marker? Does it consist of celebrating mahr as a “right” while women must return it to escape abusive marriages?
If women choose to remain Muslim, that is their prerogative. Faith is personal. But calling a system that encodes male guardianship, unequal testimony, sexual entitlement, disciplinary authority, and conditional mobility as feminist is intellectually dishonest. “Muslim feminist” becomes an oxymoron if feminism means dismantling male supremacy rather than decorating it. A woman’s choice to wear hijab does not automatically transform the legal and historical framework that produced it into feminism. Choice exists inside structure. Structure does not vanish because choice happens.
Muslim women deserve better than a theology that tells them they are spiritually equal while structuring their legal and social lives into permanent dependence on male benevolence. Libra feminists who claim Islam is “feminist” are domesticating feminism, turning it into a language of accommodation to patriarchy rather than resistance.
If feminism is supposed to centre women’s autonomy, consent, and bodily integrity, then a system that grants men unilateral divorce, curses women for refusing sex, allows men to hit their wives, polices women’s bodies, bars women from leadership, and naturalises child marriage cannot be feminist. It can be “merciful” in the eyes of men, but it is not freedom. It is not equality. It is a patriarchal charter dressed up as revelation.
In the end, patriarchy still runs the show in Islam, even when it wears the mask of divine revelation.
