Social and Legal Status of Women in Muslim Society

Abstract

The issue of rights and obligations and the status of women in countries professing the religion of Islam remains relevant up to date. It is not sufficiently studied and raised by the number of prejudices. Many Muslim scholars and jurists when touching upon this subject, extoll religious teachings and they also rely on their own Constitution and the Universal Islamic Declaration of human rights. However, they forget about the main problem – applying all those rights in practice. The article thoroughly examines this issue. The article attempts to consider the legal and theological aspects of the rights and freedoms of women, typical for the majority of Muslim countries (Afghanistan, Iran, Indonesia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Tunisia, etc). The existing laws cited in the article show presence or absence of the status and rights of Muslim women. The article notes that the development of the idea of ensuring human rights all over the world influenced the legal consciousness of Muslim politicians, Imams, that in turn has led to the adoption and approval of legal documents and declarations aimed at improvement of social and legal and economic status of women. The author marks that in most Muslim countries, the rights of women need appropriate regulation, because, historically, women were always in more vulnerable position in comparison to men, and till today, few things have changed. The customary, pre-Islamic, traditional attitude towards the role and status of women has ingrained so deeply in the minds of Muslims, that even today, few of the representatives of this religion perform their duties specified in the Quran, the Islamic Declaration of human rights and other documents. The research results can be used in teaching such academic disciplines as comparative law, history, sociology of law, micro-sociology of family, ethnography.