Source: Pew Research Center
A new survey report looks at attitudes among Muslims in 39 countries on a wide range of topics, from science to sharia, polygamy to popular culture. The survey finds that overwhelming percentages of Muslims in many countries want Islamic law to be the official law of their land, but there is also widespread support for democracy and religious freedom.
Navigate this page in PEW Forum website:
- Women and Veiling
- Wives’ Role
- Women and Divorce
- Inheritance Rights for Women
- Women’s Views on Women’s Rights
- Sharia and Women’s Rights
In nearly all countries surveyed, a majority of Muslims say that a wife should always obey her husband. At the same time, there also is general agreement – at least outside sub-Saharan Africa – that a woman should have the right to decide for herself whether to wear a veil in public.
Muslims are less unified when it comes to questions of divorce and inheritance. The percentage of Muslims who say that a wife should have the right to divorce her husband varies widely among the countries surveyed, as does the proportion that believes sons and daughters should inherit equally.
In some, but not all, countries surveyed, Muslim women are more supportive of women’s rights than are Muslim men. Differences on these questions also are apparent between Muslims who want sharia to be the official law of the land in their country and those who do not.
Muslims in many of the countries surveyed generally favor a woman’s right to choose whether to wear a veil in public.30 This view is especially prevalent in Southern and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Southeast Asia, including at least nine-in-ten Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina (92%), Kosovo (91%) and Turkey (90%).
There is less agreement among Muslims in the Middle East-North Africa region and South Asia. While more than eight-in-ten Muslims in Tunisia (89%) and Morocco (85%) say women should have the right to choose whether they wear a veil, fewer than half in Egypt (46%), Jordan (45%), Iraq (45%) and Afghanistan (30%) say the same.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the one region surveyed where most Muslims donot think women should have the right to decide if they wear a veil. The only country in the region where a majority supports a woman’s right to decide is Senegal (58%); by contrast, fewer than a third support giving women this right in Nigeria (30%) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (29%).
Categories: Women, Women In islam, Women Rights, Women's right
I am unsure as to the reason for this poll; since most of the questions raised are against the fundamental teachings of Islam.
The Holy Qur’an asks the women to pull their headgear down to cover their chests, as does it dictate the quantum of inheritence to the son and the daughter. I wonder whether we have reached a summit of progress where we have decided to poll upon how to take Islam further.
The best way to view Islam, according to me – and this is just my opinion, is to let the teachings of the Holy Qur’an govern the matter of how the society is to be run, and as far as individual choices are concerned,let the individual decide. One does not have to be spoon fed on the opinion of others to come to a conclusion as to what one wants.
I am doubtful of the appropriateness and adequacy of the section of muslims surveyed. In Asia, India is one of those countries having the maximum number of muslims, this being far more than most of these muslim countries. Yet, I do not see India figuring in the list. Have we now concluded that muslims are those who live in those so called “Islamic countries”???
Why not endeavor to come out with how we can be better muslims, than to put in efforts to make Islam better? Are we better than God? or are we now doubting the import of the Holy Qur’an??