THE MODERN MUSLIM WOMEN IN AMERICA

Challenges Facing: The Modern Muslim Women in America

Challenges Facing: The Modern Muslim Women in America

In this paper I am going to discuss the challenges facing American Muslim women. Imagine a young intelligent woman with a family, and a husband whose role is to be the caregiver for the family, and not the provider. This woman has no say in a career outside of taking care of the children, and doing the chores around the household, because she lacks women's rights. Muslim women, like the one I have just described lack specific rights pertaining to career, marriage, divorce, and many others. Throughout the entirety of this paper, I will be discussing the various roles of Muslim women.

The first and one of the most important roles of all Muslim women is to wear the Al Hijab. The Al Hijab is a robe made of a piece of cloth that covers the entire body, except for the hands, feet, and the face. The main purpose for the Al Hijab is to protect women from men who might portray them as sexual objects (Shaaban, 1988). It is required of all Muslim women to wear the Al Hijab, which included the covering of their hair, whenever they were to go out into the public eye (Shaaban, 1988). However, depending on how each woman interprets the readings from the text of the Koran, the choice of wearing the Al Hijab is ultimately up to the women's interpretation of it in the Koran (Fernea, 1998). In countries such as Iran and Afghanistan, Muslim women are required to wear the Al Hijab, and therefore their interpretation of this veil in the Koran will not matter (Fernea, 1998).

In addition to the wearing of the Al Hijab, many Muslim women struggle with the topic of marriage as well. Before a Muslim woman can be married, a prerequisite of virginity is in order until after the marriage ceremony (Shaaban, 1988). This requirement was only took shame upon women and not upon men. If a man were to have sexual relations with a woman before marriage, he would not face harsh consequences from his family. However, with the roles reversed, a woman would be looked down upon by her whole family if she had sexual relations, before she were married (Shaaban, 1988). For a woman to have to bear this kind of humility seems so unfair to me, because having sexual relations is a consequence shared on both sides of the table. A man should bear the same consequences as a woman when it comes to sexual relations, because the two of them are at fault, and not just the woman. When a man and a woman are married and have children, they have become mature Muslims, unless they have broken the rule of sexual relations before marriage (Fernea, 1998).

For many Muslims their marriages will make it through all of the tough times laid out ahead of them, but for those marriages that do not ...