this is a website of an american open-minded guy who converted to Islam (shia faith)
American Shia
he wrote the following
Women in Islam
The role of women in Islamic societies is vastly
misunderstood. In general Muslim men and women have more
clearly defined roles than do many of their non-Muslim
counterparts.
There is a great deal of media attention focused on the
plight of women in places like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. It is
true, that many women in these societies have considerably
fewer rights than do women in the West. We must be careful
however, to not paint all Middle-Eastern women with the same
brush and not to impose Western cultures on non-Western
peoples. For example, women in many parts of the Middle-East
would not consider it proper to leave their homes with their hair
uncovered. These cultural norms are no more oppressive than
Western cultural norms, they are merely different.
Not all Muslim women cover their hair and not all women
who cover their hair are Muslims. Islam mandates that women
dress modestly and cover their hair and all but their hands and
feet. This can be accomplished with jeans, long sleeve shirts and
a headscarf as is done by many observant Muslim women
throughout the Middle-East or can include the abaya (a loose
dress like garment thrown over the clothing) or the niqab
(garment that covers all but the eyes) and the burkha (garment
that completely conceals the women in a tent like covering with a
mesh covering even the eyes. The variances in dress that I have
described above are largely cultural and not necessarily Islamic.
Many Muslim women do not cover their hair at all, especially in
places like Tunis, Turkey, Azerbaijan and even Egypt and
Lebanon.
Islam tends to get a bad rap for its treatment of women, but
we should remember that the Quran gave rights to women at
least 1,200 years before similar rights were given to women in
the West. Some of the rights guaranteed to women in the Quran
are: the right to inherit property, the right to testify in an Islamic
court, the right to choose or reject a spouse, the right to divorce,
and the right to receive both spousal and child support.