Islam's Response to Contemporary Issues — Page 101
Social Peace 101 reproduction, family care and concomitant involvements. This is exactly what Islam proposes. Again, women in general have a weaker and comparatively frail constitution. Yet, surprisingly, God has provided them with tougher potentials in their physique. These attributes are mainly due to the presence of an extra half chromosome in their cells, which is responsible for the difference between men and women. This is obviously provided to meet the extra challenge placed on them during pregnancy, childbirth and the lactation period. All the same, this potential does not make a woman outwardly stronger and tougher. They should not be relegated to hard menial tasks in the productive economic field merely in the name of equality or any other name. This also requires that they should be treated with more tenderness and kindness. Women should have a lesser load to bear in daily life and should not be forced to bear equal load with men in public activities. It emerges from the above that if the task of the running of a home is a special area of responsibility to be assigned to either man or woman, a woman has obviously much greater merit than a man to perform such responsibilities. Additionally, by nature women have been assigned the responsibility of looking after the children. Such responsibility can only be partly shared with men. Women must be granted the right to remain at home far more than men; if, at the same time, they are absolved of the responsibility of earning their livelihood, the free time available to them must be employed for their own sake or for the sake of society as a whole. That is how the concept of ‘a woman ’ s place is in the home’ is born. There is no question of their being tied to their aprons or imprisoned in the four walls of the home. In no way does Islam infringe the rights of women to go out in their spare time to perform any task or to