Women’s Empowerment- An Islamic Perspective

Abstract

Women's empowerment has become one of the central themes in the ongoing debate between Islam and secularism regarding women's role and status in society. Liberal Islamists embrace women's empowerment and promote it in Muslim societies without a thorough assessment from an Islamic perspective. Women's empowerment has not received a sufficient response from the Islamic scholarship. This work attempts to lay down the foundations for addressing the current gap in that response. Toward that end, this work employs a qualitative approach. It utilizes secondary sources of information to analyze women's empowerment and critique the main approaches employed to promote it in Muslim societies. This work then provides an Islamic assessment of women's empowerment and concludes with recommendations for further work.