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Women in the Arab world, as in other areas of the world, have throughout history experienced discrimination and have been subject to restrictions of their freedoms and rights. Some of these practices are based on religious beliefs, but many of the limitations are cultural and emanate from tradition as well as religion. These main constraints that create an obstacle towards women's rights and liberties are reflected in laws dealing with criminal justice, economy, education and healthcare.〔('Challenging Inequality: Obstacles and Opportunities Towards Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa' )〕 ==Arab women before Islam== Many people / writers have discussed the status of women in pre-Islamic Arabia, and their findings have been mixed.〔Turner, Brian S. ''Islam'' (ISBN 0-415-12347-X). Routledge: 2003, (p77-78 ).〕 Under the customary tribal law existing in Arabia at the advent of Islam, women as a general rule had virtually no legal status. They were sold into marriage by their guardians for a price paid to the guardian, the husband could terminate the union at will, and women had little or no property or succession rights.〔Beck, lois. and Keddic, Nikki. " Women in the Muslim world", Harvard University Press, London, 1978, p.37.〕 Some writers have argued that women before Islam were more liberated drawing most often on the first marriage of Muhammad and that of Muhammad's parents, but also on other points such as worship of female idols at Mecca.〔 Other writers, on the contrary, have agreed that women's status in pre-Islamic Arabia was poor, citing practices of female infanticide, unlimited polygyny, patrilineal marriage and others.〔 Saudi historian Hatoon al-Fassi considers much earlier historical origins of Arab women's rights. Using evidence from the ancient Arabian kingdom of Nabataea, she finds that Arab women in Nabataea had independent legal personalities. She suggests that they lost many of their rights through ancient Greek and Roman law prior to the arrival of Islam and that these Greco-Roman constraints were retained under Islam. Valentine M. Moghadam analyzes the situation of women from a marxist theoretical framework and argues that the position of women is mostly influenced by the extent of urbanization, industrialization, proletarization and political ploys of the state managers rather than culture or intrinsic properties of Islam; Islam, Moghadam argues, is neither more nor less patriarchal than other world religions especially Christianity and Judaism.〔Unni Wikan, review of ''Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East'', American Ethnologist, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Nov., 1995), pp. 1078-1079〕〔Valentine M. Moghadam. ''Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East''. (Lynne Rienner Publishers, USA, 1993) p. 5〕 In pre-Islamic Arabia, women's status varied widely according to laws and cultural norms of the tribes in which they lived. In the prosperous southern region of the Arabian Peninsula, for example, the religious edicts of Christianity and Judaism held sway among the Sabians and Himyarites. In other places such as the city of Makkah (Mecca) -- where the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, was born—a tribal set of rights was in place. This was also true amongst the Bedouin (desert dwellers), and this code varied from tribe to tribe. Thus there was no single definition of the roles played, and rights held, by women prior to the advent of Islam. In some tribes, women were emancipated even in comparison with many of today's standards.〔(Islam and Women ) Dr. Younus Shaikh〕〔(Aspects of Pre-Islamic Arabian Society )〕 There were instances where women held high positions of power and authority. Pakistani lawyer Sundas Hoorain has said that women in pre-Islamic Arabia had a much higher standing than they got with Islam. She describes a free sex society in which both men and women could have multiple partners or could contract a monogamous relationship per their will. She thus concludes that the Muslim idea of monogamy being a post-Islamic idea is flawed and biased and that women had the right to contract such a marriage before Islam. She also describes a society in which succession was matrilineal and children were retained by the mother and lived with the mother's tribe, whereas children are always given to the father after a divorce, under Sharia law. Hoorain also cites problems with the idea of mass female infanticide and simultaneous widespread polygamy (multiple women for one man), as she sees it as an illogical paradox. She questions how it was possible for men to have numerous women if so many females were being killed as infants.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CmSrLKwZE4 )〕 In pre-Islamic Arabia, there were patterns of homicidal abuse of women and girls, including instances of killing female infants considered to be a liability. The Qur'an mentions that the Arabs in Jahiliya (the period of ignorance or pre-Islamic period) used to bury their daughters alive.〔The Qur'an, 4 : 19〕 The barbaric custom of burying female infants alive, comments a noted Qur'anic commentator, Muhammad Asad, seems to have been fairly widespread in pre-Islamic Arabia. The motives were twofold: the fear that an increase in female offspring would result in economic burden, as well as the fear of the humiliation frequently caused by girls being captured by a hostile tribe and subsequently preferring their captors to their parents and brothers.〔Engineer, Asgar Ali, "the Rights of Women in Islam", C. Hurst and company, London, 1992, p.21.〕 In his book ''Infanticide: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives'', Glenn Hausfater details how Qais Bin Assem, a leader of the Tamim tribe, killed every daughter he had for fear of their capture (and his disgrace) in the intertribal wars that dominated Arabian society at that time. According to some scholars; during times of famine, especially, poorer families were likely to kill a daughter, regarding her as a burden on a starving family. It is generally accepted that Islam changed the structure of Arab society and to a large degree unified the people, reforming and standardizing gender roles throughout the region. According to Islamic studies professor William Montgomery Watt, Islam improved the status of women by "instituting rights of property ownership, inheritance, education and divorce."〔Maan, Bashir and Alastair McIntosh. ("'The whole house of Islam, and we Christians with them...': An interview with 'the Last Orientalist' - the Rev Prof William Montgomery Watt." ) Internet version from www.alastairmcintosh.com. Also published in The Coracle, the Iona Community, summer 2000, issue 3:51, pp. 8-11.〕〔Esposito, John L., with DeLong-Bas, Natana J. (2001). ''Women in Muslim Family Law'', 2nd revised Ed. (Available here via GoogleBooks preview ). Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-2908-7 (pbk); pp. 4-5.〕 The Hadiths in Bukhari suggest that Islam improved women's status, by the second Caliph Umar saying "We never used to give significance to ladies in the days of the Pre-lslamic period of ignorance, but when Islam came and Allah mentioned their rights, we used to give them their rights but did not allow them to interfere in our affairs", Book 77, Hadith 60, 5843, and Vol. 7, Book 72, Hadith 734. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Women in Arab societies」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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