History is silent as to whether there was any distinction in status between the male and the female sexes during the beginnings of human civilization. In later days no doubt the female sex was regarded as inferior to the male and the idea of inferiority developed to such an extent that the male sex not only claimed a complete superiority over the female sex, but further arrogated to itself the right to utilise and employ the female sex as it liked.

Surveying the history of the world on this point we find that in pre-Christian Europe and Greece, which was the centre of light and learning for a long time and which provided philosophical and scientific inspiration to the Europe of later days, regarded woman as something definitely inferior to man. She was a subservient creature who had come into existence solely for the purpose of breeding citizens for the state and soldiers for the army. Their great dramatist Euripedes puts into the mouth of Medea the remark. "Women are impotent for good, but clever contrivers of all evils," Such degrading conceptions led to a moral.degeneration which ultimately ruined the Greek society. The names of virtuous women says Professor Lecky, scarcely appear in Greek history." (History of European Morals, Vol:ll p. 307).

Conditions in Europe did not irnprove with the advent of Christianity. "Of the woman came the beginning of sin and the wickedness of man and through her we all die. " Consequently, Paul, the premier saint of Christendom, proclaimed: "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence, for Adam was first formed than Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in transgression." Other early Fathers were even more uncharitable and denounced women as "the lance of the demon," "the gate of the Devil," "the road of iniquity." "the sting of the scorpion," a daughter of falsehood, the sentinel of Hell," "the enemy of peace" and "of the wild beast, the most dangerous." Nay, they went still further. The Greek Orthodox Church denied that woman had a soul and at the Council of Macon, a Bishop vehemently asserted that a woman did not belong to the human species. (Westermarck, p.663) A council held at Auxierre prohibited women [from receiving] the Eucharist [with their bare] hands [or] to [go] near the altar during the celebration of the Mass on the ground that she was an "unclean thing". "I may define man," says Principal Donaldson (Woman, pp. 181, 182), "to be a male human being and woman to be a female human being . . . Now what the early Christains did was to strike the 'male' out of the definition of man and 'human being' out of the definition of woman. Man was [a] human being made for the highest and noblest purpose; woman was a female made to serve only. She was on earth to influence the heart of man with every evil passion. She was a fire[storm] continually striving to get alongside the male man-of-war to blow him up into pieces."

In the Asian cradles of civilization [women were] no better off. Hinduism, which is the oldest among the present day religions of the world, laid it down: 'In childhood a female must be subjected to her father, in youth to her husband, when her husband is dead, to her sons; a woman must never be independent'. (Manu, V 140). "The legislator Man", says the celebrated Hindu scholar, Sir R. G. Bhandarkar,"is equally hard on women. It must be acknowledged that the estimate of the old Aryan of womanly nature is not flattering to them generally. They are debarred from reading the Vedas; any religious rite in which they alone are concerned is directed to be performed without Vedic Mantras. Even the Bhagavad Gita gives expression to the general belief that it is only a sinful soul that is born as woman, Vaisya or Sudra". (Collected Works, p. 46 1).

In Buddhism, says the Buddhist scholar, May Oung, "the idea of wedlock and its attendant worldly life, is opposed to the ultimate and the annihilation of Desire, the striving for which must necessarily involve celibacy." (Buddhist Law, Par. 1, p. 2). In Buddhist ideology, therefore, according to the historian Westermarck,"Woman are, of all the snares which the temper has spread for men, the most dangerous; in women are embodied all the powers of infatuation which blind the mind of the world."

In pre-lslamic Arabia, the general conception of womanhood was of such a degraded type that her very existence was considered ignominious for the family. Female infanticide was consequently practiced on a wide scale. Those women, however, who escaped early death were allowed to live only on sufferance. For, an Arab woman "had no rights; she could not inherit property; her person formed part of the inheritance which came to the heir of her husband, and he was entitled to marry her against her will. Hence sprung up the impious marriages of their sons with their stepmothers and others of an even worse character. . ." "Polygamy was universal and quite unrestricted; equally so was divorce at least as far as man was concerned; (Mohammed and Mohammedanism; Bosworth Smith; p 82)

Such was the condition of the female sex in the world when Mohammed (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) the Saviour of womanhood, stood up in Arabia and, through the Divine Revelation of the Lord of the Universe Who created both the male and the female and Who loves them equally, preached to the world that :
# females were just like males
# have equal rights
# have equal honour
# equal status in life
They were on no account to be treated as the property of the males. They have the right of ownership of property in the same way that males have, though, no doubt under the principle of the division, the female sex has some specialised duties to perform in life, just as the male sex has its own duties.

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