“Live with women in accordance with what is fair and kind: if you dislike them, … you dislike something in which God has put much good.” (Quran, 4:19)
Admittedly, as I read the Quran, I wasn’t always a fan of how it talks about women. On the surface, at times it seems to treat women as unintelligent and inferior to men. For example, it mentions that men should take charge of tasks that involve mathematics because it would take several women to make the same calculations a man could on his own.
However.
This is hardly different from the Bible. Both books are heavily influenced by cultural bias and the worldly circumstances of the time they were written. In the example above, the footnote I read pointed out that in the time and place this Sura was written, women received little to no education to begin with. So those who were capable of developing math skills had no opportunity to learn them.
Now consider the Bible. In various parts of the Old and New Testaments, women are told to be subservient to their husbands, that they have fewer rights than men (such as divorce and land ownership), that they shouldn’t speak at church, and many other such inequalities. Like the Quran, the Bible also lays out strict dress codes for women that feel oppressive today.
None of this is meant to excuse unequal treatment among women and men. Rather, the point here is that when reading a sacred text, it’s important to try and see through cultural imperfections to the good doctrine at the center. Even when it seems like God is condoning unequal ideas, the core truth is usually more complicated.
Jesus taught a parable featuring a slave. Does that mean he approved of slavery? An entire biblical book (Philemon) involves Paul instructing an escaped slave to return to his master. Does that mean God gave slavery His stamp of approval? Much of the Old Testament is written with a strong anti–Northern Kingdom bias. Does that mean God loved the tribes of Judah and Benjamin more than the other ten tribes?
I won’t answer these questions for you, but I will submit that we can seek out goodness from imperfect texts and fallible writers. Clearly a perfect God would not treat any of His children unequally or love them any less. As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said:
“Except in the case of His only perfect Begotten Son, imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we. And when you see imperfection, remember that the limitation is not the divinity of the work.” (“Lord, I Believe,” general conference, Apr. 2013)
The core truth taught in the Quran is not misogynistic. It honors women as “something in which God has put much good” and condemns mistreating them. So instead of getting hung up on the cultural imperfections of our scriptures and spiritual leaders, let’s benefit from godly principles we can find at the heart of their messages.
The Commonplace Notebook 