On an entire page of the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, it was recently published that European and American intelligence agencies as well as the Israeli Mossad submitted lengthy reports to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), giving alerts about the increasing rate of the spread of Islam in the West, in spite of all the crises that are encompassing Muslims. The reports also mentioned that the last two years witnessed the conversion of more than fifty thousand Europeans, most of them women, to Islam. They reported the frightening way in which Islam was spreading, and that newcomers to Islam perform Islamic rites accurately, and that they become more observant than those who are Muslims by descent. According to the reports, the entire world should be cautious about this frightening phenomenon, especially in light of the conversion of European and American women to Islam. It is very dangerous when a woman embraces Islam because an entire family, with an average of five members, will follow her.
In recent times, female converts to Islam have emphasized to all those around them that they entered Islam because it is the only religion that grants a woman all her rights, while at the same time conferring a special sacredness on a woman and gives her security. If a woman believes in that, she can easily attract her friends, and thus, the circle rotates to a terrifying degree.
This is the center of interest of Western and Israeli intelligence centers as well as the Israeli mass media. The rate at which Islam is spreading in the West is on the rise according to the testimony of the enemies of Islam, despite the negative propaganda that they spread about it. Western women mark the majority of newcomers to Islam although the West charges Islam with suppressing and abusing women.
Bearing in mind the attitude of our enemies who observe the reasons behind the spread of Islam, the question that arises is: Have we as Muslims utilized the facts published in these reports to spread Islam in the circles of Western women? Have we stressed in our religious discourse to the West all the sublime meanings that Islam preserves for women? To what extent can we benefit from these facts to serve our contemporary Islamic issues? Have we studied how the principles of Islam reach Western women in spite of the barriers set by the West?
The following paragraphs will attempt to answer these questions.
Dr. ‘Ali Jum‘ah, Mufti of Egypt, emphasizes that the miserable status of the contemporary Western woman has motivated her to search for Islam and embrace it. She is very much attracted by the fact that Allah The Almighty has placed man and woman on an equal footing when He addressed both of them as “Insaan (human being)”. Also, there is neither antagonism nor ethnicity between man and woman, only different characteristics, and each of them complements the other just as daytime complements night, and summer complements winter. The status of a woman in Islam is distinguished and satisfies her Fitrah (innate natural disposition) and suits her physiological and psychological characteristics.
The Islamic thinker, Dr. Muhammad ‘Imaarah, stresses that the conversion of European women to Islam despite the propaganda against it is not strange. A woman who gets to know Islam finds it the religion that holds women equal to men in terms of rights and obligations. It makes such equality a means through which society maintains the sound Fitrah which Allah The Almighty made a covenant between the sexes. By virtue of that covenant, a woman leaves her family to place herself in the arms of a new person who is a stranger to her, something that she did not give to any of her family members among whom she lived and matured. Equality is a return to Fitrah, by which man is elevated above the awful consequences of suppression that is the outcome of the powerful dominating over the weak throughout the journey of human development.
Dr. ‘Imaarah adds that when Islam holds man a degree superior to woman, that degree means leadership which is inevitable for any society, whether it is large or small; a village, a city or a nation. In this regard, while a woman is required to meet an obligation, a man is required to carry out dozens of obligations due to his position of leadership and observance of interests, based on the fact that marital life is social, and for every society there must be a leader.
According to Dr. ‘Abd As-Saboor Marzooq, Secretary General of
the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, the man-woman relationship in contemporary Western societies is the greatest evidence on the abuse of women who are still a cheap commodity in all walks of life. There are even systems and laws for debasing women which permit the husband and the wife to commit immorality and vice without limits. The Western woman is like a ewe which is fed well to make use of, and the society has mastered the art of taking her out of her life and chastity so as to be a tool for gratifying their desires and vile whims. Under the pretext of equality, they made women undertake men's work, while men were not asked to do women's work.
Henry Makow, an American, criticizes the condition of American women, emphasizing in an article that the emancipation of women is a trick played by the new world order; a cruel trick that has lured American women and has struck a hefty blow to Western civilization.
The Western woman, due to the so-called liberation of women, lives an immoral life. Tens of males know her before marriage, hence she loses her innocence which is part of her femininity and becomes rigid, sly and unable to reciprocate love. She even becomes aggressive, unstable and unfit to be a wife or a mother. Although those who wage campaigns that aim at distorting the image of women in Islam are mostly Jewish orientalists, they forget that their Torah, which they forged, is what does evil to women. Is there any debasement of women beyond their claim that the Jewish woman is forbidden to read the Torah?
Such statistics are of significance. It is important that we, not our enemies, prepare them to know the reasons behind the spread of Islam in the West, and try to develop those reasons. It is also crucial that those who are concerned with Islamic Da‘wah (propagation) issues utilize the atmosphere that the Western woman lives in now, and choose the most effective ways to communicate to her the correct message of Islam. In this regard, Dr. Aaminah Nusayr, Professor at Al-Azhar University, views that the current Western setting entails activating the role of women working in Da‘wah as being most able to reach women of the Islamic foundations that graduate propagators. We also need to concentrate on the absent role of women working in Da‘wah. The causes that hinder women from assuming their role in Da‘wah with efficiency and freedom must be eliminated, especially those who are related to female propagators in the West. Young Muslim women in the West should be given the opportunity to learn, ask, and gain the spirit of confrontation and wise behavior. We should also reach out to the reality of Western women for positive points that are in harmony with the views of Islam, and take them a basis for clarifying the moral attitude of Islam regarding other issues. One of these positive points in the West is the trend that calls for chastity, purity, moral values and observance of human customs and traditions. There are non-Muslim American schools which call for terminating intermixing between the sexes. There are also groups in American educational institutions assuming the slogan of returning to chastity and preserving virginity.