Western ignorance about Muslim women obscures their historical achievements and leadership

There is a particular sadness that comes from watching the same ignorance repeat itself. A Western world that has built its sense of moral clarity on the idea that it alone understands women's liberation, yet knows almost nothing about the women who shaped one of history's great religions, or the women living within it today.

The author has listened to refugee friends describe their displacement. She has watched Americans abandon a country they invaded to save it. She has read the hateful comments about Islam that flood social media—a religion followed by more than 1.6 billion people—written by people who seem to believe the faith itself demands the subjugation of women. And she has felt, repeatedly, a deep shame at how thoroughly the West has misunderstood this history.

Start with a basic fact: the Prophet Muhammad, fourteen centuries ago, became the first political and religious leader in the world to ban the killing of infant girls. In the Arabian Peninsula, newborns were buried alive when families wanted sons instead. In Christian Europe, unwanted girls were left at foundling wheels or killed by their fathers. Muhammad declared that the lives of girls held the same sacred weight as boys. There is nothing in the Quran that forbids women from working, studying, or seeking knowledge. The pursuit of learning is woven into Islam's foundation. What happened in places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan—the extreme interpretations that restricted women's rights—came from extremists, not from the religion's core.

Four of the six most historically significant figures in Islam are women. Khadija was a merchant who owned dozens of trading caravans across the Arabian Peninsula. She heard of a man known for his honesty and integrity, hired him to manage one of her routes, and they fell in love. She became his first wife in an era when most men took multiple spouses. She was the first woman to hear the revelations brought by the Angel Gabriel, making her the first Muslim woman in history. She used her wealth and influence to support her husband and the faith until her death in 619—a year Muslims call the Year of Sorrow.

Aisha married at nine, which was common then, as was Mary's marriage to Joseph at eleven. But calling her a victim misses everything about who she became. She had a gift for language and argument. She became one of Islam's greatest theologians, spoke publicly about women's rights and equality within the faith, taught history to girls, and was sought out for her knowledge of medicine. She led hundreds of caravans of female pilgrims to Mecca. She debated with the Prophet, pointed out his mistakes, and suggested how he should behave and dress. She founded a school for girls in Mecca. She lived to sixty-five, a long and productive life for her time. Millions of Muslim girls are named after her. All Muslims revere her as the Mother of the Believers.

Yet Western media has spent decades portraying Muslim women as helpless, oppressed, needing rescue by the very powers that have invaded and destroyed their countries. The same Brazilian far-right figures who claim to support wars in the Middle East to liberate Muslim women are the ones who elected a man who said he would never hire a woman because she might get pregnant. They are the ones who harass women abroad, beat their wives at home, and celebrate the murders of women like Marielle Franco and rural labor leader Margarida Alves. They ignore that Muslim women lead companies, practice medicine, conduct research, teach, and report the news across the Muslim world. They do not know that Layla Ghanam, the governor of the Ramallah region in Palestine, is respected by thousands of Muslim men.

The Western obsession with the hijab—the headscarf that covers hair but leaves the face visible—reveals this ignorance most clearly. The same veil was worn by Mary, mother of Jesus. Orthodox Jewish women wear it. Christian women in Russia, Greece, and Serbia wear it to pray in Orthodox churches. Brazilian Christian women wore identical veils to Mass until recently, including the author's own grandmother. The burqa, which covers the entire body and face, originated in Afghanistan more than a thousand years before Islam arrived there. In six trips across the Middle East, from Palestine to Syria to Lebanon to Egypt to Morocco, the author never saw a woman wearing a burqa. Yet Western critics claim to be experts on Islamic dress while confusing two entirely different garments.

The hypocrisy cuts deeper still. While pointing fingers at Muslim men as oppressors, Brazil recorded 66,000 rape victims in 2018 alone—the highest number since tracking began in 2007. More than half were girls thirteen and under. Four girls are assaulted every hour in Brazil. On average, 180 rapes occur daily. The aggressor is often someone close to the victim—an uncle, a stepfather, a teacher. Brazil has become the fourth-largest country in the world for child marriage. Yet the same people who weaponize concern for Muslim women's rights ignore this catastrophe happening in their own country. They do not seem to understand that a woman in a bikini, walking alone, being harassed on the metro and in the streets, is not liberation. They have never truly known a woman at all.