History 111: Intro to Western Civilizations (the first civilizations through Charlemagne's Empire) This classs discussed not only the beginning of early civilizations, but also religions.
It was in this class where we had to read excerpts from famous writers and their books that discussed early socities and civilizations; this book was one of our textbooks.
Well through the course we had covered most of the readings about the Romans by authors such as Pericles and others. Later when we got into discussing the "emergence" of Islam, we had a couple of readings from the book. Two of the readings were ayats from Holy Quran and the other two were writings of Imam Ghazali. You would think these were pretty good readings for people who hadn't a clue about Islam. One of the readings was titled : "Women in the Quran" -- it was one of the ones that contained ayats from the Quran, and the other was "War in Islam". Both readings used ayats from the Quran and were completely out of context.
As I read through the brief 3 pages of the reading on women in the Quran, I can remember my face feeling hot (no I wasn't getting sick, though I felt a big lump in my throat). I wasn't only angry but more so hurt at the message being depicted. The ayats were chosen randomly to address the title, and were completey out of context. Women were portrayed as mere objects, where men could punish them at their will and attain pleasure from them when they wished. It would begin with an ayah and then leave off by " ..." and then go to another ayah, and the same was repeated. The person who chose these ayats didn't even mention which ayats they were for people to go the Quran and look them up. There were no explanations for any of the ayats (there was no tafseer from the Quran either)
When I finished the reading, I discussed it with 3 other Muslims in my class, Mahjabeen, Rehan, Marwan, and a few other knowledgable Muslims on the matter. We all agreed to it's misrepresentation of Islam, so Mahjabeen and I went to our instructor after class to discuss our problem with the readings. He was very open-mided about our concerns and simply told us that he was unfortunatley quite ignorant about Islam, and that if we wanted we could each (the four of us) write a paper on the topic in the reading, addressing our concerns w/ backed proof. He would then copy them and distribute it to the class to read. We happily agreed... obviously this was the perfect opportunity for dawah and clearing up the misconceptions about Islam.
I was very happy at this opportunity. As a Muslima, I know how beautiful and fair Islam is, and I'm more than sure any Muslim would agree to this. In this twisted society we live in, where media and the "liberating" Western literature already depicts Islam as a "terrorist" religion in which women are oppressed by their fathers and husbands, the readings seemed to back those images of Islam and Muslims.
Though I shouldn't have been surprised by the readings, I was still very surprised, actually shocked, at what a higher educational institution was teaching to people; and we wonder why people don't know anything about Islam, even though it is one of the fastest growing religions in the U.S. and abroad.
Anyhow ... we agreed to do the assignment (our instructor even said he'd give us extra credit, which was a double whamy :), Alhumdulillah)
We each picked an area to research and write about. I picked Gender Equity because it is one of the most misunderstood areas about Islam, not only among non-Muslims, but Muslims as well.
We all turned in our papers, and did get extra credit :), but unfortunately our instructor was unable to copy and ditribute it to the class (b/c we turned it in on the exam day -- that was our fault). There is a good chance that he will use the papers as supplemental readings for his future classes, insha Allah. May Allah grant him hidaya, and make something good come from those papers. Ameen.