Why women should be educated, from conservative viewpoints
Conservative Muslims believe that education is important for the women. As stated in Greenberg’s chapter Learning to be “the mothers of tomorrow” conservatives believe that “girls had to be educated so that they could become modern mothers who could raise nationalist sons” (134). This may be interpreted as although these women are going to school for an education, their main curriculum includes how to become a modern mother. The schooling that these girls received involved how to be more hygienic and take care of infants which lowered the
Why women should be educated from liberal viewpoints
Liberal and conservative Muslims both agree that women need education, however, their reasonings differ. Greenberg declares that “although girls were expected to aspire to be future mothers and to maintain their nation’s culture, the schools also exposed them to female role models such as teachers, and nurses, working women who had not (yet) fulfilled the social expectation of marriage and motherhood” (165). The need for a woman’s education is mentioned by a modernist Qasim Amin, who states …show more content…
In Barbara Frey Stowasser’s article Liberated Equal or Protected Dependent? Contemporary Religious Paradigms on Women’s Status in Islam she notes that Abbas Mahmud al- ‘Aqquad interprets women as having qualities that appear to be childlike and destructive. Another viewpoint of Aqquad is that “Women desire what is forbidden; they are ignorant, curious, weak – willed, and unable to resist temptation” ( these views explain why women are not to be political leaders. Many other conservatives share the opinion that women have no place in the workforce and especially not in politics. Women are to work at home to care for children and perform “her role as supportive wife and loving mother as designed by God”