Women in the Quran

In the process of doing this reading I was really struck bu Sura 4, about women. My own perception of women in Islam before reading this was very limited, just coming from media stories and the like. I thought that women were very restricted in their roles, and that this role came from Islam. But in reading Sura 4, I realized that Islam actually teaches that women should be more equal to men than I thought that it would. It says, “Men have a share in what the parents and relatives leave behind at death; and women have share in what the parents and relatives leave behind” (74). This is only one example from this chapter, but I think that it shows the kinds of equality that this Sura talks about. While, granted, there are some aspects that are harder to swallow than others, I think that it really shows that one should not build one’s perception of the treatment of a specific population of people in a particular culture just based on hearsay or media coverage. I found this to be very educational and helpful to me in my own perception of Islam.