I thought a very interesting point brought up in class yesterday was that most Americans (or those from Western countries in general) view Muslims and Islamic countries through an incredibly narrow, underdeveloped lens, never having been educated on the religion of Islam, it’s different branches such as Sunni and Shia, the Koran, or the laws which certain Islamic countries have in place. There tends to be a perception among Americans and people from the West that Islamic countries impose universally harsh and controlling laws, that the religion of Islam hates women, or that it is a violent religion. All of these stereotypes are patently untrue, as can be seen through the Hadiths, and are more telling of American society than actual Islamic beliefs or practices. It made me wonder why such stereotypes exist in the West towards Muslims and what can be done to mitigate their spread.
Including this, I thought some of the more interesting Hadiths were those pertaining to women and their place in Islamic society, given how the perception of Muslims in the West is that they are incredibly oppressive towards women. The fact that Muhammad’s wife Khadijah proposed to him and was first his employer was incredibly shocking to me and illustrated the point driven home in the Hadiths that women should have a say in who they marry and divorce. My shock at these facts is evidence enough that people in the West are generally not exposed to information about Islam as regularly as they should be, allowing the negative stereotypes to go unchallenged for the most part.