Paris Sorbonne University hosts lecture on women’s rights in Islam

French-Lebanese journalist Zeina Al Tibi says Islam first established women's rights and equality, while Cherie Blair praised the UAE for its leading role in empowering women.

Cherie Blair had words of praise for the UAE's efforts to empower women, while a university lecture highlighted how Islam champions rights for women. AFP / Philippe Desmazes

ABU DHABI // The UAE’s efforts to empower women have come in for notable praise in the past week.

Zeina Al Tibi, a French-Lebanese journalist and president of the Centre for Geopolitical Studies in Paris, said the UAE had become a model for equality in the region and across the world in the past decade.

And Cherie Blair, a prominent barrister and wife of the former British prime minister Tony Blair, praised the nation for its leading role.

She told Newsweek that Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, wife of the founding President Sheikh Zayed, had been pivotal in obtaining universal education for women in the 1970s, and in the appointment in 2004 of the first female Cabinet member, Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi.

Mrs Blair also said the UAE was the top-ranking country out of 136 for the ratio of girls to boys in education, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.

Ms Al Tibi was in Abu Dhabi this week to give a lecture at the Paris Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi on Islam as a founder of women’s equality.

The author of Islam and Women, in which she aimed to dispel misconceptions about the religion, said she hoped to address western notions that Islam promoted unequal treatment.

“My book is directed towards the European reader to give them the idea that their criticism against the Islamic religion is all wrong,” Ms Al Tibi said. “Before Islam, women had no presence whatsoever in society.

“Islam was the first religion to give women their rights but unfortunately, with time and the dominance of the masculine society, it started imposing traditions instead of concentrating on religion.”

She gave the example of Khadija bint Khuwaylid, first wife of the Prophet Mohammed, who was a businesswoman and known to travel around her community.

Ms Al Tibi said recent Arab leaders, such as Sheikh Zayed and King Mohammed VI of Morocco, advocated women’s rights based on what they had learnt from Islam, “not from their own ideas”.

Morocco had also reached a balance between Islam and modernity, she said.

In 2004, King Mohammed gave women many privileges derived from Islamic teachings.

“It raised the status of women in society and the family,” Ms Al Tibi said. “For example, after a woman is divorced she has the right to take care of her children, even if she remarries.

“And if divorced, the ex-husband has to pay her half the price of the house.”

The king also appointed a woman as a chief of a Moroccan state.

Involving women in politics is an area that requires attention, Ms Al Tibi said, adding that this would be the topic of her next lecture.

“Men and women have different streams of thought – not that one is right and the other is wrong, but they complement each other,” she said.

“This is why it is important to involve women in politics, so their thought could complement their male counterparts.”

Countries such as Saudi Arabia, which deprive women from the right to drive cars, do so out of masculine-orientated principles, rather than religious reasons, she said.