1.  Definitions and concepts of Social Structure:
• The relationship of definite entities or groups to each other,
• Enduring patterns of behavior by participants in a social system in relation to each other, and
• Institutionalized norms or cognitive frameworks that structure the actions of actors in the social
system.
 Social Structure of Muslims countries:
• The foundations of the social system of Islam, rest on the belief that all human beings are equal
and constitute one single fraternity.
 Right to get Education:
•“It is compulsory on every Muslim to get education.” (Tabarani) “Rasool Allah had fixed a separate
day of the week to teach SAW the Muslim women when he would advise them and teach them the
commands of the Shariah.” (Saheeh Bukhari)
Equality of reward for their deeds:
• Men and women are equally obliged to perform the Ibadah i.e.: bearing, praying, fasting,
pilgrimage and get equally reward for their deeds.
 Right to express their Opinion:
• Women have right to express their opinion and be heard in any of situation either personal issue
or social issues.

2.  Equality of Mankind:
• Islam says that if there is any real difference between man and man it cannot be one of race,
color, country or language, but of ideas, beliefs and principles. Two children of the same mother,
though they may be equal from the point of view of a common ancestry, will have to go their
different ways in life if their beliefs and moral conduct differ. On the contrary, two people, one in the
East and the other in the West, even though geographically and outwardly separated by vast
distances, will tread the same path in life if they share the same code of moral behavior. On the basis
of this fundamental tenet, Islam seeks to build a principled and ideological society very different
from the racial, nationalistic and parochial societies existing in the world today.
 Institution of the Family:
• According to Islam the correct relationship between man and woman is marriage, a relationship in
which social responsibilities are fully accepted and which results in the emergence of a family.
Sexual permissiveness and other similar types of irresponsible behavior are not dismissed by Islam
as mere Innocent pastimes or ordinary transgressions. Rather, they are acts which strike at the very
roots of society. hence, Islam holds all extra-marital sex as sinful and forbidden (haram) and makes
it a criminal offence. Severe punishments are prescribed to deter would-be offenders.
• Islam has assigned to the man a position of authority so that he can maintain order and discipline
as the head of the household. Islam expects the wife to obey her husband and look after his well-
being; and it expects the children to behave accordingly to their parents. Islam does not favor a loose
and disjointed family system devoid of proper authority, control and discipline. Discipline can only be
maintained through a central authority and, in the view of Islam, the position of father in the family
is such that it makes him the fittest person to have this responsibility

3. Love and loyalty among the faithful:
• Allah, the Most Glorified, says:
• “Surely the faithful are but brothers...” Holy Qur'an (49:10)
• “And the faithful men and women, are friends of each other...” Holy Qur'an (9:71)
 Islamic society is built on right, justice, and mutual kindness:
•Allah, the Exalted, says:
“Surely Allah bids to justice, benevolence and giving to relatives, and He forbids indecency, evil
and transgression. He exhorts you so that you may remember.” Holy Qur'an (16:90)
 Right to own Property:
• A Muslim woman had a right to own property from Inheritance, from what is left by parents and
those nearest related there is a share for men and a share for women, whether the property be small
or large, a determinate share. In addition to she can buy property on her own name as a legal
person. She can possess property without anybody’s interference. She has complete right on her
property as she can sale it, rent out it and can give it to anyone as a gift.
 Right to Marry:
• Marriage is invalid without her consent. But guardian’s consent is additional to this to protect
her from mistakes due to her youth and inexperience.

4. •Allah, the Compassionate, says:
•“...and cooperate (with each other) for righteousness and cooperate not in sin and enmity...”Holy
Qur'an (5:2)
•In every aspect of life, the members of an Islamic society cooperate wholeheartedly with each other.
For example, in building mosques and schools, helping the needy, fighting oppression, establishing
economic, social and cultural associations, are all forms of co-operation within the society.
The bond of unity and co-operation
Maintaining good morals
• Honesty, sacrifice, mercy, sympathy, love, faithfulness, keeping ties with near kin, respecting
neighbors, and being kind and gentle to others, are factors which consolidate a society and
gladden its members. They become serene and free from worries and pressures. There is no
sadness.
 Right to Vote:
• Islam provides a woman with right to vote or participation in political affairs. Women can be in
leadership positions. During the Caliphate of Omar Ibn al-Khattab, a woman argued with him in
the mosque, proved her point, and caused him to declare in the presence of people: “The woman
is right and Omar is wrong.

5.  The broad principles on which Islam wants people to structure their social lives are:
• To co-operate in acts of goodness and righteousness and not to co-operate in acts of sin and
injustice. (al-Maidah 5: 2)
• One’s friendship should be only for seeking the pleasure of Allah: whatever you give should be
given because Allah likes it to be given, and whatever you withhold should be withheld
because Allah wishes to. (Trimidhi)
• You are the best community ever raised among mankind; your duty is to command people to do
good and prevent them from committing evil. (Al- ‘Imran 3: 110)
• Do not think evil of each other, nor probe into each other’s affairs, nor incite one against the
other. Avoid hatred and jealousy. Do not unnecessarily oppose each other. Always remain the
slaves of Allah, and live as brothers to each other. (Muslim)
• Do not help a tyrant, knowing him to be such. (Abu Daud)
• To support the community when it is in the wrong is like falling into a well while catching the tail
of your camel which was about to fall into it. (Abu Daud; Mishkawt)
• No one among you shall be a true believer unless he likes for others what he likes for himself.
(Bukhari and Muslim)
 Women in Islamic Societies
• The constitutions of many Muslim states provide for equal rights between women and men.
However, Islamic family law as variously manifested in Muslim nations poses obstacles to
women’s equality.

6. • Islamic family law, which addresses marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance, has long
been a target for reform. Many state elites have pressed for family law reform to further state
interests by removing hindrances to women’s full participation in the labor force and politics
• Reforms of family law often have been limited by the state’s perceived need to appease
conservative social elements and, since the 1970s, growing Islamist movements. Islamist
movements, sometimes through outright state takeover, as in Iran, occasionally have succeeded in
rolling back “women-friendly” reforms previously achieved.
• The verses of the Quran regarding oath (of abstinence from sex), divorce and Iddat (term of
transition) were revealed to bring an end to the oppressive traditions and customs according to
which a woman was retained in formal marital captivity and for long periods of time while her fate
remained in suspense. The same is true of the verses concerning inheritance which restored rights
which had been denied to her by guaranteeing her a definite share. Other verses were revealed
which criticized the pessimism and dejection that used to attend a female birth and the
abominable practices of female infanticide. The Quran says, "When any of them receives the
tidings of the birth of a female his face becomes dark and he is filled with sulkiness. He keeps
hiding from people because of the unfortunate news, [wondering] whether to hold on to it as a
contemptible thing or just bury it in the soil. O! what a foul judgement". (Al-Nahal, 58-59). "When
the [female] buried alive will be questioned: for what fault was she murdered?" (Al-Takwir, 8-9)
• The Qur'an does not require women to wear veils; rather, it was a social habit picked up with
the expansion of Islam. In fact, since it was impractical for working women to wear veils, "A
veiled woman silently announced that her husband was rich enough to keep her idle.

7. •A fair deal for women in islam is "When you divorce women and they fulfil the term of their Iddat,
then retain them in kindness or release them in kindness. But do not retain them to prejudice them
or to take undue advantage. Do not take the revelations of God as a laughing matter. Remember
God's grace upon you and that which he has revealed upon you of the scripture and of wisdom to
exhort your. be pious and know that God is aware of all things. When you divorce women and they
fulfil their term do not prevent them from marrying their former husbands, if they agree on
equitable terms. That is an admonition for him among you who believes in God and the day of
judgement and God knows, but you do not know". (Al-Bagarah, 231). "O you who believe, it is not
lawful for you to inherit women against their will [by maliciously retaining them captive in formal
marriage till death], nor to put constraint upon them to take away part of what you have given
them unless they be guilty of flagrant lewdness. Consort with them in kindness for if you hate them
it may happen that you hate something wherein God has placed much good". (Al-Nisa, 19). "When
they have fulfilled their term, there is no blame on you if they [women] dispose of themselves in a
decent and reasonable manner. And God is well aware of what you do" (Al-Bagarah, 234)
• The traditional Muslim Society, which is over-impressed by its historical decline, had developed a
general preference for circumspection and cautiousness over the demands of positive pursuits. It
has become unduly conservative for fear that freedom of thought would lead astray and divide
the community; and that freedom of women would degenerate into licentious promiscuity - so
much that the basic religious rights and duties of women have been forsaken and the
fundamentals of equality and fairness in the structure of Muslim Society, as enshrined in the
Sharia, have been completely overlooked.
• Islam took women by the hand and made them equal with men, whereas before the Prophet
came, women had no standing. Islam gave women strength.

8. • In the domain of public life she is not allowed to make any original contribution to the promotion
of the religious quality of life. Whenever she was allowed to work towards the material
development of life that was likely to be in a context of exploitation or as mundane work with little
spiritual satisfaction or significance
• At the time Islam began, the conditions of women were terrible - they had no right to own
property were supposed to be the property of the man, and if the man died everything went to his
sons." Muhammad, however, by "instituting rights of property ownership, inheritance, education
and divorce, gave women certain basic safeguards.
• God considerably improved the status of women in 7th century Arabia. In local pagan society, it
was the custom to bury alive unwanted female newborns; Islam prohibited the practice. Women
had been treated as possessions of their husbands; Islamic law made the education of girls a
sacred duty and gave women the right to own and inherit property. Muhammad even decreed that
sexual satisfaction was a woman's entitlement. He was a liberal at home as well as in the pulpit.
The Prophet darned his own garments and among his wives and concubines had a trader, a
warrior, a leatherworker and an imam.
• Islam holds you in higher esteem than it does men. Islam wants to save you; it wants to save you
from becoming this plaything they want to turn you into. Islam wants to train you to become a
perfect human being.
• Unfortunately, women have suffered from victimization in the past, notably in two periods. The
first was during the Age of Ignorance, the period before the advent of Islam. During this time,
women were oppressed; they were treated like animals, even worse than animals. Then Islam
came and bestowed its blessings on mankind, it dragged women out of that state of oppression,
[and] it pulled her from that slough of ignorance.

9. • Mothers are the source of all blessings, but if, God forbid, they bring their children up badly, they
become the source of all evil.
• Wives in Islamic societies face great difficulty in suing for divorce, but husbands can be released
from their vows virtually on demand, in some places merely by saying "I divorce you" three times.
Though in most Muslim states, divorces are entitled to alimony, in Pakistan it lasts only three
months, long enough to ensure the woman isn't pregnant. The same three-month rule applies even
to the Muslim minority in India. There, a national law provides for long-term alimony, but to
appease Islamic conservatives, authorities exempted Muslims.
• Family law reforms continue, often thanks to the pressure of proliferating groups of Muslim
activists for women rights. In 2004, a major success was the overhaul of conservative family law in
Morocco, which now boasts a relatively progressive system.
• In many Muslim states, Women are able and sometimes officially encouraged to exploit rules
and loopholes to circumvent discriminatory provisions in the law. A growing form of feminist
activism at present aims to educate women about such strategies and available loopholes.
Social Scientific Study of Women in Muslim countries
• The 1990s saw an explosion of writing about women, which is ongoing, as is the growth in the
number of interested scholars who address issues of gender and Islam.
• Such women-focused work in the various social science disciplines initially emerged in the United
States and Europe but spread within a decade to venues outside the West, including venues in parts
of the Muslim world where women’s reform organizations and feminist networks became active.

10. Social changes
•According to some scholars, Muhammad's condemnation of infanticide was the key aspect of his
attempts to raise the status of women. Regarding the prevalence of this practice, we know it was
"common enough among the pre-Islamic Arabs to be assigned a specific term, waʾd“ A much cited
verse the Qur'an that addresses this practice is: "When the sun shall be darkened, when the stars
shall be thrown down, when the mountains shall be set moving, when the pregnant camels shall be
neglected, when the savage beasts shall be mustered, when the seas shall be set boiling, when the
souls shall be coupled, when the buried infant shall be asked for what sin she was slain, when the
scrolls shall be unrolled...“[Quran 81:1]
• Sociology built up a substantial body of work about women’s roles and status in the family, in
education, in the workplace, and in social formations and movements, and examined how gender
inequalities are constructed and maintained in the various arenas of life.
• The Quran also replaced the pre-Islamic custom of adoption (assimilation of an adopted child into
another family in a legal sense) by the recommendation that "believers treat children of unknown
origin as their brothers in the faith and clients [Quran 33:4-5], [Quran 33:37-40].
• The Islamic idea of community (that of ummah), established by Muhammad, is flexible in social,
religious, and political terms and includes a diversity of Muslims who share a general sense of
common cause and consensus concerning beliefs and individual and communal actions.
• Muhammad's preaching produced a "radical change in moral values based on the sanctions of
the new religion, and fear of God and of the Last Judgment", the pre-Islamic tribal practices of the
Arabs by no means completely died out.

11. • Islam teaches support for the poor and the oppressed. In an effort to protect and help the poor
and orphans, regular almsgiving — zakat — was made obligatory for Muslims. This regular alms-
giving developed into a form of income taxt to be used exclusively for welfare.
• "The social system build up a new system of marriage, family and inheritance; this system
treated women as an individual too and guaranteed social security to her as well as to her
children. Legally controlled polygamy was an important advance on the various loosely defined
arrangements which had previously been both possible and current; it was only by this provision
(backed up by severe punishment for adultery), that the family, the core of any sedentary society
could be placed on a firm footing."One hadith records that Abu Huraira reported that a person
said: Allah's Messenger, who amongst the people is most deserving of my good treatment? He
said: Your mother, again your mother, again your mother, then your father, then your nearest
relatives according to the order (of nearness).
• The Qur'an told that the guidance comes to a community that regulates its flow of money and
goods in the right direction (from top down) and practices generosity as reciprocation for God's
bounty. In a broad sense, the narrative underlying the Qur'an is that of a tribal society becoming
urbanized.
• Social welfare in Islam started in the form of the construction and purchase of wells. Upon
his hijra to Medina, Muhammad found only one well to be used. The Muslims bought that well,
and consequently it was used by the general public. After Muhammad's declaration that "water"
was a better form of sadaqah (charity), many of his companions sponsored the digging of new
wells. During the Caliphate, the Muslims repaired many of the aging wells in the lands they
conquered.

12. • Islam reduced the effect of blood feuds, which was common among Arabs, by encouraging
compensation in money rather than blood. In case the aggrieved party insisted on blood, unlike the
pre-Islamic Arab tradition in which any male relative could be slain, only the culprit himself could be
executed.
• The Cambridge History of Islam states that the nomadic structure of pre-Islamic Arabia had the
serious moral problem of the care of the poor and the unfortunate. "Not merely did the Qur'an urge
men to show care and concern for the needy, but in its teaching about the Last day it asserted the
existence of a sanction applicable to men as individuals in matters where their selfishness was no
longer restrained by nomadic ideas of dishonor.“
 Conclusion
• The rot in western society is the result of putting into practice the principles in which they
believe Colonization, industrial revolution, occupation of countries and the media have spread
this ideology to the rest of the world .
• The rot in Muslim society is the result of deviation from Islam, a gap between principle and
practice The cure is to return to Islamic principles.