Is The Declaration Of Human Rights An Insult To Woman?

by Abbas Adil

Excerpts from the book “The Rights of Women in Islam” by Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahhari

In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23, clause 3, it is written: “Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity…”

In Article 25, clause 1, it says: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, and housing and medical care and necessary social services,…….

In the above two articles of the Declaration it has indirectly been confirmed that every man who establishes a family should bear the expenses and the cost of maintenance of his wife and children. The money spent on them is to be reckoned as the necessary expenses of that man.

In the Declaration, despite explicitly mention that men and women have equal rights, the fact of the husband’s giving maintenance to the wife has not been considered incompatible with the equality of rights. Therefore, those persons who every now and then invoke the authority of the Declaration of Human Rights and its approval in the two Houses of the Iranian Parliament should consider maintenance as a settled question. Would the worshippers of the west, who call everything which has an Islamic color reactionary and outdated, allow themselves to be disrespectful in the sacred presence of the Declaration of Human Rights as well, and continue to think of maintenance as bearing the traces of the ownership of man, and the slavery of woman?

What is more, in its Article 25, the Declaration says: “Every body has the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

Here, not only does it treat the lots of the husband as a loss in the means of livelihood for a woman, but it has included widows in the same rank as the unemployed, the sick and those physical disabilities. Is it not a grave insult to women? If in any of the books or any legal work of the east an expression like this had been found, the wailings of the objectors would have reached the skies, as we ourselves witnessed in certain cases in respect of the laws of Iran.

Nevertheless a reasonable man, who is not biased and prejudiced, and has his eyes on all the sides of a question, will see that neither the law of creation, which has made man one of the means of a woman’s livelihood, nor the Declaration of Human Rights, which has included widowhood as a loss of the means of sustenance, nor finally the law of Islam, which has considered woman as entitled to maintenance has insulted her. The fact that a woman is created in need of man, and that the husband is considered to be the source of dependence of the wife is only one aspect of the problem.

The law of creation created man and woman in need of each other with a view to fitting man and woman more firmly together, and making the home, which is the basis of the real happiness of man, stronger and more secure. If, in monetary matters it has made man the source of dependence of woman, in spiritual tranquility it has made woman the source of dependence for man. These two different requirements make them more close and united to each other.

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