Women in Islam

This is from an Islamic CD set I recommend by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah...

"It shows that the status of women in Islamic societies has never been uniform or monolithic but has shifted from place to place, from age to age, and from class to social class. The greatest disparity, however, has been between the norms of the Prophetic period and those of subsequent ages. Prophetic society lacked the rigid divisions of social space that became characteristic of many traditional Islamic societies, and, as a rule, Prophetic society was more open and less patriarchal, giving women greater freedom and allowing them a conspicuous role within the matrix of social and civic life. A second major shift in women's status occurred during the colonial, post-colonial, and modern periods, when the position of Muslim women often deteriorated markedly."