Religion vs. Gender Equality

This morning, like any other Saturday mornings of mine, I had a teacher from the neighborhood coming over to teach me more about Islam. The tedious one-hour session includes 30 minutes of Qur'an recital and another 30 minutes of Qur'anic interpretation. Like always, it never stopped dragging on and on, mainly because I barely listen and crammed my brain instead with random thoughts like what to do tonight or which book to read tomorrow. What can I say, I never wanted any of this, it was my parents' brilliant idea to make me "a better, more sholihah person". Although what they don't know is, I perfectly know how to filter craps from infiltrating my brain cells.

Like this kind of crap:
The verses I read this morning were regarding women. As my teacher translated them, she explained that it is forbidden in Islam for women to be leaders. The reason is because women have more complex emotions than men, and they also have their monthly menstruation cycle, which would intrude their leading activity. When I asked for more explanation, she mentioned, as example, how the law is haram for women to lead prayers, because of the menstruations i mentioned above.

And it went further. Not just in prayers, my teacher said that Islam forbid women to lead, in general. It is said that men are more solid and stable, and they are more capable of leading than women because they have more self-control and are more rational. And women in the other hand are said to be given more advantage because they don't have to mind the things men should. They are obliged to just stay home, keep their skin covered from eye sights, and take care of their families.

I asked what if, in a community, there is one woman who is smarter, wiser, more experienced, and have more leader traits than all the men combined. Shouldn't she be a leader then, now that obviously she has excelled everyone else in her community and has undeniably fulfilled all the criteria to be a leader? My teacher said no. She's still a woman, and women can't lead. So what that woman has to do is, pass on her knowledge to a man and train him well so he could be the leader instead.

I asked, but isn't this a degradation towards all women? Shouldn't they be ashamed that even religion itself puts them a level below men?

My teacher said: Islam doesn't put women below men, but above. God doesn't want women to suffer hardships, so He (or She) assigned women to do much simpler yet equally important tasks, like taking care of family and fulfill their husbands' needs.

So what exactly did I miss? That women should be happy because their world is smaller than men's? And how is restricting women from taking part of leadership in order to make the world a better place considered as an honor? On what basis that a woman cannot lead just because she's a woman, disregarding how proficient, visionary, and dedicated she is?

True, men are tougher in making decisions, because they are not easily disrupted by their emotions. But women, our overflowing emotions are the result of our feelings, and you can't lead a country or a world only based on your brain and logical judgments, you have to rely on your feelings to. Otherwise you'd be nothing but a dictator.

Nowadays, there's no such saying as men are smarter and more capable than women. Women are aware enough to set aside those limiting boundaries and step out beyond to what others can't reach. Lots of women have made the breakthrough of being successful leaders. Queen Elizabeth, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Hillary Clinton, Benazir Bhutto, Margaret Thacher, Indira Gandhi, to name a few.

Back to my religious lessons. So did my teacher (who is a female) plainly misinterpret the verses - like how terrorists misinterpreted jihad as a duty to bomb down their enemies - or was that really how women should be in the world of Islam. Either way, I am, as a woman, very much ashamed that the female clan has to go through that low of degradation.

This is exactly why I detest extremists and radicals.