Syed Tanzeela Farooq
When a girl is born, everyone waits for her to grow up and take care of the house. This expectation is instilled in her mind from childhood: "When I grow up, I have to take care of the family." She grows up listening to this constantly. All her dreams, fresh as dew, are buried because of this cultural mindset. Yet, when a boy is born into that same world, no one thinks this way about him. I don't understand why a boy is encouraged to have independent thoughts from childhood, while a girl is not even allowed to understand the full meaning of freedom.
Girls are taught inequality from a very young age. If a boy asks for a toy, he is given a car or a doctor's kit. But if a girl asks for the same, she is bought a kitchen set. By teaching them these things, society conditions girls to believe their only purpose is to take care of the house.
In return for everything they do, women want just one thing: respect. Yet, they rarely receive it. Look at what our mothers and sisters do for us. It is because of women that a house becomes a home, but many men fail to understand this. In the old days, men would not let women study because they feared that if women became educated, they would become equal to men. That is why some men never want a woman to walk step-by-step beside them; instead, they treat them with disrespect, keeping them beneath them.
This is exactly why every girl needs to be independent—so that society is forced to respect women. A woman rarely gets the status she truly deserves, whether she is a mother, a sister, or a wife. They deserve to be given equal status. Girls sacrifice their youth to build a home, yet they are still not respected. In this selfish society, daughters-in-law are often treated like maids in their new homes. They are daughters-in-law in name only. If a girl falls ill at her in-laws' house, they often send her back to her maternal home simply because she can no longer work.
When will the mindset of this society finally change?
We say we are developed, but are we really? Our technology might be advanced, but our thinking is still stuck in the 18th century. We will only be truly developed when our mindsets develop. We will be called developed when a girl asks for a doctor's kit or a toy airplane, and she is given exactly that. Girls have dreams too, but society imprisons their minds and snatches those dreams away. I am waiting for the moment when the thinking of this society truly changes.
The Qur'an is not a historical text to be admired from a distance — it is the ultimate guidance for how we are meant to live, individually and as a society. It doesn't leave us guessing. It lays out rules, responsibilities, and rights with a precision that no man-made system has matched, and among the clearest of these is how women are to be treated.
In Surah An-Nisa (4:1), humanity is reminded that men and women come from a single soul — an origin that leaves no room for one gender to be seen as lesser than the other.
The Qur'an also secured for women something the world took over a thousand years to catch up to: the right to inherit. The same surah (4:7) states plainly that women have a share of what parents and close relatives leave behind, just as men do — a share that is obligatory, not optional.
And on dignity itself, Surah At-Tawbah (9:71) describes believing men and women as protectors of one another, standing together in enjoining what is right — partners in faith and responsibility, not one ruling over the other.
This is what I mean when I say the Qur'an is the solution. It doesn't merely suggest good treatment of women — it commands their dignity and their rights as a matter of faith, not favor. If we, as a society, returned to these rules — not as slogans but as a lived practice — the mistreatment we see around us would have no ground left to stand on.
The guidance has always been there. The only thing missing is our will to follow it.
