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The Viewpoints of Three Muslim Women on Being Oppressed

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When non-Muslims in the United States think of Islam the first things that comes to many their minds are September eleventh, terrorist, the middle east, and oppression of women. Most Americans believe that Muslim women must be oppressed because they have to wear “those veils over their heads”, completely cover themselves, and their husbands are allowed to have multiple wives. A survey last year by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that more than half of the 1,000 U.S. respondents believe that Islam encourages the oppression of women.( al-Jadda, A veil doesn't mean 'oppressed,1). But are Muslim women really oppressed or do they have a choice? In this paper I will look at the viewpoint of three Muslim women. The first one is Sumbul Ali-Karamali the author of The Muslim Next Door . The second is Aisha Stacey who is an Australian revert to Islam that works as a writer at the Fanar Cultural Islamic Centre in Doha, Qatar. The third is Khalida Tanvir Syed who is the author of Through White Noise , but the source I will be referring to is a paper she wrote called Misconception About Human Rights and Women’s Rights In Islam. I will also look at the viewpoint of Azam Kamguian, who is an Iranian writer and women's rights activist and my final source.
In The Muslim Next Door Ali- Karamali argues that when it comes to the status of women in Islam what we Americans see is very different from Muslim women’s reality. She says that the oppressed Muslim women we see in the

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