Civil society has yet to define and accept broader human rights … The struggle goes on, building on those who went before us, for the benefit of those who come after us.

The 50th anniversary of President John Kennedy’s assassination this year is poignant for those of us who were well along in high school or had begun college when we heard the news that awful Friday afternoon. We still remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the word came. I was in the locker room in the seminary dormitory with some classmates when a friend ran in to tell us. First came shock; then, hopeful denial. The television, however, confirmed the unbelievable reality. The next three days we rarely budged from in front of the television – not until the state funeral had ended.

Kennedy was, for many of us, the promise of our generation. His eloquence, humor, and charm captured our idealism, as certainly as his call-to-action inaugural address – “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” – inspired us to build our communities and bring our country further along the path of democracy. He urged us to reach out to the world. The Peace Corps, which Kennedy proposed at the University of Michigan during his campaign, captured our imagination.

Tragic history has a way of deadening dreams, and casting youthful idealism upon its ash heap. We strove to resist that trajectory and continued to push our energy forward in the civil rights movement, and those movements that followed … for women, the environment, and peace.

Many of my generation answered the call, and, with the help of Lyndon Johnson’s masterful implementation, and expansion, of Kennedy’s ideals, joined the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, or the War on Poverty. Others of us dedicated ourselves to other visions of civil society. Some of us were brutally tortured to death. Many were beaten bloody at lunch counters and on buses, or had snarling dogs set upon them. Terroristic violence even killed four little girls at Sunday school in Birmingham, Alabama.

We endured the pain of the unimaginable assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and strove with grit to keep the dream alive and steady the course, despite the odds set against us.

Of course, we were not alone. We were building on the shoulders of the other generations in our time, and marching with them. All of us were honoring the legacy, lives, and struggles of those who had gone before us and now rested in peace. But it was Kennedy’s clarion voice that called us younger folks forth.

I myself ended up in the farm workers movement, following the leadership of César Chávez, and eventually moved into broader human rights efforts.

As I look back fifty years, I have learned that the struggle is so much more difficult than what we had seen through our idealistic-tinted glasses. I still cannot bear to watch the anniversary replays of President Kennedy’s assassination, and this year is even worse.

But there is never a moment that I don’t feel a stirring deep within my heart when I watch his inaugural address or listen to his speeches calling upon our “better angels,” as another assassinated president, Abraham Lincoln, did a hundred years earlier.

It is with the same stirring of heart that I watch the next generations so passionately pick up the struggle to make the dream real.

When I look back, I also see other formative people and events that helped move me in this direction. I have learned from this that everything we do well in life has a good impact on others and that we can always learn from the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Probably the person who influenced my life the most was my grandmother. She was an intensely devout Christian, who practiced every day what she believed. She gave her money to the poor, visited people in the hospital, doted on her grandchildren, helped my parents support our family of six kids and send us to Catholic school, and prayed and went to Mass every day. My grandmother lived a life of compassion, tolerance, and justice. In her late eighties, she was on a picket line, supporting the United Farm Workers’ grape boycott.

Another important epoch in my life was the eight years in seminary, high school and college, studying to be a priest, even though I eventually chose a different vocation to which I felt called because it offered a more activist role in human rights work; after a stint in graduate school studying philosophy, I went on to become a lawyer.

But my time in the seminary gave me a good liberal arts education and taught me discipline, spirituality, philosophy, and grounded me in Catholic social justice teachings. It was the era of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II. Pope John was much like John Kennedy: he “opened the windows” of the Church and challenged us to bear witness to the Gospel in community life in new ways; to help build civil society, in effect.

And, in my later years, coming to know and work with people in the Hizmet movement inspired by Fethullah Gülen gave me yet a broader, more ecumenical vision of the world, and offered the opportunity of collaborating with people of the Islamic faith to help build civil society. This experience further deepened my own spirituality.

Few of us involved in human rights, I venture to say, are without a spiritual basis for our work. Like all generalizations, mine is surely excessive; but it does capture the point that very many human rights advocates remain in their work because of their spirituality, which comes in all shapes and sizes. As the Christian monk and mystic Thomas Merton warned, without spirituality, we find ourselves caught up in the frenzy of activism and overwork, which overwhelms us.

While in law school, I worked summers with migrant farm workers in Michigan, the vast majority of whom came from the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, along the border with Mexico. It was the era of César Chávez, who galvanized the country around issues of justice, decent pay and working conditions for field laborers.

So it was that I ended up in the Valley and worked there for ten years, helping to support farm worker organizing efforts and undertaking other human rights endeavors. It was an amazing way to witness that people living in poverty had great personal wisdom and an amazing sense of family and community.

Eventually, my work brought me to Austin, Texas, and the Texas Civil Liberties Union.

In 1990, two of us located free office space in a benefactor’s community building and began the Texas Civil Rights Project. Over the years, through the help of many generous people and organizations, TCRP has grown to a staff of 38 people in five offices: El Paso, South Texas, West Texas, Houston, and Austin.

TCRP handles the full panoply of civil rights issues, including: voting, free speech and assembly, economic justice, jail and prison matters, police misconduct, discrimination, and disability. For 23 years, the Texas Civil Rights Project has been a tireless advocate for racial, social and economic equality for low-income people, through its education and litigation programs.

Some of the achievements of the TCRP staff include:

• Handling more than 3000 legal cases for poor and low-income people
• Developing a vigorous VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) legal program for abused immigrant women in rural Texas that includes our unique “Circuit Rider” component and counseling and support services provided by a MSW supervisor and social work interns
• Publishing twelve Human Rights reports on issues such as hate crimes, Title IX rights of girls in high school, and the death penalty, and seven “self-help” legal manuals, on matters like veterans rights, disability laws, and prisoner rights
• Conducting community and lawyer trainings for more than 50,000 persons
• Publishing more than 400 opinion editorials in Texas newspapers
• Giving more than 500 speeches and talks on civil rights to diverse groups (such as school conferences, law enforcement trainings, and senior citizen organizations)

Due to the tireless advocacy of many TCRP employees, jails in Texas counties now do much more in preventing inmate suicide, providing interpreters for deaf prisoners, protecting vulnerable inmates from sexual assault, and administering HIV medications.

TCRP set the national model in ballot accessibility for blind voters and has led more than 30 regional compliance campaigns in Texas under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Thanks to our intrepid staff, businesses, churches, and courthouses in Texas are much more accessible to elderly and people with disabilities, as are government programs.

TCRP’s Title IX programs on sexual harassment and equal sports opportunities have helped make rural middle and high schools more hospitable for young women, and respectful of them, and opened up the prospect of athletic scholarships to college for them. Our Safe Schools project works with community groups on anti-bullying programs for students and our “Equality under the Law” campaign addressed “benign” discrimination against African Americans and Hispanic Americans in banks, restaurants, motels, and other public accommodation.

Efforts to help South Asian, Muslim, and Arab citizens, permanent residents, and students who fell victim to post September 11th discrimination included filing a suit against a major airline and enlisting Texas attorneys to represent, on a pro bono basis, individuals who were questioned by the FBI.

TCRP worked with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) to help create single-member school board districts and assisted in redistricting the Texas Legislature and congressional districts so as to protect the voting and representational rights of minority citizens.

We assisted the NAACP is persuading the U.S. Department of Justice to audit the Austin Police Department and make more than 200 changes, including its use of force practices in the city’s minority communities.

TCRP joined with the American Jewish Congress in one of the first court cases in the country to challenge the constitutionality of government funding of a religiously-orientated job training program that used the Bible as an employment text and proselytized its trainees.

And we are a leading voice in raising questions about the fairness of Texas’ death penalty scheme, and the possibility of executing innocent people. So, too, are we an intrepid advocate of traditional civil liberties, such as free speech and assembly, due process, and equal protection under the United States and Texas Constitutions.

Our work that I’m proudest of dealt with:

• Ending secret collection of and research on blood of all babies born after 2002 
• Directing 480 suits under the Americans with Disabilities Act and related enforcement campaigns
• Challenging grand jury discrimination against Mexican Americans, women, and poor people
• Eliminating the statutory exclusion of farm and ranch laborers from the Texas workers’ compensation and unemployment compensation laws
• Extending the Texas Equal Rights Amendment to minority voting and redistricting
• Establishing a habeas corpus mechanism to review claims of innocence for persons sentenced to death
• Winning the right of blind voters to cast secret, adapted election ballots 
• Banning mandatory polygraph testing of state employees (and establishing privacy as fundamental right under the Texas Constitution)
• Protecting United Farm Workers Union members from retaliatory employment termination
• Securing the right of blind people to use dog guides in public accommodations 
• Seven McAllen police brutality class actions suits that reorganized the department

The most recent and profound personal development, as mentioned earlier, was coming to work with hizmet. It started with one of the movement’s interfaith dialog trips to Turkey and eventually led to writing a book on the eight-year-long political trial of Fethullah Gülen, which ended successfully and actually helped the process of more deeply democratizing Turkey.

International human rights law had always been a passion, and it was an honor to write on a subject that no one else in the world had written on. In subsequent trips, I met so many people in hizmet and was always singularly inspired by their good deeds, hard work, amiability, and commitment. It reminded me that people from all walks of life and faiths are struggling for democracy and human rights.

There remains much to do, of course. Human rights is a life-long struggle; it is painstaking to build civil society. As Eugene Debs, the renowned American labor organizer, said, every struggle for human rights is lost, and lost, and lost, before it succeeds. Indeed, many people have given their lives over the years, and suffered enormously to help make the world a better place for its people.

Civil society has yet to define and accept broader human rights, such as the right to employment, the right to a social and economic safety net, the right to medical care, the right to participate in community’s cultural life, the right to adequate standard of living, and the right to an education. The struggle goes on, building on those who went before us, for the benefit of those who come after us.

Eleanor Roosevelt put it well in her remarks at the United Nations in 1958:

Where, after all, do universal rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.

Such has been the journey of those of us inspired by John F. Kennedy all those years ago. It has been an incredible blessing to “labor in the vineyard” with so many good and decent people; they have contributed to my own growth as a person. I hope and pray that I have given back to them a portion of what they have given me. That, after all, is what living in the human community is all about:

We make a living from what we get.
We make a life from what we give.
What we have done for ourselves dies with us.
What we have done for others and for the world is immortal.
MaryAnn Evans

Harrington is founder and director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit foundation, promotes civil rights and economic and racial justice throughout Texas, for low-income people. He is author of Wrestling with Free Speech, Religious Freedom, and Democracy in Turkey: The Political Trials and Times of Fethullah Gülen.

One category of galaxies is the spiral; this is dependent on the galaxies’ appearance. The magnetic field of the Sun is also a spiral. Among many things that have a spiral form are the cochlea inside our ears, our navel cord, our fingerprints, the teeth of mammoths, elephant trunks, some spider webs, the horns of some goats, cluster of sunflowers, thousands of types of mollusks, the pattern in which subatomic particles move, plus many more examples. Grapevine shoots, ivy, some microorganisms, and the positioning of some leaves around their branches are in the form of a helix. Nature displays brilliant examples of spiral and helix forms over a wide spectrum, ranging from fossils to galaxies. Below we will discuss some of them:

The Archimedean spiral

Named after its discoverer, this spiral is the geometrical location of a point which moves across a line turning around a fixed point at the speed of q and with a straight angle (Figure 1). The equation for the polar coordinates is p=aq. The distances between the curves are equal. A good example of this type of spiral is the spider web constructed with equal distances from the center.

The Equiangular (Logarithmic) spiral

This spiral type was defined by Descartes in 1638. In an equiangular spiral, any line that crosses the center cuts through all coils of the curve (Figure 2). The equation for polar coordinates is Inr=a.q or r=ea.q. Sea shells and the shells of snails are formed with this spiral.

Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden Ratio

The following numbers, the sequence of which is made by adding the last two numbers together, are known as Fibonacci numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, … In other words, each number is the sum of the preceding two numbers. Let us divide each number with the preceding one and write down the quotients:

1/1=1; 2/1=2; 3/2=1.5; 5/3=1.666…; 8/5=1.6; 13/8=1.625; 21/13=1.615…; 34/21=1.619…; 55/34=1.6176…; 89/55=1.618…

If we continue to divide in this way, we will reach a mathematical constant, i.e., 1,618034, which is known as the golden ratio (φ).

Let us now draw a new geometrical shape with the Fibonacci numbers. Next to a 1-unit side square put another square that has equal dimensions. Then add another square, this time equaling the sum of the sides of the previous two (2 units). As we continue to add new squares with double the units of the previous two we get what is called the Fibonacci or golden rectangle. When we draw an arc from one corner of this rectangle to an opposite corner and continue drawing through neighboring squares, as in Figure 3, we will get a spiral. A good example of this is the nautilus shell. The golden rectangle and the spiral is frequently used in fine arts, architecture, and technology.

The Helix

The space curves that coil around a cylinder and cut through its main axis at a right angle is called a cylindrical helix (Figure 4). An ivy plant climbs a tree in a helix, and a helix is the shortest distance to a certain height. The Selimiye Mosque, Edirne, Turkey, features one of the best examples of helices in architecture. The architect Sinan designed the minarets of this mosque with three balconies, which are reached via different stairs that have no connections between them.

The 3D Archimedean spiral and the Logarithmic spiral (Helico spirals)

Conical helices are the space curves that coil around a right cone and cut through its main axis at a right angle. Sea snails, or limpets, have this spiral shape (Figure 5).

Galaxies and hurricanes

Galaxies and hurricanes are also spiral in shape and they have some similar features. Sharing the Stamp of Unity, the law of which governs the entire universe, both galaxies and hurricanes are affected by major forces, like the force of gravity, angular momentum or rotation.

Spiral galaxies are divided into two categories: elliptical and barred spiral galaxies. Barred spiral galaxies have arms that extend away from the main core (Figure 6).

(As evidence for a people open to belief) We have assuredly set in the heaven great constellations, and We have made it (the heaven) beautiful for those beholding. (Hijr 15:16)

The Nautilus: A wonder of creation

The hard shell of the nautilus has a beautiful logarithmic spiral shape. Each coil is at a distance from the next at an increasing proportional distance, each coil is multiplied by a constant. The chambers in the shell are similar, but they widen in a geometric sequence. It is amazing that calcium carbonate, the material that makes up the shell, can accumulate in such a way so as to comply with this geometrical pattern. In this pattern, the nautilus occupies the least space that is possible, thus losing as little heat as possible. Architects have been inspired by the nautilus to produce designs to use the smallest possible space to contain the most possible room.

The Cochlea

The cochlea in our ears is like a double-ramp tunnel coiled upon itself. Etymologically, the word cochlea comes from a Greek word that means snail. The spiral shape of the cochlea reminds one of sea shells.

Horns

Horns of the sheep and goats have the shape logarithmic spiral; they grow in the form of helicoids, as if coiling around a cone.

The Rose

The leaves of a rose are lined up and shoot out in a spiral shape.

Spirals open for us gateways to thought in our efforts to explore the wisdom and beauty that have been set in motion in the universe and are constantly maintained. Spirals, like other living or non-living objects or beings around us, are exquisite works of art that point to the fact that nothing exists from coincidence. Looking through a telescope to a marvelous galaxy in outer space or examining a sea shell on the beach or holding a rose in the spring may become a rewarding act if we contemplate on their Fashioner, for such “contemplation for an hour is worth voluntary prayer for a year.”

In a book that deals with questions of logic, when we see numbers written in succession, such as 5, 15, 25; then we are able to discover the relation between these numbers, to predict the next number and to realize that this pattern was made by somebody. However, if we were to be told that these figures indicate the distance covered in equal segments of time by a pebble that has been dropped from a certain height, most of us would not think about the One Who made this general rule.

Or for example, the equation 11.111.111 x 111.111.111 = 12.345.678.987.654.321 may be as amazing to some people as the verses of a beautiful poem, whereas it will leave others cold.

Likewise, the famous mysterious symbols of mathematics, e, i, , are nothing more than some alphabetical signs for most of us, nevertheless they must have meant a lot to the famous physicist, Richard Feyman, since he wrote the following equation in his diary, noting that he admired it: ei+1=0

If we write f (z) = Z2 + c;, this will not be a meaningful sentence for most people. But that will not change the fact that it is an incredibly simple expression of biological and physical reality in an expression which concerns our lives (as in fractal logic). And the picture you see here (Figure 1) is nothing but the analytical projection of this equation on a computer screen.

The spiral form (Figure 2) which can be seen in various things from cone shells to nebulas, has a very simple formula, r2=a2/A which is fascinating for those who spend some time to think about it. All these examples have a point in common. These numbers, which are abstract concepts, are as real as the concrete objects of the physical world. While other sciences make sense, more or less, for a layperson, mathematics can only be appreciated by people who know it well.

The mythological Princess Dido of Phoen-icia fled from the city where her husband (the King;s brother) had been slain by the King. She wanted to settle in Carthage, in North Africa. There the King only allowed her to buy as much land as could be covered by the skin of a cow. Dido decided to interpret the word ;cover; in a wider sense. She had her servants cut the skin in thin strips, connecting them to each other. In the end, she obtained a long cord, estimated to be somewhere from between 1,000 to 2,000 m. long. When it came to placing it on the ground, Dido wanted to find the shape that would cover the largest area. She found the right shape. She made a circle on the ground and she was able to encompass quite a large area of land. As a matter of fact, looking at some ancient castles, we can understand that they were built in this way in order to create the largest structure over the smallest possible area. This explains why the cross-section of a vessel tissue is circular, because it occupies minimal space in the body (Figure 9).

Did you know that mathematical reality applies in our body and in the universe? This fact was realized when scientists developed fractal geometry. The fractal structure we see in the roots and leaves of plants and in the human respiratory and vascular systems are very good examples of this fact. Such excellence indicates the All-Knowing Omnipotent One Who is behind these geometrical designs (Figures 4, 5, 6).

What is the invisible secret of this visible structure? Dido had to enclose the maximum area by using limited material, which she accomplished. Such optimization also exists in the human body and in other living things. The biological systems we have mentioned above have vessel systems designed as fractal networks, delivering the necessary substances to cells. Essentially, these systems are designed in such a way that the vessels occupy minimal space while serving all the cells within the system; this can only be realized through such a fractal structure.

The most striking proof supporting this idea is that if the human veins, which do not take up a great deal of space in the body, were all added together, they would reach a length that is three times the circumference of the world.

How can this be possible? This can be explained quite simply: find an equilateral triangle and carry out the following instructions. First, divide each side of the triangle into three equal sections and place another (smaller) equilateral triangle on the middle section of each side you have divided, facing outwards. If you repeat the same thing for each of these small triangles, you will create the pattern below (Figure 8).

In a fractal structure, as the number of branches near infinity, the shape of the structure resembles a circle more and more. The new area we will find cannot be bigger than the area of the circle, and the points of contact with the circle will approach the maximum value (Figure 9).

We can also explain this fact in the following way: take a circle with a radius of 3 cm. This will serve as the cross-section of a cylindrical object. Then draw seven smaller identical circles inside the first circle. You will see that the proportion between the sum of circumferences and the sum of areas is 5/7. Those who are interested in mathematics will see that as the value of the r (radius) decreases, the difference increases. This clearly indicates that fractal structures are always advantageous. So, what about organs like the brain or the lungs? They do not have a completely fractal structure, yet they really need to have a larger surface area than other objects of equal size. These organs have been enabled to have the largest possible surface area by being convoluted. Otherwise, man would be a strange creature, burdened with a huge mass on his back. Similarly, when we look at a map that shows the coastlines, we see that a coastline that has many capes and bays has a longer coast line than its counterparts, which run straight along the land. All these living things or organs (man, trees, brain etc) have such structures from the very moment they are created. This system or project (Figure 10) cannot have developed on its own, by chance, without there having been a Creator.

Sir James Jean says, ;The Creator must be a perfect Mathematician; in his book The Mysterious Universe. In so saying, he draws attention to mathematics, the mysterious pattern in the universe, and points to the Artist behind the ornamented beauty seen in Creation. The magical science of mathematics whispers its secrets to those who try to perceive it through the eyes of wisdom.

A: Before discussing the equality of men and women, we should first look more closely at the meaning of “equal” and “equality.”

“Equal” means that there is no difference between things, that they have the same nature, quality, value and dimension. On the other hand, “equality” means that there is no discrimination between people in terms of rights.

Having established these definitions of “equal and “equality,” then how are we to view women in relation to men?

a) Difference in Nature

God has created everything in the universe in pairs. It is impossible to say that one of these pairs is equal to the other in all respects. “And of everything we have created pairs that you may reflect.” (Az-Zariyat, 51/49).

From atoms to plants, and from these to the male and female of animals and human beings, everything has been created in pairs and each member of the pair is in need of the other. Positives are in need of negatives, electrons are in need of protons, night is in need of day, summer is in need of winter, the surface of the earth is in need of the sky, men are in need of women and vice versa. In addition, there are probably other pairs that we may not know of yet, but we will learn about these with the development of science and technology.

Just as God has created the electron in relation to the proton, the negative in relation to the positive, and the female seed in relation to the male seed, God has created women and men, and He has formed a unity between these couples. But just as positive and negative are not equal, nor are the electron and proton equal, women are not equal to men. This is an unchanging rule of the nature of creation. Moreover, other than God, Who is One, everything else is deficient and insignificant and cannot continue its existence by itself. So, men and women, who are imcomplete by themselves, will come together to form a union, and it is this union that is the essence of the whole.

Therefore, women and men are not equal, but they complete each other. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), in one of his hadith says: “Women are (the other) half of men.”

The word for “other half”-sakik-in this hadith means a piece of a whole divided into two through the middle. This means that each piece that is forming the whole is the sakik of the other. Thus, according to this hadith, women and men are equal halves as human beings. But they are never the same as the other; that is, their natural, spiritual and psychological structures are different. As a woman can never be equal to a man according to his physical and spiritual structure, a man can never be equal to a women according to the same aspects. Neither are men biologically superior, nor are women inferior to men. As human beings cannot really change the difference between the sexes, both believers and nonbelievers should give up their dreams of bein equal and should accept women and men as they are.

In addition, we cannot even claim that individuals of the same sex are totally equal to one another. Trying to verify this would be to attempt to change the rules of creation; such efforts are useless. Here we should mention that the difference in the creation of women should not lead men to feel superior. On the contrary, God states, “And Who made (things) according to a measure, then guided rightly” (Al-Ala 87/3). He is the One who creates women and men in the best pattern of creation and He is the One Who teaches them how to improve themselves. He is the One Who makes them complementary to one another and the protector and guardian for one another.

b) Differences in Duty

As is clear from the above explanations, just as women and men cannot be equal in their nature, nor can they be equal in duty. If you expect a woman to perform the same duties as a man, you will in fact be oppressing her. It is obvious that women are different from men physically, biologically and spiritually. It is therefore only normal that, arising from this difference in their natures, that there should be a difference in duties. For instance, men are stronger than women. In this respect, it is very difficult for a woman to do some of the work that a man does. This is not to be seen as an inadequacy of women. Women are generally more merciful, compassionate, intuitive and emotional when compared to men. In this respect, men cannot be compared to women in any way. Both sexes are equipped according to the necessities of their duties; this is the true justice. Therefore, instead of studying men and women as if they were on equal terms, we should evaluate women and men separately and according to their own particular natures.

Women have certain rights and duties based on the nature of their creation, and if women make use of these qualities they will then be able to obtain better results.

New generations are brought into this world by women and are brought up by them. Humanity gains good individuals through their efforts. It is a great kindness and wisdom of God that women have been equipped with such compassion when we consider that they are in charge of bringing up children. In this respect, among all the members of the family, women deserve the greatest respect. They are the educators, teachers, and the source of the family’s endurance and the peace of the home. Men are reassured by them. Children grow up under their compassionate wing, and are raised with healthy emotions, compassion, and strong values. If the mother lives a chaste life, then the children will be saved from degeneration, and a community formed of these children will be saved from oppression.

When we compare all the things that humans provide women with in the name of equality with those favors that God the Almighty provides, the former will be very small in comparison. Moreover, all the rights granted to women and all the effort expended on behalf of their gaining “equal rights” is as ridiculous as if we were to give a copper medal to someone whose chest was already covered in gold medals.

God has given everyone their own nature. With the granting of this nature he did not make anyone coarse or foolish. If he had granted any superflurous duties to people, then this would have been no more than an injustice or an act of oppression.

The tasks or duties that women do should be suited to their physical, psychological and spiritual nature. Offering a woman a job that she cannot handle, or employing her in a job that is not in her nature to accomplish, has nothing to do with equality or treating a woman as an equal; this is not a humanitarian approach. On the contrary, such behavior is little more than the forceful seizure of the majority of her rights.

A hadith of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), expresses the subject in a beautiful and elegant manner: “They had put a cow to yoke. It turned and said to its master: I have not been created for such jobs.” Rather, it is the ox that was created for such jobs.

In conclusion, everything has been created for a reason. For true justice to prevail, every creature should be employed according to its capabilities and according to the reason for its creation.