Are men and women equal?

Do you believe that men and women are equal?

Honestly, the myths, you know? No. Of course not. Who told you they are? You don't believe they are.

If it's something that you have to constantly ask about, constantly, struggle to achieve and enforce, then it isn't a natural state, is it? If it was an obvious accepted fact, then it goes without saying no argument is necessary. No one ever says, do you believe that men and women both have arms and legs? No one ever says, do you believe that both men and women breathe oxygen? But you ask, are they equal?

Or do I think that they're equal? Do I believe that they're equal? Well, if you believe that they're equal and you believe that their equality was a natural undeniable reality, then you would be insulting my intelligence to ask that question. Just as you would be insulting my intelligence if you ask me, Shahid, do you believe that both men and women have arms and legs and breathe air? But you're not actually asking me if men and women are equal.

You're asking if I believe that they're equal, which means that you're asking me if I believe in your concept of equality. Well, don't. It's an incoherent concept. Of course, don't believe that. Men and women are not equal.

Men and men are not equal. Women and women are not equal. Individuals are not equal. How can collections of individuals be equal with collections of other individuals? That's illogical.

It doesn't make any sense. Are you equal with your boss? If so, then why is he or she your boss instead of you? I'm not equal to another man who's stronger than me, who's smarter than me. I'm not equal to him in strength, and I'm not equal to him in intelligence.

I'm not equal to a man who's richer than me in wealth. I'm not equal to a man who has a higher status in society than me. There are things that I can't understand no matter how hard I try, and there's other people who can understand those same things effortlessly. There may be things that I cannot understand, and a woman is able to understand it instantly. Or maybe there's something that I can do that a woman cannot do.

So how are you gonna extrapolate from those examples or those scenarios that therefore, because Shahid can do something that a woman can't or a woman can do something that Shahid can't, therefore that means that this gender is superior to that gender or vice versa. Now you created a concept that is inconsistent, does not align with human reality or human complexity, and you invented that concept because your culture has historically been abominable towards women. The West has never known what to do about women. You went back and forth for centuries trying to decide if women were goddesses or witches, tools of the devil, the cause of original sin. You used to wonder whether or not women even had souls.

There's never been any people in the face of the earth so confused and twisted up about women as the West. And then you came up with a so called solution, which was to create this even more confused concept of equality. And then you'll accuse the Muslim world, and in fact, the entire non western world of being misogynistic and patriarchal, which is what you are. You would accuse the rest of the world for that because the rest of the world never talked about equality the way that you do. But the reason we didn't talk about equality was because we were never as confused as you are and have always historically been about being humans.

And then you try to force us to try to explain our beliefs to you according to your framework. To try to explain to you, for example, how Islam actually upholds the equality of the sexes in terms of both men and women having equal innate value, but they have different roles in society and so on. There's no reason why we need to do this. Why should we try to make our clarity align with your confusion? Why is it even necessary?

Why do you find it necessary to believe in the fantasy of equality when we all know that some people are better than others? We all know that some people are smarter than others. We all know that some people are more capable than others. And if that's the case, and it is the case, then subhanAllah. I hope that we're not all born equal because that would be a severe indictment against anyone and everyone who fails in their life to become an astronaut or to become a brain surgeon or to become a brilliant writer or an artist.

If we're all born equal, then how do you explain the infinite disparities between people's capacities? But then you're gonna say that all women are equal with all men? When all men aren't equal with all men and all women aren't equal with all women, This is incoherent. What does it even mean? Every person, individual person is tasked with what their god given capacities are capable of and no one is blamed or shamed or looked down upon for not being able to do what's beyond their capacity.

And we're not judged on an equal basis, but we're judged according to our individual abilities, whether you're a man or a woman.

But Islam is quite patriarchal, isn't it? I mean, doesn't the Quran say that men have authority over women?

Well, don't they? I mean, men are the ones who have been oppressing you all this time. Right? I mean, according to your own narrative, men have been running the show. The feminists are asking for their so called rights from who exactly?

Look. If you didn't have, what you call patriarchy, then what you would have is a hell on earth for women Because clearly, women do not have the power to coerce men, to force men, to make men deal with them this way or that way. If if you're out somewhere and a man starts to chat you up and you don't wanna be chatted up, what do you do? You tell him, I have a boyfriend. I'm married, and he goes away.

You have to conjure up an imaginary man to get him to back off because nine times out of 10, only a man can keep another man in check because men are inherently more dangerous than women. Instead of patriarchy, replace that word with bodyguard. What makes more sense? For you to be my bodyguard or for me to be your bodyguard? Who do you think is more capable of protecting who?

From who? If men didn't protect women, who would? Why men would do whatever they wanted. And isn't your bodyguard responsible for you? Shouldn't you listen to him if he says, for example, don't go here, don't go there, or let's take this route instead of that route because it's safer, isn't that authority?

But he's doing it for you. Would you feel resentment about that authority? That's irrational. Look. You cannot dismiss the importance of physicality, human physicality.

We're physical beings. Technology does not level the field the way you think it does. Let's say, you have a business meeting, and you and you have the meeting in a coffee shop. And while you're there, during the meeting, it gets late. It gets very late.

And then the meeting is over. Your phone battery is dead. Coffee shop is closed, the client has left, and you came by Uber. Now you're alone in the dark with no way home. If it's me, I'll just walk home.

If it's you, you would have been getting nervous and worried throughout the entire meeting the later it got worrying about how you're gonna get home. You're not gonna be worried about being assaulted by a gang of women. And if you were walking in the street by yourself late at night and you see a man coming towards you, which one of the two of you is more likely to be afraid? Who's gonna be scared of who? But see, you in the West have confused this.

The feminists have confused this. The red pillars have confused this. This power imbalance with superiority, we don't do that because we don't, attach that kind of value to it. It just is what it is. The power imbalance, that literal physical power imbalance, that imbalance in the ability to coerce and exert force and to be violent is just a fact and a reality of the power imbalance between men and women.

But your culture is in love with power. It's in love with force. It's in love with violence. So to you, whoever has the greater capacity for violence, whoever has the greater capacity for being dangerous, then that person is better. The one who can exert his will is better.

Whoever has the power to force people to do something is better, and whoever is weaker is less. It's because you admire power so much and you admire force and you admire the ability to coerce, that you find yourself resenting that men have authority over women or the idea the concept of men having authority over women because you think it's unfair. You think that women are being deprived, but remove that authority and see how deprived you'll be. Remove that authority and you will be in danger. You will be deprived of your safety.

You'll be deprived of your security, your freedom, and maybe your life. In the Muslim world, we're not confused about this, and we don't think in terms of, better or higher value on this basis except in terms of piety and righteousness, and what each person's role is, and what their duties are in society, in the family, all naturally proceeds from their abilities and capacities. I'm not equal to a woman who is more pious than me, but I may have authority over her because authority does not mean the same thing as superiority. It's just a function. It's just a function that doesn't carry any particular implications about it with regards to value.

But your society, assigns value to it, assigns a value to it that's inappropriate, that is not an obvious value to be assigned to it. You in the West, because you've largely become atheist, We'll make fun of Muslims. We'll make fun of our intelligence because as you say, we believe in fairy tales. You say, we believe in a god without evidence. We have no evidence to prove the existence of god, but we believe in him.

Meanwhile, you invent a concept, this concept of equality, and treat it as sacred, and you believe in it religiously, with religious devotion, and you demand that everyone believes in it, and no one can dare doubt the, reality and the, holy truth of the concept of equality even though all evidence that you are exposed to on a daily basis disproves, that concept. So you'll make fun of us and you'll look down on us and you'll insult our intelligence for believing in something that you say we don't have any proof for. Meanwhile, you're believing in something for which all of the proof that exists disproves it. You see how incoherent your thinking processes are?