The Prophetic Vision of Women Empowerment: Evidence from Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) Family

Women empowerment is one of the most crucial factors of a society’s overall success story. The determinants of women empowerment are many including both the psychological and material components of rights, power and perception. The term “women empowerment” combines between women’s sense of self-worth, control of their choices, their rights to avail the benefits of resources and power to direct their own lives in addition to influencing the social change. The body of Islamic tenets, arguably, contains many indications on the building blocks of women empowerment in Islam, which could be retrieved primarily by exploring the specific aspects of Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) life. The Prophetic scheme on how and to what extent Islam views the need and significance of empowering women can be illustrated by delving into the pertinent Prophetic traditions on the subject of women’s rights. In addition, possibly, the vision of the Prophet on women empowerment can be best analyzed by examining the status of the closest female members of his own family. Among the female family members of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) with whom he had an opportunity to repeatedly interact for a considerable period of time were his wives, daughters and granddaughters. This chapter aims to critically analyze the treatment of the Prophet to one of these three main categories of his female family members, i.e., his wives, in terms of their empowerment. The chapter is based on a qualitative research approach and primarily examines the literature in Arabic, Urdu and English to explore the Prophetic vision of women empowerment. In order to reach a solid conclusion, both the primary and secondary sources such as Quran, Hadith, Seerah (biography of the Prophet) and other academic analyses are referred to in this study.