I first take the position of daughters in their parents’ home. Under Islamic law, compared with sons, daughters remain in their mothers’ custody for a much longer period not because of any inferiority attached to them but so that the mothers could train them up in house-hold affairs.
The right of the daughters to recieve maintenance from their parents extends upto their marriage and, unlike that of the sons, does not terminate at the advent of puberty. This also is to their manifest advantage.
Moreover, among the items of maintenance is included, along with food, clothing and lodging, education on a par with the sons. Very clearly the Prophet of Islam had declared:
To get educated is a solemn duty of all Muslim men and all Muslim women.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Strikingly, maintenance of a widowed or divorced daughter, irrespective of her age, is as much a liability of her parents as that of a virgin daughter.
In a typical display of its policy to secure to every woman self-respect of the highest order, Islam does not leave either a widowed daughter at the mercy of her in-laws or a divorced daughter to live on forced charity by her former husband.
Under Islamic law both of them respectably return to their parents and are legally entitled to re-live with them till their remarriage with all the rights of virgin daughters restored to them.
It is a pity that this extremely humane pro-women policy of Islamic law should have been erroneously treated as a depravity for women necessitating imposition on the Muslims of an altogether different legal culture.