~Muslim Women *Award* Degrees While European Women Not Permitted - TopicsExpress

~Muslim Women *Award* Degrees While European Women Not Permitted to *Attend* Lectures~ In Europe, women were first permitted into university lectures in the the 1870s and then only allowed to study for a degree in the 20th Century! In 1869 Girton College for women opened in Cambridge – but women could only attend lectures not gain degrees. While women in Britain and Europe were prevented from gaining degrees until relatively recently, Muslim women more than a thousand years ago, were not only gaining degrees but were awarding them! Fatima Al-Fihri, set up the first university in the world: The University of Qairawiyyin in Morocco in the 9th Century. Professor Ruth Roded in her book “Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sad to Whos Who” says: “If U.S. and European historians feel a need to reconstruct women’s history because women are invisible in the traditional sources, Islamic scholars are faced with a plethora of source material that has only begun to be studied. [ . . . ] In reading the biographies of thousands of Muslim women scholars, one is amazed at the evidence that contradicts the view of Muslim women as marginal, secluded, and restricted.”