ies have been revealed and"commodified." This they see as one important ingredient in the general moral andethical disintegration of Western societies. Western women are portrayed as havingbeen used and misled. Deprived of pride and dignity, they are objects of sexualexploitation rather than liberation.28 Women have been molded to believe that the western treatment of women is exploitative. Until Muslim women fully come to realize what rights they are being denied, they will nothave the necessary motivation to achieve them. Therefore this attitude is an inherentbarrier to Muslim women playing an equivocal role to men in Islamic society.Not only does hi'jab call for a code of conduct in dress, but it also designatesproper modes of behavior in other areas. Hi'jab lays down rules for Islamically acceptablemanners, speech, and modesty. Included in these ideas are rules for female confinement totheir homes. Although rules in relation to confinement are dying out in most areas,women in fundamentalist areas are still not allowed to leave their houses withoutpermission from their husbands and under the accompaniment of a male relative. Forwomen, hi'jab covers a great expanse of rules from not wearing silver and gold, to nevershowing anybody except their husband their knees.The future of Muslim women depends on the height of their productive value, thustheir status depends indirectly on their ability to become educated and to educate. Womenwho are able to penetrate the educational systems in Muslim states, need to educate theirsisters. They must be victorious in providing information about the equality that they donot have. The censorship in Muslim states is one factor that is currently limiting thisspread of information. Women will eventually gain equivocal roles in society if agitationon the cultural front is able to occur with the same ferocity that Taslima Nasrin hasproduced in Bangladesh.Taslima Nasrin, the feminist writer whose...
