DAUGHTERS OF ISLAM.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4906, 23 November 1925, Page 3

DAUGHTERS OF ISLAM.

THEIR GROWING FREEDOM. V ... ' ; EVEN THE SLOW EAST MOVES. To us, who live under Western civilisation there seems, at first sight little cause for comment in the fact that Turkish women and girls have just been declared free to enter comin their native land. Yet there is a very important significance in thii! apparently .slight change. . With us courtesy to women is an inborn instinct. We should no more practice a deliberate 1 dis,courtesy, cruelty, or unfairness .to a woman or girl than we should pick a pocket Religion and the customs of our civilisation breed into us a seemly just and generous attitude towards the opposite sex, and it is difficult to realise that other civilisations can have any different influence in like conditions.

But in that vast cohfmunity which looks to Mohammed as its prophet, priest, and king, the position of woment has ' alwayp been different. Mohammedan women have been a sort of living property, with few rights and liberties, over whom man was set as lord, master, and possessor, te be shut up in private places, like caged birds, nevei* to walk abroad save under guard, and then veiled.

To-day the tide of progress, moves, even in Islam. This year the harem has been abolished; men are to have each but one wife ; women may come forth unveiled; and now, greatest wonder of all, they are allowed ,to enter business, Like the girls of Christian and Far Western nations.