causing in many cases the couple to separate, or else to remain together in reluctance and misery.

Our teacher, Shaykh Muḥammad al-Amīn al-Shinqīṭī, said in his tafsīr, Adwā’ al-Bayān (3 / 422):

“Know—may Allah guide me and you to that which He loves and is pleased with—that this unbelieving, erroneous, and vile notion of making the female exactly equal to the male in every ruling and every field—an idea that flies in the face of sense, reason, heavenly revelation, and the legislation of the Creator—brings about such corruption and disruption of the human social order that it is hidden only from one whose insight Allah has blinded.

Allah, exalted is He, has endowed the female with qualities that fit her uniquely for forms of participation in building human society that no one else can fulfill: carrying the child, giving birth, breastfeeding, raising children, serving the home, and attending to its affairs—cooking, kneading, sweeping, and the like. The services she renders to human society from within her house, in modesty, protection, and chastity, preserving honor, virtue, and human values, are in no way inferior to the man’s service through earning a livelihood.

Yet those base, ignorant unbelievers and their followers claim that a woman has the same right as a man to work outside the home, even though, during pregnancy, nursing, and post-partum recovery, she is visibly incapable of undertaking any task that involves hardship. Thus, when she and her husband both leave the house—"