Haggag Salama

The French Orientalist Gustave Le Bon did justice to the Eastern woman in the face of the distorted images drawn by the West. In his book "The Civilization of the Arabs," he confirmed that the women of the East - in the past - were more educated than the women of Europe, and that Islam had a great impact on the condition of women in the East and raised their social status instead of lowering it. He noted that Islam granted women inheritance rights better than in most European laws. He cited stories of women who were famous for their scientific and literary knowledge in the Abbasid and Umayyad eras in Andalusia, such as Wallada bint al-Mustakfi and Aisha of Cordoba. He concluded that Europeans took the principles of chivalry and the respect for women from the Arabs.