By Hussein Haji
Few subjects ignite more impassioned argument than the status of women in religion. Social media posts and polemical speeches alike often repeat a striking claim: that in 586 AD, church leaders in France gathered to debate whether women even possessed souls. The story is usually deployed to contrast Christian Europe’s alleged misogyny with the reforms introduced by Islam — or, conversely, to frame Islam as uniquely restrictive toward women.
The historical record tells a more complicated story.
The event in question refers to a council held in 586 in the Burgundian city of Mâcon. According to surviving accounts, one bishop raised a linguistic query about whether the Latin word homo — meaning “human being” — properly included women. The matter was settled swiftly: women were affirmed to be fully human. There is no reliable evidence that church authorities seriously debated whether women had souls or classified them as less than human.
Such anecdotes, however potent, often obscure a broader truth: most ancient civilisations were deeply patriarchal.
Rome’s Daughters
In the Roman world, women were legally subordinate to male authority under the system of patria potestas. A father — and later a husband — held formal power over a woman’s legal and economic life. Women could not vote, hold public office or serve in the Senate.
Yet the picture was not uniformly bleak. By the late Roman Republic and Empire, elite women could own property, manage estates and, in some cases, initiate divorce. Their influence was often informal but real. The rights of a wealthy Roman widow differed starkly from those of an enslaved woman.
In other words, Roman society was restrictive — but not monolithic.
Arabia Before Islam
Pre-Islamic Arabia presents a similarly varied landscape. It was not a unified state but a constellation of tribes, each with its own customs.
Some women exercised economic independence. Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, later the first wife of Muhammad, was a successful merchant in Mecca before the advent of Islam.
At the same time, other tribal practices were harsh. Historical sources record instances of female infanticide — a practice later condemned in the Qur’an. Widows could, in certain tribes, be treated as inheritable property. Marriage arrangements were often transactional, embedded within tribal alliances.
As elsewhere in the ancient world, women’s status was mediated by tribe, class and circumstance.
What Islam Changed
When Islam emerged in the 7th century, it introduced reforms that altered women’s legal position within Arabian society.
The Qur’an explicitly prohibited female infanticide. It assigned women defined shares of inheritance — smaller than men’s in most cases, but unprecedented in codified form within that context. Women were granted the right to own and manage property independently, and a marriage contract required their consent. Divorce, though easier for men to initiate, was not entirely closed to women.
Spiritually, the Qur’an articulated moral and religious accountability for men and women alike. In theological terms, both stood equal before God.
For many historians, these measures represented meaningful reform relative to prevailing tribal norms.
The Long Arc of Interpretation
But the story did not end in the 7th century. Over centuries, Islamic jurisprudence developed complex schools of law. In some interpretations, male guardianship was reinforced; in others, women found avenues to pursue scholarship, commerce and political authority. Muslim history includes female scholars of hadith, patrons of architecture, and even sovereign rulers.
The tension between text, interpretation and culture is hardly unique to Islam. Christian Europe, too, oscillated between restriction and reform — as did Jewish, Hindu and other societies shaped by patriarchal traditions.
The claim that women were universally treated “worse than animals” before Islam is as imprecise as the suggestion that any one civilisation solved gender inequality in a single stroke.
Beyond Slogans
Modern debates about whether Islam “suffocates” women’s rights often conflate scripture with cultural practice, and medieval jurisprudence with contemporary politics. Women’s lived realities today differ dramatically between, say, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — just as they differ between secular France and the United States.
History resists simple morality tales. The status of women before and after Islam cannot be reduced to a single council, a single verse or a single era. It is a story of gradual reform, enduring patriarchy, interpretive struggle and social change — a story that, in many parts of the world, is still unfolding.
