In a Friday sermon delivered at the Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Ashraf Nusairat said that the notion that women do not have rights in Islam was introduced into Islamic countries by Western colonialism. According to Dr. Nusairat, the issue of women's freedom, equality, and rights is foreign to Islam and was planted by the Western colonialists, who now use it against Islam. "I call upon our Muslim women to return to the religion of Allah, and to understand the Islamic faith correctly. They must not be led astray by the Western notions of equality," said Dr. Nusairat in his March 16 sermon, which was posted on the Dar Al-Hijrah YouTube channel. Dr. Ashraf Nusairat is the director of Noon Arabic Academy in Hanover Park, Illinois.

To view the clip of Dr. Ashraf Nusairat on MEMRI TV, click here or below.

Ashraf Nusairat: "The issue of women's freedom, equality, and rights is foreign to Islam. It has nothing to do with Islam. It is a product of the human mind. When human beings legislate laws, they make mistakes. This is why women in the West began to demand their rights.

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"The notions that women should not work, that they have no right to work, and that they must stay at home like slaves are foreign to Islam. They exist, however, in Muslim countries, because we have become distant from our religion, and because of what was done by the West, by Britain and France, when they occupied the Muslim countries. They planted these notions in the minds and hearts of our grandparents. Consequently, this is what we saw in our parents. That's when the West began to view this as a weakness, as discrimination against women. They planted this seed and now that it bears fruit, they use it against Islam. I call upon our Muslim women to return to the religion of Allah, and to understand the Islamic faith correctly. They must not be led astray by the Western notions of equality."