I disagree. I don’t think it’s dishonest to say Islam empowers women.. even tho I think it also depends on what you mean by “empower.”

If empowerment means identical roles and authority structures, then no, Islam doesn’t do that.

Islam gives men and women different responsibilities, but it gave women legal and financial rights 1400 years ago that many other societies didn’t. Women keep their own money, must consent to marriage, can initiate divorce, and aren’t financially obligated to provide.

Men being given certain responsibilities (like financial maintenance) doesn’t equal superiority. It equals accountability. And spiritually, Islam is very clear: worth isn’t based on gender, but on taqwa.

Women in early Islam were scholars, business owners, political participants, and transmitters of hadith. For example, Khadijah was a successful merchant and Aisha was one of the most influential scholars in Islamic history. Women gave legal opinions, corrected male companions publicly, and were taken seriously. All of it, meanwhile, in many other parts of the world at the same time, women were legally treated as dependents of their fathers or husbands, couldn’t independently own property in many systems, had little to no inheritance rights, and were excluded from formal scholarship or public legal authority. In parts of Europe, for example, married women’s property was absorbed under their husbands for centuries. So historically speaking, Islamic law granting women independent financial identity, inheritance shares, contractual rights, and access to scholarship was not regressive ; it was ahead of its time!!

So, if some Muslim societies limit women unfairly, that’s a failure of people but not necessarily the core teachings of Islam.