MUSLIM WOMEN AND CHALLENGES OF WESTERN EDUCATION

Education, any education, is beneficial to humanity and enjoined upon Muslims to seek for it and use it within the confines of Islamic framework. Education turns harmful only when it is stripped of moral values. Western Education being secular in identity and purpose had some inherent and inadvertent negative effects on the Muslim women which are regarded as challenges to their Islamic personality. This paper, using the qualitative analytical approach delves into the challenges affecting the Muslim women who pass through Western Education at the points of study and work to earn livelihood and develop their nation. The paper discovered obstruction of prayer time, eroding family responsibilities, moral laxity manifesting in sexual licentiousness, imposition of un-Islamic dressing and indiscriminate mixing of sexes as major challenges of Western Education to the Muslim women. The paper recommends the intertwining of Islamic moral values with Western Education and its institutions as the way forward in addressing the challenges.