Lifting the Veil: Women's Rights, The Quran and Islam

Foreword

...Conjecture is no substitute for the truth. [The Quran 53:28]

The religion of Islam today continues to be one of the most misunderstood religions in the West. But who is to blame, the Western media? Not particularly. Perhaps the major reason for this misunderstanding is the fact that for centuries this beautiful religion has been presented to the world by people, scholars and countries that do not actually follow the Islam taught in the Quran.

Terrible acts of terrorism done in the name of religion are prime examples. The attacks with hijacked planes on New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001, killing thousands of innocent people were deplorable. No God-fearing people can ever condone this kind of activity. As in many other attacks in the past, the terrorists are linked to groups that abuse the name of Islam to commit crimes that are abhorred and strongly condemned by God in the Quran, the Muslims’ holy book.

The religion of Islam should not be confused with what these so-called Muslims have done. They actually, by the definition of the Quran, are not Muslims any more than members of the Ku Klux Klan are Christians. The religion of Islam condemns the killing or even the persecution of people merely because they embrace a different faith. The Quran mandates absolute freedom of religion in a society. It does not allow Muslims to fight except for self-defense and to enforce peace. It does not allow

restrictions on those who disagree on religious matters. It urges Muslims to treat such people kindly and equitably.

Unfortunately, terrorists are not the only ones that give Islam a bad name. It is a fact that there are numerous man-made rules which have crept into mainstream Islam that have nothing to do with the religion of Islam as laid out in the Quran. One of the major principles that has been corrupted over the years is the equality of women in Islam. God tells us clearly in the Quran that we are equal in His eyes, whether we are male or female. Even though we each have obvious physical differences, the only difference that God considers is righteousness. Furthermore, the Quran is full of commands and laws to protect the rights of women, as well as the rights of the weak, such as orphans.

That is why Ms. Lisa Spray’s work in this book is such an important undertaking. She brings forth all the issues confronting today’s women who follow or want to follow the religion of Islam. She gives examples from her experience and tells us how she dealt with each issue she confronted, one step at a time.

Ms. Spray is particularly well qualified for this task as she has first-hand knowledge of several faiths, including traditional Islam. Being a traditional Muslim was quite an experience for her, as it would be for any Western woman, until she came across Quranic Islam, by God’s leave, and found that what she had been taught as the religion of Islam was very different from what God revealed in the Quran.

Besides her own experiences, she includes in her book many real life stories of friends who went through similar experiences on their own. They too saw the light at the end of the tunnel when they were introduced to Quranic Islam.

Furthermore, she has brought into focus the importance of a good translation of the Quran. The Quran, the Final Testament to humanity, is not only beautiful, complete and fully detailed, but also comes with a divine mathematical proof which Ms. Spray discusses and then summarizes in an appendix of her book. I hope her book will be a stepping-stone and inspiration for readers to go and get a Quran and read God’s guidance from cover to cover.

Abdullah Arik

Imam and Director, International Community of Submitters

[1953-2012]

Preface to the

Revised Edition

It has been eighteen years since we published the first edition of this book. The world has changed during that time, but not much for many Muslim women. All this book’s original contents still apply to the lives of those women just as they did when we first published them in 2002. However, some things have changed and need to be updated, including websites. We also added four additional chapters—one on being born and giving birth, another on daughters and parents, one on women as widows and orphans, and the last on women who strive against tyranny and oppression. We moved one of the original appendices into the book’s main body as a chapter as well.

Some contributors to the original edition are no longer in this world, including Abdullah Arik who wrote the forward you just read. I sorely miss all of them. Some new contributions come from newer acquaintances. All bless both the book and my life, which I am most thankful for. Praise God!

Acknowledgements

It takes a village to raise a child.

                                                      African proverb

In many, many ways it has taken a community to write Lifting the Veil. I wish to acknowledge and thank all of those who have helped raise this book.

First, I wish to acknowledge and thank the contributors for their personal stories that add so much both in content and in heart to the book. In the order in which they first appear I thank Shari, LK, Iman¹, Irandokht, Patty, Senobar, Naima, Connie, Lydia Kelley, MeauVell, JC, N., Lory, I. R., Pari, Swedish Muslim, G., A submitter who knows, Sabah, Lourdes, Parsa, Khaula, Fari, and Carolyn Smith.

Others have added wonderful editorial input and I thank them all: Ruthanne Taylor, Rev. Raven Gaston, Azhar Khan, Margaret Sierras, and Carol Vinson. Besides sharing their stories, Lydia and

Fari gave me great editorial and proofreading

assistance. I wish to acknowledge Abdullah Arik, though he is no longer with us, for his excellent foreword, his editorial comments, and all his assistance.

I also thank Heike Senouci for her editorial assistance and her translation of the essence of the book into German.

In truth, this book is as much or more all of yours than it is mine.

May it be acceptable to God, the Source of all good.

Lisa Spray

Introduction

Life always amazes me; things happen that you would never expect. I know that I never expected to become a Muslim until one stormy night sailing on the ocean in a 57-foot schooner I realized I needed to do more than just read the Quran that a friend gave me. You will find that night’s story and how I became an official Muslim in Chapter 1.

That night in 1976 started me on a wonderful journey, one I am still on and enjoying more every day. Of course, an enormous amount has happened in the world since the journey began, and some of the change affects many Muslim women.

However, the changes do not eradicate the issues Muslim women often face. For most of us in the West, their lives are veiled from us. We cannot imagine what these women face daily. Thus, this book—I decided to attempt to share my experience of becoming a Muslim many years ago and how that changed my life.

Initially, I followed what I believed was the only form of Islam. When I became more familiar with the Quran, I began to see that the culture and traditions of the Arabs and other Muslims hid Quranic Islam. I pray this book will lift that veil for you along with the more general veil covering the lives of Muslim women, God willing.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

I intended the first writing of this material for other Muslims, and that book, entitled My Heart’s Surprise and published by BSM Press in 2001, had limited success as a niche book for Muslims. 

In 2002 I published again with BSM Press the second version of the book, then entitled Women’s Rights, The Quran and Islam. In that version I changed my focus to make the book more accessible to the general reader of the time shortly after the infamous 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and other targets. Suddenly people wanted to learn about Islam and needed to do so.

I will never forget that terrible morning—waking up and getting ready for work as if it were just another morning. Then my best friend Lydia telephoned. Turn on the TV. Something terrible is happening in New York.

Half-dressed my husband and I ran into the dark living room. Without turning on the lights we turned on the TV to the horror of the World Trade Center collapsing.

I never brought myself to watch the videos again, or the coverage of earlier events where people jumped from windows and died on the streets below. Nor can I bring myself to listen to the frantic phone calls from those caught in the towers as they spoke to their loved ones in those last minutes, knowing their lives would soon end.

I don’t remember much more about that morning, probably because like most Americans and a huge portion of the world, shock took over my brain. However, I do remember walking into work and encountering Maria, an older woman of Native American descent, her normally cheerful face a grey mask, almost as grey as her shoulder-length hair. We talked earlier about our various faiths, so she knew mine.

When she caught sight of me her whole face stiffened with emotion, pointing at me, You did this! she screamed. And she pivoted around on her heel and walked in the opposite direction down the asphalt-tiled main hallway of our office building.

Already in shock, she stunned me further. My eyes, still red from crying immediately filled again and I ended up in the women’s bathroom sobbing until I could pull myself together enough to work, or rather attempt to. I suspect not much work got done that day in most places in the United States.

None of our lives have ever been the same since then. Worldwide we became aware of the terror under which millions had lived for years. Now that terror stalks us in this country too. This country—having never seen such a terrorist attack on our soil—will never recover totally from 9/11.

I believe it will always haunt us, triggered again and again by current events, for such horrifying terror attacks continue throughout the world today. Thankfully at least some of the major Muslim terrorist groups ended up defeated and all but eradicated. Sometimes more audacious Muslim terrorist organizations replaced them. I put quotes around Muslim for these groups because no true Muslim would participate in such horrifying acts that go so totally against the Quran and any true teachings of the God all humans share. As you will find more than once in this book, the Quran condemns such hideous violence.

But what does this have to do with Muslim women’s rights? you might ask. It has a great deal to do with them. Terrorism affects all people, but it especially affects women and their children. For though men fight, ultimately it is the women, children, and elderly who survive and must pick up the pieces after the fighting ends.

In multiple areas in recent years, the decimation of the male Muslim population forced women to take over more and more masculine duties, even to the extent of becoming soldiers and fighting terrorists like ISIS and its so-called Islamic State. This book includes Chapter 24, in honor of those amazing women who not only fought but won against their terrorist enemies and the enemies of democracy and freedom.

Throughout the Muslim world, change has come for women in recent years, though not always for the good. In some places like Turkey, the first Muslim country to really make great strides in women’s rights, there have been some reversals to those rights. However, the general trend continues to be more positive than negative, by God’s grace.

You may wonder exactly what you will find in this book. It tells the story of my coming to terms with what I thought Islam meant for women when I first began practicing the religion and how the Quran resolved the issues I found. As I write about each issue, I encountered I also share from other sources, especially from the Bible and the stories of other women.

I begin with the issues I thought would make it difficult for me to live as a modern Western woman. However, as I studied the Quran, I found that of all the scriptures the Quran acts as the torchbearer for women’s rights. Probably not what most readers expect. Why? Because what most of us know as Islam does not follow the Quran, rather it follows traditions and culture, especially that of the Arabs who initially received the Quran but then chose to follow the Hadith and Sunna instead.  Hadith and Sunna² are what tradition says the prophet Muhammad said and did. Like all religious congregations, Muslims inter-mix their culture with their scripture.

Why does this happen? We all see everything through the lens of our culture, including divine revelation. And so, we interpret the revelation—be it the Vedas, Torah, Gospels, Quran, etc.—through that lens. In part, this explains the inevitable spread of denominations, sects, and other groupings in all religions. Humans divide and then want to impose their understandings on others. I believe this causes all the religious and other conflicts humanity sees and has probably seen its entire history.

I am not an unbiased source because for most of my life I have accepted the Quran as God’s word.  However, I pray, God willing, whatever your views you will find some value and enjoyment in this exploration into my journey to become a scriptural Muslim—one who now follows only the scripture in my religious practice.

1 The Beginning for Me

In the name of God, most Gracious, most Merciful

As you read, you will find a few phrases typically used by Muslims in the text, like the In the name of God, most Gracious, most Merciful I begin this chapter with. I do this to give you a more complete experience of what it means to me to be Muslim.

Ever since I can remember I believed in God. Though my parents had spiritual natures, religion had no real place in my nuclear family. This gave me the freedom to explore the vast world of religious thought my own way. Explore I did. As a child, I read quantities of mythology from all over the world. The Native American mythologies touched me the most deeply.

Perhaps my family’s short trips to watch the Easter ceremonies of the Yaqui Indian tribe, or the Yoeme in their own language, provided the reason for that choice. A marvelous blend of Catholicism and the native belief system from before European contact, these ceremonies opened a door for me to a new culture and a new worldview. Their dance/drama depicts the struggle between evil and goodness, all staged within the story of the Easter passion. Organized around the year-round preparation for these ceremonies, traditional Yoeme religious life culminates in their final performance during Easter week.

Back then, most traditional men became members of one of the dance societies. These societies performed this impressive and deeply spiritual ceremony for its own sake. What we saw was an expression of their strong faith rather than a staged production. The privilege of watching those ceremonies remains one of my most treasured childhood memories.

When I saw such deep reverence and total dedication to a religious path it moved me and awakened my own need for a spiritual path.

In my early teens, I began reading the scriptures. I read the Bible and bits and pieces from other traditions. I read stories of the saints and wept for them and their suffering. I remember thinking to myself, I could never be that good, but I am so glad that someone was.

I also read stories of the European settlers of various nationalities. The slaughter and brutal enslavement of the Native American peoples by these Europeans horrified me. The greatest horror was that so much of this terrible activity ended up carried out in the name of religion. (Having grown older I know this occurs in all situations where people are conquered, no matter what the cultures and religions involved.)

My longing for God and a spiritual path on one hand, and my horror of organized religion and its activities on the other, staged a constant drama in my young life. As a young adult, I found a spiritual home for a while in a Quaker meeting and later with the Sufi Order in the West. Traditionally Islamic mystics, most Sufis follow one of the sects of Islam. However, a spiritual student from India whose teacher had given him the task of introducing Islam to the West in a way that was easy for Westerners started the Sufi Order in the West. The group I became a member of had New Age traits and very few of its members converted to traditional Islam. In the Introduction, I mention it was a friend who gave me my first Quran. Saida followed this Sufism.

The story of how this Quran eventually brought me to Islam appears below, reprinted from The Hoopoe, an Islamic literary magazine no longer in existence.

Into The Light

By Lisa Spray

© 1988

IN THE NAME OF GOD, MOST

GRACIOUS, MOST MERCIFUL.

Well, she really didn’t have any choice. She had made up her mind that incredible night, the like of which she hoped she would never see again!

The seas had been wild and the winds even wilder. The schooner, with sails reduced to the bare minimum that would act as stabilizers, bobbed around like a toy between the too playful paws of a kitten.

In the troughs, looking up at mountains of water as high as the masts (or so it seemed in the long-prayed-for dawn grey) she realized how the Children of Israel must have felt scuttling through the Red Sea, with cliffs of water poised to topple down on them at any minute. It was just as miraculous that she had come through that night. She, a desert rat who didn’t even like to swim (except to snorkel), had survived the most excruciating night of water torture that she could imagine. They had all survived, no one had washed overboard, and nothing had punctured the ferro-cement hull...and only God could have brought them through. She knew that more surely than she knew that the blood flowing through her was red.

It was only hours, though it seemed like years, earlier that she had decided. For a long time she had been reading the Koran [Quran] a friend had given her. It was so obviously truthful, in spite of the King James English of the Urdu speaker who had translated it. She almost chuckled remembering when Saida gave it to her: I haven’t been reading this, and when my dog wanted to chew on it I figured I’d better give it to someone who might. Some of her best friends had been dogs. Saida’s sure was!

Anyway, it was clear. She could no longer procrastinate. She had to become a Muslim, in spite of what she knew about them. The book was true. Maybe the rest would make sense later.

~: * :~

She talked to an old Sufi friend. He was the only practicing Muslim she knew. What did she have to do? Well, it was very simple. All she had to do was go through this ceremony and say these words in Arabic, and learn these prayers, and wear these clothes, read these books, and clean herself this way, and deal with men in this way, and...and...and by the way she might want to start doing these prayers for the prophet.

Laden down with books, and even more burdened with instructions, she trundled home to the little travel trailer she shared with her now land-locked sailor husband.

What if I can’t do all this stuff?

You’ll never know unless you try.

Patiently he stood by watching as she transformed herself into a fourteenth century woman. He even helped drill her as she struggled through the strange little Pakistani book on the prayers.

Gay reel mag dooby...

Wait, I think it’s more like ‘Guy real,’ but this ink blot makes it kind’a unclear.

~: * :~

Now she was an official Muslim. People looked at her as they passed her on the street, wondering what kind of nun she was. Old friends didn’t recognize her. And she couldn’t pronounce the names of her new friends.

Her family was scared. They had lauded her involvement with the [Vietnam] war resistance. The Sufis were harder for them, but they were nice and New Age and seemed harmless enough. Sailing was dangerous, but only to life and limb. But Muslims.... Muslims were terrorists, and treated women like cattle, and rejected the basis for modern life!

~: * :~

Her Sufi Muslim friend was staying where someone was starting a new mosque. The painting was almost done and carpets were in. He asked her if she would like to come by and help a bit. She wasn’t very excited.

The last mosque she had been in had been quite a scary experience. The only other woman there didn’t speak English, and all of the men treated them as if they were contagious. Actually, that probably was a good thing, because the room they were in must have once been a walk-in closet. Any more people, male or female, would have made it a sardine can!

She had fled as soon as the juma prayer [the Friday congregational prayer] was over.

No, another mosque experience was not her idea of a great way to spend the afternoon.

But after a while she worked up enough courage to get her to the front door. But she stood on the front porch of the renovated house for quite a while before bringing herself to go in.

~: * :~

Right now she is sitting in front of a computer terminal, wondering how long she could have lasted as a muslim if she hadn’t walked through that door, hadn’t met that gently smiling man working just inside the sunny room which felt more like home than even the house she grew up in...if she hadn’t heard about his discovery of the mathematical code in the Qur’an...the intricate code which is God’s own tamper proof seal on His message to each one of us. How long could she have lasted in the cloth chains of hijab [garments worn by many Muslim women in public] before she would have dumped them—and everything connected with them?

Of course it hadn’t ended there. There was a lot of growth, a lot of stumbling, a lot of tying one’s shoelaces together, a lot of repenting.

But by God’s great mercy she was there, and she was able. And only by His great mercy will she continue to be, Inshallah [God willing]!

And of course there is still a lot of growing. But that’s OK, ‘cause as Elliot Paul put it, Whatever isn’t growing, wears out!

(From The Hoopoe, Summer/Fall issue, 1988, page 20.)

Though I had to force myself to ring the doorbell as I stood there on the front porch, walking through the door into the mosque was like grabbing a lifeline. God had guided me to a group of people who followed the Quran alone—exactly what I needed. I don’t think I would have lasted very much longer trying to follow all the rules and regulations that the various forms of traditional Islam impose on their women. Nor would I have survived the issues with which I struggled of inequality for women in Islam.

In fact, I had already begun to drown in all the rules.

~: * :~

Notes On Personal Names

In some situations, I have changed names and sometimes identifying details of people.  

Notes On Verse References

Before we go any further let me say just a few words about the Quran translations I use in the rest of the book. I very occasionally use A. Yusuf Ali’s 1968 edition (the edition I first received from Saida). Still one of the most widely used translations, when I became Muslim most people I knew, thought it the best. He arranged his verses like poetry, dividing up each into many lines. He printed them side by side with the Arabic of the same verse. I use the frequent convention of leaving more than four quoted poetic lines in that format, while combining shorter quotes into a prose format, using slashes to indicate line divisions.

You can tell when I used Yusuf Ali’s translation because the reference at the end of the verse lists The Holy Quran. I then give the verse reference, first with the Roman numerals he used followed by the reference translated to Arabic numerals in brackets. Where I combined lines, I left his capitalization.

Most of my verse quotes and linked references come from the fine translation done by Rashad Khalifa, PhD.—the 2010 printing. Though not as well-known as Yusuf Ali’s translation, I find it the clearest and easiest for native English readers. I use this translation for my personal reading. Dr. Rashad Khalifa chose Quran: The Final Testament as his title. Please note that because he did not use the poetic conventions of Yusuf Ali, the quotes from his translation may seem less substantial. Please do not let that fool you. As you will see later in Chapter 21 on studying the Quran, his translation has some very extraordinary qualities. If you do not have a Quran handy and wish to look at one of the references given, you can find it in Appendix 1. This has all the Quran verses referenced taken from Dr. Khalifa’s translation.

Most Western readers know more about the Bible verses. References for these include the editions with their dates for the first usage and just the title thereafter. I use the same poetic conventions for the Biblical verses.

~: * :~ ~: * :~ ~: * :~

Every journey begins with one step. Once we take that step then God helps us along on the path we have chosen—or perhaps I should say, at least for me, the path He has chosen for me. If no one had given me a Quran I am not certain that I would have ever read it. But having read it I embarked on a wonderful journey of exploration and personal growth, as you will see in future chapters.

The amazing positive change in my way of thinking and feeling because of my journey rather overwhelms me at times. No longer am I the fearful, woeful, and constantly self-deprecating being that began the journey all those years ago. As I come to trust God more and more that growth seems to accelerate until I hardly remember how it felt to live in my former state. The resulting joy and appreciation for it all just continue to grow, all praise and thanks to God!

2 Women’s Position

Culture and the way it affects humans always fascinated me. After stumbling around in my first two undergraduate years, I decided to study something I enjoyed. I chose anthropology—which includes the study of culture. Though not a great choice for a career to support you, it provided me with more understanding of myself and the many people from different parts of the world I would soon meet.

I read the Quran for a year or two before I sailed with friends in their schooner from southern California through the Panama Canal to the U.S. Virgin Islands. During that trip, we sailed about 500 miles off the coast of Mexico because we kept hearing horror stories about pirates taking over boats and appropriating them for running drugs.

That far offshore we encountered some heavy weather and in one of the storms, I decided I needed to become a Muslim. (This is the storm described in the last chapter.) That night at the end of 1976, while I shared the second watch, I made the commitment to do more than just read the Quran. I had to try practicing Islam, despite all the scary things I thought I knew about it. The Quran felt right, maybe the rest would follow.

I have never regretted my decision. I’ve been a practicing Muslim ever since I learned the practices. It changed my life more wonderfully than I could have imagined.

As I described in Chapter 1, when I got back to the States several months after that fateful storm, I contacted the only Muslim I knew who actively practiced Islam. Soon a new world caught me up. New friends from very diverse cultures allowed me to use far more of my anthropology than I ever expected. My interest in culture now paid off.

I am not a scholar of Islam or an anthropologist. I do believe however my many years as a Muslim and my contacts with many diverse cultures give me some insights to share.

Often when the practices of some Muslims do not mesh with my understanding of the Quran the issue results from culture.

How do you define culture? Good question. Many volumes have attempted to define it.

Stated in a simple way, I see it as all the things that make a group of people similar to each other and different from other groups. It includes the way we speak, the words we use, the foods we eat, the stories we heard from our elders and will tell our children. It affects the way we see ourselves and others, the way we view life and death, even the colors we paint our houses. It is a million things we accept as part of our identity without thinking about them.

The personal distance we surround ourselves with gives yet another example of culture. Have you ever found yourself backing away when your listener keeps pushing your space? Or perhaps you have been the space pusher. You have just come face to face with differences in culture.

Many years ago, I spent some sleepless nights with a wonderful friend from Egypt. She grew up in a small village surrounded by the sounds of people and animals. She could not sleep without noise, so always had the television or radio playing. I on the other hand grew up in a culture where an ideal bedroom meant to have your own quiet refuge, away from all noise and commotion. We laughed when we talked about it later.

In spite of my experiences with other cultures I still find myself taking a deep breath and trying to calm my temper when someone playing loud music drives up to my quiet picnic spot. Although I understand some of that culture, I am still bound by my own culture. So loud music in a peaceful place upsets me.

These cultural differences carry over into religion also. We often accept people eat food very different from what we enjoy and listen to music that puts our nerves on edge but then still expect them to live with the same spiritual reality we do. While very human, this reaction ignores reality. At the core of our culture and thus at the core of ourselves, our spiritual understanding defines us. So why do we expect it to look the same for everyone?

Before I first started reading the Quran, I thought I knew all about Islam—and it demeaned women. I assumed the Quran would bear this out.

It surprised me to find in the Quran that God made men and women equal.

However, I couldn’t see this at first.

In the last chapter I mentioned the Quran Saida gave me. Abdullah Yusuf Ali translated it. I had read the Christian Bible, the Torah and some of the Bhagavad-Gita. I decided I really should read the Quran, though convinced I would not find much of value there.

Like many Westerners I saw Islam as one belief system, with all Muslims following the same understanding. I did not realize, as much variety of understanding exists among Muslims as among followers of any other major religion.

What I always assumed was the only form of Islam did not attract me at all. A footnote in that Yusuf Ali translation awoke my interest and started my learning process, ending on the stormy night I decided to become Muslim. When I first read his translation of Verse 3:195 nothing stood out to me. The verse refers to believers in God who pray to Him for forgiveness and mercy:

And their Lord hath accepted Of them, and answered them: / "Never will I suffer to be lost The work of any of you, Be he male or female: / Ye are members, one of another....

(The Holy Quran III:195 [3:195])

However, his footnote for this passage astonished me:

In Islam the equal status of the sexes is not only recognised but insisted on. If sex distinction, which is a distinction in nature, does not count in spiritual matters, still less of course would count artificial distinctions, such as rank, wealth, position, race, colour, birth, etc.

How could Yusuf Ali say Islam insists on the equal status of men and women? I never expected this. Islam makes women subservient, right? Every report in the media, every book I ever read told me so. (Please remember this was in the 1970s.)

Perhaps he made an error or somehow the translation became biased. Looking at other translations for this verse I did not see any other indication of this equal status.

Not until years later when I read Dr. Rashad Khalifa’s translation of the verse, did I understand its full impact for the equality of men and women:

Their Lord responded to them: I never fail to reward any worker among you for any work you do, be you male or female—you are equal to one another….

(Quran: The Final Testament 3:195)

Finally, in print: God made men and women equal in Islam.

But why didn’t other translations say so? Looking again at them, the wording does not say it straight out, but they imply the same meaning. All the others I have seen resemble Yusuf Ali’s Ye are members, one of another. What does that mean but, God made you all the same—or equal?

However, if your cultural background does not accept that equality, you may not catch the meaning. My background accepts equality between the sexes (at least it says it does), and I still did not catch it.

Perhaps this gives a clue. I expected unfairness towards women in Islam. Plenty of evidence exists to show we tend to see what we expect. This creates the biggest blind spot for all humans. I set myself up not to see the equality of men and women in the Quran. Perhaps most translators did the same.

Dr. R. Khalifa’s translation of the remainder of the verse strengthened my understanding:

...Thus, those who immigrate, and get evicted from their homes, and are persecuted because of Me, and fight and get killed, I