Dr. Bakhtiar is the first Muslim woman translator of the Quran, and thanks, to her, she corrected the 1400-year-old misogynistic interpretations of verse 4:34 that bred among Muslim women.
I have interviewed several Muslim women; they all hated Islam but never said that to anyone and lived within the Muslim social system. You visit the matrimonial sites, and I did for my research; most Muslim women who are independent and over 50 do not list their religion as Islam.
They resented the idea that the Quran permitted men to beat them if the situation arose, and some men took advantage of it. Add to that the evil of Triple Talaq; a woman was always living in the threat of talaq even if she is 65 years old. Thanks to Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar for correcting that gross mistake that denigrated Islam. She must be the most influential Islamic scholar of this century and the previous one. She restored a woman’s God-given dignity.
It was a lousy situation for Single Muslim women. For this reason, and I painstakingly wrote the article, Can a Muslim woman marry non-Muslims? A few Muslims throw a few verses from the Quran at me and back off when they realized they are banking on the mistranslated verses.
The less informed men throw a few verses from the Quran in defense that a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim; they need to study those verses, bigoted men translated them.
I’m a blessed soul – Dr. Bakhtia has wholeheartedly endorsed my book, The American Muslim Agenda. It is on page viii of the book. She had further agreed to work on the mandatory continuing education for imams and ulema to catch up with the correct translations.
She is a significant loss for Muslims.
Inna lillahi o inna ilaihi ur rajeeoon.
Mike Ghouse
Here is a tribute to her by Davar.
https://medium.com/@idavar/courage-temperance-justice-and-the-enduring-wisdom-of-the-late-scholar-laleh-bakhtiar-df5f2aa59e4