Re: Why are two woman witnesses, equivalent to only one male witness in Islam ?
PyariCgurya please read post #27 to get an understanding of my view. As for abilities, men and women are different, but intellectually, I have never said, whether a woman is more, or less or even the same. However, I think Allah (SWT) Knows Better, but I would think men and women have equal intellects.
You said the capabilities of the men and women are different. In terms of being a WITNESS in financial matters, how are they different. If a female sees that a person has tampered with financial documents, and can testify that the documents were tampered with, AND she has good financial background to have reason to KNOW that the documents were tampered with, then why is her testimony alone not ENOUGH?
The value of a witness depends on not only their intelligence, but also in their accuracy. You might have a financial expert who is giving dubious evidence, but its not because they're stupid or not. There are a LOT of factors involved. Fact is that this ruling was made for a time period in which they didn't have complicated court systems, and complicated financial systems, and "experts" in the financial field. The ruling was for a time where there were no stock brokers, and where you'd need to have some basic idea of how a company works to know why Enron went down.
So for a basic system, and a basic society in which women were held back, there was a simple ruling to ensure some fairness in their primitive "judicial" system. Now countries have far more developed judicial systems, with far more educated people. So things are different and the rule no longer applies.
Just like you don't apply the rule about being fair to your right hand, right? There is no such thing as slavery anymore, so are you going to go get a slave so that you can have a right hand, so that you can be good to her? No! Do any of the rules on slaves and how to treat them apply any more? No. Because we don't HAVE slaves anymore.
Likewise, we don't have retarded women anymore.
But you're honestly making me doubt that now.
Hareem, if anyone asks you to be a witness for anything, I'd strongly recommend you follow the Quran's ruling.