I was struck by Jim Garrison and Banafsheh Sayyad’s article last year for the Huffington Post: “Muhammad was a Feminist”....

Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah,...... already a mother of three, and a successful merchant. With more caravans than all the other Quraysh traders put together, she led a wealthy, independent lifestyle, refusing many offers of marriage from wealthy men, and chose the penniless Muhammad for her new husband.
This was remarkable at a time when most women were treated like property and barely had any rights at all until the advent of Islam. The very fact that the Prophet of Islam was chosen by such a unique woman, and felt honoured to take her hand, is of extreme importance – the Quran was given to a man who honoured and respected the feminine more than any other man of his time. How fitting, since the Quran granted women unheard of rights, like the right to divorce and inherit property, and could have set in motion an evolving women’s emancipation if Muslims had been awake to its message. Sadly, in the centuries after Muhammad and Khadijah, the possibility of women’s emancipation was inevitably sidelined by the patriarchal establishment that hijacked Islam. In our time however, we can reconnect with this great heroine and appreciate her and the feminine strength she manifested in the way that she and Muhammad would have wished.