We live in a world of the politically correct, where everyone should be equal and saying otherwise is frowned upon. What do we find in the Quran about this?
The Quran on Equality
3|195|And so their Lord answered them: “I will not waste the work of any worker among you, whether male or female. You are one of another. For those who emigrated, and were expelled from their homes, and were persecuted because of Me, and fought and were killed—I will remit for them their sins, and will admit them into gardens beneath which rivers flow—a reward from God. With God is the ultimate reward.”
4|124|But whoever works righteousness, whether male or female, and is a believer—those will enter Paradise, and will not be wronged a whit.
16|97|Whoever works righteousness, whether male or female, while being a believer, We will grant him a good life—and We will reward them according to the best of what they used to do.
40|40|Whoever commits a sin will be repaid only with its like. But whoever works righteousness, whether male or female, and is a believer—these will enter Paradise, where they will be provided for without account.
Three ways some are better than others
1. Knowledge
Are those who know the same as those who don’t?
39|9|….Say, “Are those who know and those who do not know equal?” Only those possessed of reason will remember.
2. Piety
2|177|Righteousness does not consist of turning your faces towards the East and the West. But righteous is he who believes in God, and the Last Day, and the angels, and the Scripture, and the prophets. Who gives money, though dear, to near relatives, and orphans, and the needy, and the homeless, and the beggars, and for the freeing of slaves; those who perform the prayers, and pay the obligatory charity, and fulfill their promise when they promise, and patiently persevere in the face of persecution, hardship, and in the time of conflict. These are the sincere; these are the pious.
3. Deeds
4|95|Not equal are the inactive among the believers—except the disabled—and the strivers in the cause of God with their possessions and their persons. God prefers the strivers with their possessions and their persons above the inactive, by a degree. But God has promised goodness to both. Yet God favors the strivers, over the inactive, with a great reward.