CORDOBA, Spain, March 4 (IslamOnline) – A world conference on women and Islam has ended in the Spanish city of Cordoba with calls for western societies to change their negative image of Islam, stemming mainly from misconceptions.

The Third Conference on Muslim Women was attended by 200 women and 80 men, some of them are Spanish politicians. The conference aimed at discussing the Islamic faith, multi-cultures, and calling upon the European society to stop attacking Muslim women, with the pretext of getting them to live normally in Europe.

The conference’s organizers stated that one of the major goals of the gathering was to forge a clear vision about Muslim women’s integration in different European societies. Another goal was to correct media stereotypes of Muslim women that often portray them as oppressed, timid and downtrodden.

The conference's final statement was a summary of all the topics the speakers touched on during two days of meetings in Cordoba, the historic capital of the western Islamic empire.

Delegates attending heard that Muslim women faced many difficulties, whether they were immigrants living in a western society or recent converts, mainly because of a high level of ignorance of Islamic customs.

The conference concluded that it was up to western societies to change their views of Islam and to counteract negative images of Islam in the media.

Meanwhile, Spanish papers echoed Monday the vision Muslims wanted to convey to the Spanish society, in particular, and Europe in general.

Spanish daily newspaper, El Pais, said, “Discrimination that Muslim women suffer, and difficulties they face to integrate in the European society have no religious foundations. These are cultural differences.”

The paper added that the woman model offered by Prophet Mohammad (Peace and Blessings be upon him) and the (Glorious) Qura’n does not allow discrimination or bad treatment inside the house. Islam does not have a text banning female education.

The case of the Moroccan girl, Fatima, who was a hot public issue for the last couple of weeks, had its implications on the work of the conference.

A Moroccan teenager, whose father pulled her out of school because local authorities refused to allow her to wear a veil (hijab), turned up for class Monday, Feb. 18, 2002, after Spanish education authorities granted her permission to wear it.

Muslim women delegates said the decision to wear a veil or headscarf was often portrayed as their central preoccupation, when in reality there were many other subjects of concern to them.

They added the West has to realize that the veil matter is an expression of the personal freedom of a woman to appear in public the way she wants. “It is a right with religious connotations, but that does not mean the rejection of those, who do not wear it,” one participant said.

It is of value to mention here that Spain is coming to terms with the relatively new phenomenon of large-scale Muslim immigration and many speakers in Cordoba said it was all too common for Spaniards to confuse integration with the need to adopt Spanish customs.