Does islam claim women are dumber than men? This claim is often made using sahih al Bukhari 304 where the prophet Muhammad ﷺ said “I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you.” The issue here is that there is a mistranslation. The Arabic word translated to “deficient” is “نَاقِصَاتِ” which should translate to reduction. We see the same word in the Quran (13:41) and (21:44) and the word is not translated to “deficient” but “reduction”. Now what does this reduction mean? The Hadith it’s self explains it. The reduction is not in regards to stupidity rather the obligations of a women in islam are reduced. The prophet ﷺ gives two examples in this Hadith. The first example is there reduction in religious obligations, the prophet ﷺ says “Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses, The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the reduction in her religion." As for intelligence the prophet ﷺ said “two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the reduction in her intelligence” As seen these are about the obligations being reduced and not that the women is deficient compared to a man. Lets see what scholars said Translation: “and the meaning of aql (mind) here isn’t what we think with the contrary of foolisheness but it is the meaning rembering things and fixing stuff that is how the prophet explained it with “isn’t the witness of a men like the witness of 2 women” -Source: Sharhu Sahih al-Bukhari ibn uthaymeen (RH) volume 2 page number 73 commentating on narration number 304 print of al-maktaba al-islameyah Same thing said in fathul bari and Sharh Sahih muslim And this is a general statement since we can notice pregnant women women on their periods and frustrated ones have shorter memory then man If they were stupid the prophet wouldn’t allow Aisha (AS) to be an excellent teacher Sheikh uthman al-khamis says this is because women are more emotional than man this can be linked to what ibn uthaymeen said, they have hard time fixing stuff because they tend to me more emotional when it comes to memory Females tend to perform better than males in verbal-based episodic memory tasks, as opposed to spatial-based memory tasks [10]. Females generally access their memories faster than males [11], date them more precisely [12], and use more emotional terms when describing memories [13]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6028920/ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1FpbeO5ctHU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lBZU0vFxbcg Ibn taymiyah said: “For there are women smarter than man” -Source: Majmu’ al-fatawa 6/447