In The Shadow
Of Inequality
By Nighat Gandhi
The
Hindu
19 October, 2003
There
are over a billion Muslims in the world. Roughly half that number are
women. When violence against women is viewed in a global context, startling
facts emerge: the majority of the world's displaced persons and refugees,
as a result of armed conflict and human rights violations, are women
and children. A majority are Muslim women and children, increasingly
subjected to the secondary horrors of war rape, trafficking,
hunger, homelessness, unemployment, malnutrition. More facts: the majority
of the world's absolute poor are women, and the majority of the world's
illiterate are also women. Of them, Muslim women make up a substantial
percentage.
These facts should
be enough for thinking (Muslim) men and women to demand reasons for
these gross inequalities. Mehnaz Afkhami, an Iranian activist in exile
in the United States, writes in Fatith and Freedom: "unless a substantial
number of women in a community come to believe they have rights and
demand to exercise them, rights remain an abstraction. Rights and empowerment
are interconnected." It is obvious then that the debate on rights
can't be raised by Muslim women in the absence of empowerment. Fortunately,
for the first time in history, the sources of power no longer lie with
a few in the form of wealth or force alone.
The empowerment
tool in the 21st Century is knowledge. It is through knowledge that
even marginalised Muslim women can become permanently empowered. Thus,
Afkhami urges women's rights activists, especially those who can "communicate
with others, influence events, and make a difference", to develop
strategies for easy dissemination of knowledge among Muslim women. The
new communication technologies can be employed cost-effectively to expedite
this goal.
The significance
of knowledge acquisition should not surprise Muslims. The very first
word of the first verse of the Quran is: "read" (Iqra in Arabic),
an injunction to acquire knowledge, reason, and reach conclusions through
rational reasoning (Quran 96:1). Very few educated Muslim women have
engaged in the process of ijtihaad or critical reasoning and rethinking
of their religious texts. Women interpreters such as Lebanese Nazira
Zin Al Din, writing in the 1920's on the controversial subject of veiling
for Muslim women, said that since Islam is based on the freedom of thought,
will and action, no Muslim has authority over another in matters of
religion.
After a study of
Islamic texts, she came to the conclusion that veiling for women is
not a required practice. Men and women are advised to observe modesty
of dress and behaviour, and if it were God's will to have women totally
covered, there would be no need for the Quranic verse asking men to
"lower their gaze and guard their modesty". (sura Al-Nur,
verse 30). Not surprisingly, Al-Din's views have never been represented
in the mainstream of Islamic legislation.
There is no ordained
priesthood in Islam, so any ordinary Muslim, man or woman, who can read,
is entitled to interpret Islamic laws, rights and responsibilities in
the light of the Quran and hadith (the collected sayings of the prophet
regarding the rights and duties of Muslims). The prophet is supposed
to have urged travel as far as China (a formidable undertaking in Seventh
Century A.D.) in search of knowledge. He didn't mean just religious
knowledge, nor was he addressing Muslim men exclusively.
Historically, most
Islamic scholars have been men, and it is safe to say that they can't
be relied upon to produce interpretations that are favourable to women's
rights. Even the meticulous al-Bukhari, Ninth Century Arab scholar,
has cited as authentic the hadith (attributed to Al-Bakara) delegitimising
a Muslim woman as the head of a Muslim state. Benazir Bhutto' s leadership
was challenged by a maulvi in Pakistan on the basis of this hadith.
Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan sociologist, after extensive research, found
that Al-Bakrah was someone who had been flogged for giving false testimony
in a case of adultery. She insists that misogynistic hadith can't be
accepted as truth and need to be traced to their original sources to
check for reliability.
Muslim women might
do well to remember that Islam was born in the arms of a woman
the first person to accept Islam was Khadija, an independent and wealthy
business woman. She had been twice-widowed before she proposed marriage
to prophet Mohammed. She was 40 at the time, and Mohammed, the manager
of her business, 15 years younger. Compared to the courageous and outspoken
women Mohammed respected, and whose opinions he valued throughout his
life, the state of subjugation and seclusion from public life in which
most contemporary Muslim women are forced to live, is sad indeed. When
I find books like AIDS Nature's Terrible Revenge, by Munir Ahmad
Khadim, I begin to wonder when Muslim women are going to take charge
of their life.
Another Indian scholar
of hadith, Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, admits that though nowhere in the
Quran are women required to veil their faces, it would be better if
they did so, and preferably with thick cloth. Bowing to the unethical
authority of such scholars is a denial of responsibility by Muslim women
for their own fates.
Is a feminist reinterpretation
of Islamic laws an impossible goal? No, according to Miriam Cooke, who,
in Women Claim Islam, defines Islamic feminism as a juxtaposition of
two epithets, not a "fixed identity" but rather a "contingent,
contextually determined strategic self-positioning". Islamic feminists,
she writes, have a "difficult double commitment: on the one hand,
to a faith position, and on the other, to women's rights both inside
the home and outside". Those who claim themselves to be Islamic
feminists, are "political insubordinates. They are refusing the
boundaries others try to draw around them so as to better police them.
They are claiming their right to be strong women without fear
that they be accused of being Westernised and imitative".
For the half a billion
Muslim women who are adversely affected by laws and customs which serve
the interests of a male elite, it is imperative to take the subject
of women's rights out of the hands of self-appointed male guardians
of Islam. Muslim women have simultaneously to free themselves from the
oppression of Muslim men, as well as claim their God-granted rights.
As a first step, I suggest reading the Quran, not in Arabic, but in
one's mother tongue, to discover what the Quran has to say about Muslim
women.
I share Raja Bahlul's
cautious optimism though. In Birzeits' University online journal, Our
Voice, and on the topic of Islamic feminism, he writes: "
one need not think that Islam (or indeed any religion) is the best,
or least objectionable intellectual framework . But we live in
an age where every school of thought, every intellectual orientation,
from Marxist feminism to Post-modernist feminism is subject to
objections and criticisms. There's no reason why some people, raising
the banner of Islamic feminism, should not join the fray." The
struggle for the rights of Muslim women is also a search for ways and
means to bring women from different cultures to work towards solutions
to common problems. The global movement for human rights is not, and
should not, remain exclusively a women's project. I agree with Edward
Said when he defines identities like Indian, or woman, or Muslim as
nothing more than "starting points". None of us can lay claim
to a single identity any more. Islamic feminism, or the quest for Muslim
women's rights within the framework of Islamic laws, should be seen
as such a starting point. It may enable Muslim women to climb out of
the black hole of ignorance, inequality, and indignity, to finally merge
with the global effort for creating a socially just and equitable world.
Nighat Gandhi is
a writer and women's rights activist. E-mail her at [email protected]