Since Kamala Suraiya nee Das and Obama bin Laden, there has been interest in what is called the `Muslim’ issue. We, the Hindu majority, are now looking curiously at people who have been our brethren for several centuries, who share our culture, traditions, food habits and certainly, history.
Again, since the last decade, there has been a clear revival of Muslim interest in Islam and the Quran, and very many Muslims in India are into visibly different dress like the burkha for women, the long kurta and pyjamas for men. This has gone, side by side, with incredible activity by women in the Old City. When I was studying in the Women’s College in Hyderabad in 1971, there were very few women on the streets and public places. Those who came out, traveled in rickshaws which had front coverings so that the women were not seen.
Nearly forty years later, the rickshaws have gone, but Muslim women, in burkha and without, have come into public places in huge numbers. We see them at restaurants, roadside cafes, offices, railway stations and bus stands, driving scooters, cycles and cars. One cannot but avoid reflecting on whether the tremendously increased public activity of Muslim women is at variance with the burkha. On Western talk shows, one also sees `modern’ Muslim women wearing the hijab and arguing with great force on their rights as minorities. It is in this context that when I met Hafsah Qureshi, I was greatly intrigued.
I saw Hafsah at a meeting of women in the Old City. Some Muslim women wore the black burkha, some Valmiki women had their heads covered with their dupattas or sari pallus, but Hafsah wore a hijab (head covering) and a pink jilbab (one-piece cloth from shoulder to the toes). Even in that voluminous covering, I was struck by the beauty and grace of the girl. She was introduced to the audience as someone conducting a survey on the health of adolescent girls in the Old City, and when it was her turn to speak, she was even more interesting. Her Hyderabadi Urdu was mixed with very British English. She introduced herself as a medical student from UK; she was told, she said that violence against women was not an issue in India, but had discovered in her short stay in Hyderabad that this was not so. What prompted this girl, born and raised in the West to proclaim herself so distinctly as Muslim?
When I met her later, I put her through a grilling. Offensive almost, but I wanted to find out what made this girl a combination of what she is – modern and thoroughly Islamic. Hafsah was born in 1988 in Lincoln, East Midlands, UK. Both her parents are from Hyderabad and migrated to the UK in 1975. Her father is a practicing doctor, while her mother with a masters’ in English Literature, is a home-maker. They have four children and Hafsah is their third.
`I studied in a school where most children were from middle class white families. There was only one other Muslim girl in my school. I always knew I was different by virtue of being from a Muslim and Indian background but I did not feel discriminated against.” she says. She started wearing the hijab when she was 13 years old and the jilbab, about seven years later. (Her mother had started wearing the hijab a few years earlier as also her elder sister.) `If everyone around me had been Muslim, I may not have been as interested in religion as I am now, and would have practiced an Islam drowned in conformity to culture rather than a true understanding of the Quran,’ she says. `But because I was different from people around me, I was forced to think about who I am and what I stand for. I became fascinated by philosophy and all the world religions, frequently partaking in debates at school. The more I was questioned about Islam, the more I read about it and the more I wished to live by it. I feel my belief in an unlimited Creator is logical as I think this limited universe could not just have created itself from nothing.
I believe the Quran must be the word of the Creator as the Quran challenges man in chapter 2 verse 23-25 to produce one chapter that matches its literary genius if they think it is fabricated by man, yet no-one has met this challenge. Thus I have no qualms in believing its beautiful teachings come from God. She insists, `I came to Islam after reasoning.’ Hafsah is the only one in her immediate family to wear the jilbab; her parents do not think it obligatory that she do so.
After school, joining medicine at the University of Sheffield away from home was a change. `Hafsah would have liked to a full time activist, but we explained to her that women in our culture do not take up such an extreme step. We urged her to study medicine,’ says her mother. Hafsah continues, `Unlike school which is a sheltered place and where children from similar families study, college was an exceedingly multicultural environment. I made many non-Muslim friends. I found that social life consists of drinking and clubbing, and the girls have issues of self esteem and unwanted pregnancies.’ It was there that Hafsah discovered that by following Islam, she was breaking the stereotype of women. `I feel that I am an ambassador for my religion,’ she says. `Especially after 9/11 (terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon), preconceptions about Muslims abound. Islam is not what it is portrayed about, and that is why it is important that I follow my religion closely and not be afraid to proclaim this visibly.’ Her close friend often puzzles over how different Hafsah is from the Muslim stereotype. The stereotype of Islam is one of violence and bigotry, despotism and suppression, obstinacy and chaos. Hafsah’s Islam is about peace and justice, love, gentleness, fairness, equality and brotherhood.
Hafsah is active in the students’ movement in the UK, especially on human rights issues such as that of Palestine. `Islam is about pleasing the One God and God loves those who fight injustice,’ she says, and I immediately recall the Christian liberation theologists from South America.
I ask her how she justifies wearing so many clothes in a hot country like India. `Islam is a submission to the will of God, and life is a test – it is but a drop in the ocean of the hereafter. So when my dress seems uncomfortable, it becomes a test for me, as my obligatory five prayers a day,’ she replies. Nevertheless I do not think anyone should be forced to cover; it should be a lifestyle choice that stems from a conviction in the truth of one’s religion. She however wears colour. `The Quran does not say anything about wearing only black, I wonder why women here wear only black burqas.’
I ask her what her feelings are about non-Muslims. She has very many friends among them. But what does she think about their being non-Muslims? She refuses to take a judgemental stand. `Only God has the right to judge, we do not,’ she says. Besides, people are what they are due to several reasons. Who am I to take a stand on what is right for others?
She muses on what makes religion less of a driving force today. `Very many people do not believe in a Creator because of the myths woven around religions. It is upto Muslims to create a positive impression, to show how religion can also be logical.’
I ask her on her stand on terrorism. A terrible question, offensive almost. She is firm in not supporting terrorism. `I can understand from where they come, I can understand the terrible situation creating the ground for their anger, but cannot condone their violence against innocents,’ she says. ‘Their method is not at all supported by the Quran and example of the Prophet’ Hafsah has had the opportunity to grow up in the West where few people think that women’s place is in the house alone. In India, both Hindus and Muslims push girls into an invisible burkha and din into them, just as we prepare our sons to learn that women’s place is primarily in the house, only women are responsible for work at home and raising children, that most public places are not appropriate for women, that women should meekly bear domestic violence, and that women need to stand behind men, always supporting them. If we could raise our sons and daughters differently, we would have many more Hafsahs.
Gita Ramaswamy
gitaramaswamy@yahoo.com