New Delhi, August 06: How does the women’s jamaat engage with issues related to patriarchal interpretations of Islam? Does it also seek to engage in the debate about Islam and women and promote a more gender-sensitive approach to Islamic law as it relates to women?
Besides trying to address the domestic problems of Muslim women and seeking to empower them economically, we feel it is imperative to try and promote gender consciousness among them. One way to do so is by networking with other Muslim women’s groups who are engaged in developing what is now called Islamic Feminism.
I have had the good fortune of attending several meetings organised by various Islamic feminist groups — including a big gathering of Muslim feminists brought together by Sisters in Islam in Kuala Lumpur, a Islamic Feminist convention in Barcelona, in Spain, a meeting on gender justice for Muslim women in Kabul, a UN meeting on the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in New York, and two gender training programmes in Sri Lanka. Recently, I was selected for the International Visitor’s Leadership Programme to spend a month in the USA. All these experiences have enriched my understanding of women’s issues in a very major way.
We try to convey these ideas about Islamic feminism and gender-sensitive readings of the Quran to our members through discussions in our regular meetings, through our publications, and through our shariah training programmes, of which we have organised seven so far in different places in Tamil Nadu. In these programmes, resource persons discuss various aspects of Islamic teachings about women, showing how the Quran upholds gender justice, and critiquing unwarranted, patriarchal understandings of Islamic law.
Some years ago, we launched a Tamil magazine, Pengal Jamaat, which highlighted cases of harassment and various other problems Muslim women face as well as articles about Islamic feminism and gender-just understandings of Islam. The magazine was a tri-monthly, and we brought out eleven issues. It was widely circulated among our members. However, due to paucity of funds, we had to discontinue it.
We use both Quranic as well as secular, human rights arguments for our work of conscientising Muslim women. We also use the secular laws. We do not define ourselves in a narrow religious fashion, and we closely collaborate with non-Muslim secular women’s groups, whose meetings we attend and who also attend our meetings. I am thankful for the immense support I have received from numerous non-Muslim sisters — activists and writers. Most of the members of the STEPS board are non-Muslim women. So are many of the women’s groups we collaborate with. We stand for a common cause — of women, irrespective of religion.
What strategies do you suggest for reforming Muslim Personal Law in a more gender-just direction?
We have consistently demanded that the State immediately ban the noxious practice of triple talaq in one sitting. Even the mullahs admit that this is a wrongful innovation, which is not sanctioned in the Quran, and so they call it talaq-e biddat. But, according to them, all biddats in matters of religion are condemnable, so how do they continue to uphold this biddat form of divorce? It was not sanctioned by the Prophet.
What we are asking for is that this practice, that has ruined the lives of countless Muslim women and keeps married women constantly insecure in their marriages, threatened by the ever-present possibility of their husbands divorcing them at will, should be banned at once, and that it be replaced by the proper method of divorce that the Quran describes. What we are demanding is our Quranic right, and I am really saddened that this demand is branded as ‘un-Islamic’ by ignorant mullahs and their male Muslim followers.
Our demand continues to go unheard. We are routinely told that because we are not trained Islamic scholars, we have no right to critique the mullahs, even on solid Islamic grounds. I have been told that I have no right to speak on Islam just because I do not veil myself. Rather than logically answering my questions, which they cannot, they resort to character assassination.
We deliberately do not talk about veiling and pardah, which is the pet theme of the maulvis and patriarchal men. I believe that women have the right to dress as they want, as do men. Several of our members cover their heads, and some even veil themselves. Others do not. But we do not talk about this issue as then it would sideline all the major issues that we want to focus on — domestic violence, women’s educational and economic empowerment and so on.
We also do not focus only on the problematic issues related to Muslim Personal Law which discriminate against women, although this is one of our major areas of concern. I have problems with the media focusing only on these issues, ignoring other very real and pressing issues of Muslim women’s educational and social marginalisation — which are not just a product of patriarchy within the Muslim community but also have to do with discrimination and neglect by the State and the wider society.
I am saddened by the fact that some sections of the media constantly highlight the problems of many Muslim women face at the hands of their menfolk and the mullahs while conveniently neglecting the problems that they face, along with Muslim men, in society at large, at the hands of the State and, in many places, at the hands of dominant communities.
In this way, they want to locate the source of all our problems within the community itself, as being unrelated to patterns of deprivation and discrimination that emanate from without. In this manner, they want to create the very wrong image that all the problems of Muslim women are simply a result of the evil doings of Muslim men, and, thereby, to misleadingly suggest that Muslims, as a rule, are a hopelessly ‘backward’ community.
Let me cite an instance to illustrate this point. Some years ago, a group of Muslim boys in Tirunelveli, a town in Tamil Nadu, killed a Muslim girl just because she was found talking to some other boys. We organised a protest meeting and then a press conference in Chennai. Instead of asking us about the case, a non-Muslim journalist stood up and asked me my views on terrorism and India-Pakistan relations and other such unrelated matters. I replied curtly, saying that our sole concern was Muslim women. But he lost his cool and began shouting. It was clear that he wanted to use the occasion simply to reinforce negative stereotypical images of Muslims.
–Agencies–