Mathnawi 1: 2433-37
Woman is a Ray of God
Muhammad said,
“Woman prevails over the wise and intelligent;
while the ignorant dominate over her.”
They lack tenderness and affection
because their animality prevails.
Love and tenderness are human qualities;
aggressiveness and lust are bestial.
Woman is a ray of God.
She is not an earthly beloved.
You could say:
she is creative, not created.
Maulana Jalal Uddin Rumi
(Kabir Helminski translated)
This paper aims to deconstruct the universal problematic of the “Muslim woman” and localise it within a specific historical, social and cultural context thereby also exposing Islam as a civilization of diversity stretching from North Africa to China; and not as a monolithic bloc of fanatical, fatwa-issuing mullahs, oppressed women and martyr-terrorists, as the media would have us believe. It entails an enquiry into the question of women’s rights in South Asia, with specific emphasis on Muslim women and the use of the veil as a signifier of “oppression” or “liberation”. The choice of Muslim women to veil or not veil has become increasingly politicized within the contemporary context of the demonization of Islam as the new post-Cold War enemy.
The use of a loose diaphanous veil as a polite and honourable head covering similar in function to that of the hat and scarf of Catholic women in Europe, has a historical precedent in South Asian culture stretching back at least to the 15th century. Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and later even Jewish and Christian women all covered their heads as a socio-cultural practice that extended into religious contexts and sacred spaces as a signifier of respect for the occasion. However, this practice, although it constituted the cultural norm of “modesty” prescribed by various religious traditions, was not in anyway linked to a religious law. The Holy Qur’an in Surah XX1V verses 30-34 states the following regarding the modesty of women’s appearance:
1. “That they show not of their charms in public except that which needs be seen” (Yusuf Ali Translated)
2. That they cover their bosoms.
3. That they not strike their feet to draw attention to their hidden charms.
South Asian Muslim women will generally drape a yard or two of cloth or a shawl over and across their shoulders which effectively covers the bosom and will also serve when the moment for respect arises, to cover the head and shoulders. The practice of head to toe veiling; however, and particularly of covering the face so that only the eyes are exposed is particular to the anthropological practice of the Bedouin Arabs unto whom the message of Islam was revealed. In Arabia, both men and women are forced to veil in this manner to protect themselves from the harsh climate and elements of the desert. Hence the practice of veiling using the chador or burka (a head to toe tent like garment) as a decree for women, although situated within a complicated historicity and as a survival and protection tactic during the climate of warfare under the Prophet Muhammed’s leadership of the early Muslim community, is ultimately a geo-political practice of the Arab Bedouins that has been confused as a religious decree for Muslim women.
For the scope of this paper, I am interested specifically in the interpretation of “veiling” within the South Asian context as Purdah (literally veil or curtain) or the seclusion of women from the public sphere and the confining of their activities to the four walls of the home [chardivari].
Colonialism and the Historical Context
The seclusion of women from the public sphere and from civil society has been a continuous injunction for Muslim women on the subcontinent. It has served as an established ideal, equally during Colonialization; the fight for independence; the development of the nation state and the formation of national identities, and in the contemporary climate (the rhetoric of which is a return to the colonial rhetoric of protecting native culture and indigenous identity in the face of imperialism).
Traditionalist Islamic discourses have equated woman with home, family and domestic life, thereby charging her with upholding the integrity and honour of the family sphere while simultaneously protecting her from the gaze and dangers of the outside world. These interpretations of Muslim woman’s role greatly limit and circumvent her world, handicapping her from the possibility of participating equally in civil society or the public sphere as a social agent capable of shaping and choosing her legal, political and social reality. Furthermore, it altogether bars her from the possibility of contributing to the Islamic ethics of social welfare and social responsibility, or from pursuing the Islamic decree to seek education and develop the intellect. These charges, among others, are made in the Qur’an to all Muslims both men and women, using the gender neutral term “insaan.”
The position of Islam and of Muslims as the minority religious group in South Asia has always been precarious, necessitating a careful negotiation of religious and cultural values and norms. In the face of such “external” social and political insecurity, the seclusion of women into the controlled space of Purdah inside the home compound became an important source of “internal” moral and cultural, even religious security. As Ayesha Jalal argues:
“Even before the challenge of Western colonialism, when state power was in the hands of Muslim dynasties, the Faithful had to seek accommodations with peoples of religious convictions other than their own…The stability of Muslim rule from the days of the Delhi Sultanate to the twilight of the Mughal Empire rested on a careful apportioning of patronage: non-Muslims were pressed into the service of the state and the quiescence of Muslim religious leaders was secured through material and other royal nostrums…But there was consolation in the knowledge that the real strength of the Islamic social order lay in the continued stability of the family unit, and more specifically the social control of women.”
Although just prior to the advent of the British East India Company and its consequent Raj, South Asian women were beginning to explore the possibilities of their participation in public life through education and as agents of social welfare, the arrival of the British put a an abrupt end to that. In the face of colonial humiliation as embodied by the loss of social, political and economic power, the position of woman within South Asian culture become honour-bound as the symbol upholding indigenous dignity. So, although South Asian men eventually accommodated themselves to new “modern” British social practices by adopting their dress codes, learning their language and educating themselves to become versant in their sciences; South Asian women receded further into the safety of their homes, their traditional dress, their languages and their religio-cultural values. Within the colonial context, native woman became the final unconquerable domain, the ultimate upholder of indigenous self-esteem. Hence as R. Krishnan has articulated, the figure of woman becomes both goddess and victim simultaneously ; goddess as the ultimate figure of honour, and victim to the pristine prescriptions of upholding that honour.
Within the context of the Muslim community both in South Asia and the Arab World, “Woman is uniquely viewed as the purveyor of cultural authenticity—according her the role of moral protector of the family against the threat of cultural poisoning, moral contamination and social change.” It is this position as the symbol of cultural authenticity, which prevails even in the contemporary climate within otherwise progressive discourses of Islamic tajdid (renewal) and islah (reform) in civil society, which continues to lodge the role of woman squarely within the four-walls of the family unit.
It is important to note, that woman’s social, legal and even political rights as elucidated in the Qur’an were acknowledged both by the ‘ulema and by the ruling elite, however they were subordinated in favour of her role as mother, and as the upholder of morals for the Muslim community as a whole: “Despite her Qur’anic rights, woman is viewed here as predisposed exclusively to motherhood and therefore her rights are framed but more importantly sacrificed to fit into the larger, more important framework of gender complementarity and family cohesion.”[italics mine] With reference to veiling then, the argument was not that Muslim woman must be secluded into the space of the home, or wear a burqa for that matter, by Qur’anic decree, but rather that Muslim woman should observe Purdah out of service to her family and her community; thereby fulfilling her primary responsibility as the guardian of Islamic morals and the upholder of virtue for the Muslim community.
Independence
The period leading up to independence, when nationalist ideologies were still being conceptualised, saw an “increased politicization of the ‘woman question”. Woman becomes the battleground over which male ideological wars are fought. The Colonial power wants to “liberate” her from her oppressive, traditionalist culture. And the native Essentialist wants to keep her and protect her from the “rape and ruin” of the West. The Nationalist wants to use her as a token of compromise, a bargaining stick to appease the traditionalists while embracing an independence dictated by necessarily Western models of socio-political and economic governance. As Hibba Abougideiri notes within the similar context of the Middle East, “Nationalist discourse simply translated motherhood from an Islamic duty to a Nationalist duty, keeping motherhood as the ultimate role/identity of woman but re-introducing it into a social contingent” by say allowing for education…[or modernisation]. Once again woman’s role within the family unit, inside the home, takes primacy over any public function as a citizen or agent of civil society.
The woman’s question became embroiled in the politics of nation-state identity and was always subservient to it so that it could never stand on its own merit but only in service to the larger project of creating and legitimizing a national identity and a state apparatus. In the context of South Asia, Islam and Muslim religious identity became the legitimising factor in the creation and separation of India and Pakistan. Hence Islam became equated with state legitimacy . Therefore any articulation of woman’s identity had to confine itself once again to the dominant language and discourse of Islam at the time. Consequently, the nation state rather than becoming a liberating vehicle for Muslim women, became yet another imposition onto the already confined space for the articulation of their voices.
Nation Building and the Formation of National Identity
For most modern Muslim states, the process of nation building continues into the 21st century. The Muslim world is rocking under the tripartite pressures of insecure political identities stemming from the hastily drawn, ethnically and geo-politically unsound national boundaries of the European colonizers; this insecurity is exploited by the impending threat of Talibanisation in the case of Pakistan and “fundamentalist” politics using Islam as their rallying cry in the Middle East; resulting in unstable political regimes, with unreliable country infrastructure and hence economic turmoil and social unrest. The threat of extremist “Muslim” politics is a very real one. In the face of an acute post-colonial political and economic failure, families that can no longer afford to feed their children, or rely on the state to meet the basic needs of health and education are facing an ideological frustration. The nation state was shaped by politicians and social historians who were the products of a colonial education that imprisoned their imagination inside a Western lexicon of social and political possibility. Consequently most young nation states sought to mimic western models of political governance and socio-economic organisation, as opposed to building their own. These models however were not compatible with the indigenous socio-cultural heritage and value systems; resulting in a distinct failure of the modern nation state system in the Muslim world. National governments however, due to fractionalisation, corruption and incompatible national agendas have not been able to overcome this failure and rebuild the nation state. Muslim societies, having undergone long periods of social, political and economic turmoil since the advent of the colonial powers in the 19th and 20th centuries, have lost hope in political systems and are turning instead, hungry, economically desperate and morally defeated, to the one thread of continuity in their history: Islam.
Given the above political climate, gender issues and the woman’s question have become secondary to the bigger questions of political identity and economic survival. Ziba Mir-Hosseini contends that “The woman’s question (press) has become both player and pawn in the nation’s fragile political landscape… Factional and ideological politics overshadowed the discussion of gender and women’s rights. Although most national political ideologies have given a nod or two to the need to introduce Muslim women into the public sphere; and some have even gone as far as to institute legislature that if and when put into practice mildly improves women’s standing outside the home; most have done so not out of a will to improve women’s lives ipse facto, but rather as a larger political strategy. There has been a glaring lack of commitment by political parties and women’s organisations alike to merge their agendas and fight together for change. This has largely to do with the initial issue of gender being a contemptuous, sticky subject and therefore readily relinquished as the bargaining stick with which concessions are made to legitimizing the “Islamic’ identity of the new nation.
However, it is important not to underestimate the political instability, economic hardship and social stresses of Muslims in South Asia. In the words of an Afghan woman interviewed in Quetta, Pakistan:
‘First stop the bombing, the shooting and the fighting. Then let me feed my children and put a roof over their heads. After that help us to build schools and hospitals and to have [sanitary] water and light [electricity]. Let me and my family feel safe here in our own land, let us have a livelihood we can rely upon, then, after all this is done, then we can talk about women’s rights.”
Notwithstanding the extremely fragile and disruptive atmosphere of national insecurity and financial crisis, it is important to note the continuous, since the inception of nationhood, lack of any broadly based alliance between gender issues and political parties. Taking into account that the question of gender is one that concerns society as a whole and not just its women, no definitive, reliable solution to the woman’s question can be formulated until it is addressed as a universal, societal and political concern and not a minority issue.
In Difference
Women’s identity and the question of women’s rights in South Asia has been imagined, since the 19th century, in double and triple difference to hegemonic narratives of social and cultural identity.
First, Muslim women’s rights movements had to identify themselves in [negative] relation to native patriarchal paradigms which were sociological and cultural in nature but which used Shar’iah Law and principles of Islamic Jurisprudence to legitimise the circumcision of woman’s social and public identity. “Islam [is] used to obfuscate the more proximate and materially based impetus behind the desire to circumvent women’s rights particularly in the public sphere.”
Muslim women were forced to define their agenda for emancipation using a lexicon of liberation that was “imported” by the Western colonial powers. Therefore any notion of change, whether liberalising or otherwise became suspect in the face of a colonial humiliation that gave birth to essentialist and reactionary tendencies of holding fast onto “our ways” or the traditional indigenous cultural which in its turn became equated with orthodox religious paradigms.
Muslim women activists and intellectuals often become disillusioned by the politics of gender in Islam, because the language, the very ontology of it is still controlled by the ‘ulema, which dismisses any new language, any new way of thinking as Western and foreign. The clerical establishment “rejects the notion of gender equality as a Western concept with no place in Islam, and instead puts forward the notion of complementarity of gender rights and duties.”
Any conversation of women’s rights becomes equated with the Western ideology of Feminism. “Feminism’, as a movement and consciousness, is alien and irrelevant to Muslim societies, where Islam grants women their rights. They reject feminism as a concept rooted in the West, where Judaeo-Christian religious traditions imposed such disadvantages on women that they have little choice but to organise themselves.” So, Feminism as a notion is rejected as either foreign or irrelevant and the rights which the Qur’an has granted to women, which perhaps the religious texts of other traditions have not, are sacrificed as we have seen above in favour of preserving family honour and morality.
Muslim women must then return to finding a solution within the movement for reform and tolerance inside the Islamic legal and societal paradigm. Unfortunately, most leading Muslim male reformists will admit to not having thought about gender, citing a variety of excuses the most common of which is the assurance that women’s rights will sort themselves out once freedom and democracy and the rest of society is set straight after the reformists gain access to the state and law-making apparatus. Others have become irritated and said flatly they have enough on their plate, women should fight their own battles. Worse still are those reformists who side with the establishment and do not believe in gender equality. When questioned regarding the injustices to women that prevail in the legal and civic context, they will blame them on an incorrect interpretation and implementation of Shar’iah which will be straightened out once Islamic reform takes place. Consequently, we have once again come full circle back to the beginning and the problematic of an Islamic clergy that wants to sacrifice women’s Qur’anic rights for the sake of maintaining the sacrosanct unity and virtue of the family.
In the political climate of formulating an indigenous and national identity in response to the colonial project, women became symbols of cultural identity so that even if legal reform was won, it was often impeded by cultural barriers that threatened not only to judge women but, if she strayed from her role of protector of native virtue and upholder of family honour, threatened to oust her from the social paradigm altogether. Consequently “fallen” or un-virtuous Muslim women are not welcomed back into the home. The huge outcry, delay and social stigma around the taking back of women “fallen” during the period of communal violence at the time of the partition between India and Pakistan is a testament to this: “The mere presence on Pakistani soil of tens of thousands of women who had been abducted and raped was an ignominious blot on the conscience of a social order that made a fetish of safeguarding female honour.”
Hence women attempting to cross the divide from the private into the public realm do so at the risk of their social standing and livelihood, for once outside the four walls, they may not be allowed back in. It is this risk that has led to what Ayesha Jalal has called the “Convenience of Subservience” in the Pakistani context. It refers to middle and upper class women who tolerate a “subservience” in their position in civil society in return for the privileges of their social position. Therefore, there are internal contradictions within the women’s rights movements: the very women fighting for women’s rights are educated upper and middle class women, who acquiesce to the status quo to preserve their socio-economic privileges. “Successful” women in the South Asian context are those who have bought into the Islamic and nationalist “cultural” prescriptions of their identity, and manipulated these to gain positions of considerable social privilege, thereby becoming not only participators but also purveyors of patriarchy, masquerading under the various titles of “Tradition”, “Cultural Authenticity” and “Islam”. One cannot come to an understanding of the Muslim, or the South Asian, or the Pakistani woman without accounting for differences of class, rural, urban and social standing. Muslim women do not a constitute a monolithic block but rather represent a diversity of situations and contexts where each has either found and established her own equation for participating in Muslim society or is still seeking to manage and bring resolution to seemingly contradictory interests and values.
We find Muslim women then stuck between two Islamic realities: one, a pluralistic and tolerant Islam at ease with human rights and democratic values but unable to realise concrete social and legal change due to lack of access to power and the tools of governance; and another, an absolutist and legalistic Islam that tolerates no dissent and makes little concession to the people’s will and contemporary realities. She has now to face and resist a third challenge, that of Western Feminism. Muslim women seem to rank rather highly on the agendas of Western feminists who want to liberate them from their own native and therefore backward and oppressive, cultures by re-casting them into the idioms of emancipated Western women. Idioms which are not compatible with the Muslims women’s own indigenous upbringing, socio-cultural values or even language, and which force women to choose between all embracing East versus West narratives. Although many Western feminists enter the domain of Muslim women and her rights with the best intentions, they seem oblivious to the fact that in addition to woman’s public, legal and constitutional struggle, there is her private, personal and religious struggle. How useful is a freedom or a right that divides you from your family, divorces you from your culture and robs you of the conviction of your faith?
A Muslim woman navigating in this climate of cyclical questions, opposing world views and clashing civilizations, who refuses to swallow any one exclusive ideology whole-hog, has to tread a tricky, thin line of constantly defining and re-defining her own identity using a language whose semantics consistently paint her as “other” or outside the accepted paradigm. Not withstanding this awesome challenge, if we take a look with open eyes at Muslim women writers, film-makers, photographers, artists, musicians, dancers, human rights activists, lawyers, politicians, academics, journalists…we perceive a formidable population of women, emboldened by their faith in a God who is All Loving and Merciful, encouraged by the ethics of integrity taught to them by Muslim social values, emancipated by their access to international spaces of education and professionalism and driven by their refusal to be constricted into the four walls of Purdah. These Muslim women are refusing to be cast into the roles of their mothers and their grandmothers and are carving into the 21st century a niche for the expression for their own unique and diverse voices.
Image/s:
Photo by PNW Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/three-women-wearing-abaya-and-hijab-standing-on-beach-shore-8995936/