Swiss Vote for Burqa Ban and Its Reaction among Indian Muslims
By
Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi, New Age Islam
11
March 2021
Swiss
voters on Sunday narrowly backed a ban on full face Burqa for Muslim women. An
official referendum has shown that in Switzerland—a country which is actually
one of the first modern-style democracies in the world — around 51.21 percent
of voters and a majority of federal Switzerland’s cantons are against the
wearing of Burqa in public places. Some 1,426,992 voters backed the ban, while
1,359,621 were against, on a 50.8 percent turnout.
According
to reports, Switzerland will only allow women to wear it inside their
respective places of worship and for “native customs”. It was, in fact, the Swiss People’s Party
(SVP) which launched the proposal of the Burqa ban in public places. It has
earlier held some processions and put-up posters that featured a woman in a
black Burqa/Niqab with captions like “end extremism” and “fight against radical
Islam” etc.
This writer
has a brief experience of spending some time in certain parts of Switzerland.
To my utter surprise, Burqa-clad women are hardly seen anywhere in Switzerland,
except in some parts of Zurich, Lausanne and Saint Gallen where Muslims from
Turkey, Pakistan, and several Arab countries are staying as migrants and
refugees.
It is not
surprising as only five percent of the total Swiss population, which would be
around 86 lakh people, are Muslims and they mostly come from Turkey, Bosnia,
Kosovo and former Yugoslavia which themselves hardly ever had a ‘Burqa
culture’. According to research by the University of Lucerne, almost no Muslim
woman in Switzerland wears a Burqa or any full-face veil. The University of
Lucerne has found in its recent study that the Burqa, Niqab or full-face veil
is hardly ever worn in Switzerland, not to speak of any one advocating it. Even
in the religious places like the Turkish Sunni mosques in Zurich, Berne or
Geneva, or the Shia places of worship in Schlieren and Saint Gallen, fewer
women wear burqa or full-face cover. Then what is the reason behind the sudden
strong reactions of Muslim communities in Switzerland. They condemned the
campaign against the Swiss ban on Burqa, describing the day it was discussed in
the Swiss parliament as a “black day” for Muslims?
Tellingly,
the newly-founded Islamic Central Council of Switzerland and the Association of
Islamic Organisations in Zurich (VIOZ), the largest cantonal Islamic umbrella
organization in Switzerland have expressed great concern over the Swiss vote
that, they say, has “proved an increase in Islamophobia in Switzerland since
the ban on minarets in 2009.” It is worth mentioning that the Swiss citizens,
both Christians, agnostics and atheists, had voted on the proposal to ban the
building of minarets when the SVP claimed the building was a ‘sign of
Islamisation’.
In the wake
of all this, a similar discourse on the whole issue has been renewed in India’s
Islamic circles. Dr. Zeenat Shaukat Ali, a Prof. of Islamic studies and Saira
Shah Halim, social and women rights activist, Jawed Anand and the Indian Muslim
Secular Democracy (IMSD) have all weighed in. They propound that the full-face
veil is not mentioned in the Qur’an, and that only head covering is Islamic or
Qur’anic, and not the covering of full face for women. Also, in the earliest
period of Islam, that’s is the Prophetic Age, called Ahd-e-Risalat, women were
not clad in Burqa anywhere in the Arabian Peninsula.
Regardless of the actual reasons why many
Swiss voters support the Burqa ban in their country, the fact remains that the
Arabic-style Abaaya or the post-1979 Islamic Revolution Iranian Hijab or Niqab,
which later transformed into what we earlier called “Burqa” and now “Burkha” in
the Indian subcontinent, are not actually 'Islamic'. All these have been
imposed on Muslim women in different periods to pursue the pan-Islamic
political ends. Hence, they can be, at best, seen today as different regional
or ‘cultural’ practices in Muslim societies, and not as part of religion or as
an essential part of the Islamic code of conduct. More significantly, it cannot
be justified or juxtaposed with religion as one’s ‘personal choice’ or ‘freedom
of religion’ under the large ambit of human rights in the modern democratic
countries, from France, Switzerland to India.
In fact,
some Muslim countries of higher Islamic authorities like Egypt, the cradle of
Sunni Islam’s largest seminary Al-Azhar Sharif, Tunisia, which is a new
regional epicenter of the evolving neo-Salafist theology, Azerbaijan, a
progressive and modern Muslim nation in Central Asia, have either banned or
introduced strict laws against the full face-coverings. Turkey, which had a
little stricter law against the full-face veil, especially the Saudi-Arabic
style, has only abrogated it now under the current regime of the aspiring
global Islamist leader, Rajab Tayyab Erdogan. In Egypt, the full-face covering
has been seen as part of the anti-regime political Islamist expression of
resistance. The 1996 Fatwa issued by the then Grand Mufti of Egypt and Sheikh
Al-Azhar, Sayyid Tantawi categorically stated that the full-face veil was not
required in Islam, and has not been mandated by the Qur’anic verses related to
Hijab or Jilbab.
But
ironically, in India, most traditionalist Islamic theologians and Muftis are
less aware of these established Traditions and Texts (Nusus) and are more
abreast of the 18th century Fatwa documents like Fatawa e Alamgiriyya (compiled
at the order of Aurangzeb), and Fatawa e Razawiyyah (of Maulana Ahmad Raza
Khan). The reason is that the Mufti-making ‘ifta’ curriculum, which is around a
2 to 5-year course in the Sunni Madrasas has become what they themselves call
'Sho'aba e Waqt Guzari' (a department for ‘time pass’).
But on the
other hand, the established theologians of Islam around the world have debunked
the untenable theological justifications around the full-face veil of all
forms. Busting the myth of Burqa/Burkha ʻAbd al-Ḥalīm Abū Shuqqah has elucidated in his well-researched Arabic book
titled as, “Freedom of Women in the Prophetic Age” (تحرير المرأة في عصر
الرسالة)
that there was actually no imposition of the full-face veil in times of Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh). He has ample proof from the Qur’an and authentic Prophetic
Traditions (Sahih Ahadith) to buttress this point.
A rather
radically new and thought-provoking narrative is that the un-Qur’anic
patriarchy brutalizes the Muslim men more than their women, as it leads to the
de-humanization of the whole community, especially the men as ‘guardians’ or
‘controllers’ (Qawwamun) of the Muslim society.
All in all, an emerging moderate Muslim thinking is that the Burqa
culture in the Indian setting is part of deep-rooted religious patriarchy which
has its origins in the Constantinople Christianity, the Byzantine theology or
more conventionally and systematically in the Jewish Hassidic community, an
ultra-orthodox sect which spread in the Europe with its birth in Israel.
The latest
write-ups by Ghazala Wahhab, and excerpts from her book “Born
a Muslim: Some Truths about Islam in India” as reproduced by New Age
Islam have also sought some intellectual contestations on the related
issues. Although there’s nothing new in
Wahab’s book, it has been placed among the books of the week, which reinforces
a new narrative that the “progressive” Indian
Muslims were Communists or Leftists though steeped in Islamic culture by
way of mannerisms and attire, and thus she singles out an Islamic feministic
outlook advocating for a complete gender equality in Islam. But then she takes
the position of a traditionalist Muslim when it comes to commenting on the Prophet's
first wife Hazrat Khadija. Wahab writes: “How appalling it is then that
this astonishing and unparalleled story of a remarkable medieval woman has been
relegated to the footnotes of Islamic history, and is remembered only for her
piety and devotion to her husband”.
In fact,
what we need to address is the misplaced religiosity attached to the regional
Arabic, Turkish or Iranian cultural and identity expressions disguised as
'Islamic' in the Indian subcontinent. Those who seek to revive the 'actual',
'authentic' or 'puritan' Islam in India--be they Salafis, Deobandis, Shias or
some of the Barelwis—they all need to look at how Islam was best practised in
India as an indigenous, vernacularized faith tradition which accentuated and
enhanced the overall image and socio-economic status of Muslims in different
periods.
But the
current state of 'purified' Indian Muslims, largely churned out from the
ultra-orthodox Islamist ghettos, traditionalist madrasas and Maktabs from
Kashmir to Kerala are indicative of their religious, cultural and
socio-economic decay. We need to trace the syncretic Indian Islam’s history
from the 7th century Arabia to how it arrived in India through trade routes and
a great deal of cultural interactions and inter-connections which evolved
through the centuries to reach its present state—which we term today as ‘Indian
Islam’.
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Regular Columnist with Newageislam.com, Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is a classical Islamic scholar and English-Arabic-Urdu writer. He has graduated from a leading Islamic seminary of India, acquired Diploma in Qur'anic sciences and Certificate in Uloom ul Hadith from Al-Azhar Institute of Islamic Studies. Presently, he is pursuing his PhD in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
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