By Khaled Ahmed
January 25,
2021
Tradition
clashes with modernism in the ongoing debate on women’s role in society
Pakistan’s
women rights movement has a long and storied history, with one of the best
scholarly works on it being found in Tahmina Rashid’s 2006 Contested
Representation: Punjabi Women in Feminist Debate in Pakistan.
A poster from an Aurat March demanding
equal rights for women in Pakistan. Twitter
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Rashid
studied and worked at various institutions in Pakistan before moving to
Australia, where she continued her learning pursuits. Her major area of
interest includes political and international issues, gender, religion and
society, feminism, poverty and urban issues. She has a Ph.D. from the
Department of Political Science and Gender studies at the University of
Melbourne. In her book, published by the Oxford University Press, Pakistan, she
points out that traditionalists in her homeland believe that Islam has given
comprehensive and divine guidelines regarding the rights of women in the Quran
and Sunnah and that these rulings are universal and unchallengeable.
This school
of thought is generally represented in the country by scholars of Ahle Hadith,
and thinkers such as Maududi, Thanvi, Afzalur Rahman, Anees Ahmad and Israr
Ahmad. There is a general agreement in their writings about the role of women
in society. They believe that Allah has assigned the role of reproduction and
motherhood to women and that this is their prime responsibility.
Victims Of Pious Literalism
Unless
there is a compelling need, according to the prevailing mindset, women should
not play any public role, as it will destroy the fabric of Muslim society and
its natural order. They also see women as physically and intellectually less
capable than men for handling various public responsibilities and situations.
They believe that God made women to serve as companions for men, and assert
that Islam has already given women enough rights, and asking for more risks
inviting God’s wrath.
Traditionalist
scholars are committed to literal interpretations of the Quran, which they
perceive as a source of unchanging guidelines for all aspects of human
activity. They are critical of Muslim women who defy these views and seek
rights beyond these guidelines. They selectively use the historic facts about
the active public role of women by glorifying domestic roles of the past, creating
a conflict between the concept of the ‘authentic’ Islamic identity and a modern
cultural consciousness based on knowledge and rational intelligence. It has
been widely presumed by these traditionalists that “feminism” cannot exist
within “Islamism”—at least in its present form.
Culture Subsumed By Faith
Islamic
modernism emerged in British-ruled India in the 19th century as a reform
movement. It was rooted in a pluralistic environment, characterized by the
presence of diverse ideological groups and followers of the Enlightenment,
Westernizers, Evangelicals, the traditional Islamic establishment, and
modernist theologians. Muslim modernists have a different vision regarding
women’s rights and role in society. This pluralistic context was also
characterized by the limited intervention of the State in religio-cultural
production within society.
Pakistani
scholars have defined “culture” in a number of ways. Nazrul Islam, a social
scientist, regards it as the “manifest aggregate of people’s language,
religion, customs, manners, dress, art, economy and outlook.” He suggests that
Pakistan is a multicultural state in the sense that people speak different
languages and each language can be identified with at least one of the
geographical regions. Many scholars of this tradition thought that women could
play a public role in this environment.
Class Divide Of Victims
The general
assumption about upper-class women, especially married ones, is that they live
a life of luxury and comfort, enjoying an equal status with the male members of
the family. These perceptions are refuted, however, in surveys conducted by
some non-government organizations such as Simorgh, which reveal that women in
the upper class are treated as badly as those in the lower class. The only
difference is that more sophisticated means are employed to keep their
socio-economic role suited to the needs of the male family members.
In
Pakistan, women’s issues are generally interpreted and analysed either in the
context of Islam or in relation to the state; and identities like class and
location, and modes of female agency, have also been understood in relation to
these categories. Recently, feminists have begun to attract academic inquiry in
a broader context. Such views arise from a variety of stimuli, including a
visible religious factor that has aided the presence of powerful ecclesiastic
groups, often enjoying official patronage and magnified in the past, especially
during the regime of Gen. Ziaul Haq.
Women
belonging to the religious right, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami and Deobandi
activists, are disdainful of the idea of feminism in all its manifestations. In
their opinion Islam has already bestowed sufficient rights upon women. And it
is only necessary to implement these rights in a comprehensive Islamic setting.
Risks Not Taken
Prime
Minister Zulfiqar Bhutto was unwilling to risk his political survival by
supporting “peripheral issues” such as women’s emancipation. State policy under
him was based on the rhetoric of class issues, wrapped in the folds of religion
rather than gender; however, he failed to even address any of these concerns.
It was the peculiarities of the class situation of women and the particular
ideological orientation of their families that determined the extent to which
they were able, if at all, to take advantage of state populism, and extricate
themselves from some of the more oppressive moorings of Pakistani society. A
lot of expectations were attached to Bhutto’s regime, but irrespective of an
increase in the number of women’s organizations, Pakistani women did not gain
half the benefits that they could have expected to achieve in a period of
populism.
The Hudood
Ordinances of 1979 relate to: a) the crimes of rape, abduction, adultery and
fornication b) the crimes of theft and armed robbery; c) false accusations of a
crime, including zina; d) prohibiting the use of alcohol and narcotics and e)
describing the mode of whipping as punishment for those convicted under the
Hudood Ordinances. Ostensibly, the Hudood Ordinances were promulgated to bring
the criminal legal system of Pakistan into conformity with the injunctions of
the criminal Laws of Islam.
Frozen In History
According
to the ordinances, if rape or zina is committed by an adult married Muslim, the
“hudd” punishment is stoning to death; for adult non-Muslim and single Muslims,
the punishment is 100 lashes. “Hudd” for committing “Qazaf” and for consumption of alcohol (for Muslims alone) is 80
lashes. Mode of evidence was intended so that the condition of capital
punishment becomes exceptionally difficult. The provision of General Zia’s law
requiring four male witnesses to establish rape, and placing the onus of
proving the crime on the complainant, created problems for women victims.
Moreover,
the onus of proof makes the complainant vulnerable, because if she fails to
prove the rape, she must be prosecuted for Zina,
i.e, fornication or adultery under the Zina Ordinance or wrongful accusation
under the Qazaf Ordinance, 1979. Her registered complaint becomes a confession
of Zina and she can be implicated as
a party, while the man involved escapes punishment despite being a party to any
sexual act.
These laws
ignore modern scientific techniques for establishing a crime in their exclusive
reliance on four male witnesses and the disregard of other available signs,
symptoms and forensic evidence. Because of numerous loopholes in General Zia’s
laws, girls marrying without the consent of their family could be falsely
accused of adultery. The laws become an instrument and deterrence against adult
girls revolting against prevailing socio-cultural norms. There were lots of
incidents reported in the press where the provisions of the Zina Ordinances
were misused by police and influential people to extort money or settle old
feuds. It has been frequently reported by the national press that under the
Zina Ordinance, the rapists were often set free due to lack of evidence, while
raped women are arrested, prosecuted and punished for committing Zina, or for giving birth to an
illegitimate child.
Curse of Qisas
and Diyat
The law of
Qisas and Diyat was proposed in 1982 during the Zia period (but implemented
during Nawaz Sharif’s first regime in 1991), when the Federal Shariat Court
held some provisions of the Penal Code to be repugnant to the injunctions of
the Quran and the Sunnah in relation to the offenses of murder (qatl) and
injury to the human body (zurb). This law describes all offenses relating to
injury to the human body and has provided for monetary compensation in lieu of
Qisas.
The monetary
compensation is of three kinds. Diyat (blood money) is the compensation payable
to the heirs of the victim by the offender in case of murder. The value of
Diyat is to be fixed by court and the minimum prescribed by the law is equal to
the value of 30.630 grams of silver. The money is to be disbursed among the
heirs of the victim in accordance with the rules prescribing the shares in the
inheritance. It can either be paid by the offender as a lump sum or in
instalments over a period of three years. If the offender fails to pay the
Diyat once it is agreed upon, he can be imprisoned till it is paid. Secondly,
Arsh is another form of monetary compensation, which is payable for causing
harm.
Like the
Hudood Ordinances, the Laws of Qisas and Diyat reduced the legal competence of
women to half of that of a man. Qisas cannot be enforced on a minor, under the
prevailing law of Qisas and Diyat. An adult is defined as “a person
who has attained, being a male, the age of 18 years or, being a female, the age
of 16 years, or has attained puberty, whichever is earlier.” This definition
has caused inequality of treatment between men and women in the imposition of
punishment.
Women Come Out For Women
A woman
becomes liable to harsher punishment at an earlier age than a male. As puberty
varies by region and ethnicity, girls can become liable to the same punishment
as adults at ages as young as nine or 10. Human rights activists have advanced
arguments that puberty does not determine mental maturity, and is, therefore,
not acceptable as a measure for fixing criminal liability.
Author
Rashid has taken note of several women’s rights organizations active in
Pakistan. Simorgh, a relatively small organization, was established in 1985 and
includes among its members some vocal founder-members of the Women’s Action
Forum, such as Neelam Hussain and Fareeda Sher. Like the Applied Socioeconomic
Research (ASR) Resource Center, they have published a lot of informative
material and introduced local readers to the works of modernists and traditionalist
Muslims, as well as progressives and feminists, providing a discussion forum
for local progressive and liberal writers.
Joining The Global Paradigm
Since its
inception in 1976, Shirkatgah has published a large number of books, training
material and information brochures, as well as educational posters. It is the
South Asian branch of Women Living Under Muslim Laws, an international
organization working for the rights of Muslim women within the paradigm of
modernist interpretations of religious texts. The organization has known
modernist Islamists, Fareeda Shaheed and Khawar Mumtaz, in its ranks.
Like ASR,
Shirkatgah regularly publishes the works of local writers as well as translated
works from across the world, particularly those written about Muslim
communities. Their range of publications is diverse, comprising training
manuals, posters and information on any current situation such as instructions
for voting during local government elections. Aurat Foundation, established in
1986, differs from other organizations, as its major focus is on lower/lower
middle class women. Publishing mostly in Urdu, it provides legal service to
destitute and victim women. Its published material primarily deals with issues
faced by lower class women in their daily lives, and its outreach is wider
compared to the publications of other organizations.
The book
notes: “Two lawyer sisters (Asma Jahangir and Hina Jillani) come to the fore,
due to the wider publicity available to them in national and local dailies.
Their work generated controversies as they took up many controversial legal
cases relating the Christian minorities, blasphemy, divorce and marriage
without the consent of the parents. Most were aware of these two names and
their heroic efforts leading to various attempts in their lives to harass and
deter them from their work.
“Their
office, despite all security measures, was like a public office, providing
legal assistance to destitute women. One sister was frank in her criticism of
the military regimes and Islamization of society through legal means, leading
to undemocratic and conservative societal attitudes. The international acclaim
of their work has given them wider acceptability among women to relate to them
and acknowledge their work for the cause of women. Many participants were able
to acknowledge their work by their names and not through their organization or
links with international agencies.”
Original Headline: Shortchanging Women in
Pakistan
Source: Newsweek Pakistan
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/tradition-clashes-with-modernism-ongoing/d/124162