Politics and Women Protection Bill: News Age Islam's Selection, 18 March 2016
New Age
Islam Edit Bureau
18 March 2016
• Politics and Women Protection Bill
By Zeeba T Hashmi
• Trump Is the Outcome of the Southern Strategy
By Vijay Prashad
• After Freedom What?
By Zubeida Mustafa
• Quite Unlike the PNA
By Asha’ar Rehman
• Women’s Rights in ‘Naya Pakistan'
By Muhammad Anwar
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Politics and Women Protection Bill
By Zeeba T Hashmi
March 18, 2016
Punjab government has given in to the pressure from religious political parties who remain dead against any policy that can even faintly hint of protection to women. Their protest is under the garb of “destroying family structure” and because it is a “western” concept. We are all victims of our patriarchal traditions, of feudal elites, who hold important positions in our decision-making and policy institutes, and have a very powerful nexus with the clergy who base their principles on control-the-weak, where women become n easy target.
While we consider everything that is rational to be a ‘western agenda’, we actually give in to the hegemonic tradition that we are ostensibly fighting for their preservation. Everything that demands a practical solution based on real life problems — like violence against women, child abuse, limiting their movement and political associations and obstructing their opportunities in professions and education — is met by a fierce campaign by clergy who undermine such laws by declaring them to be against Islam. The recent wave against the ‘controversial’ Women Protection Bill adopted by the Punjab Assembly and duly signed by the Governor of Punjab, is based on the assumption that it stands in clear contradiction of article 31 of the Constitution of Pakistan, which defines the Principles of Policy for lawmakers. According to this article, the state is to enable Islamic way of life in society, which it already does. According to law experts, nowhere does this ‘questionable’ bill stand in contradiction to the constitution. However, Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani, Chairman, Council for Islamic Ideology (CII), has very strongly protested against criminalising domestic violence. Use of religion for every social problem is extremely unfair, because there is absolutely no room left for rationality and empathy, which calls a crime a crime. The clergy has not been able to present their arguments in favour of brutal acts of murder or abuse other than their religion excuse, and this is exactly what makes religion disturbing. Many scholars agree and endorse that disciplining wife through beating is sanctioned in Islam and consider it to be the prime right of men. However, little has been done to pay heed to the alternative view of other Muslim scholars who contend that the Arabic word used in the Quran in that context is derived from the word daraba, which has been linguistically misappropriated by many translators and interpreters of the Quran. I do not mean to imply that this is the correct interpretation, but it must be acknowledged that there are a million versions of Islamic texts, which make them nothing more than a jargon of interpretations, thus making it extremely difficult to ascertain what God actually said or did not. In fact, such ideological debates turn a blind eye to our real problems in society and let them persist.
Let us briefly go through the visible examples of how people easily get away with their actual or potential crimes. Recently, a draft bill on criminalising child marriages to be presented by Marvi Menon in parliament had to be withdrawn due to absolute protestation of the CII by stating that it contradicts the Islamic sanction that girls as young as nine years are eligible to marry. There is no acceptance of the alternative views of other scholars who maintain that there is no such thing as child marriage in both the Quran and Sunnah, and contend, through their academic reasoning that the age of Hazrat Aisha (RA) was 19, and not nine, at the time of her marriage to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
Let us also see how some prominent religious clergy, like Mufti Muhammed Naeem have endorsed pedophilia and rape as religion-sanctioned practices. A key opinion-maker, Orya Maqbool Jan, had actually endorsed, under the garb of religion, that the Pakistani army had a right to keep captured women as their sex slaves during the 1965 war in Khem Keran. Let us also not forget our politicians, like Imran Khan, who has, in his habitual appeasement of the clergy, announced that the Khyber Pakthunkwa (KP) draft bill on women would first have to be approved by the CII before it is presented in the KP assembly. Khan gives credence to a body that does not even hold a democratic mandate of the people, nor is it authorised to make policies for government. Let us not forget that it is the same Imran Khan, who, along with other politicians and clergy, vehemently opposed government’s passing Protection of Women Rights Bill (Criminal Laws Amendment) 2006, which had made the much-needed differentiation between rape and adultery, which until then was not a part of the Hudood Ordinance. For something as rational or commonsensical as this law, it was still opposed as something as a ‘western’ conspiracy.
In response to the adoption of the Women Protection Bill in Punjab, the clergy have come in unity to denounce it, and have given an ultimatum (or rather a threat) to government to completely repeal this law by March 27, in spite of government’s will to review the bill and make amendments where they are necessary. Instead of focusing on a rational, working model for ensuring protection of women from violence, the Punjab government seems to be coming under pressure and providing a soft corner to the clerics once again. Where there are academic and practical confusions in Islam, making it a guiding principle for making laws, naturally, calls for more problems. This is one of the reasons why the religious nuisances are created by the CII, owing to various misinterpretations and misguidance on Islam. The CII should at least have a reasonable representation of the unbiased Muslim scholars, minorities and women. Moreover, for the sake of ensuring that there are no conflicts in society, the state should not be the one to define religion for others. It should be there to only intervene when one’s rights, dignity and safety is undermined, and any threat or practice of violence must be taken very seriously.
The misogyny in our traditions, which is further reinforced by religion, makes women indifferent towards abuse; some of them have accepted it as a norm because they are made to believe that they deserve it. This regressive behaviour is indeed reflective of a sickening mindset that has been vehemently protected by clerics to protect women from ‘western agendas’.
Zeeba T Hashmi is a secularist and a freelance journalist.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/18-Mar-2016/politics-and-women-protection-bill
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Trump Is the Outcome of the Southern Strategy
By Vijay Prashad
March 18, 2016
What began as a joke is now no laughing matter. Donald Trump will most likely be the Republican nominee for the President of the United States. Given the deep uncertainty of this presidential campaign, there is a sense that he could even win the presidency. The headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., teeters in fearful anticipation. No one would like to openly speak about the presumptive nominee, but most of the party faithful fear his ascendency.
Trump, the real estate baron, is truly an outside candidate. He says anything he wants, including dismissing the formidable pieties of the Republican Party on trade and foreign policy, and is therefore out of the party establishment’s control. Each of the mainstream candidates (Jeb Bush and Chris Christie) fell before Trump’s withering attacks and the massive support these attacks generated. Christie fell and then joined Trump’s juggernaut. Along New York City’s western highway are a series of buildings that bear — in large letters --Trump’s name. He was the real estate developer of Trump Place Apartments. The Republican Party fears that it has been transformed into the ‘Trump Party’. He has done a hostile buyout under their noses.
The last Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, went to the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah to deliver a major address against Trump. Robert Hinckley created this institute in 1965 to “encourage the youngest and best minds to enter politics.” Neither Trump nor Romney fits the bill. Barack Obama defeated Romney in 2012. Trump seized the irony of a failed candidate taking the podium to attack his own party’s leading candidate. “Mitt is a choke artist,” said Trump in his inimitably harsh style. “He choked like I’ve never seen anyone choke.” Romney, in the same gutter style, called Trump “a phony, a fraud”. Trump’s “promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University”, said Romney. “He’s playing the American public for suckers: he gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.” Romney was referring to the red hats that are now commonplace at Trump rallies. They bear the slogan: “Make America Great Again.” This is the sum total of Trump’s message. He has said little else.
An indicator of how removed Romney and the Republican establishment are from the mood of the electorate of the Right was that several people in the Utah audience of 700 wore these Trump hats. When Romney said, “Donald Trump tells us he is very, very smart,” a heckler yelled, “Smarter than you!”
On many issues, Trump is not as harsh as his rival Ted Cruz. Cruz comes from the extreme right-wing Tea Party section of the Republicans. He is an uncompromising religious zealot, who believes in much the same kind of programme as Trump on issues of immigration and war-making. (It was Cruz, after all, who said that he would bomb Iraq and Syria to “make the desert glow”.) Cruz is deeply disliked by his Republican colleagues. At a Washington Press Club meeting in late February, the party leader Lindsey Graham said: “If you kill Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you.” Beneath Senator Graham’s joke is an edge of what is widely believed. Cruz is no better than Trump, and yet is the only other viable candidate in the Republican primary.
Romney urged his party to block Trump, not at the elections, where his warning has been irrelevant. A few days after Romney made his speech, Trump handily triumphed in the primary elections in Kentucky and Louisiana (Cruz won in Kansas and Maine) and is now well ahead to become the presidential nominee. What Romney wants is for the party leaders at their convention to create rules that circumvent Trump’s election victories and deliver the candidacy to an acceptable person. He did not say who this should be. This is for the better since the two establishment candidates (Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Governor John Kasich of Ohio) are anaemic.
A ‘brokered convention’ has its perils since it would likely turn off those people who are loyal Trump voters and who might boycott the general election in November. This would deliver a landslide to the Democratic Party, not only in the presidential election but also mainly in the concurrent elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives. In anticipation of that prospect, the Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (a State that voted for Trump), will release his members so that they can attack Trump as they run for their own elections. This is pandemonium.
Why do the Republicans fear Trump so much? Romney evoked the racism and misogyny of the Trump campaign. Romney even said the word “misogyny”, something of historical proportions for a party that has systematically gone after women’s reproductive health and women’s rights. The ‘gender gap’ in the 2012 presidential election was the largest in U.S. history, with the Democrats winning the women vote by 20 points.
On racism, the Republican coalition has relied upon Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” of 1968, which evoked issues of “law and order” and “States’ rights” to send a message — blow dog whistles — to whites in the South that the Republicans would not honour the victories of the civil rights movement. The idea of “cutting taxes” and “stopping welfare” suggested that whites would not have to provide compensation for the years of slavery and apartheid. It was a not-so-subtle way to reproduce racism in the Republican coalition. What Trump has done is merely shout out loudly what the Republican Party wants whispered. His fulminations against Mexicans and Muslims — dangerous as they are — merged directly out of the coded racism of the Republican establishment. Trump is the outcome of the Southern Strategy, of the anti-immigrant sentiment in the party and the deep wells of Islamophobia that have been cultivated since the 1990s. In this, Trump’s danger is his nakedness.
What worries the establishment is more than this surely. Trump’s erratic political positions whip from condemnation of the Iraq War of 2003 to denunciation of the trade agreements from the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 to the current Trans-Pacific Partnership. There is fear among the business elite that Trump will not honour the carefully crafted consensus between the two parties to protect the global interests of what is now called the one percent. The sum total of Trump’s platform was enunciated clearly in 2015 at a rally in Jacksonville, Florida: “We’re going to make our country great again. Remember this: the American dream will be back, bigger and stronger, I promise, than ever before. Ever.” With wages flat since 1973 for workers, that dream has been unattainable for at least two generations. It is the distance from that dream that draws disgruntled white rural voters to Trump and college students and urban multi-ethnic voters to the socialist barnstorming candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Both Sanders and Trump have rattled the cages of the consensus. Sanders, the establishment believes, will eventually be undone by Hillary Clinton, who will loyally protect the interests of the one percent — unlike both Sanders and Trump. While Sanders could enliven the politics of unions and community organisations, Trump has merely enflamed the politics of his stature. One opens the door to a conversation about socialism, while the other opens the door to Trump. The establishment recognises the choice these men place before the electorate. It is socialism or — dare one say the word — fascism.
Vijay Prashad is a historian of the Global South, and the Chief Editor, Leftword Books. He writes for Frontline, Hindu, al-Araby al-Jadeed, BirGun,
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/18-Mar-2016/turning-up-trumps
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After Freedom What?
By Zubeida Mustafa
March 18th, 2016
FOUR years ago, on a leap day, a young man of 28 walked out of Haripur jail to his freedom. Now when he looks back at this great event in his life, he describes his feelings on the occasion as ‘confusing’. It felt surreal, he said to me, as he looked back to that day. “I was asking myself, ‘Is this really happening to me?’”
Sohail Fida was hauled into prison in 2000 when he was only 16 years. Allegedly false charges of murder were brought against him and a confession extracted by torture.
Despite his incarceration for 12 years — five of them on death row — Sohail did not lose hope. His story is one of grit and courage. It is a story that inspires.
Sohail Fida’s love of books kept him going during his years in jail.
It would appear strange that a person should have mixed emotions of fear and elation on the day for which he had waited for years. An exceptionally insightful man, Sohail Fida realised immediately as he stepped out of Haripur jail that he had changed. Twelve years of seclusion had left him uncomfortable in people’s company. “I had forgotten how it felt to be in public. I felt intimidated by people and disturbed that I could not remember the right way to behave in their presence,” he told me.
For him the transition from total anonymity to such exposure became a challenge. Reintegration into society was complicated and tough. Yet he has not become totally cynical.
How did the misfortunes in his life strengthen Sohail’s resilience as he claims they have? Two important factors sustained him through his adversity during incarceration and his post-prison rehabilitation. One was his love of books and education. The other the humanitarian nature of his job. He is coordinator in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of the Customs Health Care Society (CHCS). This NGO is working to alleviate the sufferings of the poor through model health facilities to address the needs of distressed humanity.
Sohail derives deep satisfaction from his work as he is aware of the relief he provides those in need.
In prison his studies — he passed five examinations in 12 years of imprisonment — and books (Intizar Husain was a favourite) gave him solace. He has words of praise for the prison officials and the numerous volunteers who visited the jail and facilitated his studies. His love for learning is as strong as ever and for two and a half years he has been a volunteer visiting lecturer at a college in Bahrain, Swat. Recently, he earned his BEd degree and will shortly be joining the MEd programme. His commitment to the teaching profession is strong though Sohail realises that it “cannot make him rich, popular or powerful”.
After his initial anger at his misfortune had subsided, he did a lot of introspection which changed his perception of his tragedy. He came to believe that something good would come out of it. “Everyone has problems. What makes a person different from another is his response to adversity,” he remarked, going on to quote a verse, “Two men looked out from the prison bars. One saw the mud, the other saw stars.”
What is the good that has come out of his suffering? “If this prison interlude in my life had not occurred, I would have been a simple graduate, filling gas tanks of buses at my father’s petrol station and arguing with bus drivers and conductors!” he remarked.
But disillusionment is beginning to set in. Like Rip Van Winkle who woke up to a changed world after a long slumber, Sohail finds the innocence he hoped for has vanished. The level of honesty, integrity and truthfulness has fallen dismally though his family’s support has been invaluable. He had scathing comments on the education system in Pakistan; “It encourages copying and cramming culture and is destroying the minds of the youth. Our children can never compete internationally as education has become a business enterprise and students chase paper degrees.”
Sohail Fida is now working on his second book Dream Shattered which is about his own experience of society and the ‘odd people’ he has met since he has been out of prison. His first book Soul Unshackled was written in prison and has been translated into Urdu. It has won a number of awards. May Sohail live to read and write many more books.
But it is also time for civil society to revisit the issue of capital punishment in Pakistan. Many became the hapless victims of miscarriage of justice when the moratorium on executions instituted by the PPP government in 2007 was lifted last year. Another death-row prisoner who devoted his prison years to passing examinations and teaching his fellow prisoners, Zulfiqar Ali, could not escape the noose. If nothing else, there should be a law that book lovers should never be sent to the gallows. We do not have enough of them around.
Source: dawn.com/news/1246367/after-freedom-what
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Quite unlike the PNA
By Asha’ar Rehman
March 18th, 2016
IT is finally the women who have united people who had long been busy identifying the factors that separated them from one another. The so-called religious political parties have given the government until March 27 to remedy a women’s protection law in Punjab. Some of the protesters, who have in their turn shamelessly been used to crack poor misogynist jokes, warn of a PNA-like agitation — a reference to the campaign that led to the downfall of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977.
It is still a long shot. Most probably the government would be hoping for locating a few among the angry group to have placating or appeasing negotiations with. It is indeed the possibility of the government agreeing to some modifications in the bill that is drawing uneasy reactions from civil society organisations including the media. The mention of the successful 1977 agitation does, however, on its own prompt a quick look at the right wing that has now come together against the women’s bill, its strengths and weaknesses.
It has time and again been pointed out that the proliferation of the religious-political parties has led to the emergence of small satellites all over the country. These groups are able to generate their own resources and are bound by their own little ideologies and beholden to their own leaders. They will resist being placed for prolonged periods under the umbrella that the likes of Sirajul Haq and Maulana Fazlur Rehman might want to bring them under from time to time.
The warning to the government over the women’s law caps one of the various trends that surfaced in the aftermath of the PTI dharna.
This is one aspect of intra-right politics that is often not given too much attention. The focus generally is on the political conflicts between the religio-political brand against the so-called secular parties or on the fights between one big religious party and another. The factions are very much there in discussions of militancy perpetuated by religious-minded groups but strangely absent from the discourse about politics by religious parties.
The warning to the government over the women’s law caps one of the various trends that surfaced in the aftermath of the PTI dharna in the second half of 2014. Another one is notably represented by the PPP whose chairman has just called for a joint thrust by his party, the PML-N and PTI. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari may find support for his call of unity to take Pakistan forward. For many of the PPP’s old backers it will sound just like another declaration.
It was Imran Khan’s failure to force the PML-N out on the strength of his powers to stage a long sit-in that changed the attitudes and positioning of the politicians and parties. The Sharif government had demonstrated that it was well equipped for the long haul. This impression was boosted as the government quickly displayed just how easily and willingly it could share power with those it ought to be shared with. In time, this sent other politicians on regular rounds looking for reasons and causes to make themselves relevant. Between the end of 2014 when the dharna was wound up and now, so many of them have tried to revitalise their outfits by capitalising on one perceived impetus or another. None seem to have succeeded as yet.
Among them, much of the focus has been hogged by Asif Ali Zardari and Sirajul Haq, heads of two political parties who had for long defined whatever ideological material shaped Pakistani politics.
Even in times of uncertainty, it has to be said that, personally, Mr Zardari’s line has remained more or less the same. The message conveyed during a recent television interview of his reaffirms this. Barring an aberration, an emotional outburst that had him groping for material to throw at someone, he has been like this for many years.
His theory of coexistence has been consistent right from his days in jail in the 1990s. He had apparently thought that his party would never be allowed a long enough stay in power unless it was ready to live only with an illusion of it, with the shots being called by someone upstairs. That is about all he can stand for now, hoping that others will at some stage find it impossible to deliver the kind of package that only he can.
The real changes Mr Zardari’s party has been long crying for are left for his son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to occasionally talk about. The latest the young man has been heard casually and almost inaudibly remark on is the need to revive the party in Punjab, beginning, as some well-wishers had been suggesting, with the deceptively infertile fields in southern Punjab.
However, the drive, for whatever it promises to be, may be delayed. The PPP, the great champion of progressive causes, may again be required to side with the PML-N over the growing threat presented by the impending coming together of the right wing. The problem is that the alliance may give the PPP some more reason to do nothing to uplift its image.
On the other hand, hailed as the natural moderator during the dharna days, the Jamaat-i-Islami’s Siraj ul Haq has come round to considering a campaign against the government.
The untiring Jamaat emir seems to have come to a conclusion which matches the one some of his junior, more ambitious party colleagues had been advocating for long. The party must find reason to build up a passionate campaign or face further erosion of popular support.
The JI must move. It cannot just be content with having one of its most well-known men putting up a token, in the recent context, typically innocuous fight in a Karachi by-election swept by rival MQM. It cannot just sit in a trance in the name of order as its student wing is faced with newer challenges, such as the incident where it was recently taken on by a bunch of outsiders — students from Balochistan — at the Punjab University.
Asha’ar Rehman is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.
Source: dawn.com/news/1246368/quite-unlike-the-pna
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Women’s Rights in ‘Naya Pakistan'
By Muhammad Anwar
March 18th, 2016
The writer is executive director of Centre for Governance and Public Accountability and holds a master’s degree in Development Studies from the University of Rotterdam
In the ‘new’ Pakistan, as aspired to by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), women will be treated as per the injunctions of Islamic Sharia. The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) interprets these injunctions. That is why the proposed women’s protection bill in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) was sent to the CII for vetting. But, what exactly is ‘new’ here?
The CII has already declared the Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Bill 2015, un-Islamic. So, in all probability, the K-P’s bill for the protection of women will also be declared the same. Thus, the bill may die before its birth. But there are many questions, which Imran Khan and the PTI-led coalition government in K-P, need to be asked.
The K-P government has enacted, or amended, about 80 laws since the PTI coalition government was formed in 2013. Why must only the law relating to women’s rights have the stamp of CII approval? Why weren’t laws related to local government, banking, taxation, universities, trusts and so on, not considered worthy of CII approval? After all, Islam covers every aspect of human life. Why is the PTI practising double standards?
The PTI, as a party, believes in utilising technical and scientific methods in solving various issues. The biometric voting process has been its main demand, to ensure fair elections. However, the party’s great fervour for science does not coincide with the CII’s determination that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases. Perhaps the PTI should also get CII approval on using biometrics for the voting process. For all we know, the CII may have a different opinion on biometric voting procedures and that opinion should be ‘respected’ as well.
I may have opposed the PTI’s dharna for different ideological reasons, but the one thing I really liked about it was the participation, in large numbers, of the youth. The scene was mesmerising, as girls and boys danced together to the variety of tunes played by DJ Butt. There was an undeniable energy to change Pakistan. I wonder if Imran Khan would have dared to obtain Maulana Sherani and the CII’s thumbs-up for the music and dance that took place at the dharna.
The fact of the matter is that in PTI’s ‘Naya Pakistan’, the prospects of women’s rights are bleak. Going by the CII footprints, the PTI in Naya Pakistan will not mind any man marrying off his teenage daughter. Yet, a book written by a girl of the same age will be banned in educational institutions, as we have witnessed in the case of Malala Yousufzai. Imran Khan’s legislative performance on protecting women’s rights is no different from any firebrand religious party in Pakistan. He opposed the Women’s Protection Bill in 2006, when he was the lone MNA of the PTI. During that era, he also voted against amendments to the Hudood Ordinance. It appears that he now feels the need to oppose such legislation in K-P as well. Hence, the bill has been sent to the CII for approval.
The PTI’s respect for the CII is exemplary. One expects the same respect from the PTI for the Election Commission of Pakistan, parliament and the judiciary. The PTI left no stone unturned when discrediting these institutions during the dharna. Is the discrediting of parliament and the superior judiciary, and trust in the CII, to be expected of Naya Pakistan?
K-P, like the rest of Pakistan, has serious gender-related issues and it needs serious consideration from the lawmakers. According to the Aurat Foundation Report, 10,139 cases of violence against women were reported in 2014, in Pakistan, of which 736 cases were from K-P. The number of unreported cases may be much higher. Many victimised women voted for the PTI with the hope that in the new Pakistan, they will be able to live a life of dignity, with all their basic rights protected. How can a party, having justice in its very name, claim to be the party of change if it cannot ensure the protection of and dispensation of justice for women, the marginalised segment of our society?
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1067694/womens-rights-in-naya-pakistan/
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