Most of the literature written in defense of allegations made against Islam and the shariah and Quranic injunction, in specific, is agonizingly apologetic. Hardly does one encounter arguments of true intellectual worth, one that can be proudly debated within the academia and give Islam, as one of the major religious doctrines of the world, its due place.
Islam and women, in particular, has always been a contentious issue within academia and debates continue to date amongst prominent Muslim feminists (such as Abu Lughod, Moughessi, Merinissi, Al Sadawi amongst others) whether it is meaningful to speak of an Islamic feminism within Muslim societies. The different but equal assertions sits at the heart of this debate and what makes any argument or meaningful dialogue within this sphere redundant and futile is the unbending reality that divine law is static- the Book has been revealed- the injunctions are absolute and final.
It has therefore been an obdurate challenge for women across Muslim societies be it Tunisia, Algeria, Pakistan, Iran or Egypt (Kandiyoti provides an interesting study of Women, Islam and the State) to formulate feminist discourses and launch a movement for their cause when there is no apparent leverage for change within the divine scriptures.
An argument that apologists oft expound is that discrimination or atrocities committed against women is not a result of Islam but specific cultural practices. They fail to acknowledge that religion is an important feature and function of culture- culture as a way of life is formulated along ethical moral philosophies held by a certain people and peoples responses are conditioned and informed by their code of life. Therefore, there exists an inherent, indeed an intrinsic link between religion and culture. Hence to assert that patriarchy is the bane of female existence and not Islam is an inane assertion (given that the two are inextricably bound together).
A popular condemnation against the West takes form as ‘their deficient knowledge of the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet (PBUH) , that Islam supports values and structures that are incompatible with the principles of human rights’. (Asad)
It is interesting (or rather disappointing) to note that there exists no definition of the female as an independent entity in her own right within the Islamic doctrine. The Quran does not speak of her as a being as her own individual but always in the role ascribed to her i.e. the mother and the wife. This reduces the female to her reproductive capacities only and her function in life is determined solely and exclusively by this biological reality. Furthermore it is note worthy that although the male has a crucial role in reproduction (without his contribution there could be no process of life or birth) yet he is not circumscribed by his role as progenitor- he is not reduced to a mere semen ejaculating being but a being in his own right who lives life in totality, eats, drinks, conducts business and commerce, interacts with other beings and communities, contacts marriage, and fights wars. The woman conversely is viewed only as a womb, her functions delineated (and that goes for all Abrahamic religious doctrines as well) as giving birth and building a home. Any divine directives given to her are regarding the safekeeping and safeguarding of her husbands property (physical assets- and herself included by predators).
Thus, given such a status accorded to women by divine laws, the Universal Declaration of Man or any other such universal conception of human rights advocating for life, liberty and property, is inapplicable to women. The concept of ‘pursuit of happiness’ in the declaration is further problematized along with the notion of liberty given that Islam means submission to God. Dalacoura also points out that in Islam: “The idea that human beings have rights qua human bengs is absent, in explicit form, from the Quran and the Shariah. Only God has rights not people.Only God has absolute freedom, human freedom is consisting in the complete surrender to divine will.” (Dalacoura 43) If surrender to divine will forms the crux of the Muslim faith, then any kind of maneuverings within Islamic laws, such the family law ordinances, to offer a greater degree of autonomy to women, automatically takes the form of blasphemy and is therefore shunned and physically (and often violently) repressed. The divine laws blatantly favor men and thus they act as a major pressure group under the banner of Islam to safeguard their interests when their hegemony is threatened and invariably succeed by quoting innumerable Quranic verses and Hadith in their defense.(Zia’s Chaddar and Chaar diwari-confining women to the veil and the home- comes to mind as one such action taken in the 1980s that has severe social and subsequently economic ramifications for urban professional Pakistani women).
Consequently there can be no real female emancipation within the rubric of Islam given that it invariably perpetuates a system of social institutions that marks values of honour and purity on women’s bodies and restricts their autonomy by holding them as the guardians of cherished family and community values. These social forces define some key contradictions inherent in our society: honour and shame, purity and pollution, virtue and temptation, chastity and permissiveness, domination and submissiveness, order and chaos (the popularly held chauvinistic notion-supported by Hadith-that giving power to a woman will only lead to chaos; a hadith that was strongly advocated when Benazir Bhutto came to power in the 1990s) It is all well and meaningful to indulge in scathing acerbic critiques of Western Liberal Human Rights agendas, as Naim does, but we must not be so myopic as to blindly overlook the failings of our own ideologies. The fact that religion restricts female autonomy in various political and social ways is a reality that the women in Pakistan have to face and to achieve any substantial reform for this crucial segment of society, the state has to shed of its Islamic cloak.
Social Sciences Major, 2008
Lahore University of Management Sciences
November 19, 2008 at 4:46 am |
Interesting article in my opinion
TAreq Md Zayed