Crying Without Tears

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#12

``Kuran is a hoax.

read this descripancy and cry at the thought of GOD being fallible and iliterate/uneducated:
``


kEHTO mUKHERJEE

tHE SEED OF sHYAMA pRASAD THE VIRUS THAT HAS CAUSED THE ePIDEMIC OF sANGHI rIOTS ACROSS THE FABRIC OF iNDIA


Islam and Feminism
Are Feminism and Islam mutually exclusive terms? To my surprise I found that they were not. As the process of modernisation spreads around the world, Muslim women have asked various unpopular questions concerning the interaction between Islam and Feminism. The result has been the construction of various feminist traditions within Islam. This essay seeks to examine the root causes behind various Islamic feminist reformers.

The Changing Global Community

The dawn of the nineteenth century marked the commencement of an era of worldwide social change that has continued to challenge the religious and social basis of all societies to this day.1 European colonial powers formed the political and economic ideological framework that was to encroach upon the Islamic world. The gradual emergence of the global economy and the political ascendancy of the West dictated a global trend that was not easy for non-Western nations to avoid. These changes have invariably been multidimensional in nature; from the emergence of territorial states in their current format to educational reforms. One of the areas to undergo a radical transformation is relations between the sexes, as women searched for their identity and place in the new world.

While common perceptions view ‘feminism’ and ‘Islam’ as a contradiction in terms, Fatima Mernissi2 argues that throughout the history of Islam, small numbers of women have seized power in both political and military spheres where their western sisters were unable. Throughout the Islamic world, their has been a growing awareness of both feminism as a movement and feminist issues. This essay seeks to understand some of the root causes that lie behind issues currently being raised by Muslim feminist reformers asking whether these issues are essentially ‘religious’, ‘cultural’, or ‘social’ in nature. I will not go into details about the particular concerns. It is that which lies behind the issues that I wish to deal with. The sheer size and cultural diversity within the Islamic world renders it impossible to accurately survey all issues pertaining to feminism. Therefore, much of this essay is limited to the Arab experience.

The Nature of Islam

Before examining the issues raised by feminists, I believe that we need to ask ‘What is the central nature of religion?’ or in this case ‘What is the central nature of Islam?’ A substantive understanding of religion, where belief in either theistic beings or the supernatural is the prime objective3 comes across as inadequate when religion constructs a comprehensive world view ethic. Clifford Geertz understands religions as representations of cultural systems. Religions are influenced by the process of social change, while at the same time, able to influence such changes.4 Talal Asad takes this viewpoint a step further, arguing that religion as known today, is a modern invention tailored for military conquest.5 For Lawrence, religion is reduced to a subset of culture, and will differ between different cultures.6

This type of function view of religion, leads to Durkheim style views of religion, where religion exists to give adherents a symbolic framework that allows a total perspective on their relationships within the society.7 Religion symbolically legitimises the present order by providing a system of self understanding the community and its function in the cosmic order.8 This can be seen in the way ethnic religions, such as Judaism and Hinduism, have their basis in a social structure founded on kinship relationships. Here, religion protects the community against migration and cultural assimilation.9 Young views Islam as a more than an ethnic religion. As society moves from an ethnic to a universal identity, wide ranging cultural reformation takes place, including religious reform. Under a charismatic leader, religious principles are reformed in an attempt to bring society back to its original social and cosmic order.10

While Marxism’s main concern is with the social impact of religion, they tended to reduce religion to the sum of its infrastructural causes. From this they argued that religion possesses the ability to act as a tool of social upheaval and protest in light of an oppressive economic framework.11 At its best, religion is capable of representing ‘a subversive social Utopia that was (ultimately) prevented from historical realisation by . . . . theistic misunderstanding.’12 While this presents a positive outlook on the role of religion, Lawrence moves towards recognising a larger process, where religion in an ideological tool, that motivates the elite of a religious community to ‘pursue specific interests for the gain of one group, with the simultaneous loss to another group.’13 This type of view tends to overemphasise the way in which Islam operates as a tool of political ideology. While this viewpoint has gained popular acceptance among many in the west, it has tended to negate the multidimensionality of Islam.

I believe that an understanding of the continuing development14 of Islam that is multidimensional in nature, is necessary to understand the root causes behind feminist concerns. While Islam does act as a political ideology, it is above all a cultural system that has been affected, as all societies have, by what Tibi refers to as the ‘globalisation of the civilising process’,15 where European forces have universalised their own process of civilisation.16

The origins of Islam can be traced back to the process of reforms instituted by the Prophet Muhammad. Many of these radical reforms concerned the treatment and place of women. He abolished female infanticide, allowed women to posses and exercise full control over their wealth and guaranteed women the right to inherit and bequeath property. Strict limits were placed on polygamy, and women were allowed to keep their dowry. However, despite the reformist nature that gives Islam its universalist dimension, there appears to exist lingering structural similarities to that of ethnic religion. This can be seen in how Islam has sought to maintain a patrilineal17 and patrilocal family structure, and the strong desire by many to preserve their ethnic identity.18


A Religious Basis

The Koran forms the basis of family law, and is regarded as the literal and unmitigated word of God, untainted by any human interpretation, including the prophet himself. Being beyond reproach, Koranic regulations regarding women are followed with great strictness. Despite the positive reforms, the Koran states that ‘men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God hath gifted one above the other.’19 However, while women were understood as inferior, Muhammad was convinced that men and women were equal before God. Both sexes had an equal responsibility to submit to God and the opportunity to receive salvation. Young proposes that this soteriological equivalence between the sexes that bypassed male intermediaries may have been inadvertently responsible for the sharp sex role segregation that developed after the Prophet’s death.20

Hussain finds that the issues raised by Islamic feminists are not directed at God’s word as revealed in the Koran, but with the religious scholar’s interpretation of the Koran, and the ‘contrived or inauthentic traditions of later provenance which either do not reflect what the Prophet said or represent fallible variations of his Hadith’.21 It is argued that generations of scholars sought to tighten waning moral standards throughout Islam while at the same time sanctioning various changes to Islamic thought and practice that were most likely imported through foreign converts. The result could be described as an idealised form of Islam that was not necessarily in accord with the spirit of the Koran. Feminist writer Nazira Zayn al-Din is scathing in her critique of early Islamic exegetes, charging that they are guilty of ‘disregard and neglect of God’s word, (by) putting forth undue allegations and assumptions as well as sheer subjective prefereces, and obstinately adhered to their individial opinions.22 This can be seen in the Hadith’s denunciation of the prophet’s highly active wife A’isha, compared to the ideal model of femininity found in the secluded daughter Fatima. Over a reasonably short time frame, the religious understanding of sex roles moved away from Muhammad’s reformist ethos that allowed women full and active participation within the community, towards a model that assimilated regional social and cultural norms into the actual religious teaching of Islam. With the basis of sexual inequality firmly grounded into the Prophet’s Hadith and Sunna, any attempt to question it is regarded as a ‘direct attack on Allah’s realm and order.’23


Mernissi finds that the religious basis for the political seclusion of women can be traced back to the philosophical basis of the caliphate. A caliph is part of an apostolic succession; he succeeds the prophet in time and rules with the authority of God, as a deputy of the Prophet.24 The first caliph, Abu Bakr replaced the Prophet after his death and thus inherited both spiritual and material leadership that Muhammad had been given by Allah. The two major terms that denote power in the Arabic language, imam and caliph do not posses a feminine form.25 With Islam being a complete way of life, power becomes essentially religious in nature. It was the Caliph’s duty to coordinate political administration via the use of religion, so that society was in harmony with the cosmic order. The caliph becomes the executor of the will of Allah on earth. If God is both One and male, then the caliph, as Allah’s representative on earth, cannot be female. Women are automatically excluded from exercising power.26




Confusion of Spheres

Feminist writers, such as Elisabeth Schemla suggest that it is the mixing of civil and religious spheres within many Muslim states that is at the base of feminist concerns.27 Leila Ahmed describes Islamic social systems as having combined the “worst features of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern misogyny with an Islam interpreted in the most negative way possible.28 Any women who challenge this blending of the civil and religious spheres that constitute the basis of Muslim society risk the death penalty. One such woman, Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin has proposed that secularism is a necessary step in the promotion of women’s rights.29 Nasrin argues that morality standards should not be dependent on either social or religious rules. A societies moral standards should be relative to the sum of the social, cultural and structural factors. To choose one element, such as religion, will invariably lead to an unjust society.30

I would suggest that this sociological structure is further complicated by what Brazilian scholar Alberto Ramos describes as the ‘universality of modernisation.`31 This view states that societies in developed countries constitute the ideal model that undeveloped nations should strive to copy. This view places a heavy emphasis on the necessity of stable western style democratic political systems, where individuals are free to hold different opinions, and a separation of social and political systems.

The dilemma facing Islamic states is that while a majority of them accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights shortly after World War II, clauses within the declaration are at odds with several key principles found within Islam. Mernissi argues that the assertion that ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’ (Article 1) contradicts the hijab (veil) and the reasoning behind it, and the declaration that ‘everyone has a right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference` (Article 19) is in direct contrast with the Islamic concept of the amma, who are the ‘uncultivated mass, ignorant and undisciplined by nature; being incapable of reflection or reason, it must be excluded from power.’32 The election of Benazir Bhutto as Pakistan’s Prime Minister serves an interesting example of how religious principles have often become subservient to social and cultural forces. Fundamentalist elements staunchly opposed the fact that Bhutto won on religious grounds after the result. They did not overly oppose either the process of democratic election with universal suffrage which contradicts the elitist and permanent religious principle of bay`a,33 or the fact that she stood for office when it is taught that ‘a people who entrust a woman with rulership will not prosper and thrive, and her government will not render her people happy’.34 Suffice to say that much of this problem can be reduced to the very different cultural understanding of ‘freedom’ that underlies western notions of human rights. In the west, freedom is understood as the struggle for individual autonomy and independence, while Arabic cultures understand freedom as the opposite of slavery.35


Social and Cultural Problems

Nawal El Saddawi36 finds that the oppression faced by women is ‘not essentially due to religious ideologies . . . but derives its roots from the class and patriarchal system’37 Islamic history paints a picture of pre-Islamic society where women’s sexuality is ‘chaotic, all-embracing, rampant promiscuity whose essence is woman’s self determination`.38 The male is left with a lack of initiative, and is unable to control relationships through a position of privilege. Such fears are behind the construction of Muslim sex roles, which find their basis in the assumption that proper social order relies on the curtailment of female sexuality.

The worst example of this sexual paranoia can be found in the act of female circumcision. Though having no basis within the Koran or any authentic Hadiths, clitoridectomies are still practised under the name of Islam, particularly in parts of North and East Africa. The practice predates Islam, and is possibly pre-Judaic,39 and serves to ensure that women are incapable and undesirous of any sexual relationship. One feminist described the circumcised woman’s sexuality as being like that of ‘a dead piece of wood.’40 For Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saddawi,41 her circumcision was the driving force behind her feminist journey. Her operation had led to feelings of insecurity, anger and rebellion. She went through life unable to understand how her well educated parents had participated in such a barbaric act, and were unable to provide answers with any more substance than ‘that is the way it is.’ It is important to note that this practice is generally perpetuated by female relations, to ensure the child’s desirability as a wife, and to strengthen family ties. It would appear that this issue is in many ways a social issue, particularly in light of the breakdown of the extended family that accompanies the process of modernisation.

Feminist issues can also be traced back to the way in which Islam has set up the differences between the two sexes into a type of ‘social architecture.’42 The male has a strong sense of threshold or territorial boundary, known as haram, to which access by women is forbidden. The opposition felt by the first politically active Muslim woman, A`isha, the Prophet’s wife was not in terms of her competence, but based on systematic arguments centring on territory. Being the first woman to transgress the territorial sexual limits she has been linked with Muslim concepts of fitna, which describes chaos, disorder and destruction.43 Fitna serves to describe why there will be many more women than men in hell and is the description of any women elected to political office.

This strong sense of haram is often enshrined in Islamic State Codes.44 The Moroccan code describes the earning of salaries as masculine domain. Masculinity is directly related to the mans ability to be the sole provider for his family. If a women earns an income, they are perceived as either being masculine or humiliating their husband. When we take into account the way in which the state is taking on roles traditionally associated with male authority, such as education and the provision of economic security, it can be seen how many man view the process of modernisation as a castrating phenomena.45

A common argument from feminists is that many Islamic laws have been made harsher by custom over time. This can be seen in the practice of the hijab. The veil finds its origins as a Persian elitist fashion that was used to distinguish the aristocracy from the commoners.46 The Koran appears to make a clear distinction between Muhammad’s wives, and believing women. It is only the Prophet’s wives that should shield themselves from men. Other women, like men, are to act modestly. Early Islamic society saw no restrictions or limitations on the role of women in public affairs. However, as the ulama began the process of interpreting Islam through the exegesis of the sacred texts, restrictive practices from foreign cultures were assimilated into the teaching of Islam in order to maintain its appeal to new converts.47 The advent of twentieth century fundamentalist movements have ensured the continued growth of restrictive practices in many parts of the Islamic world. An example of this can be seen in the Saudi Arabian scholar who recently argued that the teaching of Islam only permitted women to show a half of one eye in public.48


While the veil is often regarded as a strong cultural symbol, the issue of the hijab appears to have become entangled in the wider issues of class, imperialism and nationalism.49 This can be seen in how the Islamic world would often respond to issues of colonial ascendancy and class division by religious revivalism. While unveiling became common during the mid twentieth century, the process of reveiling in nations such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia coincided with the discovery of oil and the subsequent changes in geopolitical status. As the full effects of modernisation threatened the Islamic world, these reactionist tendencies gave Islamic neoconservative political organisations the ability to control women with no real religious reasons.50 In many ways, veiling has come to be a strong symbol of resistance to colonialism.51

While some women are keen to discard the veil, others are intentionally putting it back on for political reasons. Modernisation is not necessarily viewed in a positive light, particularly when understood as ‘westernisation’. Many women find the over-exposed style of western sexuality repulsive and they fear the breakdown in the extended family unit with the securities offered by such a social structure. Many women sincerely desire a more ‘moral’ economic, political and social life as prescribed by Islam.52 I do not believe that this is necessarily limited to ‘fundamentalist’ sections of the community, as popular conceptions would have us believe. Rather, I view this as a recognition of Islam’s ability to be an influencing factor in the process of social change. As Christianity influenced the shaping of Western culture, so too will Islamic religious discourses influence the developing shape of Islamic cultures today.



In Conclusion

Though I have sought to distinguish between modernisation and westernisation, I feel that it is virtually impossible for me to really understand and analyse modernism and its effects outside of the western context. I’m sure that the distress I felt reading Nawal Saddawi’s account of her circumcision would be very similar to that felt by a Muslim reading accounts of the sexual exploitation and violations that western feminists would characterise as a widespread aspect of western society.

The universal process of modernisation has demanded that the Islamic world face those issues presented to them by its feminist reformers. In accordance with most other parts of the world, reform is most likely to occur when economic pressures demand some form of action, though Islam has managed to keep such reforms within an Islamic framework.53 This is clearly true in areas such as education and family planning.

It would appear that it is the mixing of traditional values, rather than religious principles that has led to the discontentment articulated by Islamic feminist reformers. It would appear that the real conflict lies between traditional values and modernisation, rather than the pure `religious values’.54 Islam and modernisation are capable of co-existing where there is an acceptance of Islam’s dual role as a provider of a framework in which society can function, and a subset of culture that is capable of being influenced by non religious factors.



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Bibliography


Ahmed, Leila, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical roots of a Modern Debate, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1992.


Baum, Gregory, ‘Definitions of religion in sociology’, Concilium, no. 136, June 1980, pp. 25-36.


Goodwin, Jan, Price of Honour: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World, Warner Books, London, 1994.


Hussain, Freda, Muslim Women, Croom Helm, Worcester, 1984.


Jamal al-Lail, Haifa R., ‘Muslim Women Between Tradition and Modernity: The Islamic Response’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol 16, No. 1, 1996, pp. 99-110.


Jones, Alan (ed.) (J.M. Rodwell, trans.) The Koran, Everyman, London, 1994.


Lawrence, Bruce B., ‘Toward a history of global religions(s) in the twentieth century: parachristian sightings from an interdisciplinary Asianist’, Sixteenth Annual University Lecture in Religion, 23 March, 1995, Arizona State University, pp. 1-25.


Mernissi, Fatima, ‘Conclusion: women’s liberation in Muslim countries’, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society, Revised Edition, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1987, pp. 165-177.


Mernissi, Fatima, (Mary Jo Lakelan, trans.), Women and Islam: An Historical and Theological Enquiry, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992.


Mernissi, Fatima, (Mary Jo Lakelan, trans.), The Forgotten Queens of Islam, Polity Press, Oxford, 1993.


Mernissi, Fatima, Women’s Rebellion & Islamic Memory, Zed Books, London, 1996.


Minces, Juliette, The House of Obedience: Women in Arab Society, Zed Press, London, 1980.


Nasrin, Taslima, ‘A disobedient woman’, New Internationalist, New Internationalist Publications, No. 289, April 1997, pp. 23-4.


Saddawi, Nawal El, The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, Zed Books, London, 1980.


Schemla, Elisabeth, ‘Islam’s veiled threat’, World Press Review, Vol. 42, no. 1, January 1995.


Sharma, Arvind (ed), Women in World Religions, State University of New York Press; Albany, 1987.


Tibi, Bassam, (Clare Krojzl trans.), Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change, Westview Press, Boulder, 1991.



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1 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical roots of a Modern Debate, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1992, p. 127.

2 in Fatima Mernissi, (Mary Jo Lakelan, trans.), The Forgotten Queens of Islam, Polity Press, Oxford, 1993.

3 Gregory Baum, ‘Definitions of religion in sociology’, Concilium, no. 136, June 1980, p. 30.

4 Bassam Tibi, (Clare Krojzl trans.), Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change, Westview Press, Boulder, 1991, p.1.

5 in Bruce B. Lawrence, ‘Toward a history of global religions(s) in the twentieth century: parachristian sightings from an interdisciplinary Asianist’, Sixteenth Annual University Lecture in Religion, 23 March, 1995, Arizona State University, pp. 15.

6 Ibid., p. 16.

7 Baum, op. cit., p. 25.

8 Ibid., p. 30.

9 Katherine Young, ‘Introduction’ in Arvind Sharma (ed), Women in World Religions, State University of New York Press; Albany, 1987, p. 17.

10 Ibid., p. 16-7.

11 Baum, op. cit., p. 36.

12 Ibid.

13 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 14.

14 I wish to draw a distinction here between religious ‘development’ and any ‘evolutionist model’.

15 Tibi, op. cit., p. 2.

16 Ibid.

17 It is interesting to note an interesting paradox here. In a kinship system that is purported to be exclusively male, the Prophet’s lineage passed through his daughter Fatima, due to the absence of any surviving sons.
Mernissi (1993), op. cit., p. 125.

18 Young, op. cit., pp. 22-3.

19 Sura 4:34
from Alan Jones (ed.), (J.M. Rodwell, trans.) The Koran, Everyman, London, 1994, p. 53.

20 Young, op. cit., p. 23.

21 Freda Hussain, Muslim Women, Croom Helm, Worcester, 1984, p. 37.

22 Ibid.

23 Mernissi (1993), op. cit., p. 30.

24 Ibid., p. 31.

25 Ibid., p. 4.

26 Ibid., p. 32.

27 Elisabeth Schemla, ‘Islam’s veiled threat’, World Press Review, Vol. 42, no. 1, January 1995, p. 1.

28 Ahmed, op. cit., p. 128.

29 Taslima Nasrin, ‘A disobedient woman’, New Internationalist, New Internationalist Publications, No. 289, April 1997, pp. 23-4.

30 Ibid.

31 in Haifa R. Jamal al-Lail, ‘Muslim Women Between Tradition and Modernity: The Islamic Response’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol 16, No. 1, 1996,
p. 101.

32 Mernissi (1993), op. cit., p. 34.

33 Ibid., pp. 34-5.

34 Hussain, op. cit., p. 32, quoting Hadith Bu 92:18.

35 Ibid., p. 14.

36 Like Taslima Nasrin, Nawal El Saddawi was placed on a death list.

37 Nawal El Saddawi The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, Zed Books, London, 1980, p. 110.

38 Mernissi (1987), op. cit., p. 166.

39 Jan Goodwin, Price of Honour: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World, Warner Books, London, 1994, p. 334.

40 Origin of quote unknown. Was probably from a book I had to post back before witting

41 A rather graphic and traumatic account of her experience can be found in The Hidden Face of Eve, op. cit., pp. 7-9.

42 Mernissi (1993), op. cit., p. 66.

43 Ibid.

44 Mernissi (1987), op. cit., p. 171.

45 Ibid., p. 172.

46 Goodwin, op. cit., p. 30.

47 Hussain, op. cit., cpt. 3.

48 Goodwin, op. cit., p. 332.

49 Ahmed, op. cit., p. 6.

50 Goodwin, op. cit., p. 353.

51 Hussain, op. cit., p. 76.

52 Minces, op. cit., p. 51.

53 Minces, op. cit., p. 8.

54 Haifa, op. cit., p. 99.



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Well expressed sentiments in this poem.

I would resist the temptation to rhyme all the time but that just might be a matter of preference.

Ras

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re#10 by keshto

``Why not throw this islamic trait of 1000 years which impedes the woman`s rights?

get a face and defy this burqa shurqa or...

get a life. ``


dose submission sets you free ?
or dose it bounds you ?

tht is the question .

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Well Naz Sis.... i will just say .. when you write .. you WRITE .. although whatever you expressed is not something to comment on. Its just matter of FEELING IT but following a tridition made me say a few words about it .. so i did ... may ALLAH bless u .... !

it couldn`t be that bad -- go out -- smell the roses -- find the silver linings -- and take prozac --

``don`t worry be happy``

seriously -- this is a beautiful piece of elegant poetry -- very well put --

more power to your sensitive pen - Ms Naz -- please continue to write...

N:

some good lines…while time cannot take the pain away…it certainly acts as a balm to diminish the intensity…

your poem reminded me of the poem at the end of this:

http://63.194.130.82/cgi-bin/show_article.cgi?aid=00001211&channel=gulberg&start=0&end=9&page=1&chapter=1

(though when they transferred files from old chowk to new some formatting went haywire…and I suspect the context of your poem is different than the one there…)

…welcome to chowk and pls. keep contributing

...t

N aZ:- just love the simplicity and the depth of the verses.

N aZ:- just love the simplicity and the depth of the verses.

fara