In Good Faith

With the Anglo-American world once again rattled after the recent spate ofbombings in London, questions about Islam and liberalism have once again becomethe frontispiece of world news. Whether to be in ever preparedness for battle,whether to undertake racial profiling to put a halt on further attacks, whetherto pull out of the Iraq imbroglio before the mess worsens - these are questionspreoccupying global political and security pundits. 

In the midst of such disturbing developments there have also occurred certainother ‘events’ - events that have caused many of us to pause and reconsiderthe variegated character of the so-called Islamic world. I refer here to certaindevelopments that have shaken the world of Muslim women - in particular therapes of Imrana in India, Dr. Shazia Khalid in Pakistan, and most recently atelevision program called Corridors in Afghanistan.

The cases of Imranaand Khalid are quite well-known by now. Both have received a considerable amountof press in South Asia and have elicited responses from writers and commentatorsin different parts of the world. Salman Rushdie recently used these events tocondemn a culture of rape that exists in South Asia, a culture whose origins heattributes "to the unchanging harshness of amoral code based on the concepts of honour and shame." 

I do not wish to argue here with Rushdie’s characterization of entirecultures in this manner. Nor do I wish to debate the solution - the institutionof a uniform civil code - that he proposes. For me, the Rushdie piece andvarious other op-ed items that have appeared especially on the Imrana and Khalidcases are a welcome sign because of the possibility they embody of a seriousdebate in the global public sphere about the status of Muslim women. 

The conditions for such a debate however by definition demand that there arediffering points of view in circulation. It won’t do to condemn certain eventsas "medieval" and hope that the institution of modern law will have asolution. At the same time we cannot possibly give up our right to talk aboutthese events and the judgments passed on these women on the grounds that theyhappen to be matters internal to a particular faith. A brief look at the eventsin question will make it clear that adjudication of "honor and shame" is notall that goes on in the Islamic world.

Imrana has agreed to stomach the decision made by the Deoband seminary (DarulUloom). She has accepted that she must forsake her husband’s home sincegetting raped by her father-in-law has made her "haram" - unclean, impure,contaminated, and tainted - to cohabit with her spouse. 

Shazia Khalid was packed off to London by the state authorities in Pakistan.Openly threatened by the state and her family in her own country, she now livesin a tiny flat with her husband, having been forced to leave her adopted sonAdnan behind. Her career as a doctor appears over for all practical purposes.Yet she tearfully dreams the dream of one day going back to Pakistan to start ahospital for battered women. Ironically Pakistan is too far off for her as isCanada, another country where she tried to get asylum. But Khalid continues herfight, a fight in which she has the solid support of her husband and certainsections of the global media.

Corridors, telecast by a private channel Tolo TV, reportedly featured aprogram recently where a young woman spoke out against her parents for forciblygetting her engaged. In many ways a typical story of the victory of ‘love’over ‘arranged’ marriage, the young woman ran away to Kabul and marriedsomeone of her own choosing. What makes this tale exceptional is the localewhere it took place - Afghanistan, a country where a woman can be imprisoned forbreaking off a "genuine" engagement. 

According to the BBC the program also featured the girl’s parents and herirate fiancé. The latter’s anger hits one, especially another woman readingit, like a body blow. "Everyone has sisters and mothers," he said,"and as a result of all these women's rights, a man might go to work duringthe day and come home to find his wife has run off with someone else orsomeone's taken her." It does not take a rocket scientist to understand whya young woman might not find the speaker of these lines a particularly appealingsuitor.

The critical factor about all the three cases is that they have spurred adebate in the places where they took place. I know that for most of us saturatedby news of abuses against women, and especially Muslim women in South Asia thisdoes not sound like much. But I want to insist that we use these three episodesto think about how to start talking again about being Muslim in today’sworld. 

The presenter of the TV program, Corridors, Humayoon Daneshyar, intended hisshow as an agent of change. He hoped that this episode would caution familiestrying to push their daughters into forced marriages. They know now, he argued,that their daughters might speak out on television too and shame them. But noteveryone is as welcoming of the prospect of change. Fazl Hadi Shinwari isAfghanistan's Chief Justice, head of the Supreme Court and an Islamic scholar.He wants Tolo TV banned, objecting in particular to women appearing unveiled.Yet, despite what the high and mighty may desire women in Afghanistan areenthused by the program. Shamsola Mazai of Afghanistan's Human Rights Commissionhas been reported as saying that they have seen a sudden increase in womenseeking help, partly because of television coverage like this.

It is not my point that a few articles and television programs will suddenlychange the world. But they do serve a purpose. And that is to force us tointellectually and socially engage with certain maladies of modern societies.Yes, I don’t think that it is accurate to describe the brutalisation of womenin certain regions of the world as a throwback into some kind of medievalism. Itis by no means the case that these are especially Muslim oddities whose roots goback unproblematically to the Quran.

Much like "jihad", a topic that has with good reason led to a surfeit ofscholarship, the world of Muslim women too awaits serious attention fromacademics, policymakers, and feminists. Most writers on jihad disagree with oneanother on their understanding of the phenomenon. Yet, their disagreements arewelcome because it lifts a veil of silence from matters theological andreligious and places them in the open for debate in the public sphere. 

I think the same kind of attention needs to be paid to Muslim women in SouthAsia. Saba Mahmood’s recent book Politics of Piety based on areligious-political movement of Muslim women in Egypt is a inspiring example inthis regard. We need more scholars to step forward and speak about the everydayof Muslim women - not just the stories of their oppression but also accounts oftheir self assertion in the public realm, their place in the political economyof contemporary societies. India has just had its first female qazi, women inthe ‘dawa’ movement in Egypt have publicly claimed the right to read theQuran and have entered the public sphere in an extremely visible manner as pioussubjects.

These examples bring to light the multi-faceted nature of Islam. Indianhistory too is replete with examples that make it clear that the history ofIslam on the subcontinent is richly polysemic. Some scholars, most notablyShahid Amin, Muzaffar Alam, C.M.Naim, and Richard Eaton have for long beenexploring the intimate histories of Hindu-Muslim relations. Professor Naim’scontributions on this site [A'Hyper-Masculinised' Islam? and The Hijab And I]beautifully illustrate another side of Muslim womanhood and force us to thinksociologically about what went wrong and when. At the same time, there are alsohistories of personal intimacies - of inter community marriages and theemergence of faiths that are a merger of the Hinduism and Islam. 

We all know of Akbar, and subsequent Muslim monarchs marrying into non-Muslimfamilies. Yet, we have very little knowledge the actual discussions andnegotiations that preceded such marriages. We know that Jodhabai continued toremain a practicing Hindu after her marriage to Akbar. What theological/religious arguments were deployed on either side so that neither was consideredto be defaming their respective faiths? The Muslim world in medieval India wasnot completely sealed off from their Hindu brethren and vice versa. Whatelements of personal law and faith did the two communities share and how didthey discuss these interactions on theological grounds? It is only now thatthere has been a near complete sealing off of the ‘personal’ domain, anunshakeable resolve that such matters need not be discussed by a general publicand should be the preserve of the cleric.

And what good has such sealing off done? In the Irfana case, the ChiefMinister of the state Mulayam Singh Yadav supports the decision of the ulamawithout even making a pretense of engaging with the issue. The thinkingapparently has been done by the ulama and the victim would do good to obey. Yet,there are other schools of Islamic thought that rule that a man who nurturessuch lust, and goes to the extent of acting on his desires on the body of hisdaughter-in-law must also be severely punished. For Shazia Khalid who wasreportedly asked to produce four witnesses of her rape because that was the "Islamic"rule, one wonders whether that is the only interpretation of what the bookordains. But where is the room for such discussions when we have given up ourright to speak on such matters to the official gatekeepers of the faith?

This is why I welcome programs like Corridors. The fact that it gave aplatform to people to speak their contradictory points of view before ananonymous public on a prime time current affairs program is a huge step. One ofthe most positive effects of globalization has been the proliferation of themedia in India. Indian viewers are increasingly getting used to witnessingheated debates - debates that often pit politicians and public intellectuals ofdiffering hues against each other within the confines of the studio - onsocio-political issues on television in both English and the vernaculars. Evenwhen the debates are inconclusive, or produce more heat than light, they remainvaluable in nurturing a democratic ethos. Corridors represents a similar openingup, albeit on a small scale in Afghanistan. Perhaps a baby step, but it seems toremind us all that it is really important in today’s crazily anarchic world tonot give up our commitment to discussion. A discussionthat is fearless to broach issues ranging from questions of faith, to legalityand rights, and proper social conduct.

Rochona Majumdar is an assistant professor in the Department of South AsianLanguages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.