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by
Nafisa Hoodbhoy
The
emergence of fundamentalist movements in Muslim countries,
more properly known as Islamism, is being viewed by some
scholars as the last wave of anti-imperialism of the 20th
century. Muslim fundamentalist movements that show militancy
against Western colonial influences include the Hezbollah
and AMAL in Lebanon, the HAMAS in Palestine, the National
Islamic Front in Sudan, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria,
the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Khomeinism in Iran, the
Jamiat-I-Ulema Islam (with its multiple splinter groups)
in Pakistan, the Mujahideen and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
While the Islamists have different interpretations of the
Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence), they believe that all Muslim
societies are subjugated and subordinated because of their
deviation from the true Islamic path. When Islamists blame
the West for co-opting their leaders, they also use Islam
as a political ideology to mobilize the disenfranchised
Muslim ‘Umm’ (community of believers) against
the “corrupting” and “self-serving”
ways of the West.
Gender
and Muslim Fundamentalism
Women
form the core of Islamist debate. Muslim fundamentalists
across the board agree on restoring complementary roles
between men and women based on their biology – men
as wage earners and women as mothers and homemakers. Given
the traditional, patriarchal Muslim view of women’s
sexuality being ‘disruptive of the social order because
of her power to attract the opposite sex,’ Islamists
demand that women be veiled and segregated from men at every
level of society.
The
extremist behavior of fundamentalists and Islamists in particular
has proved harmful for the rights of women wherever they
have captured state power. Their promulgation of “Islamist”
laws and policies in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, have
introduced even more patriarchal norms into these predominantly
feudal and tribal societies, and attempted to erode their
existing diversity.
The
Veil and Four Walls – Women in Pakistan
The
Islamists supported the military government of Zia ul Haq,
who took over in a military coup in Pakistan in 1977 and
ruled for the next 11 1/2 years. This was the period when
the concept of ‘chadar and chardiwar’ (veil and
four walls) was pushed upon Pakistan women. Women began
being discriminated against in the workplace and in the
streets. The state used the electronic media to mount scathing
attacks on working women and projected the “Islamic
woman” as devoted to home and family.
The Zia government passed a series of laws against women.
The Zina Ordinance (part of Hudood Ordinances, 1979) makes
sex outside marriage a crime against the state. It also
does not give maximum sentence on the basis of women’s
testimony. Discounting women’s testimony has to date
resulted in imprisonment for thousands of poor women, who
have been accused of adultery or even been victims of rape.
In addition, the equality granted to women under Pakistan’s
constitution was subverted with the passage of the Laws
of Evidence, 1984 (in which two women’s testimony is
equated with one man in financial matters) and the Qisas
and Diyat Ordinance, 1985 (in which the blood money for
a deceased woman is half that for a man). 1
The effects of the Islamist ideology have seeped into the
rural areas of Pakistan where customary laws hold sway.
In the last two decades there has been an appreciable increase
in tribal customs like honor killings in which the unfortunate
woman and her lover can be killed by her immediate family
and get away with a lesser sentence.
Religious
Minorities in Pakistan
The
Blasphemy Laws, passed by General Zia ul Haq have deprived
religious minorities in Pakistan – Christians, Hindus
and Parsees (Zorastrians) – full citizenship. These
laws award the death penalty for anyone charged with ‘blasphemy’
against Prophet Mohammed. At times they have been used as
a pretext against non-Muslims who might be involved in a
land dispute. Blasphemy charges are also used against the
Ahmediya community, who offend the sensibilities of the
mainstream Muslims by denying that Mohammed is the last
Prophet.
Religious minorities in Pakistan have become further isolated
because General Zia’s introduction of separate electorates.
The latter requires non-Muslims to elect non-Muslim candidates.
With reserved seats for non-Muslims, candidates are now
required to contest elections on a countrywide basis rather
than from a particular region. This, as non-Muslim voters
have testified, makes the candidate unaccountable to his
particular constituency and leads to a further neglect of
the religious minorities.
The
Classic ‘Islamist’ State – Iran
 Iran
has even less diversity than Pakistan in terms of its religious
sects, ethnic communities and women’s movements. The
Shia clerics who ushered in Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution
in 1979 had been in power for only two weeks when they decreed
that women ought to be veiled and segregated. Iran became
the classic ‘Islamist’ state where Khomeni received
support from all sectors of society, including women, against
the Shah’s pro Western policies. Once victorious, the
Shia clerics pushed women into the veil, after referring
to those in Western dress as “Westoxicated” and,
the “painted dolls of the Shah.”
One of the first acts of the Khomeini government was to
suspend the Shah’s Family Protection Act. In one go,
women lost all their rights of family law. Although the
FPA was restored in amended form in 1992, Iranian laws presently
weigh heavily against women. Women are treated as subjects
within marriage: men can divorce more easily and remarry
without seeking permission from their wives, polygamy is
more common, temporary marriage has been re-instituted and
child custody made more difficult for women. The legal age
for marriage for girls has been dropped to nine years, eliminating
their chances for finding a life outside marriage and motherhood.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to middle-class women in Iran
is the gender
segregation in education and employment. Female literacy
has dropped. At the same time, forbidding girls to be taught
by male teachers has significantly narrowed their education
opportunities. Women’s employment has increased marginally
after the 1979 Islamic revolution, but only because of their
induction into sex segregated occupations like teaching,
“female oriented” fields of medicine and in government
agencies that deal with women.
Since the death of Khomeini in 1988, a relatively liberal
breed of Shia clerics (presently led by President Khatami)
has encouraged “Islamic feminists”. The latter,
who are “deconstructing” the Quran and Hadith
(sayings of the Prophet) work with secular feminists to
improve women’s rights in Iran. They have had limited
success. Even these “Islamic feminists” occasionally
risk the wrath of hard-line clerics by publishing articles
by women poets and interviews of filmmakers from outside
the mainstream. Even more likely to get arrested are unveiled
women or those espousing secular views.
Inside the Burqa – Outside the Decision-Making Process.
Women in Afghanistan
The Taliban, a Pashtun ethnic group who have ruled Afghanistan
since 1995, rode the wave of Islamic militants brought into
the region by the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia
to fight the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Though the Taliban has an Islamic fundamentalist image,
its practices are tribal rather than Islamic. For example,
it allows the ‘Jirga” (consultative body of male
tribal elders) to make communal decisions on the basis of
the Pashtunwali code of honor and shame. Women are totally
excluded from participating in this decision-making process.
Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, they have imposed
the ‘burqa’
– a voluminous covering which women must wear from
head to foot with only a mesh for the eyes. Women have been
barred even from their Islamic rights of inheritance. Instead,
the Afghan tribes are now resorting to a pre-Islamic custom
whereby widowed women are being inherited by their brother-in-laws
or stepsons. Also, stricken by dire poverty, Afghan farmers
(who previously received a bride price for their daughters)
are now selling their daughters to pay off loans.
Today Afghanistan tops the list of fundamentalists attempting
to stamp out diversity. About 100,000 women teachers, doctors,
nurses, administrators and civil servants, who worked mostly
in Kabul, have been sent home. Primary schools for girls
have been closed (for want of women teachers), while Kabul
University – once bustling with female students –
has been closed to women.
Religious
Minorities in Afghanistan
From
time to time, the Taliban clashes with the other minorities
– Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks – who remain unrepresented
in this Pashtun based government. Tajik leader Ahmed Shad
Massoud continues to fight the Taliban from the North of
Afghanistan. In addition, the Sunni Taliban and the Iranian
Shia militants have been sighting their battles on Pakistani
soil. This has created sectarian clashes between the Shai
and Sunni population in Pakistan, mostly to the detriment
of Pakistan’s minority Shia population.
The Islamic fundamentalists export of terrorism to the West
has now come full circle. Indeed, if any lessons are to
be derived from the emergence of Islamists, it is to recognize
that the West acted short-sightedly in the background of
the Cold War and the oil crisis. The U.S. support to the
fundamentalist regimes in Pakistan and Afghanistan not only
weakened Pakistan and Afghanistan’s civil societies,
it sparked the return of illegal immigration, heroin, debt
liabilities and terrorism. It is high time the UN, world
governments and religious leaders realized that a hard-line
approach to the Muslim world will only elicit more fundamentalist
responses – to the detriment of all concerned.
Nafisa
Hoodbhoy has worked as a journalist for the last 16 years
in Karachi, Pakistan for the English language daily newspaper,`Dawn’.
In 1995 she was nominated by Amnesty International as a
‘human rights defender. Presently, she is a Visiting
Lecturer at Amherst College, teaching a course on the `Regulation
of Sexual Activities and Identities’ relating to Pakistan,
Iran and Afghanistan.
Notes
1- “Blood money” is a term used in tribal societies.
It denotes financial compensation given for a murdered person
in lieu of spilling blood.
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