WUNRN
Pakistan - The Fate of Feminism
KARACHI, Pakistan —
On Feb. 12, 1983, 200 women — activists and lawyers — marched to the Lahore
High Court to petition against a law that would have made a man’s testimony in
court worth that of two women. The Pakistani dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq
had already promulgated the infamous Hudood Ordinance, which reflected his
extremist vision of Islam and Islamic law. Now, it was clear to many Pakistani
women that the military regime was manipulating Islam to rob them of their
rights.
General Zia’s days are over, and parts of the
Hudood laws pertaining to rape and adultery have been superseded by less
objectionable clauses in Pakistan’s Protection of
Women Act of 2006. But Pakistani women have yet to achieve what Madihah Akhter,
writing in The Feminist Wire, an online magazine, identifies as “political,
cultural and economic equality for women and a place in the constant struggle
to define their nation.”
The reality of
Pakistan’s women continues to confound easy categorization. They have been
going to school and university, holding down jobs and earning money for several
generations now. Yet they still live with widespread gender-based violence,
society’s acceptance of women as property, and a widespread belief that they
don’t deserve education, jobs or an existence outside the domestic sphere.
Neither Pakistan’s laws nor its social codes
nor its religious mores truly guarantee women a secure place as citizens equal
to men; such attitudes are preserved by patriarchal tribal and cultural
traditions, as well as the continued twisting of Islamic injunctions to suit
the needs of misogynists. Could feminism be the best antidote to this male
chauvinism ingrained in modern Pakistani society?
Feminism has been alive in Pakistan since the
country was born. During partition of the British Indian Empire in 1947, a
Women’s Relief Committee, which oversaw refugee transfers between India and
Pakistan, was founded by Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
Pakistan’s founding father. Then Begum Ra’ana Liaqat Ali, the wife of
Pakistan’s first prime minister, founded the All-Pakistan Women’s Association
in 1949; that organization worked for the moral, social and economic welfare of
Pakistani women. Ms. Jinnah ran in the presidential elections in 1965 and was
even supported by orthodox religious parties, but lost to the dictator then
holding the office, Gen. Ayub Khan.
In the 1980s, the
Women’s Action Forum used activism to oppose General Zia’s myopic vision of
Islam; today, Pakistani feminist collectives continue to protest violence
against women, raise awareness about women’s education and political and legal
rights, and lobby policy makers to enact women-friendly laws. The
groundbreaking Repeal of Hudood Ordinance, the women’s empowerment bill and
anti-honor-killings bill were all moved in Parliament when Sherry Rehman, a
former ambassador to the United States and a renowned feminist, held the
portfolio of minister for women’s development in the last decade. These and the
anti-sexual-harassment bill were all eventually codified in Pakistani law over
the next several years.
But many Pakistanis
cling to the idea that feminism is not relevant to Pakistan — that it’s the
preserve of the rich and idle or, worse, that it’s a Western imposition meant
to wreak havoc on Pakistani society. Many Pakistani men and women believe that
women’s rights need go no further than improvements Islam brought to the status
of women in tribal Arabia in the seventh century. Men in Pakistan are not yet
ready to give up their male privilege, and many Pakistani women, not wanting to
rock the boat, agree with them. The Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal calls it
the “convenience of subservience” when elite and upper-class women marginalize
women’s movements in order to maintain their own privilege.
The scholar Margot Badran has
identified two threads of feminism in the Muslim world: 19th-century “secular
feminism” and 20th-century “Islamic feminism.” Islamic feminism, pioneered by
scholars like Riffat Hassan, Amina Wadud, Asma Barlas and Fatema Mernissi,
seeks to reclaim Islam from male interpretations by using passages in the Quran
to combat institutional misogyny. Islamic feminism as practiced in Pakistan is
accessible to the middle and upper middle classes, who enthusiastically attend
Quran classes held in Urdu, where they analyze verses and learn about the
rights that the religion affords them. It also inculcates solidarity with
Muslim women around the world. But with its emphasis on academic learning, it
can limit empowerment to educated women, marginalizing the unschooled and the
poor.
Pakistani
feminists like Shahnaz Rouse, a Sarah Lawrence College professor, and Farida Shaheed,
a sociologist who heads the Shirkat Gah women’s resource center in Pakistan,
have done vital work in the field of Pakistani gender identity and class
analysis, while Fouzia Saeed has been instrumental in raising the issue of
sexual harassment. But their work, and that of other theorists and activists
whose primary basis for feminism is not Islam, is often dismissed as favored
only by an English-speaking elite with little relevance to greater Pakistani
society.
Yet secular feminism has a more
democratic scope; its proponents agitate for the rights of all women in
Pakistan, non-Muslim as well as Muslim. It links to other feminist movements
worldwide, not just Islamic ones, and is more pluralistic. By appealing to
secular nationalism as well as Islamic modernism, it is not restrained by the
need to base all thought in Islamic scripture, although secular feminists also
use this powerful tool when necessary.
A feminist movement can succeed only
when it mirrors the makeup of the women and the society for whom it operates.
Pakistan needs a feminism that elegantly marries both strands of feminism —
secular and Islamic — because that’s how Pakistan was formed: on both Islamic
and secular principles.
The clinical psychologist Rubeena
Kidwai said this about the status of women in Pakistan today: “Pakistani women
are like bonsai trees, clipped and pruned and weighed down by the expectations
of Pakistani society.” And Pakistan’s feminists are the only ones who can undo
that destructive process, so that Pakistani women can flourish and grow to the
heights of their human potential.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
International Crisis Group: http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/publication-type/alerts/2014/conflict-alert-protecting-pakistan-s-threatened-democracy.aspx?utm_source=wu18aug14&utm_medium=pakistan-alert&utm_campaign=wuemail
CONFLICT ALERT: PROTESTORS IN PAKISTAN -
PROTECTING PAKISTAN'S THREATENED DEMOCRACY
Islamabad/Brussels - 21 August 2014
........The International Crisis Group
calls on the political and military leadership to continue adherence to the
constitution and enforcement of the rule of law, while permitting the right to
peaceful protest........
________________________________________________________________________