WUNRN
Statement
by Zainah Anwar : Creating a Public Voice and Claiming Authority on Women’s
Rights in Islam
For
the CSW59 session on
Political
Will & Public Will – Fine Tuning for Gender Advocacy
Muslim women today live in an era in
which women’s rights have been asserted and recognised as part of international
human rights standards. Constitutions and national laws in many Muslim majority
and minority countries guarantee equality and non-discrimination to all
citizens regardless of gender. Vast socio-economic changes have transformed the
daily lives of Muslim women. Muslim women’s tangible contributions to their
families as providers and protectors are growing and are increasingly being
recognised.
However, growing conservatism and
extremism in many parts of the Muslim world have impacted Muslim women and
their rights in many adverse ways. Women’s demands for law reform to end
discrimination are resisted by forces claiming that they are against the
teachings of Islam. The limited space for debate on matters of religion makes
it particularly difficult for women’s rights activists to advocate for change
and to get their concerns reflected in the decision-making process. They are
often demonised and sometimes their lives are threatened for challenging the
discriminatory and obscurantist views of those in religious authority and the
political Islamists. Very often they are told, ‘this is God’s law’ and
therefore not open to negotiation and change. To question, challenge, or demand
reform will supposedly go against Shari‘ah, weaken their faith in God
and lead them astray from the straight path. Such Muslim women are often
accused of being westernised elites, agents of the West, anti-Islam, anti-Shari‘ah,
infidels, and women who have deviated from their faith.
This problem is compounded by the fact
that most Muslims have traditionally been educated to believe that only the ulama
(religious scholars) have the right and the expertise to talk about Islam. Thus,
very few Muslims, including human rights advocates, are willing to engage
publicly in a debate on religion. Some feel they do not have enough knowledge
to speak about Islam. Others take a strategic position not to engage with
religion, believing that religion is inherently unjust and patriarchal, and
that to engage with religion is to strengthen the power of the ulama and
to validate the legitimacy of religion in the public space.
This fear or reluctance to engage with religion has left the
field open to the most conservative forces within Islam to define, dominate and
set the parameters of what Islam is and what it is not. They defined for us
what Islam means, how to be a Muslim, how to be a ‘good’ Muslim woman, wife and
daughter and then prescribe laws and policies that keep women shackled as
second class Muslims and second class citizens.
I believe that to remain silent is to
cede the space and the discourse on Islam to those who believe men and women
are indeed unequal, that Muslims must live in an Islamic state and be governed
by Islamic laws that often discriminate against women and violate fundamental
liberties, and that there can only be one truth and one interpretation of Islam
that must be codified into law and any digression from it must be punished.
Today, many women’s rights activists
living in Muslim contexts have begun to recognise the strategic need to
understand Islam better, acquire the knowledge and courage not just to
challenge the ways Islam is used to discriminate against women, but to offer an
alternative vision that reconciles religion with human rights and women’s
rights. In countries and communities where Islam is used as a source of law and
public policy and shape culture and tradition, this is an imperative.
In Malaysia, the women’s rights group
Sisters in Islam has successfully created a public voice and public space for
debate on matters of religion. They have broken the hegemony of the religious
authorities and publicly challenged the ways Islam is used to justify laws, policies,
statements that discriminate against women, violate fundamental liberties, and
undermine the democratic processes.
Through letters to the editor, press
statements, public education, memorandums on law reform, and easy-to-read
publications, they have promoted an alternative discourse on an Islam that
upholds equality and justice and argued for the possibility and necessity for
reform.
In so doing, they have been accused of
insulting God, Islam, Islamic law. They have had scores of police reports lodged
against them, their book has been banned, and now a fatwa hangs over their
existence. They have been declared “deviant” and accused of subscribing to
religious “pluralism and liberalism”.
But strategically, Sisters in Islam
regard every attack against them as an opportunity to widen the public space
for debate and build support for the Islam of justice and equality that they
believe in. They are now taking to court the state religious authority that
issued the fatwa, challenging it on constitutional grounds, including freedom
of expression, freedom of association and freedom of religion.
Such public challenges raise awareness
among more and more Malaysians of the threat posed by ethno-religious
supremacists who fly the flag of race and religion to maintain their power and
control over an increasingly critical public.
Today, more and more groups are being
formed, more voices are heard to challenge the extremists, and putting pressure
on the government to take action to stop these attempts to undermine Malaysia’s
constitutional democracy.
At the international level, Musawah, the
global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, an initiative of
Sisters in Islam launched in 2009, is making waves. Its activities include
producing ground breaking feminist scholarship in Islam, courses on women’s
rights in Islam in different parts of the Muslim world and direct engagement
with the CEDAW process by challenging the ways governments use Islam to justify
their reservations and non-compliance with their treaty obligations and
offering the possibilities of reform towards equality and justice.
Obviously, there are not too many
leaders in the Muslim world with the courage or the will to deal with the
challenge posed by political Islamists and the ways Islam is used as a
political ideology. But Muslim women are saying enough is enough and they are
taking the lead in challenging the rising conservatism and extremism. It
is their hard earned rights and freedoms that are most affected, and it is they
who have to take the lead in challenging these Islamist forces that are trying
to turn back the clock.
In spite of risks to their own lives and
liberty, Muslim women today are asserting that if Islam is used as a source of
law and public policy, then everyone has a right to speak out on the religion
and the ways it is understood, practiced, codified into laws and enforced in
ways that often discriminate against them. Their experience of living Islam in
Muslim contexts give them the authority and the right to speak out, to shape,
define, and influence the meaning of what it means to be Muslim in the 21st
century.
Zainah Anwar is a founding member and former Executive Director of
Sisters in Islam and current Director and co-founder of Musawah.