WUNRN
Gender Equality
& Islam: What Are the Final Frontiers in the Muslim World?
25 March 2015 —The Asian Development Bank marks
International Women's Day and the 20th Anniversary of the Beijing Platform for
Action with the Distinguished Gender Month Speaker Address, delivered by Dr.
Zainah Anwar, a founding member and Former Executive Director of Sisters in Islam (SIS), and the current
Director of Musawah,
the SIS-initiated Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim
Family.
By Gela Velasquez of WEAct 1325 Secretariat
Dr. Zainah Anwar, like many other Muslim feminists
from around the world, works hard to show that Islam and gender equality are
compatible. In her speech, she gave emphasis to the violence, injustice,
cruelty, and discrimination experienced by women, justified in the name of
Islam, throughout the Muslim world. She similarly highlighted the call for
locating gender equality and human rights within the framework of Islam,
allowing millions of women to embrace both their religion and gender equality,
without forgoing their identities. Dr. Anwar also addressed some of the
challenges ahead, based on local and international experiences, while exploring
the final frontiers in the Muslim world for advancing gender equality.
At the beginning of her address, Dr. Zainah Anwar
highlighted specific questions that confront women's groups all over the Muslim
world and in the minority Muslim context today: If God is just, if Sharia Law
is supposed to bring about justice then why do so many laws and policies made
in name of Islam lead to injustice and discrimination against women? This
question has been in line with the struggle women, particularly in the Muslim
world, experience to end discrimination against them and face the challenge of
the patriarchy in government and in society in general. While women experience
violence, injustice, cruelty, and discrimination, the religious authorities and
the most conservative forces within Islam dictate that these are justified
according to the laws of Islam. These religious authorities are obviously
unsurpassed in their knowledge and interpretative skills and have been
traditionally educated to believe that their interpretation of Islam, being
inherently unjust and patriarchal, is definite and eternal.
Muslim women, given the gender inequality experienced
in their religion and after reading the Koran for themselves, have been taking
the lead to make their voices heard. They have been advocating to end injustice
and inequality and lead the way to define how the Muslim religion is understood
and practiced. After reading the Koran, they discover the ethical message of
equality and justice in Islam and began to question why the concept of equality
is silent in the extrajudicial and juristic text of the religion, as well as
the method in which such verses are used in the formulation of laws and policies,
and the decision making process in the Muslim tradition. But of course bringing
change is never easy, they realize that those who have benefited from the
status quo are resistant to change and used all kinds of tactics to demonize
and delegitimize the voice of change. Very often, Muslim women who demand
justice and reform are told this is God’s Law and therefore not open to
negotiations and change. To challenge/demand reform will supposedly go against
the Sharia Law and relevant traditions of Islam.
One particular example stated were the Musawah women,
who after reading the Koran for themselves, believe that these principles and
ideals of equality and justice are intrinsic in the teachings of Koran and are
upheld in universal human rights principles.
The Musawah women give importance to Article I of the
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that “All
human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed
with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of
brotherhood.” On a similar manner, they became aware of the numerous verses in
the Koran that provide for an ethical version of Islam, advocating the absolute
moral and spiritual equality of women and men. They were enlightened by the
verses in the Koran that talk about the common and identical spiritual and
moral obligations placed on all individuals regardless of sex; verses that talk
about the equal relationship between men and women in Islam - being each
other’s friend and guardians.
Moreover, there are verses in the Koran stating both
men and women to enjoy what is just and forbid what is evil; to observe regular
prayers; to pay their tariffs; to obey God and his messenger and that they will
both be equally rewarded. These verses in the Koran are unequivocally
egalitarian in spirit and substance and reflect the Koranic view on the
relationship between men and women. This egalitarian existence also extends to
human biology, verses on creation talk about the equality of creation: men and
women are created equal – neither one comes before the other; one is not
superior compared to the other nor a derivative of the other. This means that
in God’s creation of human beings, no priority or superiority is accorded to
either men or women. It is this ethical voice of the Koran which insistently
enjoins equality for all individuals that has been largely absent in the body
of political and legal thought in Islam today.
Another would be the experiences of the SIS co-founded
by Dr. Anwar in 1987. Like many other women’s groups, it is the first hand
experience of injustice, oppression and ill treatment of women that mobilized
feminists to get together to address their concerns. The women of SIS
experienced difficulties in exercising their rights in the context of the
Islamic family law (difficulties in getting a divorce, sharing marital assets,
custody and guardianship of their children, etc.). On a similar manner, the
women of SIS felt powerless when they had to suffer in the face of silence as
advised by the religious authorities - women were often told that they are
inferior to men; that men have the right to beat their wives; that women must
obey their husbands; and women must grant men their God given right to have
two, three, or four wives and therefore it is a sin for a woman to deny him
that right.
The above mentioned occurrences in the lives of the
SIS women similarly led them to go back to the Koran. Through such, the women
had the opportunity to read the text and discover words, messages and meanings
that were never exposed in all the traditional education on Islam. As feminists
and activists, SIS women began to assert and claim their right to have their
voices heard in the public sphere and intervene in the decision making process
especially on matters of religion. Through letters, publications, press
conferences and quite a number of seminars, the SIS women took positions on
contentious issues such as equal rights, domestic violence, freedom of
expression, and freedom of religion, among others.
By advocating for their rights, and creating a space
to speak out in public or in Islam, the women activists, whether from Musawa or
SIS and other relevant groups, were often criticized by conservative scholars,
Islamic activists and other authorities. The attacks, challenges and
condemnations faced usually take three forms, namely:
1. Critics undermine women’s rights to and legitimacy to
speak on Islam by questioning their credentials – of not having been
traditionally educated in religious schools
2. Critics often accuse women of diverging from their
faith by doubting the infallibility of God and His messages.
3. Critics contend that is dangerous to offer alternative
opinions and interpretations of the religion as this would confuse the
religious leaders and Muslim community and lead to disunity. They say that
there can only be one interpretation to be decided by the religious authorities
and all citizens must abide by that interpretation.
Given the above-mentioned facts and challenges, Dr.
Anwar pointed out that the human efforts in interpreting the Koran, mostly by
religious authorities, has always led to diverse/different opinions within the
Islamic tradition from the very start, thus resulting to emergence of different
schools of law and interpretations. Dr. Anwar mentions that it is precisely
because of this wealth in diversity that Islam survived and flourished in
different cultures and societies. And yet in many societies today there are
those who condemn those who offer alternative views on the traditional Islamic
beliefs.
On a final note, Dr. Anwar’s address seeks to
accentuate that a human understanding of the word of God/Allah is a human
construct that is fallible and changeable. Therefore the role of human
experience and intellect in the pursuit of the divine will lead to the
production of the Islamic knowledge and Islamic laws that cannot be regarded as
God’s law- they can change, be changed, criticized, refined and redefined.
Unfortunately, however, the traditional Islamic education has brought about a
blind/biased understanding and interpretation of the relevant Islamic laws.
This rationale is based on the belief that the great scholars of the classical
period of Islam who lived closer to the time of the prophet were unsurpassed in
their knowledge and interpretative skills. Dr. Anwar highlighted that one of
the fundamental challenges Muslim communities face today is on reconciling the
tenets of their faith to the challenge of modernity: how to deal with the
neo-universal morality of democracy in human rights and women’s rights and
defining Islam in the dominant ethical paradigm of the modern world.
At the end of the day, Dr. Anwar hopes that change in
the interpretative aspects of Islamic laws can come from top in countries where
Islam is used as a source of law and public policy. She believes that every
citizen: Muslim or non-Muslim, expert or non-expert, has a right to speak on
matters of religion and how religion can impact their lives and rights. She
similarly highlighted the role played by the civil society, human and women’s
rights activists, and public intellectuals in bringing about change in terms of
public rule in many Muslim societies