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India – BMMA Organization Creates Social Revolution for Muslim Women’s Rights, Space, in India
The BMMA use a powerful combination to drive change: Quran & Constitution.
35,000 Muslim women are addressing the heart of Muslim patriarchy.
Women read the Quran at Jama Masjid in Delhi. BMMA has
begun a course to help women study to become Qazis. Photo:
Godong/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
MUSLIM FEMINISM - Aastha Tyagi – 28 May 2015
·
Two Muslim women, Noorjehan and Zakia, are seeding a silent
social revolution.
·
Their goal? Strike at the heart of Muslim patriarchy. Make space
for women.
·
Their tools? The Quran and the Constitution. A powerful
combination.
The
revolution
·
The first all-women Sharia courts in India.
·
A new Muslim Personal Law drafted by women. Drawn from the
Quran. With a woman's perspective.
·
A pushback on polygamy, child marriage, instant divorce,
triple-talaq, halala.
·
A course to create India's first women Qazis. So far: an all
male domain.
The
change agents
·
Noorjehan and Zakia, two women changed by the 1992 and 2002
riots.
·
The BMMA - Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan. A 35,000 strong
women's group across 11 states. Founded by Noorjehan and Zakia.
The
nuances
·
Noorjehan and Zakia consciously chose to keep the words
'Bharatiya' and 'Muslim' in the BMMA.
·
They wanted to assert a composite identity: secular and Muslim.
·
They use freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution to push-back on
male take-over of the Quran.
The good
fight
·
June 2012: women are banned from entering the iconic Haji Ali
Dargah.
·
November 2014: BMMA challenges the ban. Takes Haji Ali Trust to
court.
·
Sharia law they say cannot prevail over the Constitution.
·
The ban violates women's right to freedom of religion. Article
25 of the Constitution.
For years, the famous shrine of
Haji Ali, off the coast of Mumbai, was what such places are meant to be: a
spiritual lighthouse bringing in the faithful - men, women, children, no matter
what their belief or class.
Then, in June 2012, the Haji Ali
Dargah Trust, which runs the shrine, dimmed the light: it banned women from
entering the inner sanctum.
To justify the ban, the Trust claimed
Islam forbade women from such places of worship, that they didn't come dressed
appropriately; even that the ban was for their own safety.
But the clerics faced an unexpected
pushback. A Muslim woman's group refused to comply and filed a PIL in the Mumbai
High Court in November 2014.
Their faith, they countered, was
theirs to interpret and practice, not the Trust's or any cleric's. They called
the ban completely sexist and discriminatory. This unusual pushback was led by
two spirited women Noorjehan Safia Niaz, 43, and Zakia Soman, 50.
The issue is still being fought out
in court. "I've been entering the sanctum since I was a child and this
move is not just denying me my right to practice my way of worshipping, it is
also denying generations of women their personal experiences and memory of the
dargah," says Noorjehan.
"The responsibility of the
Trust is to manage the dargah premises, not decide who will enter it."
Their stand against the Haji Ali
Trust is just one of many path-breaking battles Noorjehan and Zakia have picked
to reclaim their faith from its self-appointed male guardians, and place Muslim
women squarely in the dialogue for change.
Their life is the stuff of cinema.
Inspirational. Dramatic. Transformative.
Faith and
reason
Noorjehan and Zakia co-founded the Bharatiya
Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) in 2007. This brought together a number of Muslim
women's groups from across the country. Today it has 35,000 members in 11
states, including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil
Nadu.
In the eight years since it was
established, the BMMA has become a powerful voice, challenging deep-rooted
notions of social and religious patriarchy in India.
In the process, they have unleashed
a range of Muslim women voices that would otherwise have remained unheard.
The BMMA are using a powerful
combination to drive change: the Quran and the Constitution
The aim, Noorjehan says, is to "bring
Muslim women out from 'victimhood mode' and make them active partakers in their
own progress".
The boldest - and most
landscape-altering - move the BMMA has made so far is to strike at the very
bastion of Muslim patriarchy: the Muslim Personal Law and Sharia courts.
BMMA's fight is against the
misplaced appropriation of the Quran by Muslim men. Photo:
Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images
From the beginning, a core part of
the BMMA's struggle has been to reclaim Islam for women. This is an exciting
departure from many feminist Muslim women in the West - like writer Irshad
Manjhi - who have seceded from the faith altogether.
Unlike them, BMMA activists believe
Islam to be an inherently compassionate and just religion, which gives Muslim
women rights and duties on par with men. Their fight, therefore, is against the
misinterpretations of men - and their misplaced appropriation of the Quran.
The BBMA's name itself is a
fascinating assertion of identity. They have consciously fused 'Bharatiya' and
'Muslim' to signify that their struggle has two powerful and simultaneous
allies: the Quran and the secular Constitution of the nation.
The BMMA has come up with a new
Muslim Personal Law drafted by women
The responsibility of preventing
abuse of their rights and freedoms, therefore, rests with both.
The movement, says Zakia, is built
strongly upon the principles of secularism while the Quran guides their
conduct. They have been deploying both tools to great effect to reform Muslim
Personal Law.
For instance, the BMMA has tried to
criminalise the institution of polygamy and make 18 the minimum age of marriage
for girls. Under current personal law, Muslim girls can marry when they reach
puberty.
"The Quran encourages men to
financially support widows and orphans but this has been grossly misused by
Muslim men to marry and exploit according to their whims and fancies," says
Noorjehan. "We are trying to restrict this as much as possible."
The BMMA also strongly advocates
abolishing the practice of triple-talaaq, which allows Muslim men to divorce a
woman by merely saying the world talaaq thrice.
Instead, it seeks the use of the
'talaq-e-ahsan' method, where at least four attempts at reconciliation are made
before a divorce is granted.
In April 2014, consolidating these
battles, the BMMA did something utterly game changing and radical: they drafted their own Muslim
Personal Law.
Drawn from the Quran; but from a
woman's perspective.
Where
justice is not blind
Amongst many other recommendations,
the draft Muslim Personal Law lays out the parameters for a model Nikah
Nama, or marriage contract, drawn from the Quran, in ways that serve
ideas of equality and dignity. It demands a compulsory registration of marriage
and suggests increasing the mehr, the money
given to a bride at the time of a wedding, to 100% of the groom's annual
income.
It also declares halala illegal. Halala
is a custom wherein a divorced wife must consummate her marriage
with a second husband before being able to re-marry the first.
In true democratic spirit, this
draft is now being reviewed by other women's groups, after which the BMMA will
seek to get it enforced through a constitutional amendment.
In the meantime, the BMMA has
opened up another radical space: the first Sharia courts run by women in India.
So far: an exclusively male domain.
These modest, one-room courts - one
each in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur - are held in BMMA offices on weekdays.
Women come to these courts with
their grievances and scholars, who are a part of the BMMA, dispense justice in
accordance with the Sharia Law. "We are fulfilling an important need for
women who do not have access to the Constitutional courts or who see the courts
run by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board as being biased against
women," says Noorjehan.
The Quran does not mandate that men
alone can interpret and carry out Quranic law, but women Qazis,
or judges, have been rare.
To correct this, starting April
2015, the BMMA has begun a course to help women study to become a Qazi.
The BMMA has 35,000 members
across 11 states. It is carving a new space for Muslim women
Twenty girls from across India have
been selected for this. They will be trained by professionals and awarded a
recognised degree at the end of the course. "An intervention like this is
exciting," says Noorjehan, "Muslim women will have the opportunity to
feel closer to and reclaim their religion in their own way."
Apart from drawing strength from
the women they meet during their work, Zakia says she and Noorjehan are
inspired by the work of Islamic feminists like Amina Wadud from America, Ziba
Mir-Hosseini, a British-Iranian, Riffat Hassan, a Paksitani-American, and many
others.
"There is no monolith
definition of being a Muslim or a woman," says Zakia. "Similarly,
there is definitely no monolith definition of being a feminist. In that sense,
yes, in our beliefs, we are feminist."
Turning
points: Noorjehan's story
These are not easy positions for
Noorjehan and Zakia - or any of the other BMMA activists - to hold.
To understand the true arc of their
journey, one has to recall the entrenched discrimination Muslims face as a
community.
The 2005 Justice Rajendra Sachar
Report, tasked by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to examine the socio-economic
condition of Muslims, had showed that Muslims are among the most marginalised
communities in India.
The percentage of literate Muslims
is 59.15%, far below the national average of 65.1%. The condition of Muslim
women is even more alarming: no more than a fourth of them in rural areas and
just 18% in urban areas get work.
Noorjehan understands such
disadvantage. It has shaped her understanding of the condition of fellow women
as well as the ways in which her religion is interpreted and practised.
Noorjehan was born in Mumbai and studied at Wilson College, a liberal school.
Her religious education was received at home.
Growing up, she experienced Islam
as an 'accommodating, enabling' force. The idea that her identity as a Muslim
woman could be used to target and oppress her was incomprehensible.
Time served a reality check.
Noorjehan had just graduated from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and
started working for YUVA, a non-governmental organisation, when Sangh Parivar
mobs tore down the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992, and threw India into a
cauldron of communal violence.
The riots reached Noorjehan's
doorstep as well. It was a period of 'extreme despair'. Noorjehan's family was
forced to flee their home and wander about for four months. The experience
changed her.
After the riots ended, she
volunteered to do relief work in Jogeshwari, a grievously affected Muslim
suburb in Mumbai.
It was here that she saw the full
impact of the riots for the first time. Men killed in large numbers; women left
to fend for their families, without the tools necessary.
"That was a turning
point," says Noorjehan.
It was in Jogeshwari that Noorjehan
also became acutely aware of the relationship between her community and the
State. The 1992-93 riots turned Mumbai from a heterogeneous metropolis into a
city where Muslims were being forced to live in poor, ghettoised communities -
Mumbra, Bhendi Bazaar, Bharat Nagar, Navpada, Kurla.
This segregation bred insecurity
among Hindus and Muslims alike, and the state responded with callous withdrawal.
"When you are in a ghetto, the state forgets you," says Noorjehan. "All
government machinery vanishes."
The biggest impact of this
insecurity, she says, was the way it manifested itself in the lives of women.
That's when the need to empower
Muslim women hit home most forcefully.
Personal
triggers: Zakia's story
In the neighbouring state of
Gujarat, Zakia Soman had her own rite of passage. In a similar inferno.
During the riots of 2002, she and
her then 13-year-old son had to flee their home in Ahmedabad and relocate to a
Muslim ghetto in the outskirts.
As stories of burnings, lootings
and destruction hung heavily in the air, the scale of volatility shook Zakia.
The media reported widely on how
the local police was complicit in the carnage. "Why were the police
chasing us and not the mischief makers?" she asks. It was a harsh lesson
in citizenship.
Noorjehan and Zakia's life is the
stuff of cinema. Inspirational. Dramatic. Transformative
Once the riots subsided, Zakia
began to visit camps to help with the rehabilitation programme.
The scale of suffering there was a
shock.
"Afsana, a young mother of
two, lost her husband because he opted to stay home and look after their
property when the riots started," Zakia says. "She was left alive and
stranded." Another survivor, Zubeida, fled her home only to learn later
that her husband had been killed by a mob. She refused to believe this for
months as she never got to see or bury his body.
Despite her trauma, Afsana wanted
justice. "She wanted to use official means to get the guilty punished.
Everyone knew who the guilty were," Zakia recalls.
Zubeida, on the other hand, had a
long ordeal making rounds at police stations looking for information about her
husband.
Zakia was struck by how these
women, and many others, continued their fight, despite living in dismal,
overcrowded camps that lacked any facilities or privacy.
"Many of these women came from
disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and did not know how the State
machinery works. Their persistence was inspirational," Zakia says.
In retrospect, she feels, these
incidents went to the root of her consciousness and reshaped her. Inspired by
the tenacity of these women, she left her abusive husband and started a new
life with her son.
As the biases of the police and
government began to emerge in the aftermath of the riots, Zakia says she truly
understood for the first time what it was to be "a Muslim woman, and part
of a minority".
As with Noorjehan, the idea of
helping Muslim women find agency was reinforced for Zakia by the riots.
Together
we stand: BMMA impacts
Until 2007, Noorjehan and Zakia had
been working separately for similar goals.
Chance brought them together at a
public meeting in Mumbai. Several meetings later, the BMMA was born.
"When we were working
separately, it was a big struggle, but we could see how we were changing
things," says Zakia. "Though we are from different backgrounds, we
decided to come together on the ground that we are all secular, Muslim women.
That's how we thought of forging a national voice."
The impact has been electric.
Fareen Muzammil Sheikh, a BMMA block leader in the Naupada area of Mumbai,
holds vocational training workshops for young girls.
'I told the Shiv Sena, where were
they when my husband was beating me?' says Bharti Shetty, a BMMA activist
Through her, ration cards have been
given to women in the area; a medical camp has been set up.
"Watching me, my husband too
has formed a group to encourage dialogue about Islam, says Fareen excitedly. "My
association with the BMMA has had a very positive impact on him."
Bharti Shetty is another telling
story:
Watch an extended conversation with
the women here.
Membership to the BMMA is not
barred for Hindus. Bharti, a programme coordinator from Bandra East, works
closely with women and police stations to help them interface better.
Inevitably, this drew the attention
of the local Shiv Sena unit, who threatened her husband.
"I told my husband to tell the
Shiv Sena pracharaks to speak to me directly," says Bharti spiritedly. "I
refused to withdraw from the BMMA. I told them, so what if I am a Hindu and
they are Muslims? Where was the Shiv Sena when my husband was beating me and my
kids had nothing to eat?
"It's these women who helped
me find my feet and I'm going to stick by them."
The Shiv Sena has not bothered her
since.
One of the 20 chosen for the course
to become a woman Qazis, Neha Sheikh, 19, is another testimony to the power of
the BMMA. She sits watching a woman sharia court adjudicate on a hot April day.
"This will quench my curiosity about why girls have not been in such
positions so far. I hope I become a Qazi one day. I will be able to conduct
weddings and make my parents proud," she says.
The
matrix effect
The BMMA network has four core
areas of work: law, security, employment and education.
Vocational training is a
particularly key initiative. Apart from creating leadership skills, they have
also enabled micro-credit programmes.
For example, through the Began
Rokeya Gas Oven Micro-Credit scheme in West Bengal, 200 zari artisans were
given ovens so they could spend more time working, thus uplifting themselves
economically.
The BMMA has set up a course to
create India's first women Qazis: so far an all male domain
In Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and
Madhya Pradesh, women are being taught how to use a computer, cook, repair home
appliances and sew. Others are taught about contraception and how to open bank
accounts.
Slowly, surely, a positive
revolution is being seeded.
"Some people use poverty as an
excuse to hinder their daughter's mobility. We want to make sure girls at least
get a chance to study and be economically independent. We speak to parents and
guardians personally and make sure we follow-up on the progress they have
made", says Khatoon Sheikh, the BMMA's Maharashtra state convener.
Walking
strong: the Quran and the Constitution
In the PIL before the Mumbai High
Court, the BMMA has argued that excluding women from the Haji Ali Dargah
amounts to gender discrimination and that Sharia law cannot prevail over the
Indian Constitution.
The restriction, their petition
also says, 'emanates from a very conservative and extremist Salafi ideology'.
This is a misinterpretation of the Quran. Further, they argue, women's right to
offer prayers in the sanctum is protected under Article 25 of the Constitution,
which guarantees the right to freedom of religion.
The legal verdict on the Haji Ali
case may not be in yet, but the combined moral weight of the BMMA's argument is
hard to ignore.
They have hit upon a winning
combination: the Quran and the Constitution.
That's bound to redefine a significant cultural landscape.