On Christiantiy, Judaism, Islam and Sexism.
Part 2: On Islam and Sexism, Hatred of the Female, Rape, and the complete subjugation of Women in Islamic Society.
Table of Contents:
- The Veil
- Case Histories, The Women of Pakistan
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Segment from the book "Why I am not a Muslim", by Ibn Warraq. pg. 314-321.
The Veil
The Arabic word "hijab" is sometimes translated as veil, but it can signify anything that prevents something from being seena screen, a curtain, or even a wall and the hymen. The root of the verb "hajaba" means "to hide." By extension, hijab is used to mean something that separates, demarcates a limit, establishes a barrier. Finally, hijab has the sense of a moral interdiction. The Koran also uses two other words, "djilbah" and "khibar." The former is likewise translated as "veil," but also as "outer garment" and even "cloak." "Khibar" is similarly translated as "veil," but also as "shawl." In this philological aside, we may also mention the names of other garments that are used to cover Muslim woman in part or entirely throughout the Islamic world. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia we find haik, safsari, akhnif, and adjar. In Egypt, Israel, Syria, Iraq, and among the Bedouins, we find abaya, tarna, izar, milhafa, khabara, chambar, niqab, litham, and bourqou; in Iran, bourda, tchador, pitcha, and rouband; in Turkey, yatchmek, yalek, harmaniya, and entari; in India and Pakistan, burka.
In the struggle for the liberation of the Muslim woman the veil has become a symbol of her servitude. Thus in 1923 the President of the Egyptian Feminist Union, Ms. Houda Cha'araoui, and her colleagues defiantly threw their veils into the sea. Similarly in 1927 there was a campaign of "de-hijabization" in communist Turkestan. Not less than 87,000 Uzbek women publicly repudiated their "black cowls", though not before 300 of their sisters had been killed by the male heads of the Muslim families for betraying Islam. In 1928, at the independence celebrations, the Shah of Afghanistan ordered his wife to "unveil" herself in public.
Following the public scandal, the shah was obliged to backtrack and cancel his projects for the emancipation of women. He himself was obliged to abdicate.
In 1936 Reza Shah of Iran forbade the tchador by a special decree. Obviously the people were not ready to break with tradition and so after mass protests in 1941 he also had to retreat and abrogate the law.
The hijab was imposed by the Koran (see suras 33.53, 33.59, and 33.32 33) and also:
- 24.30-31. Enjoin believing women to turn their eyes away from temptation and to preserve their chastity; to cover their adornmentsexcept such as are normally displayed;to draw their veils over their bosoms and not to reveal their finery except to their husbands.
The veil and the injunction to Muslim women to stay at home came with Islam; for it is clear, as I have already indicated, that Bedouin women enjoyed considerable freedom, accompanied their husbands on long marches and made themselves indispensable in the camps. But all this was to change as Islam became more and more an urban phenomenon and as it came into contact with other more developed civilizations whose customs the Muslims adopted. The veil was adopted by the Arabs from the Persians, and the woman's obligation to stay closed in at home was a tradition copied from the Byzantines, who in turn had adopted an ancient Greek custom. Of course, Muslim theologians have a totally different explanation of the origin of the hijab. According to them it was imposed on women by God to please one person, i.e., Omar ibn al-Khallab, They refer to a tradition that recounts that Omar one day said to the Prophet: "The pious and the profligate have easy access to your house and see your wives. Why don't you order the mothers of all believers to cover themselves?" And Muhammad received the revelations quoted earlier. According to another version, attributed to Aisha, Omar accidently touched her hand and excused himself by saying that had he the power no one would steal a glance at her. Yet another rendition is recounted by historian al-Tabari. The real function of the hijab is to cover up the awra which we have no right to see. By "awra" is meant "the shameful parts of the body and those parts we hide out of dignity and pride. As for women, they are entirely awra."598 According to Muslim jurists, awra for men consists of those parts between the navel and the kneesand they are concealed in all cases except for exposure to his wives and concubines. No one seems to agree on women's awra. According to Hanefites, the woman can uncover her face and hands, only so long as this does not lead to or provoke temptation, seduction, or discord. For the other three Sunnite sects a woman can only uncover her face and hands in cases of emergencythe need for medical attention, for example.
The liberal attitude of the Hanefites is only apparent and not real5 9 9in reality, a woman has only to be smiling and pretty for the ulamas to strictly reimpose the veil. Even old women are advised to remain covered. Koran 24.60 says, "It shall be no offence for old spinsters who have no hope of marriage to discard their cloaks without revealing their adornments. Better if they do not discard them." Those wishing to keep women's faces and hands uncovered rely on the following hadith recounted by Aisha, the Prophet's wife: "Asma, the daughter of Abu Bakr [and the sister of Aisha] was one day in front of the Prophet without a veil. The Prophet said to her'Asma, a grown woman should only show this.' " And He showed her face and her hands.
Meanwhile various Muslim experts contradict each other on this point. Some insist that even a woman's heels should be well-hidden, citing an appropriate hadith to back up their arguments. Not only is it a symbol of women's servitude but also a symbol of the woman's total lack of trust in the father, the brother, or the husband; and at the same time the male possessiveness: for the brother and the father she is the merchandise that must not be shop soiled; and for the husband she is an object to be used at home and then carefully wrapped and put away, lest another covet her. The question of hijab continues to play an important role in modern debate and is of more than academic importance. A New York Times reporter described the situation in April 1992 in Iran: The most visible battle for women's rights is still fought through their wardrobes.
In the 13-year revolution, perhaps no other issue has been debated with such fury as the rules for what constitutes "good hejab" or head covering. "Research proved female hair had a kind of radiance" that might tempt men, Iran's first president under the revolution, Abol-Hassan Banisadr, said in the early days of the Islamic republic. In the years that followed, women were insulted, arrested, fined and even lashed for bad hejab. . . . After the all-encompassing chador, held in place with one's hand or one's teeth, the second most acceptable garment is the rappoush [a loose, long garment] worn with a scarf.
Do women have the right to leave their houses?600 Hijab also applies to the "hiding" of women behind the walls of her house. The Koran is clear on this point in sura 33.33, ordering the wives of the Prophet to stay in their homes. For reformists this only applies to the wives of the Prophet; for conservatives it applies to all Muslim women, Ghawji, a conservative, has systematically set out under what conditions a woman can leave her house, giving copious quotes from the Koran and the hadiths.
1. She may leave only in case of a real need.
2. The exit must be authorized by her husband or legal guardian.
3. She must be well-covered, including her face, to avoid tempting any men who might be around; she must move with her head bowed down looking neither left nor right. (Koran 24.31).
4. She must not put on perfume. The Prophet has said: "Any woman who puts on perfume and passes in front of men is a fornicator."
5. She must not walk in the middle of the road among men. The Prophet on noticing the confusion on leaving a mosque, said: "You women do not have the right to walk amongst menstick to the sides."
6. She must walk in a chaste and modest manner (sura, 24.31).
7. When talking to a stranger, her voice must remain normal (sura 33.32).
8. If inside a shop or an office, she must avoid being left alone behind a closed door with a man. The Prophet has said: "There can never be a tete-a-tete between a man and a woman without the devil interfering and doing his worst.
9. She must never shake the hand of a man.
10. Even at a female friend's house, she must not discard any clothes covering her in case there is a man hiding in the house. The Prophet has said:
"Any woman who takes off her cloak in other than her own house or the house of her husband is rending apart the envelope that protects her in front of God."
11. The wife must not go beyond a thirty-kilometer limit without being
accompanied by her husband or a relative.
12. A woman must never attempt to imitate a man.
Jurists have elaborated in precise detail what a woman who does leave the
house should wear. She can wear anything she likes as long as it conforms to
the following conditions:
1. Her dress must cover the entire body except the face and hands.
2. The dress must not be too fine or elaborate.
3. It must be of thick material and not transparent.
4. It must not cling to her body tightly; it should be loose.
5. It must not be perfumed.
6. It must not resemble any kind of man's wear.
7. It must not resemble the clothes of unbelievers.
8. It must not be "luxurious" or glamorous or of too great a value.
These jurists cite hadiths forbidding women to put on perfume, to wear a wig, to put on make up, or otherwise to interfere with nature. These same authors who condemn make-up for interfering with divine creation see no contradiction in demanding the excision of the clitoris, which is seen as a pious act to be encouraged. According to a famous hadith, if you "Leave the woman without clothes, they will remain at home."
Thanks to the courageous efforts of certain reformists, women at last did win the right to education. Unable to stem the tide of the feminist movement, and faced with a fait accompli, the conservatives now claimed Islam had never denied women this right, and that it was the duty of every Muslim to educate himself or herself. The University of al-Azhar, a bastion of male privilege, opened its doors to women in 1961. These claims on behalf of Islam are of course false,601 Traditions discouraging or prohibiting the education of women are numerous: "Prevent them from writing;" "Do not add an evil to unhappiness" are the norm. Indeed if Islam had sincerely approved of educating women, why was it that women had remained illiterate and ignorant for so many centuries? If she is to stay at home, if she is forbidden to talk to strange men, how will she acquire her learning? If her family gives her permission to learn, what will she be allowed to study? Essentially, most modern Muslim thinkers propose religious education for women, with a few courses on sewing, knitting, and looking after the house.
These thinkers base their arguments on the hadith where the Prophet said, "Do not teach women writing; teach them spinning and the sura 'The Night' (al-Nur)." The message is clearshe must not overstep her domestic domain. She was created by God to be a wife and mother; hence, any venture into pure chemistry, astronomy, or geometry is against her nature, her needs, and the needs of her family.
It should be apparent by now6 0 2 that by going to work Muslim women would automatically upset a great many Islamic laws governing women and the family. In Islam only men work, earn money, spend it, and are responsible for their wives' maintenanceall of which give men legitimate, divinely sanctioned authority over their wives. Some apparently reformist thinkers insist that every Muslim woman has the right to work. But on closer examination, we see that by "work," these thinkers mean something very limited: teachers of girls, nurses looking after only women, doctors for women. According to the learned doctors, she can do any kind of job except (1) those which are incompatible with her faithsuch as cleaning drains, fishing in lakes or rivers; (2) those that are incompatible with her feminine natureticket inspector, police officer, dancer; (3) those which she is incapable of handling physically, for example, factory work; (4) those that demand the use of a horse or a bicycle; (5) and, of course, those that require the use of reasonshe cannot be a judge or imam. Other thinkers forbid women the job of actress, air hostess, or saleswoman. The arguments most frequently used to limit women's work are (1) a woman's nature; she was made by nature to stay at home, look after her husband's sexual demands, and raise children; (2) her limited reasoning powers; and (3) her psychological weakness because of menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth.
These thinkers are afraid that as soon as a woman leaves her husband's house, she will fall into sin. They reduce all contact between men and women to sex. So that work that might be seen as a confirmation of woman's being, a fulfilment of her person, of her human dignity, of her personal freedom, is in the eyes of the Muslim thinkers nothing but a degradation of her dignity and honor. Despite all the obstacles put in front of them, Muslim women have managed to leave their households, have acquired educations, have started to work, and forge careers for themselves; thus, they have laid claims to their rights as consonant with their new position in society. For example, in 1952 Egyptian feminists assembled their forces and claimed the right to vote and the right to become members of Parliament. The ulamas of the University of al-Azhar rallied their forces and in June 1952 promulgated a fatwa liberally sprinkled with quotes from the Koran and the hadiths that demonstrated that Islam condemned any attempt by women to aspire to any post as a member of Parliament. The learned doctors further pointed out that6 0 3 (1) women did not possess enough intellectual force; (2) women, because of their femininity, are exposed to dangers that could lead them to abandon reason and propriety; (3) according to Abu Bakr, when the Prophet heard that the Persians had made the daughter of Chosroes their queen he exclaimed: "Never will a people who trust their affairs to a woman succeed"; (4) failure inevitably follows on the appointment of a woman to a public post; (5) Islamic law accords to a woman's testimony only half the weight of a man's; (6) according to the Koran "men decide for women in view of the fact that God has given preference to the former over the latter"; (7) God obliges men to be present at the mosque on Fridays and to conduct the holy war but not women; and (8) public posts were attributed by Islamic law only to men fulfilling certain conditions.
For all these reasons the learned doctors decided that Islamic law forbade women to assume any posts of public responsibility and in particular the post of member of Parliament. Happily, despite the efforts of the ulamas, Egyptian women got the vote in 1956. In Syria, women got the vote in 1949, again despite the obstacles put in their path by the ulamas.
Islam explicitly forbids certain professions to women: head of state, head of the armed forces, imam, and judge.
The system of guardianship in Islam6 0 4 further limits the rights of women. According to the Malekites, Shafi'ites, and Hanbalites, even a woman of legal age cannot conclude her own marriage contract on her own. Her legal guardian alone has this right. According to the Hanfites, a woman can conclude her own marriage but with the agreement of her guardian. Of course, the guardian must be male and Muslim. If a woman is a virgin, irrespective of age, her guardian can force her to marry someone of his choice, according to the Malekites, Shafi'ites, and Hanbalites. Even the theoretical right to choose her husband accorded her by the Hanfites turns out to be illusory. Theoretically, on reaching puberty woman can no longer be forced to marry against her will; but since a majority of girls are forced to marry before they reach puberty, the right to choose remains a fiction. Even assuming she reaches puberty, under the Hanfites she simply has the right to say "Yes" or "No" to the person picked by her guardian.
There is no question of her going out and choosing her own husband. It is the legal guardian who will choose for her, and characteristically when making his inquiries, the desirable qualities of the husband will be described in a few lines whereas the desirable qualities of the wife will be explained in a text twelve times longer.
In any case, when and how could a Muslim woman possibly go out and meet her Prince Charming in view of all the constraints imposed on her by Islam that we have described in this chapterforbidden to leave the house, forbidden to talk to men? Child marriages continue to be practiced, and the fact that the Prophet himself married Aisha when she was only nine and he was fifty-three encourages Muslim society to continue with this iniquitous custom. As Bousquet, writing in the 1950s, noticed, in North Africa generally and in Algeria particularly, even after a century of French rule, consummation of marriages with young girls continues, often resulting in serious accidents, and sometimes death.
In all cases a Muslim woman is not permitted to marry a non-Muslim. All Muslim males can at any moment separate themselves from their wives, can repudiate their wives without formality, without explanations, and without compensation.
It is enough for the husband to pronounce the phrase "You are divorced" and it is done. The divorce is revocable for up to a period of three months. If the husband pronounces "You are divorced" three times, then the divorce is definitive. In the latter case the divorced wife cannot return to her husband until she has been married, "enjoyed," and divorced by another husband.
Divorce depends entirely on the will and caprice of the husbandhe may divorce his wife without any misbehavior on her part, or without assigning any cause. The mother has the right to keep custody of the children, but as soon as she decides to remarry, she automatically loses her right to her children from the previous marriage. In the case where the husband has the custody of children, if he remarries he does not lose this right to keep his children. Thus the woman is faced with the choice of remarrying and losing custody of her children or keeping her children and not marrying. This of course leads to total insecurity for the women. Divorce is very frequent in Arab countries; instead of keeping four wives at the same timewhich is rather expensivea man simply changes his wife several times as recommended by the great al-Ghazali. If a woman asks a man for a divorce, he may agree if he is paid or compensated in some way. In such a case she is not entitled to the repayment of her dowry. The Koran sanctions such a dissolution: 2.229. "If ye fear that they cannot observe the ordinance of God, then no blame shall attach to either of you for what the wife shall herself give for her redemption."
An annulment of a marriage means a woman loses the right to the dowry and must give back what she has already received. Divorced women do have the right to remarry but "must wait keeping themselves from men, three menstrual courses" (2.228).
Finally, I shall end with a revised list of what a woman has to suffer under Islam because of her misdemeanors in the Garden of Eden. She is forbidden to (1) be a head of state; (2) be a judge; (3) be an imam; (4) be a guardian; (5) leave her house without permission of her guardian or husband; (6) have a tete-a-tete with a strange man; (7) shake a man's hand; (8) put on makeup or perfume outside the house; (9) uncover her face for fear of "temptation"; (10) travel alone; (11) inherit the same amount as a manshe must make do with half; (12) bear witness in cases of hudud (see page 310) and accept that her testimony is worth only half that of a man; (13) perform the religious rituals when menstruating; (14) choose where she will live before she is ugly or old; (15) marry without permission from her guardian; (16) marry a non-Muslim; and (17) divorce her spouse.
The measure of a society's degree of civilization is the position it accords to women, in which case Islam fares very badly indeed. In the words of the great John Stuart Mill, "I am convinced that social arrangements which subordinate one sex to the other by law are bad in themselves and form one of the principal obstacles which oppose human progress; I am convinced that they should give place to a perfect equality."
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Segment from the book "Why I am not a Muslim" by Ibn Warraq. pg. 321- 327.
Case Histories: The Women of Pakistan
"To be a woman in Pakistan is a terrible thing."
- Pakistani woman, suspended from her job in a hotel in 1990 for shaking hands with a man.605
"I tell you, this country is being sodomized by religion."
- Pakistani businessman, ex-air force officer.606
Let these women be warned. We will tear them to pieces. We will give them such terrible punishments that no one in future will dare to raise a voice against Islam.
- Pakistani mulla (priest) addressing the dissenting women of Rawalpindi.607
Today, in Pakistan, respect for women no longer exists, and crimes against them have increased dramatically. They claim to have "Islamized" us. How can you Islamize people who are already Muslim? Ever since Zia gave power to the mullahs, it seems as though every man feels he can get hold of any female and tear her apart.
- Ms Farkander Iqbal, Deputy Police Superintendent, Lahore, Pakistan.608
One of the ironies of the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as a homeland for the Muslims of India, is that its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was not at all religious. In fact, in today's Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Jinnah would very probably be flogged in public: during his years in England, Jinnah had developed a decidedly un-Islamic taste for whiskey, and even pork. It is also now clear that Jinnah envisaged a basically secular state; he said in one of his last
major speeches:
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. . . . You may belong to any religion or caste or creedthat has nothing to do with the business of the state [my emphasis]. , . . We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are citizens and equal citizens of one state. . . . Now, I think we should keep in front of us our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual [my emphasis], but in the political sense as citizens of the State.609
When asked by a journalist in July 1947 if Pakistan would be a religious state, Jinnah replied, "You are asking a question that is absurd. I do not know what a theocratic state means." Why, in that case, had Pakistan been deemed necessary? M. J. Akbar has argued convincingly that Pakistan was not demanded by the Muslim masses of India; it was created by an alliance of the clergy (mullas) and powerful landlords. "While the landlords and capitalists allowed the clergy to make Pakistan a religious state, the clergy allowed the landlords guaranteed property rights and the capitalists unbridled control over the economy.
Theocracy and landlordism/capitalism are the two pillars of Pakistan and BanglaDesh."610
After Jinnah's untimely death in 1948, the Prime Minister Ltaquat Ali Khan prepared a constitution that was also essentially secular. This was not at all acceptable to the mullas, who began foaming at the mouth at the very mention of democracy. Under pressure from them, the democratic constitution was withdrawn. Then in 1951, Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated by an unknown gunman, who many believe was paid by the mullas.
In 1971, after years of military rule, Zulfikar A l i Bhutto took over as martial law administrator and, in 1972, as prime minister. Though Bhutto was also essentially secular minded, he was no democrat. He also made overtures to the mullas; banned gambling and alcohol, despite his own well-known taste for whiskey; and declared that the Ahmadi sect was non-Muslim. In 1977, General Zia al- Haq took over in a military coup declaring that the process of Islamization was not going fast enough. The mullas had finally got someone who was prepared to listen to them.
Zia imposed martial law, total press censorship, and began creating a theocratic state, believing that Pakistan ought to have "the spirit of Islam." He banned women from athletic contests and even enforced the Muslim fast during the month of Ramadan at gunpoint. He openly admitted that there was a contradiction between Islam and democracy. Zia introduced Islamic laws that discriminated against women. The most notorious of these laws were the Zina and Hudud Ordinances that called for the Islamic punishments of the amputation of hands for stealing and stoning to death for married people found guilty of illicit sex. The term "zina" included adultery, fornication, and rape, and even prostitution. Fornication was punished with a maximum of a hundred lashes administered in public and ten years' imprisonment.
In practice, these laws protect rapists, for a woman who has been raped often finds herself charged with adultery or fornication. To prove zina, four Muslim adult males of good repute must be present to testify that sexual penetration has taken place. Furthermore, in keeping with good Islamic practice, these laws value the testimony of men over women. The combined effect of these laws is that it is impossible for a woman to bring a successful charge of rape against a man; instead, she herself, the victim, finds herself charged with illicit sexual intercourse, while the rapist goes free. If the rape results in a pregnancy, this is automatically taken as an admission that adultery or fornication has taken place with the woman's consent rather than that rape has occurred. Here are some sample cases.611
In a town in the northern province of Punjab, a woman and her two daughters were stripped naked, beaten, and gang-raped in public, but the police declined to pursue the case.
A thirteen-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped by a "family friend." When her father brought a case against the rapist, it was the girl who was put in prison charged with "zina," illegal sexual intercourse. The father managed to secure the child's release by bribing the police. The traumatized child was then severely beaten for disgracing the family honor.
A fifty-year-old widow, Ahmedi Begum,6 1 2 decided to let some rooms in her house in the city of Lahore to two young veiled women. As she was about to show them the rooms, the police burst into the courtyard of the house and arrested the two girls and Ahmedi Begum's nephew who had simply been standing there. Later that afternoon, Ahmedi Begum went to the police station with her son-in-law to inquire about her nephew and the two girls. The police told Ahmedi they were arresting her too. They confiscated her jewelry and pushed her into another room. While she was waiting, the police officers shoved the two girls, naked and bleeding, into the room and then proceeded to rape them again in front of the widow. When Ahmedi covered her eyes, the police forced her to watch by pulling her arms to her sides. After suffering various sexual humiliations, Ahmedi herself was stripped and raped by one officer after another. They dragged her outside where she was again beaten. One of the officers forced a policeman's truncheon, covered with chili paste, into her rectum, rupturing it.
Ahmedi screamed in horrible agony and fainted, only to wake up in prison, charged with zina. Her case was taken up by a human rights lawyer. She was released on bail after three months in prison, but was not acquitted until three years later. In the meantime, her son-in-law divorced her daughter because of his shame.
Was this an isolated case? Unfortunately no. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in its annual report that one woman is raped every three hours in Pakistan and one in two rape victims is a juvenile. According to Women's Action Forum, a woman's rights organization, 72 percent of all women in police custody in Pakistan are physically and sexually abused. Furthermore, 75 percent of all women in jail are there under charges of zina. Many of these women remain in jail awaiting trial for years.
In other words, the charge of zina is casually applied by any man who wants to get rid of his wife, who is immediately arrested, and kept waiting in prison, sometimes for years. Before the introduction of these laws the total number of women in prison was 70; the present number is more than 3000. Most of these women have been charged under the Zina or Hudud Ordinances.613
Safia Bibi, a virtually blind sixteen-year-old domestic, was raped by her landlord and his son. As a result, she became pregnant and later gave birth to an illegitimate child. Though her father brought a case against the men, they were acquitted since there were not the requisite number of male witnesses. However, Safia's pregnancy was proof of fornication and she was accordingly sentenced to three years' imprisonment, fifteen lashes, and a fine of a thousand rupees.
The judge smugly stated that he had given a light sentence in view of her age and near blindness. Happily, public pressure resulted in the revocation of the sentence. Since Zia's Islamization program got under way, the number of attacks on women has increased. In every way the lot of women has worsened under the Islamic laws. With the passage of the sharia bill in 1991, the position was further degraded, if that is possible. As one prominent feminist put it, "The shariah bill is a means to control women and marginalize them instead of bringing in a just order. It is a law that facilitates aggression against women but ignores the corruption in the country and it disregards violence against women."6 1 4
The Western press naively believed that the election of Benazir Bhutto as Pakistan's prime minister in November 1988 would revolutionize women's role not just in Pakistan, but in the entire Islamic world. Under Islamic law of course, women cannot be head of an Islamic state, and Pakistan had become an Islamic republic under the new constitution of 1956. Thus, Benazir Bhutto had defied the mullas and won. But her government lasted a bare twenty months, during which period Nawaz Sharif, who was the prime minister briefly in the early 1990s, is said to have encouraged the mullas in their opposition to having a woman as the head of an Islamic state. Benazir Bhutto's government was dismissed on charges of corruption, and her husband imprisoned in 1990.
The lot of the Muslim woman was harsh before Benazir's election, and nothing has changed. She has pandered to the religious lobby, the mullas, the very people who insist that a woman cannot hold power in an Islamic state, and has repeatedly postponed any positive action on the position of women. As one woman opposition member of the National Assembly put it in 1990, "Benazir Bhutto has not demonstrated a commitment to anything other than her own desire to wield power."6 1 5 Benazir Bhutto has shown herself to be far less radical than the Western media had hoped for. She agreed to an arranged marriage with a man she had known for seven days, and she constantly wears the traditional headscarf. At this year's Cairo Conference on Population (September 1994), she again went out of her way to take the side of the Muslim conservatives. "We thought we elected a Cory [Aquino], but it looks like we got Imelda instead," said one disappointed member of the National Assembly.616
The statistics concerning the women of Pakistan show the same grim picture. Pakistan is one of only four countries in the world where female life expectancy (51 years) is lower than the male (52); the average female life expectancy for all poor countries is 61. A large number of Pakistani women die in pregnancy or childbirth, six for every 1000 live births. Despite the fact that contraception has never been banned by orthodox Islam, under Zia the Islamic Ideology Council of Pakistan declared family planning to be un-Islamic, Various mullas condemned family planning as a Western conspiracy to emasculate Islam. As a result, the average fertility rate per woman in Pakistan is 6.9. Pakistan is also among the world's bottom ten countries for female attendance at primary schools. Some people put female literacy in the rural areas as low as 2 percent (Economist, March 5, 1994). As the Economist put it, "Some of the blame for all this lies with the attempt of the late President Zia ul Haq to create an Islamic republic.
.. . Zia turned the clock back. A 1984 law of his, for instance, gives a woman's legal evidence half the weight of a man's." (Economist, Jan. 13, 1990). Indeed a large part of the blame lies with the attitudes inculcated by Islam, which has always seen woman as inferior to man. The birth of a baby girl is the occasion for mourning. Hundreds of baby girls are abandoned every year in the gutters and dust bins and on the pavements. An organization working in Karachi to save these children has calculated that more than five hundred children are abandoned a year in Karachi alone, and that 99 percent of them are girls.6 1 7
At the time of a wedding, the family of the bride provides the dowry. Many families are under social pressure to provide a large dowry, which is a crashing burden for many of them. There tends to be a prenuptial agreement between the families regarding the size of the dowry. Yet, despite this agreement, many young newly married women are subjected to further pressure even beatings to ask their parents to provide more. When this is not forthcoming, the young woman is burned to death. In 1991 alone there were more than two thousand dowry deaths. Many deaths go unreported, since the family wants to avoid scandal at all costs. Few such cases are investigated by the police, and most of them are passed off as "kitchen accidents."
Two young sisters were taken to a hospital,6 1 8 where the doctor diagnosed an infection of the bones caused by a lack of sunlight. The girls' father had forbidden them to leave their home. This forced seclusion sometimes takes a bizarre and tragic form, as in the case of those Muslim girls known as the Brides of the Koran, who are compelled by their families to marry the Koran. In large feudal, land-owning families, especially in the province of Sind, women are allowed to marry only within the familyin many cases only to first cousinsto ensure that the family property stays in the family. A marriage outside the family would entail a break up of the property when the woman inherited her proper share of the family estate. When the family runs out of eligible male cousins, the young woman is forced to marry the Koran in a ceremony exactly like a real wedding except that the bridegroom is lacking. The bride is sumptuously dressed, guests are invited, food, and festivities follow. At the ceremony itself, the bride is instructed to place her hand on the Koran, and she is wedded to the holy book.
The rest of her life is spent in total seclusion from the outside world. She is not allowed to see a manin some cases, not even on television. These brides are expected to devote their time to studying the Koran or doing craft work. Such desolate emptiness takes its toll, and many of the brides of the Koran become mentally ill. As one out of an estimated 3,000 brides of the Koran in the Sind put it, "I wish I had been born when the Arabs buried their daughters alive. Even that would have been better than this torture."
Little did Jinnah realize how literally true his words were when he said in a 1944 speech:619 "No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners."
Despite the secular vision of its founder, Jinnah, Pakistan has drifted toward a theocratic state. Pakistani politicians have been totally cowardly in giving in to the demands of the mullas. Fear of fundamentalists has only encouraged the fundamentalists even more. It is difficult for the largely secularized West to realize what power these people can sometimes wield over the masses, encouraging them to carry out the most vile acts imaginable, all in the name of God. For instance, a mob in Karachi, hysterically manipulated by a mulla, stoned to death an abandoned infant on the presumption that it was illegitimate and thus could not be tolerated. Another mob cut off a man's hand because the mulla leading them alleged that the man was a thief; no proof, no trial, just the mulla's word. Benazir Bhutto has moved more and more toward appeasing the religious right. It would be just as well to remind her of her own words uttered in 1992 when she was not in power:
Does [Pakistan] want to be a democracy in which human rights are respected and where an enlightened vision of Islam prevails? Or will it be content to make do with an authoritarian government dominated by fundamentalists? And which authority should legislateparliament or the federal court dispensing the sharia (Islamic law)? In the absence of answers to these questions, the situation is confused today, and confusion spawns anarchy. (Le Monde, March 4, 1992)
But we do not need to leave with a completely pessimistic picture. Pakistani women have shown themselves to be very courageous, and more and more are fighting for their rights with the help of equally brave organizations such as Women's Action Forum (WAF) and War Against Rape. WAF was formed in 1981 as women came onto the streets to protest against the Hudood Ordinances, and to demonstrate their solidarity with a couple who had recently been sentenced to death by stoning for fornication. In 1983, women organized the first demonstrations against martial law.
Bibliography:
597. Ibid, pp. 123f.
598. Zeghidour, Slimane. La Voile et la bannière. Paris, 1990., p. 34.
599. Ascha, Ghassan. Du Status inférieur de la femme en Islam. Paris, 1989, , p. 126.
600. Ibid, pp. 132f.
601. Ibid, p. 146.
602. Ibid, pp. 161f.
603. Ibid, p. 174.
604. Ibid, pp. 185f.
605. Quoted by Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990.
606. Quoted by Kureishi, Hanif. My Beautiful Laundrette and the Rainbow Sign. London, 1986., p. 18.
607. Ibid, p. 22.
608. Quoted by Goodwin, Jan. Price of Honor. Boston, 1994., p. 72.
609. Quoted in Wolpert Stanley, Jinnah of Pakistan, Oxford, 1984, pp. 339-40.
610. Akbar, M. J. India: The Siege Within. London, 1985., p. 31.
611. Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990..
612. Goodwin, Jan. Price of Honor. Boston, 1994., pp. 49-50.
613. Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990..
614. Goodwin, Jan. Price of Honor. Boston, 1994., p. 61.
615. Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990..
616. Ibid.
617. Goodwin, Jan. Price of Honor. Boston, 1994., p. 64.
618. Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990..
619. Ahmed R. (ed), Sayings of Quaid-i-Azam (Jinnah), Karachi, 1986, p, 98.
.
Part 2: On Islam and Sexism, Hatred of the Female, Rape, and the complete subjugation of Women in Islamic Society.
Table of Contents:
- The Veil
- Case Histories, The Women of Pakistan
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Segment from the book "Why I am not a Muslim", by Ibn Warraq. pg. 314-321.
The Veil
The Arabic word "hijab" is sometimes translated as veil, but it can signify anything that prevents something from being seena screen, a curtain, or even a wall and the hymen. The root of the verb "hajaba" means "to hide." By extension, hijab is used to mean something that separates, demarcates a limit, establishes a barrier. Finally, hijab has the sense of a moral interdiction. The Koran also uses two other words, "djilbah" and "khibar." The former is likewise translated as "veil," but also as "outer garment" and even "cloak." "Khibar" is similarly translated as "veil," but also as "shawl." In this philological aside, we may also mention the names of other garments that are used to cover Muslim woman in part or entirely throughout the Islamic world. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia we find haik, safsari, akhnif, and adjar. In Egypt, Israel, Syria, Iraq, and among the Bedouins, we find abaya, tarna, izar, milhafa, khabara, chambar, niqab, litham, and bourqou; in Iran, bourda, tchador, pitcha, and rouband; in Turkey, yatchmek, yalek, harmaniya, and entari; in India and Pakistan, burka.
In the struggle for the liberation of the Muslim woman the veil has become a symbol of her servitude. Thus in 1923 the President of the Egyptian Feminist Union, Ms. Houda Cha'araoui, and her colleagues defiantly threw their veils into the sea. Similarly in 1927 there was a campaign of "de-hijabization" in communist Turkestan. Not less than 87,000 Uzbek women publicly repudiated their "black cowls", though not before 300 of their sisters had been killed by the male heads of the Muslim families for betraying Islam. In 1928, at the independence celebrations, the Shah of Afghanistan ordered his wife to "unveil" herself in public.
Following the public scandal, the shah was obliged to backtrack and cancel his projects for the emancipation of women. He himself was obliged to abdicate.
In 1936 Reza Shah of Iran forbade the tchador by a special decree. Obviously the people were not ready to break with tradition and so after mass protests in 1941 he also had to retreat and abrogate the law.
The hijab was imposed by the Koran (see suras 33.53, 33.59, and 33.32 33) and also:
- 24.30-31. Enjoin believing women to turn their eyes away from temptation and to preserve their chastity; to cover their adornmentsexcept such as are normally displayed;to draw their veils over their bosoms and not to reveal their finery except to their husbands.
The veil and the injunction to Muslim women to stay at home came with Islam; for it is clear, as I have already indicated, that Bedouin women enjoyed considerable freedom, accompanied their husbands on long marches and made themselves indispensable in the camps. But all this was to change as Islam became more and more an urban phenomenon and as it came into contact with other more developed civilizations whose customs the Muslims adopted. The veil was adopted by the Arabs from the Persians, and the woman's obligation to stay closed in at home was a tradition copied from the Byzantines, who in turn had adopted an ancient Greek custom. Of course, Muslim theologians have a totally different explanation of the origin of the hijab. According to them it was imposed on women by God to please one person, i.e., Omar ibn al-Khallab, They refer to a tradition that recounts that Omar one day said to the Prophet: "The pious and the profligate have easy access to your house and see your wives. Why don't you order the mothers of all believers to cover themselves?" And Muhammad received the revelations quoted earlier. According to another version, attributed to Aisha, Omar accidently touched her hand and excused himself by saying that had he the power no one would steal a glance at her. Yet another rendition is recounted by historian al-Tabari. The real function of the hijab is to cover up the awra which we have no right to see. By "awra" is meant "the shameful parts of the body and those parts we hide out of dignity and pride. As for women, they are entirely awra."598 According to Muslim jurists, awra for men consists of those parts between the navel and the kneesand they are concealed in all cases except for exposure to his wives and concubines. No one seems to agree on women's awra. According to Hanefites, the woman can uncover her face and hands, only so long as this does not lead to or provoke temptation, seduction, or discord. For the other three Sunnite sects a woman can only uncover her face and hands in cases of emergencythe need for medical attention, for example.
The liberal attitude of the Hanefites is only apparent and not real5 9 9in reality, a woman has only to be smiling and pretty for the ulamas to strictly reimpose the veil. Even old women are advised to remain covered. Koran 24.60 says, "It shall be no offence for old spinsters who have no hope of marriage to discard their cloaks without revealing their adornments. Better if they do not discard them." Those wishing to keep women's faces and hands uncovered rely on the following hadith recounted by Aisha, the Prophet's wife: "Asma, the daughter of Abu Bakr [and the sister of Aisha] was one day in front of the Prophet without a veil. The Prophet said to her'Asma, a grown woman should only show this.' " And He showed her face and her hands.
Meanwhile various Muslim experts contradict each other on this point. Some insist that even a woman's heels should be well-hidden, citing an appropriate hadith to back up their arguments. Not only is it a symbol of women's servitude but also a symbol of the woman's total lack of trust in the father, the brother, or the husband; and at the same time the male possessiveness: for the brother and the father she is the merchandise that must not be shop soiled; and for the husband she is an object to be used at home and then carefully wrapped and put away, lest another covet her. The question of hijab continues to play an important role in modern debate and is of more than academic importance. A New York Times reporter described the situation in April 1992 in Iran: The most visible battle for women's rights is still fought through their wardrobes.
In the 13-year revolution, perhaps no other issue has been debated with such fury as the rules for what constitutes "good hejab" or head covering. "Research proved female hair had a kind of radiance" that might tempt men, Iran's first president under the revolution, Abol-Hassan Banisadr, said in the early days of the Islamic republic. In the years that followed, women were insulted, arrested, fined and even lashed for bad hejab. . . . After the all-encompassing chador, held in place with one's hand or one's teeth, the second most acceptable garment is the rappoush [a loose, long garment] worn with a scarf.
Do women have the right to leave their houses?600 Hijab also applies to the "hiding" of women behind the walls of her house. The Koran is clear on this point in sura 33.33, ordering the wives of the Prophet to stay in their homes. For reformists this only applies to the wives of the Prophet; for conservatives it applies to all Muslim women, Ghawji, a conservative, has systematically set out under what conditions a woman can leave her house, giving copious quotes from the Koran and the hadiths.
1. She may leave only in case of a real need.
2. The exit must be authorized by her husband or legal guardian.
3. She must be well-covered, including her face, to avoid tempting any men who might be around; she must move with her head bowed down looking neither left nor right. (Koran 24.31).
4. She must not put on perfume. The Prophet has said: "Any woman who puts on perfume and passes in front of men is a fornicator."
5. She must not walk in the middle of the road among men. The Prophet on noticing the confusion on leaving a mosque, said: "You women do not have the right to walk amongst menstick to the sides."
6. She must walk in a chaste and modest manner (sura, 24.31).
7. When talking to a stranger, her voice must remain normal (sura 33.32).
8. If inside a shop or an office, she must avoid being left alone behind a closed door with a man. The Prophet has said: "There can never be a tete-a-tete between a man and a woman without the devil interfering and doing his worst.
9. She must never shake the hand of a man.
10. Even at a female friend's house, she must not discard any clothes covering her in case there is a man hiding in the house. The Prophet has said:
"Any woman who takes off her cloak in other than her own house or the house of her husband is rending apart the envelope that protects her in front of God."
11. The wife must not go beyond a thirty-kilometer limit without being
accompanied by her husband or a relative.
12. A woman must never attempt to imitate a man.
Jurists have elaborated in precise detail what a woman who does leave the
house should wear. She can wear anything she likes as long as it conforms to
the following conditions:
1. Her dress must cover the entire body except the face and hands.
2. The dress must not be too fine or elaborate.
3. It must be of thick material and not transparent.
4. It must not cling to her body tightly; it should be loose.
5. It must not be perfumed.
6. It must not resemble any kind of man's wear.
7. It must not resemble the clothes of unbelievers.
8. It must not be "luxurious" or glamorous or of too great a value.
These jurists cite hadiths forbidding women to put on perfume, to wear a wig, to put on make up, or otherwise to interfere with nature. These same authors who condemn make-up for interfering with divine creation see no contradiction in demanding the excision of the clitoris, which is seen as a pious act to be encouraged. According to a famous hadith, if you "Leave the woman without clothes, they will remain at home."
Thanks to the courageous efforts of certain reformists, women at last did win the right to education. Unable to stem the tide of the feminist movement, and faced with a fait accompli, the conservatives now claimed Islam had never denied women this right, and that it was the duty of every Muslim to educate himself or herself. The University of al-Azhar, a bastion of male privilege, opened its doors to women in 1961. These claims on behalf of Islam are of course false,601 Traditions discouraging or prohibiting the education of women are numerous: "Prevent them from writing;" "Do not add an evil to unhappiness" are the norm. Indeed if Islam had sincerely approved of educating women, why was it that women had remained illiterate and ignorant for so many centuries? If she is to stay at home, if she is forbidden to talk to strange men, how will she acquire her learning? If her family gives her permission to learn, what will she be allowed to study? Essentially, most modern Muslim thinkers propose religious education for women, with a few courses on sewing, knitting, and looking after the house.
These thinkers base their arguments on the hadith where the Prophet said, "Do not teach women writing; teach them spinning and the sura 'The Night' (al-Nur)." The message is clearshe must not overstep her domestic domain. She was created by God to be a wife and mother; hence, any venture into pure chemistry, astronomy, or geometry is against her nature, her needs, and the needs of her family.
It should be apparent by now6 0 2 that by going to work Muslim women would automatically upset a great many Islamic laws governing women and the family. In Islam only men work, earn money, spend it, and are responsible for their wives' maintenanceall of which give men legitimate, divinely sanctioned authority over their wives. Some apparently reformist thinkers insist that every Muslim woman has the right to work. But on closer examination, we see that by "work," these thinkers mean something very limited: teachers of girls, nurses looking after only women, doctors for women. According to the learned doctors, she can do any kind of job except (1) those which are incompatible with her faithsuch as cleaning drains, fishing in lakes or rivers; (2) those that are incompatible with her feminine natureticket inspector, police officer, dancer; (3) those which she is incapable of handling physically, for example, factory work; (4) those that demand the use of a horse or a bicycle; (5) and, of course, those that require the use of reasonshe cannot be a judge or imam. Other thinkers forbid women the job of actress, air hostess, or saleswoman. The arguments most frequently used to limit women's work are (1) a woman's nature; she was made by nature to stay at home, look after her husband's sexual demands, and raise children; (2) her limited reasoning powers; and (3) her psychological weakness because of menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth.
These thinkers are afraid that as soon as a woman leaves her husband's house, she will fall into sin. They reduce all contact between men and women to sex. So that work that might be seen as a confirmation of woman's being, a fulfilment of her person, of her human dignity, of her personal freedom, is in the eyes of the Muslim thinkers nothing but a degradation of her dignity and honor. Despite all the obstacles put in front of them, Muslim women have managed to leave their households, have acquired educations, have started to work, and forge careers for themselves; thus, they have laid claims to their rights as consonant with their new position in society. For example, in 1952 Egyptian feminists assembled their forces and claimed the right to vote and the right to become members of Parliament. The ulamas of the University of al-Azhar rallied their forces and in June 1952 promulgated a fatwa liberally sprinkled with quotes from the Koran and the hadiths that demonstrated that Islam condemned any attempt by women to aspire to any post as a member of Parliament. The learned doctors further pointed out that6 0 3 (1) women did not possess enough intellectual force; (2) women, because of their femininity, are exposed to dangers that could lead them to abandon reason and propriety; (3) according to Abu Bakr, when the Prophet heard that the Persians had made the daughter of Chosroes their queen he exclaimed: "Never will a people who trust their affairs to a woman succeed"; (4) failure inevitably follows on the appointment of a woman to a public post; (5) Islamic law accords to a woman's testimony only half the weight of a man's; (6) according to the Koran "men decide for women in view of the fact that God has given preference to the former over the latter"; (7) God obliges men to be present at the mosque on Fridays and to conduct the holy war but not women; and (8) public posts were attributed by Islamic law only to men fulfilling certain conditions.
For all these reasons the learned doctors decided that Islamic law forbade women to assume any posts of public responsibility and in particular the post of member of Parliament. Happily, despite the efforts of the ulamas, Egyptian women got the vote in 1956. In Syria, women got the vote in 1949, again despite the obstacles put in their path by the ulamas.
Islam explicitly forbids certain professions to women: head of state, head of the armed forces, imam, and judge.
The system of guardianship in Islam6 0 4 further limits the rights of women. According to the Malekites, Shafi'ites, and Hanbalites, even a woman of legal age cannot conclude her own marriage contract on her own. Her legal guardian alone has this right. According to the Hanfites, a woman can conclude her own marriage but with the agreement of her guardian. Of course, the guardian must be male and Muslim. If a woman is a virgin, irrespective of age, her guardian can force her to marry someone of his choice, according to the Malekites, Shafi'ites, and Hanbalites. Even the theoretical right to choose her husband accorded her by the Hanfites turns out to be illusory. Theoretically, on reaching puberty woman can no longer be forced to marry against her will; but since a majority of girls are forced to marry before they reach puberty, the right to choose remains a fiction. Even assuming she reaches puberty, under the Hanfites she simply has the right to say "Yes" or "No" to the person picked by her guardian.
There is no question of her going out and choosing her own husband. It is the legal guardian who will choose for her, and characteristically when making his inquiries, the desirable qualities of the husband will be described in a few lines whereas the desirable qualities of the wife will be explained in a text twelve times longer.
In any case, when and how could a Muslim woman possibly go out and meet her Prince Charming in view of all the constraints imposed on her by Islam that we have described in this chapterforbidden to leave the house, forbidden to talk to men? Child marriages continue to be practiced, and the fact that the Prophet himself married Aisha when she was only nine and he was fifty-three encourages Muslim society to continue with this iniquitous custom. As Bousquet, writing in the 1950s, noticed, in North Africa generally and in Algeria particularly, even after a century of French rule, consummation of marriages with young girls continues, often resulting in serious accidents, and sometimes death.
In all cases a Muslim woman is not permitted to marry a non-Muslim. All Muslim males can at any moment separate themselves from their wives, can repudiate their wives without formality, without explanations, and without compensation.
It is enough for the husband to pronounce the phrase "You are divorced" and it is done. The divorce is revocable for up to a period of three months. If the husband pronounces "You are divorced" three times, then the divorce is definitive. In the latter case the divorced wife cannot return to her husband until she has been married, "enjoyed," and divorced by another husband.
Divorce depends entirely on the will and caprice of the husbandhe may divorce his wife without any misbehavior on her part, or without assigning any cause. The mother has the right to keep custody of the children, but as soon as she decides to remarry, she automatically loses her right to her children from the previous marriage. In the case where the husband has the custody of children, if he remarries he does not lose this right to keep his children. Thus the woman is faced with the choice of remarrying and losing custody of her children or keeping her children and not marrying. This of course leads to total insecurity for the women. Divorce is very frequent in Arab countries; instead of keeping four wives at the same timewhich is rather expensivea man simply changes his wife several times as recommended by the great al-Ghazali. If a woman asks a man for a divorce, he may agree if he is paid or compensated in some way. In such a case she is not entitled to the repayment of her dowry. The Koran sanctions such a dissolution: 2.229. "If ye fear that they cannot observe the ordinance of God, then no blame shall attach to either of you for what the wife shall herself give for her redemption."
An annulment of a marriage means a woman loses the right to the dowry and must give back what she has already received. Divorced women do have the right to remarry but "must wait keeping themselves from men, three menstrual courses" (2.228).
Finally, I shall end with a revised list of what a woman has to suffer under Islam because of her misdemeanors in the Garden of Eden. She is forbidden to (1) be a head of state; (2) be a judge; (3) be an imam; (4) be a guardian; (5) leave her house without permission of her guardian or husband; (6) have a tete-a-tete with a strange man; (7) shake a man's hand; (8) put on makeup or perfume outside the house; (9) uncover her face for fear of "temptation"; (10) travel alone; (11) inherit the same amount as a manshe must make do with half; (12) bear witness in cases of hudud (see page 310) and accept that her testimony is worth only half that of a man; (13) perform the religious rituals when menstruating; (14) choose where she will live before she is ugly or old; (15) marry without permission from her guardian; (16) marry a non-Muslim; and (17) divorce her spouse.
The measure of a society's degree of civilization is the position it accords to women, in which case Islam fares very badly indeed. In the words of the great John Stuart Mill, "I am convinced that social arrangements which subordinate one sex to the other by law are bad in themselves and form one of the principal obstacles which oppose human progress; I am convinced that they should give place to a perfect equality."
________________________________________________________________________
Segment from the book "Why I am not a Muslim" by Ibn Warraq. pg. 321- 327.
Case Histories: The Women of Pakistan
"To be a woman in Pakistan is a terrible thing."
- Pakistani woman, suspended from her job in a hotel in 1990 for shaking hands with a man.605
"I tell you, this country is being sodomized by religion."
- Pakistani businessman, ex-air force officer.606
Let these women be warned. We will tear them to pieces. We will give them such terrible punishments that no one in future will dare to raise a voice against Islam.
- Pakistani mulla (priest) addressing the dissenting women of Rawalpindi.607
Today, in Pakistan, respect for women no longer exists, and crimes against them have increased dramatically. They claim to have "Islamized" us. How can you Islamize people who are already Muslim? Ever since Zia gave power to the mullahs, it seems as though every man feels he can get hold of any female and tear her apart.
- Ms Farkander Iqbal, Deputy Police Superintendent, Lahore, Pakistan.608
One of the ironies of the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as a homeland for the Muslims of India, is that its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was not at all religious. In fact, in today's Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Jinnah would very probably be flogged in public: during his years in England, Jinnah had developed a decidedly un-Islamic taste for whiskey, and even pork. It is also now clear that Jinnah envisaged a basically secular state; he said in one of his last
major speeches:
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. . . . You may belong to any religion or caste or creedthat has nothing to do with the business of the state [my emphasis]. , . . We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are citizens and equal citizens of one state. . . . Now, I think we should keep in front of us our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual [my emphasis], but in the political sense as citizens of the State.609
When asked by a journalist in July 1947 if Pakistan would be a religious state, Jinnah replied, "You are asking a question that is absurd. I do not know what a theocratic state means." Why, in that case, had Pakistan been deemed necessary? M. J. Akbar has argued convincingly that Pakistan was not demanded by the Muslim masses of India; it was created by an alliance of the clergy (mullas) and powerful landlords. "While the landlords and capitalists allowed the clergy to make Pakistan a religious state, the clergy allowed the landlords guaranteed property rights and the capitalists unbridled control over the economy.
Theocracy and landlordism/capitalism are the two pillars of Pakistan and BanglaDesh."610
After Jinnah's untimely death in 1948, the Prime Minister Ltaquat Ali Khan prepared a constitution that was also essentially secular. This was not at all acceptable to the mullas, who began foaming at the mouth at the very mention of democracy. Under pressure from them, the democratic constitution was withdrawn. Then in 1951, Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated by an unknown gunman, who many believe was paid by the mullas.
In 1971, after years of military rule, Zulfikar A l i Bhutto took over as martial law administrator and, in 1972, as prime minister. Though Bhutto was also essentially secular minded, he was no democrat. He also made overtures to the mullas; banned gambling and alcohol, despite his own well-known taste for whiskey; and declared that the Ahmadi sect was non-Muslim. In 1977, General Zia al- Haq took over in a military coup declaring that the process of Islamization was not going fast enough. The mullas had finally got someone who was prepared to listen to them.
Zia imposed martial law, total press censorship, and began creating a theocratic state, believing that Pakistan ought to have "the spirit of Islam." He banned women from athletic contests and even enforced the Muslim fast during the month of Ramadan at gunpoint. He openly admitted that there was a contradiction between Islam and democracy. Zia introduced Islamic laws that discriminated against women. The most notorious of these laws were the Zina and Hudud Ordinances that called for the Islamic punishments of the amputation of hands for stealing and stoning to death for married people found guilty of illicit sex. The term "zina" included adultery, fornication, and rape, and even prostitution. Fornication was punished with a maximum of a hundred lashes administered in public and ten years' imprisonment.
In practice, these laws protect rapists, for a woman who has been raped often finds herself charged with adultery or fornication. To prove zina, four Muslim adult males of good repute must be present to testify that sexual penetration has taken place. Furthermore, in keeping with good Islamic practice, these laws value the testimony of men over women. The combined effect of these laws is that it is impossible for a woman to bring a successful charge of rape against a man; instead, she herself, the victim, finds herself charged with illicit sexual intercourse, while the rapist goes free. If the rape results in a pregnancy, this is automatically taken as an admission that adultery or fornication has taken place with the woman's consent rather than that rape has occurred. Here are some sample cases.611
In a town in the northern province of Punjab, a woman and her two daughters were stripped naked, beaten, and gang-raped in public, but the police declined to pursue the case.
A thirteen-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped by a "family friend." When her father brought a case against the rapist, it was the girl who was put in prison charged with "zina," illegal sexual intercourse. The father managed to secure the child's release by bribing the police. The traumatized child was then severely beaten for disgracing the family honor.
A fifty-year-old widow, Ahmedi Begum,6 1 2 decided to let some rooms in her house in the city of Lahore to two young veiled women. As she was about to show them the rooms, the police burst into the courtyard of the house and arrested the two girls and Ahmedi Begum's nephew who had simply been standing there. Later that afternoon, Ahmedi Begum went to the police station with her son-in-law to inquire about her nephew and the two girls. The police told Ahmedi they were arresting her too. They confiscated her jewelry and pushed her into another room. While she was waiting, the police officers shoved the two girls, naked and bleeding, into the room and then proceeded to rape them again in front of the widow. When Ahmedi covered her eyes, the police forced her to watch by pulling her arms to her sides. After suffering various sexual humiliations, Ahmedi herself was stripped and raped by one officer after another. They dragged her outside where she was again beaten. One of the officers forced a policeman's truncheon, covered with chili paste, into her rectum, rupturing it.
Ahmedi screamed in horrible agony and fainted, only to wake up in prison, charged with zina. Her case was taken up by a human rights lawyer. She was released on bail after three months in prison, but was not acquitted until three years later. In the meantime, her son-in-law divorced her daughter because of his shame.
Was this an isolated case? Unfortunately no. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in its annual report that one woman is raped every three hours in Pakistan and one in two rape victims is a juvenile. According to Women's Action Forum, a woman's rights organization, 72 percent of all women in police custody in Pakistan are physically and sexually abused. Furthermore, 75 percent of all women in jail are there under charges of zina. Many of these women remain in jail awaiting trial for years.
In other words, the charge of zina is casually applied by any man who wants to get rid of his wife, who is immediately arrested, and kept waiting in prison, sometimes for years. Before the introduction of these laws the total number of women in prison was 70; the present number is more than 3000. Most of these women have been charged under the Zina or Hudud Ordinances.613
Safia Bibi, a virtually blind sixteen-year-old domestic, was raped by her landlord and his son. As a result, she became pregnant and later gave birth to an illegitimate child. Though her father brought a case against the men, they were acquitted since there were not the requisite number of male witnesses. However, Safia's pregnancy was proof of fornication and she was accordingly sentenced to three years' imprisonment, fifteen lashes, and a fine of a thousand rupees.
The judge smugly stated that he had given a light sentence in view of her age and near blindness. Happily, public pressure resulted in the revocation of the sentence. Since Zia's Islamization program got under way, the number of attacks on women has increased. In every way the lot of women has worsened under the Islamic laws. With the passage of the sharia bill in 1991, the position was further degraded, if that is possible. As one prominent feminist put it, "The shariah bill is a means to control women and marginalize them instead of bringing in a just order. It is a law that facilitates aggression against women but ignores the corruption in the country and it disregards violence against women."6 1 4
The Western press naively believed that the election of Benazir Bhutto as Pakistan's prime minister in November 1988 would revolutionize women's role not just in Pakistan, but in the entire Islamic world. Under Islamic law of course, women cannot be head of an Islamic state, and Pakistan had become an Islamic republic under the new constitution of 1956. Thus, Benazir Bhutto had defied the mullas and won. But her government lasted a bare twenty months, during which period Nawaz Sharif, who was the prime minister briefly in the early 1990s, is said to have encouraged the mullas in their opposition to having a woman as the head of an Islamic state. Benazir Bhutto's government was dismissed on charges of corruption, and her husband imprisoned in 1990.
The lot of the Muslim woman was harsh before Benazir's election, and nothing has changed. She has pandered to the religious lobby, the mullas, the very people who insist that a woman cannot hold power in an Islamic state, and has repeatedly postponed any positive action on the position of women. As one woman opposition member of the National Assembly put it in 1990, "Benazir Bhutto has not demonstrated a commitment to anything other than her own desire to wield power."6 1 5 Benazir Bhutto has shown herself to be far less radical than the Western media had hoped for. She agreed to an arranged marriage with a man she had known for seven days, and she constantly wears the traditional headscarf. At this year's Cairo Conference on Population (September 1994), she again went out of her way to take the side of the Muslim conservatives. "We thought we elected a Cory [Aquino], but it looks like we got Imelda instead," said one disappointed member of the National Assembly.616
The statistics concerning the women of Pakistan show the same grim picture. Pakistan is one of only four countries in the world where female life expectancy (51 years) is lower than the male (52); the average female life expectancy for all poor countries is 61. A large number of Pakistani women die in pregnancy or childbirth, six for every 1000 live births. Despite the fact that contraception has never been banned by orthodox Islam, under Zia the Islamic Ideology Council of Pakistan declared family planning to be un-Islamic, Various mullas condemned family planning as a Western conspiracy to emasculate Islam. As a result, the average fertility rate per woman in Pakistan is 6.9. Pakistan is also among the world's bottom ten countries for female attendance at primary schools. Some people put female literacy in the rural areas as low as 2 percent (Economist, March 5, 1994). As the Economist put it, "Some of the blame for all this lies with the attempt of the late President Zia ul Haq to create an Islamic republic.
.. . Zia turned the clock back. A 1984 law of his, for instance, gives a woman's legal evidence half the weight of a man's." (Economist, Jan. 13, 1990). Indeed a large part of the blame lies with the attitudes inculcated by Islam, which has always seen woman as inferior to man. The birth of a baby girl is the occasion for mourning. Hundreds of baby girls are abandoned every year in the gutters and dust bins and on the pavements. An organization working in Karachi to save these children has calculated that more than five hundred children are abandoned a year in Karachi alone, and that 99 percent of them are girls.6 1 7
At the time of a wedding, the family of the bride provides the dowry. Many families are under social pressure to provide a large dowry, which is a crashing burden for many of them. There tends to be a prenuptial agreement between the families regarding the size of the dowry. Yet, despite this agreement, many young newly married women are subjected to further pressure even beatings to ask their parents to provide more. When this is not forthcoming, the young woman is burned to death. In 1991 alone there were more than two thousand dowry deaths. Many deaths go unreported, since the family wants to avoid scandal at all costs. Few such cases are investigated by the police, and most of them are passed off as "kitchen accidents."
Two young sisters were taken to a hospital,6 1 8 where the doctor diagnosed an infection of the bones caused by a lack of sunlight. The girls' father had forbidden them to leave their home. This forced seclusion sometimes takes a bizarre and tragic form, as in the case of those Muslim girls known as the Brides of the Koran, who are compelled by their families to marry the Koran. In large feudal, land-owning families, especially in the province of Sind, women are allowed to marry only within the familyin many cases only to first cousinsto ensure that the family property stays in the family. A marriage outside the family would entail a break up of the property when the woman inherited her proper share of the family estate. When the family runs out of eligible male cousins, the young woman is forced to marry the Koran in a ceremony exactly like a real wedding except that the bridegroom is lacking. The bride is sumptuously dressed, guests are invited, food, and festivities follow. At the ceremony itself, the bride is instructed to place her hand on the Koran, and she is wedded to the holy book.
The rest of her life is spent in total seclusion from the outside world. She is not allowed to see a manin some cases, not even on television. These brides are expected to devote their time to studying the Koran or doing craft work. Such desolate emptiness takes its toll, and many of the brides of the Koran become mentally ill. As one out of an estimated 3,000 brides of the Koran in the Sind put it, "I wish I had been born when the Arabs buried their daughters alive. Even that would have been better than this torture."
Little did Jinnah realize how literally true his words were when he said in a 1944 speech:619 "No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners."
Despite the secular vision of its founder, Jinnah, Pakistan has drifted toward a theocratic state. Pakistani politicians have been totally cowardly in giving in to the demands of the mullas. Fear of fundamentalists has only encouraged the fundamentalists even more. It is difficult for the largely secularized West to realize what power these people can sometimes wield over the masses, encouraging them to carry out the most vile acts imaginable, all in the name of God. For instance, a mob in Karachi, hysterically manipulated by a mulla, stoned to death an abandoned infant on the presumption that it was illegitimate and thus could not be tolerated. Another mob cut off a man's hand because the mulla leading them alleged that the man was a thief; no proof, no trial, just the mulla's word. Benazir Bhutto has moved more and more toward appeasing the religious right. It would be just as well to remind her of her own words uttered in 1992 when she was not in power:
Does [Pakistan] want to be a democracy in which human rights are respected and where an enlightened vision of Islam prevails? Or will it be content to make do with an authoritarian government dominated by fundamentalists? And which authority should legislateparliament or the federal court dispensing the sharia (Islamic law)? In the absence of answers to these questions, the situation is confused today, and confusion spawns anarchy. (Le Monde, March 4, 1992)
But we do not need to leave with a completely pessimistic picture. Pakistani women have shown themselves to be very courageous, and more and more are fighting for their rights with the help of equally brave organizations such as Women's Action Forum (WAF) and War Against Rape. WAF was formed in 1981 as women came onto the streets to protest against the Hudood Ordinances, and to demonstrate their solidarity with a couple who had recently been sentenced to death by stoning for fornication. In 1983, women organized the first demonstrations against martial law.
Bibliography:
597. Ibid, pp. 123f.
598. Zeghidour, Slimane. La Voile et la bannière. Paris, 1990., p. 34.
599. Ascha, Ghassan. Du Status inférieur de la femme en Islam. Paris, 1989, , p. 126.
600. Ibid, pp. 132f.
601. Ibid, p. 146.
602. Ibid, pp. 161f.
603. Ibid, p. 174.
604. Ibid, pp. 185f.
605. Quoted by Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990.
606. Quoted by Kureishi, Hanif. My Beautiful Laundrette and the Rainbow Sign. London, 1986., p. 18.
607. Ibid, p. 22.
608. Quoted by Goodwin, Jan. Price of Honor. Boston, 1994., p. 72.
609. Quoted in Wolpert Stanley, Jinnah of Pakistan, Oxford, 1984, pp. 339-40.
610. Akbar, M. J. India: The Siege Within. London, 1985., p. 31.
611. Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990..
612. Goodwin, Jan. Price of Honor. Boston, 1994., pp. 49-50.
613. Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990..
614. Goodwin, Jan. Price of Honor. Boston, 1994., p. 61.
615. Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990..
616. Ibid.
617. Goodwin, Jan. Price of Honor. Boston, 1994., p. 64.
618. Schork, Kurt. "Pakistan's Women in Despair." In Guardian Weekly, September 23,1990..
619. Ahmed R. (ed), Sayings of Quaid-i-Azam (Jinnah), Karachi, 1986, p, 98.
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