They Too Are A Part Of Us - (Sulekha.Com, 06/04/2003)

-- By Dasu Krishnamoorty

Europe has a social problem with consequences significant for Muslim women in India. Immigrants from the Middle Eastern countries shun the mainstream claiming cultural and religious exclusivity. This is a problem that Europe is trying to cope with within the democratic structures familiar to it. Any attempt to point out that their cultural practices are a travesty of human rights draws negative response from human rights activists seeking protection for a way of medieval life sanctioned by religion and enforced by the clergy. Two recent events highlight the plight of women and girl-children of immigrant families who fiercely insulate their womenfolk and children from what they consider cultural pollution.

First is the action of the Nigerian government sparing the life of Amina Laval sentenced by an Islamic court to death by stoning for bearing a child out of wedlock. What is wrong with that gesture? Note that this reprieve came only after several countries threatened to boycott the Miss Universe contest Nigeria was hosting and solely for reasons linked to economy. This last minute commutation does not take away the savagery of the sentence in the first place and the cries of“Allah ho Akbar”that greeted the verdict. Laval would have been buried up to her neck and then stoned to death according to the original sentence.

The second instance is that of a Dutch woman of Somali origin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali who went into hiding like Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin. The reason: she launched a campaign to highlight the plight of Muslim women in Islamic countries and immigrant families from such countries. This angered the clergy who called her a traitor to Islam and a slut. Web sites were full of calls to kill her. Her campaign showed how thousands of Muslim women even in Netherlands were subjected to beatings, incest and emotional and sexual abuse. After changing homes to escape death, Hirsi Ali has fled Netherlands last month, and nobody knows where she is and what awaits her.

In Pakistan too, Zafran Bibi gave birth to a child last year after her brother-in-law had raped her. Disposing a complaint by her, the judge quoting hudood(Koranic law) said: “The lady stated before this court that, yes, she had committed sexual intercourse, but with the brother of her husband. In accusing her brother-in-law of raping her, Ms. Zafran had confessed to her crime. This left no option to the court but to impose the highest penalty (stoning to death).” In many Islamic countries, hundreds of honour killings take place in which a woman is murdered for perceived breaches of modesty.

Ms. Jahanara Begum, writing for the Institute for Secularisation of Islamic Society says: “We are tied forever to the immutable and rigid shackles of your laws,Allah. No one ever came forward for our emancipation. Men like Raja Rammohan Roy or Swami Vivekananda are not born in this society. No Sharat Chandra comes forward in this society to write an account of the volumes of tears that flow from our eyes. Syed Mustafa Siraj was at least honest when he said that the Hindus can fearlessly write on the injustices and other inadequacies of their social system, but we, the Muslims, are afraid to criticise the defects of Islamic society.”

Taslima Nasrin expresses similar sentiments: “When I began to study the Koran, the holy book of Islam, I found many unreasonable ideas. The women in the Koran were treated as slaves. They were nothing but sexual objects. Naturally, I set aside the Koran and looked around me. I found religion equally oppressive in real life. And I found that religious oppression and injustices are only increasing, especially in Muslim countries. If I criticise Muslim fundamentalists and mullahs in particular, it is because I saw them from close quarters. They consider women as chattel slaves and treated them no better than slaves of the ancient world.”

Kamala Surayya, formerly Kamala Das, does not think so. “Two plain reasons lured me to Islam. One is the Purdah. Second is the security that Islam provides to women. In fact, both these reasons are complementary. Purdahis the most wonderful dress for women in the world. And I have always loved to wear the Purdah. It gives women a sense of security. Only Islam gives protection to women. I have been lonely all through my life. At nights, I used to sleep by embracing a pillow. But I am no longer a loner. Islam is my company. Islam is the only religion in the world that gives love and protection to women. Therefore, I have converted,” says Surayya.

Somehow, the theory that Islam gives protection to women is not shared by the likes of Hirsi Ali, Taslima Nasrin and Jahanara Begum. They think that the way Islam has been practiced in most Muslim societies for centuries has left millions of Muslim women with battered bodies, minds and souls. It is most unfortunate that India's Shruti Sharma did not join Denmark, Austria, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Panama, France and South Africa in the boycott of the Miss Universe contest. The editor of Femina, a Times of India group publication dedicated to the cause of women, supported Shruti's decision.

The Hindu society has its own inadequacies. But it saw generations of reformers beginning with Ram Mohan Roy through Gandhi, Ambedkar, Baba Amte, Ramaswami Naicker and so on. Every state had its own Gandhis and Ambedkars. Literature in every one of the 18 languages of India is full of works calling upon the Hindu society to reform. None of these progressives were crucified. Parliament passed laws abolishing sati, child marriages, legalising widow remarriages, and the initiative for such legislation came from the Hindu society itself.

However, any plea for reform of the Muslim society in India creates distrust. The liberal press has space only for writers who encourage the Muslims to persevere in their apartheid existence, to nurture a feeling of martyrdom and a false sense of siege. Political parties and media pickle them in their emotional enclaves. None of them tells them about their poverty, illiteracy and social inequities. Secularism has no magic solution to the problems crippling the Indian Muslim society.

Why do the media talk about Muslims being denied jobs? Would an English newspaper entertain a Muslim who is good only at Urdu? The entire work in government and private institutions in the country is done in English. The matter of discrimination comes when an English-knowing Muslim is denied a job. Muslim parents can send their children to any of the 6,78,00 secular schools in India. If they choose to send them to Urdu schools, it is nobody's crime. Government's capitulation in reversing the Shah Bano judgement is evidence of the pitfalls in trying to help a people overcome thralldom.

Several experts cite the cheap labour immigrants supply as an argument for special treatment. They forget that the remittances that immigrants send home augment the dollar reserves of their countries. It is a two-way street where nobody has an advantage over the other. Yet the drive for multicultural societies continues relentlessly. European governments spend millions of euros every year on ensuring multiculturalism that helps preserve the isolation and even alienation of the immigrant groups from the liberal mores of the host country. In this case, it enables the immigrant men to keep their women in bondage in the midst of societies where women cherish the values of freedom and equality. Worse, multiculturalism breeds multinationalism and destroys the concept of nationalism.

India has rejected the two-nation theory. It becomes difficult to accommodate theories that elevate religion as the basis of nationhood. The September 11 attacks are an attempt to get the rest of the world to accept it. Salman Rushdie, writing in The New York Times soon after the attack, calls into question the US denial that its coalition against terrorism is not about Islam. He asks, “If this is not about Islam, why the worldwide Muslim demonstrations in support of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda? This paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders (infidels) for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of these societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.”

Muslim women are a part of the Indian society and need to enjoy all the rights that the Constitution confers on every citizen. Their empowerment is empowerment of their children who will be the country's future. It is unfair to leave their problems as problems to be resolved only by the Muslim society. That is the essence of Jahanara Begum's article. There have been several cases of voluntary conversion to Islam merely to avail of the advantage of marrying four wives. People have a right to embrace Islam though not for the privileges it confers on its men. Such distortions will disappear only when we stop defining minorities in terms of religion or faith.