Mukhtaran Mai and Imrana - The Muslim woman's plight in South East Asia

This article is by Irfan Husain, one of the columnists of the Dawn, Pakistan..


Dancing with the Taliban - By Irfan Husain

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IF we thought what happened to Mukhtaran Mai was bad, look at what Imrana is going through in India.

In the former case, the state victimized the victim by placing her on the ECL and taking away her passport. In the latter, the poor woman was not only raped by her father-in-law, but has been told by the mufti of the Darul Uloom at Deoband that she cannot now live with her husband, and must marry her rapist.

According to Yawar Baig, an Indian scholar, the fatwa is based on a ruling by Imam Abu Haneefa, the founder of the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence. But nobody can believe that it could have been the eminent jurist’s intention to so cruelly punish the victim. Clearly, the Deoband mufti has ignored the spirit of Islamic law.

Indian human rights activists are understandably furious over this fatwa: not only is the rapist getting away scot free, but is being rewarded. In fact, the whole business of having Muslims being governed under special religious dispensation based on family laws leaves Muslim women specially vulnerable. Time and again, they have been short-changed in divorce proceedings, for instance, and denied child support and alimony.

This whole travesty began with the famous Shahbano case which went all the way to the Supreme Court. Ever since, Indian Muslim women have been denied the protection guaranteed by the Indian constitution. In this controversial case, it was the secular Congress Party under Rajiv Gandhi that took the line of least resistance in order to woo the Muslim vote.

But if Indian politicians do not have the moral fibre to end this anomaly, it is backward Muslim men who take advantage of it to repress their women. By seeking such archaic and clearly misguided interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence, the Indian ulema are demonstrating their refusal to change with the times. Worse, they are making a mockery of the holy texts they are supposed to uphold.

Indeed, in recent years, Muslims have seldom missed a chance to show their faith in the worst possible light. Take the wretched Taliban as an example. After the public mistreatment of their women, they banned music, kite-flying and even chess. In effect, they were saying to the world that Islam forbids its followers to have fun. Then to top it all, they destroyed the priceless giant statues of the Buddha in Bamian, thus not only offending the millions of Buddhists in Asia, but also all those concerned with our cultural heritage. By the time the Americans attacked Afghanistan, the Taliban had forfeited all sympathy and support. Even three years after their country’s occupation, the Taliban resistance is seen as a ragtag band of stone-age rabble who want to drag Afghanistan back to pre-history. They are not perceived as the heroic figures the Mujahideen were while fighting the Soviets.

This inflexible refusal to recognize that the world is changing has placed Muslims on the defensive around the world. In dress, public appearance and customs, the majority of Muslims refuse to integrate into the mainstream wherever they are. They have thus consigned themselves to the periphery of society, viewed with perplexity and fear. In their turn, they generally despise those in whose midst they live and work.

Had this suspicion and resentment been limited to individuals, things wouldn’t have been as bad as they are actually becoming. But the rest of the world is coming to a consensus that Muslims are generally backward people, prone to supporting violence against those of other faiths. This has serious consequences, especially for those who choose to make a life for themselves in non-Muslim societies.

For instance, Muslim women who insist on wearing the hijab in the West are unlikely to be employed as receptionists, or in any job where public dealing is required. Ditto if you have a long, unkempt beard. Businessmen are concerned that customers might be put off by this public display of faith in secular societies. And employers often do not want to hire somebody who demands time off during the working day to go off and pray.

While we may deplore such attitudes, they are a reality. When economic reasons drive people to emigrate, logic demands that they remain open to change in order to better their lives. And yet, survey after survey in the UK have shown that Pakistanis, Arabs and Bangladeshis are doing considerably worse than other migrant groups.

Many Muslims in Pakistan support the application of Muslim family laws to their co-religionists in India. And yet in Pakistan, the minorities seldom have such preferential treatment. We deplore the decline of Urdu in India, and yet are unconcerned about the state of Hindi in our country. These examples of double standards can be multiplied endlessly. In short, we expect and demand far greater respect for our faith and its followers than we are willing to accord this to others.

Why are we our own worst enemies? Part of the answer lies in the past. Until relatively recently, Muslim nations were powerful and thus respected. But with colonization and the long decline of the Ottoman Empire came a sullen apathy and a denial of reality. Now even though Muslim countries are nominally free, they lack the will to change the status quo because this requires introspection and a major change in attitude. Rulers exploit this state of mind to perpetuate their illegitimate grip on power by blaming the West for all our ills.

As Imrana’s case so painfully illustrates, we remain wedded to the most retrogressive interpretation of our faith, and thus ensure that we remain backward. After partition, many Indian Muslims opted out of the educational system because most state schools in North India taught in Hindi. Thus disadvantaged, these Muslims then complained of bias against them when they applied for jobs.

I am sure there is prejudice in India, just as there is in the West. But we can hardly accuse others when there is so much discrimination against non-Muslims in Pakistan. The way to overcome barriers is to assimilate, not stand aloof and complain from the sidelines. I certainly am not suggesting that we give up our cultural identity. Far from it. But we do need to shed some of our rigid attitudes if we are not all to be lumped together with the Taliban.

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