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Monday, December 14, 2009
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The writer is a London-based lawyer turned political analyst.
In
a recent episode of “Capital Talk,” Hamid Mir suggested that in
response to the Swiss ban on minarets for mosques, we, in Pakistan,
should encourage our Christians to build as many churches as they like
and in whatever style they prefer. This is exactly the type of
openness, tolerance and respect for plurality that Islamic civilisation
displayed at its zenith, at the time when it ruled as far as Spain.
This
is also the type of broadmindedness that western countries had
exhibited previously, by attracting the best minds from diverse
backgrounds and accommodating them. Yet, since 9/11, to varying
degrees, nearly every country in Western Europe, along with the United
States, Canada and Australia, has either passed laws or manifested
societal intolerance in the form of Islamophobia. The long-term
ramifications of this increased prejudice, if it is to continue
unabated, will undoubtedly mean a decline of western dominance and
civilisation as we know it.
However, the corresponding question
is: are we in the Muslim world going to respond to this in a
narrow-minded, defensive and reactionary manner? Or are we going to
realise that what made the western world great, in the first place, and
Islamic civilisation before that, illustrious, was very closely linked
to how comfortable diverse groups of people with varying practices,
cultures and, indeed, disparate religions felt in a given polity?
What is particularly disturbing about the Swiss
ban is the fact that it was decided by the people in a democratic
initiative. But this is a weakness of the vote, which if not guarded
against will result in nothing but what Alexis de Tocqueville called
“tyranny of the majority.” Democracy, as it has been developed over the
years, calls for majority rule but with protection of minority rights.
This is a most essential concept for democracy to work. In Pakistan,
the blasphemy law is also an unfortunate example of tyranny of the
majority, ostensibly worse than the Swiss ban on minarets because it
endangers the lives and security of innocent citizens.
In order
to establish any type of moral authority in the world, Muslims will
need to rethink the injustices committed in the name of Islam in their
own countries. Nearly all countries of the western world deride the
secondary status to which women are often relegated in the Muslim
world. When the Swiss talk about it, one must take it with a grain of
salt, however, given that they only gave their women the right to vote
in 1971. And while women’s rights are a fairly new concept in the
western world at large, they are, we must acknowledge, way ahead of the
Muslim world. If one looks at inheritance laws, laws allocating assets
to divorced women or even laws defining maternity rights of working
women, the western world is far ahead of what the Muslim world has to
offer. Therefore, it is odd for us to keep chanting about the rights
Islam gives women, if we fail, correspondingly, to interpret those
rights in the light of modern-day realities and in conjunction with a
global standard that has now been set. As long as we fail to do this,
we will continue to be the subject of ridicule.
Our laws could
be better, but what is even worse is societal practice. In spite of the
fact that in Pakistan, since its inception in 1947, we have given our
women the right to vote, in certain parts of the country women are
nevertheless denied this right by their own family and community
members, and there is regrettably no action taken against these
tyrannical forces.
A recent television show by the courageous
Munizae Jahangir highlighted the plight of women IDPs from Waziristan
in Dera Ismail Khan, as women are not allowed, according to certain
tribal custom, to come out and procure their own rations. Given that a
large number of men have died in the recent unrest, this practice is
heavily discriminatory towards women, yet it is taken lightly by
society at large.
In the case of the IDPs from Swat, women
were not allowed to step out of the tents in spite of the severe heat
at the time. This resulted in terrible skin rashes and breathing
difficulties, but a tyrannical tradition was given preference over the
health of the displaced women. There is no religious justification for
this obsession with segregation. In fact, during the lifetime of the
Prophet (PBUH), men and women prayed together. Even in the case of
prayer, there was no segregation. My mother, a regular visitor to
Mecca, informs me that until the late seventies, there was no secluded
prayer area for women at the Haram either, and thus families prayed
together in a congregation of men and women.
If we are to
progress as a society and prevent the takeover of our communities by
unlearned and bigoted forces, then we must be willing to rethink these
false notions of honour and revisit traditions that are discriminatory.
We cannot create an environment that becomes conducive to dominance by
barbaric forces, and this becomes much easier when segregation to the
point of discrimination is tolerated. As it was decided in the landmark
case of “Brown vs Board of Education” in the United States, many years
ago that “separate cannot be equal” and that if blacks are to have the
same rights as whites, they must be allowed to be educated in the same
institutions. The same holds true for women in Pakistan. The only
difference is that we do not have a legal impediment to this but have
some very impermeable societal bars that must be eradicated.
Recently,
I received a sad email entitled, “Suicide bomber was my cousin,”
written by an Afghan woman called Sahar Saba. Sahar described her time
in Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan war as follows: “The Afghan
refugee camps in Pakistan were in practice run by the Mujahideen, even
if the UNHCR officially managed their affairs. In these camps, girls’
education, music, TV, or any liberal pursuit were banned. Women had to
wear burqa. My father wanted me to go to school. Rawa, an Afghan
women’s organisation, was running underground schools for girls as well
as boys.” She attended the Rawa school, but the cousin who later became
a suicide bomber was condemned to the boys-only madrasa run by the
Mujahideen, where “the primers were filled with talk of jihad and
featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines. These textbooks
were, ironically, developed in the early 1980s under a USAID (US Agency
for International Development) grant to the University of Nebraska and
its Centre for Afghanistan Studies.”
For too long, we have
allowed our religion to be hijacked by forces that have interpreted it
in ways that is killing our society. In order to rectify it, the army
will have to continue its battle until these forces are militarily
defeated, the government will need to regulate both mosque and madrasa,
as well as work on governance issues so that poverty is not become a
feeder for terrorism. The opposition will need to make sure it does not
confuse the people on these sensitive issues critical to our survival
as a nation-state, the judiciary will need to deliver justice and
punish the perpetrators of terror, the civil society will need to
actively organise and condemn cultural practices that make the
environment conducive to such malaise. But, most of all, the media will
have to play a big role in addressing this as Pakistan’s biggest
problem; yes, bigger than corruption and sovereignty issues. Media
owners and managers need to be serious about not allowing their outlets
to be used by forces that misinterpret religion or encourage any sort
of intolerance.
Website: www.ayeshaijazkhan.com
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