Neither alien nor a threat

Musawah as a global movement aims for that day when those in the Muslim world will realise that women’s demands for equality and justice are rooted in the Islamic tradition. 

SHARING THE NATION WITH ZAINAH ANWAR, The Star

THERE they go again, telling 250 Muslim women and scholars from 47 countries that our demand for equality and justice constitutes an insult to Islam. It is like a broken record, these Islamist ideologues play. It has lost its value, and it will not stop Muslim women and men from claiming their fundamental rights in Islam.

It is a love for Islam, a belief that equality and justice are Islamic values and a burning desire to make our faith meaningful to the realities of our lives that brought many of these activists and scholars together to be a part of Musawah, a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family.

The more than 50 scholars and academics who attended the Musawah Global Meeting from Feb 13 to Feb 17 in Kuala Lumpur have authored more books and published more articles on Islam and Muslim societies in refereed international journals than those third-rate engineering graduates who accused them of insulting Islam.

The over 180 activists at Musawah who work with Muslim women at the grassroots level know what it is to suffer discrimination, pain and injustice, justified in the name of religion and to be told to shut up because they have no authority to speak on Islam.

My friend Isatou Touray from the Gambia speaks of how the female genitalia are removed from girls in her society to make sure they feel no sexual pleasure. This was done in the name of Islam.

But when as an adult Isatou found out this had no basis in the Quran, she was outraged. She felt she had been cheated of a kind and just God because the adults and the religious leaders duped her into believing that female genital mutilation was ordained by God.

Now she devotes her life to campaigning against this harmful practice at national and international levels and engage with religious leaders to get female circumcisors to “drop the knife” and educate families that female genital mutilation is not a teaching of Islam.

No licence to practise

Maha Yamani, the daughter of the celebrated former Saudi Oil Minister, Sheikh Zaki Yamani, is the first woman lawyer in Saudi Arabia, but she cannot practise her craft as her government will not license a woman lawyer – in the name of Islam.

So she conducts research and writes instead, but she is very aware of the burden that fatwas issued by her country’s religious establishment bring consequences to the rest of the Muslim world.

In Indonesia, Nani Zulminarni leads PEKKA, which works with over 400 grassroots groups of poor widows, divorcees and abandoned women who are heads of households. Like hundreds of thousands of other Muslim women, Nani is the sole provider and protector of her family, yet the Muslim family law that governs her life does not recognise her as the head of her household.

“Where are these men who are supposed to protect and provide for us according to Islam?” asked Norazah from Malaysia who is the head of her family.

“They are lost in space, gone with the wind, missing in action. I don’t see any man ready to jump from behind a bush to provide for and protect me and my children.”

It is this utter disconnect between laws and practices that discriminate against women and the realities of women’s and men’s lives today that eventually led to all these activists and scholars to want to be a part of a global force called Musawah. They are sending notice to the world, to their governments and religious leaders that they will no longer accept the use of Islam to perpetuate patriarchy and discrimination against women.

And they have chosen to embark on their demand, not by rejecting Islam, but by embracing the religion as a source of solution.

What these activists and scholars of Musawah bring to the global women and human rights movements are:

> an assertion that Islam can be a source of empowerment, not a source of oppression and discrimination.

> an effort to open new horizons for rethinking the relationship between human rights, equality and justice, and the teachings of Islam.

> an offer to open a new constructive dialogue where religion is no longer an obstacle to equality for women, but a source for liberation.

> a collective strength of conviction and courage to stop governments and patriarchal authorities, and ideological non-state actors from the convenience of using religion and the word of God to silence our demands for equality, and

> a space where activists, scholars, decision makers, working within the human rights or the Islamic framework, or both, can interact and mutually strengthen our common pursuit of equality and justice for Muslim women.

There is already a “paradigm shift” in Muslim theological and jurisprudential scholarship. Much scholarship has been unearthed from the Islamic classical tradition and knowledge and understandings produced over the past two decades point to the possibility and potential for deriving concepts of equality and justice from within an Islamic framework.

What Musawah hopes to do is to build this growing international discourse on equality and justice in Islam, and create a very visible national, regional and international presence of a movement led by Muslim women.

Musawah calls for equality, non-discrimination, justice and dignity as the basis of all human relations; full and equal citizenship for every individual; and marriage and family relations based on principles of equality and justice, with men and women sharing equal rights and responsibilities.

Musawah is based on the principle that equality in the family is possible through a holistic framework that is consistent with Islamic teachings, universal human rights principles, fundamental rights guarantees, and the lived realities of women and men.

Since so much of the injustice against Muslim women and the resistance to law reform are justified in the name of Islam, Musawah is a knowledge-building movement with a key focus on acquiring knowledge and understanding why equality and change are possible and necessary within Islam.

The Musawah Framework for Action points the way. It highlights key Quranic values of equality, justice, dignity, love and compassion and basic concepts in Islamic legal theory which can lay the foundation for the claim that family laws and practices can be changed to reflect the lived realities of Muslims today.

The resource book for the movement, Wanted: Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family, contains a unique collection of seven analytical papers which provide substantive arguments why equality and justice are possible within an Islamic framework, and why they are necessary given the socio-economic realities of today’s Muslim societies.

Change the perception

The third Musawah publication, Home Truths, contains reports submitted by women’s groups in 31 Muslim countries and communities, providing a picture of what needs to be changed in their family laws and practices to ensure equality and justice and what opportunities are available at the national level to help make this happen.

The empowering Musawah video, which brought tears to the guests at the gala welcome dinner, are already much in demand as a teaching aid by the academics present.

The video dramatically projects the revolutionary message of equality revealed by the Quran in seventh century Arabia and the key achievements of women’s groups in Muslim countries to reform discriminatory family laws over the past decades.

Shame on those who speak in the name of Islam but have nothing more to offer than to perpetuate the stereotypical image of the religion as violent, intolerant and misogynistic.

At a time of Islamophobia where Muslims are stereotyped as fanatical and backward, and Muslim women as oppressed and victimised, Muslims should celebrate Musawah as a historic moment in a Muslim world where authoritarianism, oppression and discrimination reign.

Musawah, too, brings international recognition to Malaysia as one of the few Muslim countries where democratic space exists for such a groundbreaking event to take place.

Activists and scholars from 13 Asian, 14 Middle Eastern and 14 African countries attended Musawah, plus those from the Pacific, North America and Europe. Of the 47 countries represented, 32 were members of the OIC. We are a strong representation of voices from the Muslim world, in majority and minority contexts.

It is our prayer that Musawah as a global movement will lead to that day when those in the Muslim world will realise that women’s demands for equality and justice are neither alien nor a threat to Islam. They are rooted in the Islamic tradition, and they are what it takes for us to be respected as human beings of equal worth and dignity in the world.

Equality and justice are non-negotiable – and these values must be at the core of what it means to be Muslim today.