The burqa champions
Daily Times, Tuesday, February 16, 2010
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\02\16\story_16-2-2010_pg3_2
View: The burqa champions â€â€Ishtiaq Ahmed
When Field Marshal Ayub Khan introduced the Muslim Family Laws
Ordinance, he was assailed by all the reactionary ulema because it
regulated polygamy, introduced a minimum age for marriage and gave a
share in property to grandchildren from their grandfather's property
even when their own father had passed away
My recent op-ed, 'The French burqa ban' (Daily Times, February 2,
2010), has elicited spirited responses in the Pakistani
English-language newspapers. That is a sign of healthy exchange of
views. As always the liberal-left defence of reactionary practices is
the most hypocritical because it derives from not some deeply held
commitment to reactionary culture. When the Taliban or al Qaeda defend
the burqa as obligatory dress for pious women and then use the same to
carry out terrorist attacks in their twisted reasoning, the burqa has
served a double purpose: it has preserved the chastity of their female
suicide bombers while enabling them to fight in the jihad.
Additionally, if the burqa can be used by men to evade inspection then
too it has served a 'noble' purpose.
In 'The French burqa ban', I had based my opposition to it on two
factual bases: one, that it can be used to mortally harm other,
innocent human beings, and two, that it was a later accretion to the
Muslim female dress code and was not part of the pristine Islamic
community founded by the Prophet (PBUH). Nobody challenged my second
argument, so I will not go over it again.
I will address the first argument because on that occasion I only
mentioned that the burqa can be used for terrorist activities. Now, I
will give concrete evidence that should incontrovertibly establish the
burqa as a dress code that has been used in recent times on a number
of occasions to carry out terrorist acts in not only Pakistan and
Afghanistan but elsewhere too. The Kuwait Times of December 12, 2009,
under the caption 'Veiled suicide bomber was Danish says Somali
Speaker' (http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTE5Mjc4MzEwOA)
narrates the tragic story of a suicide bomber, allegedly a 26-year-old
Danish citizen of Somali descent, who killed 22 people including three
government ministers in Mogadishu disguised as a veiled woman. The
Speaker of the Somalian Parliament, Sheikh Aden Mohamed Madobe,
remarked: "It is unfortunate that a child whose parents escaped
Somalia's conflict and raised him in Europe came home with extremist
ideologies and blew himself and innocent people up." His father denied
the charges, but the fact remains that whosoever succeeded in getting
close to the Somalian politicians was wearing a burqa.
The Daily Times of February 9, 2010, informed that the
Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has dispatched eight female suicide
bombers to target Punjab. Intelligence reports suggested that they
were veiled and wore gloves and socks to conceal their identity.
During 2007-2009, the Afghan and Pakistani media have reported several
cases of burqa-clad terrorists. I need not labour the point that a
similar crime can be committed anywhere in the world, including
Europe, with the help of a burqa.
Some years earlier, the French had banned the headscarf in school for
girls because it was realised that a concerted campaign of the ulema
in combination with mainly young male adults from families were
preventing Muslim girls getting a modern education and developing
awareness about their rights under French secular law, which upholds
equality of both the sexes. The ban did not apply to girls who had
become majors or when they were not at school. There were protests on
that occasion but when the French government (a socialist one at that
time) did not give in, the protests petered out quickly because by and
large the young Muslim girls favoured an end to their inferior status
in the conservative Maghreb culture.
Another time when the sob-story about a powerless minuscule minority
did not hold much water was when cases of female genital mutilation or
female circumcision were reported from all over Europe. This barbaric
practice was found among both Muslim and Christian immigrants in
France from sub-Saharan Africa. I remember some crazy female American
postmodernist freak protesting that it was white European men
interfering in the cultural autonomy of African immigrants!
When Field Marshal Ayub Khan introduced the Muslim Family Laws
Ordinance, he was assailed by all the reactionary ulema because it
regulated polygamy, introduced a minimum age for marriage and gave a
share in property to grandchildren from their grandfather's property
even when their own father had passed away. The government stood its
ground and the first step towards social reform was taken after 1,400
years.
I am reminded of the Shah Bano Case (1985) in India in which cultural
rights and freedom of choice were put forth as arguments to disqualify
divorced aged Muslim women from claiming financial support from their
ex-husbands. On that occasion it was not a question of the freedom of
an individual but that of a community. Shah Bano, 64, was divorced by
her husband of several decades, Mr Khan. On the advice of some
well-wishers she applied for financial help from him as was granted to
Indian citizens in such situations. Muslim conservatives took the
stand that in Islam the ex-husband has no other obligation to support
his former wife beyond iddat (a period of roughly four months to check
if pregnancy had not occurred prior to divorce). The Indian Supreme
Court upheld the decision of the Madhya Pradesh High Court that had
fixed a nominal amount per month.
Conservative Muslims, including the ulema, mobilised the largely
uneducated and ignorant Muslim masses against the reform. Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi caved in because he did not want to risk
alienating the Muslim vote bank. Therefore, the Indian Parliament
passed a law exempting Muslim women from benefitting from a
progressive change in law. The opponents took the position that the
Indian state had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of the
Muslim community. On that occasion the Hindu Right came out in favour
of abolition of Muslim personal law, but earlier when in the 1950s
Jawaharlal Nehru had introduced legislation to reform Hindu personal
law to improve the rights and status of Hindu women, the Hindu
Mahasabha and RSS had opposed such measures. Their support of the
abolition of Muslim personal law was surely hypocritical, but should
that have been enough to dissuade progressives from supporting reform?
I wonder.
I probed this strange attitude of Pakistani progressives with the
grand old man of the Pakistani left movement, Dada Amir Haider, in
1972. I wanted to understand why characters who pretended to uphold
the emancipatory ethos of the French and Russian revolutions were no
different in practice from those who believe that since the end of the
Islamic Golden Age the world is constantly going astray. He gave a wry
smile and said, "Such progressives have grown their beards deep inside
their stomachs."
Ishtiaq Ahmed is a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of
South Asian Studies (ISAS) and the South Asian Studies Programme at
the National University of Singapore. He is also a Professor of
Political Science at Stockholm University. He has published
extensively on South Asian politics. At ISAS, he is currently working
on a book, Is Pakistan a Garrison State? He can be reached at
isasia@nus.edu.sg
--
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear
of punishment and hope of reward after death." --
Albert Einstein !!!
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