Islam, Women and Violence

Abstract

Islam is a religion of vast dimensions which has inspired great civilizations and today offers many men and women comfort and ethical guidance. In this paper I suggest that the tension between the Qur'an accepted as the perfect timeless word of God and the encultured dynamic Islam of nearly a quarter of the world's population results in contending perspectives of women's role and rights. The Qur'an gives men and women spiritual parity, but there are verses in the Qur'an that some feminists find difficult to reconcile with the modern rights of women. Most Islamic feminists make a clear distinction between cultural practices (what actually happens to embodied women) and the pure word of God. 1 There are profound differences in the status of women within and between predominantly Muslim countries. In some countries it is illegal for women to drive a car, or to move freely outside the home, in others women have become heads of state. The decision to wear the veil, often a sign of empowerment in Europe, is in parts of the Islamic world obligatory. Voices representing an exclusivist, literalist understanding of Islam have entered the mainstream of Muslim lives due in part to the fact that Wahhabism imposes a narrow, sectarian view of Islam, and the Saudi government with its massive oil wealth propagates this puritanical form of Islam across the world. Some traditionalist maulanas and maulvis are concerned above all with women's modesty and enforce customs that refine, purify and protect their chastity. They, like some Islamic feminists, position Islamic rights and roles for women with regard to the exoticized and eroticized `other' — in this case Western civilization, Western imperialism and the rise of Western feminism. `The West' becomes for traditional interpreters a kind of contemporary jahilya. There are also many progressive Muslim scholars who seek to articulate a historically accurate, non-idealized, now challenged, now challenging, view of Islam with an uncompromising emphasis on social justice, equality and pluralism (Safi 2008: 215). This paper argues that the ongoing, postcolonial battle against Western `imperialism' demands epistemological humility. Nevertheless, women are fighting for basic human rights and freedoms in parts of the Islamic world where the State, religious authorities (the ulema) and the patriarchal family assume the right of legal and moral surveillance. In considering the nature of violence to Muslim women in Pakistan and the UK, I hope to show that accusations of orientalism should not deter us from recognizing the courage of women activists who themselves risk imprisonment and of the struggle of women victims of rape and domestic violence to overcome feelings of shame and dishonour. I argue that both the private and public spheres need to be made safe for all Muslim women, and not just a professional elite. This can only be achieved by a fuller recognition of women's rights encapsulated in law and all aspects of public life.