Report on Muslim Womens Seminar at Shimla By Yoginder Sikand, NewAgeIslam.

com The Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, organized a three day seminar Womens Struggles for Equality, Justice and Empowerment from the 21st y, 2011. It was attended by some twenty academics and social activists ss the country (and one from abroad) who are working on Muslim womens on Muslim to 23rd of Ma from acro issues.

In his key-note address, the well-known scholar-activist Asghar Ali Engineer of the Centre for the Study of Secularism and Society and the Institute of Islamic Studies, Mumbai, spoke about alternate readings of the Islamic scriptural tradit ion that can be marshaled as a resource for Muslim women in their struggles for legal equality and empowerment within the home and in the public sphere. He cont rasted such alternate readings with the deep-rooted patriarchal tradition of Isl amic exegesis which remains dominant within many Muslim communities, in India an d abroad. Although he agreed that secular, human rights-based discourses for pur suing legal equality for Muslim women was important, he stressed the need for al ternate religious arguments as well, for only then, he contended, could such pro posals for equality gain acceptance among Muslims in general. The first session of the seminar, titled Promoting Gender Sensitive Islamic Disco urses, was devoted to a more detailed discussion of the themes that Dr. Engineer had dwelt on in his presentation. A. Faiz-ur Rahman of the Forum for the Promoti on of Moderate Thought Among Muslims, Chennai, dealt with specific Quranic verse s that have been interpreted by patriarchal exegetes to justify womens subordinat ion within the family. These readings, he contended, could be questioned on the basis of an alternate, gender-friendly Islamically-grounded epistemology, such a s by exploring alternate meanings of key Quranic terms. Sheeba Aslam Fehmi, a Ph.D. candidate at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New De lhi and one of the few Indian Muslim scholars who write regularly on gender-egal itarian readings of Islam, argued the case for what is now termed broadly as Isla mic feminism. Evoking the notion that there was no Quranic sanction for the claim that only madrasa-trained clerics could interpret Islam, or that the interpreta tions of what are regarded as classical scholars (almost all male) are binding on all Muslims for all times, she stressed the need for Muslim women to study and i nterpret the Islamic texts on their own, freed from what she regarded as the int erpretive hegemony of the clerics. The womens-friendly reading of these texts wou ld be grounded in a firm commitment to gender equality and justice, and hence wo uld necessarily have to interrogate the juridical or fiqh prescriptions of the t raditionalist clerics that, she argued, were premised on the subordination of wo men to male authority. She pointed out that this task had hardly begun in India, where few Muslim women had acquired sufficient grounding both in the Islamic sc riptural tradition as well as feminist analysis required for this purpose. The seminars second session consisted of two presentations. Nasiruddin Haider Kha n, senior editor of the Delhi-based Hindi daily Hindustan, spoke about the claim of the All-Indian Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) of representing both Islam and the Indian Muslims, expressing the view that this claim was specious, even though it was taken at face value by political parties and influential sections of the media. He provided a summary of the Boards history and argued, on the basi s of a content analysis of its resolutions, statements and practical work, that it was still reluctant to seriously consider the question of Muslim womens margin alization and the issue of suitable reforms in Muslim Personal Law. The other presentation in this session was by Zakia Soman of the Bharatiya Musli m Mahila Andolan, a Muslim womens movement with over 20,000 members across India. She argued the need for linking Muslim womens struggles for substantive and lega l equality within the family to broader efforts for empowering Muslims as a whol e, including the struggle against anti-Muslim prejudice and state neglect. Musli

m womens rights within their families and communities could not, she stressed, be divorced from ongoing struggles to counter Hindutva chauvinism and state involv ement in targeting Muslims. She insisted that efforts to secure Muslim womens rig hts as citizens had to be linked to broader democratic interventions involving o ther marginalized social groups, such as Adivasis and Dalits, as well as class-b ased movements. The theme of the third session of the seminar overlapped with the first, and was titled Islamic Feminism and Muslim Womens Mobilisation. Mohammed Wajihuddin, corre spondent for the Times of India, Mumbai, spoke about the role of the mainstream (n on-Muslim) media in highlighting cases of Indian Muslim women who were seeking t o evolve a gender-friendly understanding of their faith so as to challenge the d eeply patriarchal readings of influential male clerics, using such readings for their empowerment within the private and public sphere. He also noted that, by a nd large, the Muslim-owned media ignored such women. R. Santosh, Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at Mangalore University, who has just completed his Ph.D. on Muslims in Kerala, spoke about the efforts of some Muslim women in Kerala to interpret Islam in a m anner that accords with their aspirations for gender equality within the home an d in public space. He provided a broad overview of the responses of the major Is lamic organizations in Kerala to such efforts, noting that it was mixed and vari ed according to school of thought. Indian Muslim Women: Religious Injunctions and Social Realities was the theme of the fourth session. Roseena Nasir of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusio n at the Central University, Hyderabad, reflected on the tradition of patriarcha l exegesis of religious texts and how these impacted on the lived realities of M uslim women. Jameela Nishat, a noted feminist poet and activist from Hyderabad, provided a graphic and chilling account of the exploitation of Muslim girls in p overty-stricken parts of her city. Esita Sur, who teaches at Scottish Church Col lege, Kolkata, and is doing her Ph.D. on Muslim women in Bengal, spoke about eff orts on the part of some Kolkata-based Muslim women to mobilize for legal equali ty as well as economic and educational empowerment, using both secular as well a s Islamic arguments to back their case. The fifth session was devoted to chronicling the struggles of Muslim women for e quality and justice within their own communities. Both the presentations in this session focused on the specific case of the Dawoodi Bohras, a branch of the Mus talian Ismaili Shias. Zehra Cyclewala, a noted Bohra reformist and feminist acti vist from Surat, recounted her own storyof challenging the dictatorial writ of Sy edna Burhanuddin, the chief priest of her community, of enduring various forms o f persecution and even of being excommunicated for her refusal to fall in line w ith priestly diktats. Zainab Bano, head of the Department of Political Science a t Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, and one of the pioneers of the Bohra re formist movement, provided a brief history of the role of women in the movement. She also pointed out that despite the enormous hold of the Bohra priesthood on the community, Bohra women were distinct from Sunni Muslim women in that almost all of them were educated and many of them were economically independent. Divorc e and polygamy were rare among both the reformist and orthodox Bohras she said, although she noted that the practice of female circumcision, unknown among the I ndian Sunnis, was still observed by many Bohras. The sixth session consisted of two presentations. The first, by Sehba Farooqui o f the Delhi unit of the All-India Democratic Womens Association (AIDWA), dealt wi th the proletarianisation of large sections of Muslims in Delhi, owing to severa l factors, including globalisation, that had forced a considerable number of Musli m women to turn into waged workers in their homes. For long hours of work they w ere paid a mere pittance, while middle-men and large corporations thrived on the ir cheap labour.

Subhashini Ali, senior leader of AIDWA, spoke about the role of her movement in taking up Muslim womens issues. She critiqued the NGO approach to social reform, contending that this was a means to absolve the state of its role in addressing Muslim womens substantive concerns. She referred to AIDWAs interventions in seekin g reforms in Muslim Personal Law, in countering communalism, in struggling for j ustice to victims of anti-Muslim pogroms and in speaking out against the targeti ng of Muslims in the name of countering terror, which had spelt havoc for the li ves of large numbers of Muslim women. She argued that while using Islamic argume nts, based on alternate readings of religion, for empowering Muslim women might serve, for some, a strategic purpose, such struggles necessarily had to focus on citizenship rights of such women rather than remaining limited simply to articu lating gender-friendly readings of religion, an approach that she felt was limit ed in its scope and possibilities. The seventh session focused on Muslim womens activism in regional contexts. Musht aq ul Haq Sikander, a young writer from Srinagar, Kashmir, spoke about attacks o n women by both armed forces as well as militants in Kashmir. Awsaf Ahsan, propr ietor of Other Books, a publishing house based in Kozhikode that focuses largely on Muslim-related literature, spoke about the challenges faced by a new generat ion of women among the Mapilla Muslims of Kerala, particularly in the face of hi gh rates of literacy and the growth of a large middle-class in the community. Th ese transformations had led to new gender roles and were also prompting new inte rpretations of Islam on the part of Mapilla women seeking gender equality within their homes and in the larger society. Hadil el-Khouly, an Egyptian activist who works with the Kuala Lumpur-based Musl im womens network Musawah, spoke about the work of Musawah in seeking to bring ab out legal reforms, based on alternate readings of Islamic texts, the lived reali ties of Muslim women as well as international human rights agreements, in person al laws in various Muslim countries. Finally, Yoginder Sikand, fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, pre sented a paper that examined fatwas about women issued by one of Indias most infl uential Sunni madrasas, the Dar ul-Ulum at Deoband, arguing that many of these, that sought to justify womens subordination, had been critiqued on the basis of a lternate readings of the Islamic tradition by a number of Indian Muslim scholars and activists. Each session was followed by a lively discussion. The general conclusion of the seminar was that the struggles for legal and substantive justice and equality fo r Indian Muslim women had necessarily to take recourse both to alternate reading s of religious traditions as well as secular, human rights-based arguments, and that such struggles had to be linked to efforts to facilitate the economic and e ducational empowerment of Muslims as a whole. It was pointed out that discussion s about justice and equality for Muslim women needed to go beyond suggestions fo r reforming Muslim Personal Law or articulating gender-just understandings of th eir faith to focus also on their economic, educational and political empowerment . It was generally agreed that majoritarian communalism and the targeting of Mus lims had to be countered, for only then could efforts for justice and equality f or Muslim women gain greater acceptance within their communities. The role of th e state and of male, largely cleric-led Muslim organizations in perpetuating the economic and educational backwardness of Muslim women was also critiqued. Unles s they made positive efforts for empowering economically and educationally, Musl im women, particularly from the poorer sections (the bulk of who belonged to the so-called low castes), mere legal or religious reform could not suffice. Linked t o this was the assertion that Muslim women needed to insist that leadership of t he community could not be restricted only to some male religious and political f igures and that Muslim women, too, needed to be facilitated into positions of le adership in order to speak for Muslims generally, and not just for Muslim women

alone. It was also stressed that struggles for Muslim womens were not a concern s pecific only to Muslims or to Muslim women, and that sympathetic non-Muslims, in cluding secular human rights groups and womens movements, also had a role in rais ing and addressing their issues.