International: Women wise up to their rights
Source:
New Straits Times Zainah Anwar of Sisters in Islam writes, "The struggle of all feminists in all religions and cultures is similar. [...] They have all been accused of being against their religion [...] It is not religion but patriarchy that is oppressive of women."
In 1838, 180 women, black and white, met in Philadelphia, condemning the evils of slavery and calling for its abolition.
The motive was simple. They were driven by a faith in a just God and a belief that a country founded on the ideal of "liberty and justice for all" must mean that equal rights belonged to all human beings, men and women, white or black.
The women thought they would be applauded. Instead, 10,000 men surrounded the building where their meeting was held; they shouted and threw stones through the windows. When the women could no longer hear themselves, they marched out of the building, arm in arm, to safety. But the men continued to riot, and finally set fire to the building.
At the next meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, the first ever national political women's group in America's history, the women issued a statement: "The time has come for woman to move in that sphere which Providence has assigned her, and no longer remain satisfied with the circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and a perverse application of Scripture have encircled her".
This became the first public call for women's rights in America. These were women who refused to barter their ideals for the approval of the system. The women were demonised, attacked and intimidated. Congress passed a gag rule that it would take no further action on petitions submitted by these women. No wonder, because half the members of Congress owned slaves.
The struggle of all feminists in all religions and cultures is similar. Be they Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim women. They have all been accused of being against their religion, their God, their institutions, their culture and tradition. It is not religion but patriarchy that is oppressive of women. But it is very convenient to hide behind the infallibility of God's words to denounce those who demand for change.
I learned of this inspiring little known anti-slavery feminists at the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity (WISE), a conference that brought together over 150 women from 25 countries to stand up for gender and social justice in Islam. The story was told by Helen LaKelly Hunt, who grew up as a Southern belle in Texas, became a feminist and set up The Sister Fund to support the empowerment of women and girls.
Ever since the empowering energy of the Beijing Women's Conference in 1995, I had been dreaming of a mini-Beijing of Muslim women. We have much to share, celebrate and struggle for.
This New York meeting was not a full Beijing event, but it came close in terms of spirit and energy. A dazzling array of accomplished Muslim women took the stage, discussing with knowledge, confidence and eloquence a range of issues that included women in politics, in spirituality, in faith-fuelled activism, women interpreting the Quran and fiqh, women fighting for social justice, and women using the arts to bring change. And they were all Muslim.
Confident young women who did not make it on stage, stood in line to share their experiences, their initiatives, their struggles for justice or to ask questions and give their views. I was energised. Here was a public gathering that was breaking the Western stereotype of the oppressed, voiceless and downtrodden lot of the Muslim woman. We all knew we were not alone in demanding to be treated as human beings of equal worth and dignity. If only we could get the many powerful Muslim men who see us as a threat to see reason and recognise reality.
No wonder the American National Organisation for Women in the 1960s defined feminism to mean "the radical notion that women are people".
What came out thunderingly clear at the WISE conference was the faith of Muslim women, young and old, in an Islam that is just and liberating. That there is no contradiction between faith and feminism.
Initiated by Daisy Khan of the ASMA Society (American Society for Muslim Advancement), WISE aimed for four ambitious outcomes: An International Advisory Council for Women to take positions on gender and social justice issues of concern to Muslim women globally; a Global Muslim Women's Fund; a network of Muslim women leaders; and a long-term initiative to support the growth of distinguished Muslim women mufti.
The details remain to be worked out, but the participants engaged seriously in defining the scope and function of such a Council and the Muslim Women's Fund. The network of Muslim women leaders already exists and is fast growing and a handful of Muslim women mufti and assistant mufti have already been appointed in Syria, Turkey and in Hyderabad, India. The big challenge remains on how to multiply the numbers and to enable their voices to make a difference.
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. All over the world, Muslim women are organising and standing up for their rights. Yes, they would be surrounded by men who will riot and burn halls, or threaten to do so, yes, they would be condemned as murtad, anti-God and anti-Syariah, some would even be killed, but Muslim women will not be silenced and be unseen anymore in their demand for justice.
Change is, of course, costly. Wisely, the ASMA Society invited leading Christian and Jewish feminists to share their struggles to bring change within institutionalised religion, the price they were willing to pay for exercising their right to "rebel, rebel, rebel", as Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and feminist writer said. In a stirring speech, Sister Joan who has called for debate on the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, said: "If no leader objects and no leader rebels, then the wrongs will continue for all time."
But one woman moved us all. Mukhtaran Mai is an illiterate Pakistani woman who, instead of killing herself as others suffering her fate do, chose to fight the system to demand justice and in the process brought change to her life and the lives of hundreds of poverty-stricken girls and boys in rural Punjab. She was ordered by the village tribal council to be publicly gang-raped by four men as punishment for the alleged "honour crime" of her 14-year-old brother who was falsely accused of having sexual relations with a woman of a higher caste. She was then forced to walk back to her house half-naked.
This criminal act so outraged the village imam that he denounced the punishment during a Friday sermon, and from there the story was picked up by the national and international Press.
The state compensated her, but Mukhtaran was insulted that her honour could have a price. So the money was used to buy land and build two schools, one for boys and one for girls in her village. Some 300 girls go to school now for the first time in their lives, including Mukhtaran, who at the age of 33, is in standard four.
More money poured in when the New York Times wrote about her. She built a health clinic, a police station, bought an ambulance, and set up a woman's crisis centre when her bedroom was overrun by women and children running away from abusive homes. And, she is now building the first high school in her village.
She opened a school for boys in another village to stop the practice of poverty-stricken boys being trained to be thugs to serve politicians and feudal leaders.
For being daring to speak out, her life has been threatened. But she refuses to move out of her village for better protection in the city. She travels the world to campaign against customary practices that oppress women, but home remains her village in Punjab.
With her steely strength and dignity, she shamed and inspired us — all of us in that hall many times more privileged than her — as she demanded that we take action in the face of crime and that our very silence in the face of injustice and oppression is in itself a crime.
Her action drove home the point that it is not time that changes things, it is people. Ordinary people who, in rebelling against injustice, took on the mantle of leadership to bring about change in society.
15 December 2006
The women thought they would be applauded. Instead, 10,000 men surrounded the building where their meeting was held; they shouted and threw stones through the windows. When the women could no longer hear themselves, they marched out of the building, arm in arm, to safety. But the men continued to riot, and finally set fire to the building.
At the next meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, the first ever national political women's group in America's history, the women issued a statement: "The time has come for woman to move in that sphere which Providence has assigned her, and no longer remain satisfied with the circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and a perverse application of Scripture have encircled her".
This became the first public call for women's rights in America. These were women who refused to barter their ideals for the approval of the system. The women were demonised, attacked and intimidated. Congress passed a gag rule that it would take no further action on petitions submitted by these women. No wonder, because half the members of Congress owned slaves.
The struggle of all feminists in all religions and cultures is similar. Be they Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim women. They have all been accused of being against their religion, their God, their institutions, their culture and tradition. It is not religion but patriarchy that is oppressive of women. But it is very convenient to hide behind the infallibility of God's words to denounce those who demand for change.
I learned of this inspiring little known anti-slavery feminists at the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity (WISE), a conference that brought together over 150 women from 25 countries to stand up for gender and social justice in Islam. The story was told by Helen LaKelly Hunt, who grew up as a Southern belle in Texas, became a feminist and set up The Sister Fund to support the empowerment of women and girls.
Ever since the empowering energy of the Beijing Women's Conference in 1995, I had been dreaming of a mini-Beijing of Muslim women. We have much to share, celebrate and struggle for.
This New York meeting was not a full Beijing event, but it came close in terms of spirit and energy. A dazzling array of accomplished Muslim women took the stage, discussing with knowledge, confidence and eloquence a range of issues that included women in politics, in spirituality, in faith-fuelled activism, women interpreting the Quran and fiqh, women fighting for social justice, and women using the arts to bring change. And they were all Muslim.
Confident young women who did not make it on stage, stood in line to share their experiences, their initiatives, their struggles for justice or to ask questions and give their views. I was energised. Here was a public gathering that was breaking the Western stereotype of the oppressed, voiceless and downtrodden lot of the Muslim woman. We all knew we were not alone in demanding to be treated as human beings of equal worth and dignity. If only we could get the many powerful Muslim men who see us as a threat to see reason and recognise reality.
No wonder the American National Organisation for Women in the 1960s defined feminism to mean "the radical notion that women are people".
What came out thunderingly clear at the WISE conference was the faith of Muslim women, young and old, in an Islam that is just and liberating. That there is no contradiction between faith and feminism.
Initiated by Daisy Khan of the ASMA Society (American Society for Muslim Advancement), WISE aimed for four ambitious outcomes: An International Advisory Council for Women to take positions on gender and social justice issues of concern to Muslim women globally; a Global Muslim Women's Fund; a network of Muslim women leaders; and a long-term initiative to support the growth of distinguished Muslim women mufti.
The details remain to be worked out, but the participants engaged seriously in defining the scope and function of such a Council and the Muslim Women's Fund. The network of Muslim women leaders already exists and is fast growing and a handful of Muslim women mufti and assistant mufti have already been appointed in Syria, Turkey and in Hyderabad, India. The big challenge remains on how to multiply the numbers and to enable their voices to make a difference.
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. All over the world, Muslim women are organising and standing up for their rights. Yes, they would be surrounded by men who will riot and burn halls, or threaten to do so, yes, they would be condemned as murtad, anti-God and anti-Syariah, some would even be killed, but Muslim women will not be silenced and be unseen anymore in their demand for justice.
Change is, of course, costly. Wisely, the ASMA Society invited leading Christian and Jewish feminists to share their struggles to bring change within institutionalised religion, the price they were willing to pay for exercising their right to "rebel, rebel, rebel", as Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and feminist writer said. In a stirring speech, Sister Joan who has called for debate on the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, said: "If no leader objects and no leader rebels, then the wrongs will continue for all time."
But one woman moved us all. Mukhtaran Mai is an illiterate Pakistani woman who, instead of killing herself as others suffering her fate do, chose to fight the system to demand justice and in the process brought change to her life and the lives of hundreds of poverty-stricken girls and boys in rural Punjab. She was ordered by the village tribal council to be publicly gang-raped by four men as punishment for the alleged "honour crime" of her 14-year-old brother who was falsely accused of having sexual relations with a woman of a higher caste. She was then forced to walk back to her house half-naked.
This criminal act so outraged the village imam that he denounced the punishment during a Friday sermon, and from there the story was picked up by the national and international Press.
The state compensated her, but Mukhtaran was insulted that her honour could have a price. So the money was used to buy land and build two schools, one for boys and one for girls in her village. Some 300 girls go to school now for the first time in their lives, including Mukhtaran, who at the age of 33, is in standard four.
More money poured in when the New York Times wrote about her. She built a health clinic, a police station, bought an ambulance, and set up a woman's crisis centre when her bedroom was overrun by women and children running away from abusive homes. And, she is now building the first high school in her village.
She opened a school for boys in another village to stop the practice of poverty-stricken boys being trained to be thugs to serve politicians and feudal leaders.
For being daring to speak out, her life has been threatened. But she refuses to move out of her village for better protection in the city. She travels the world to campaign against customary practices that oppress women, but home remains her village in Punjab.
With her steely strength and dignity, she shamed and inspired us — all of us in that hall many times more privileged than her — as she demanded that we take action in the face of crime and that our very silence in the face of injustice and oppression is in itself a crime.
Her action drove home the point that it is not time that changes things, it is people. Ordinary people who, in rebelling against injustice, took on the mantle of leadership to bring about change in society.
15 December 2006
