Dear Salman Sultan,
I am grateful to you for expressing an interest in what I have to say on Begum Rokeya's essay, "Burka." Couple of forum members was perfectly happy to grab this chance to have another jab at Farida Majid. They could not be bothered to query as to why a person known (and reviled by the Jamaatis and Jamaati-pasands) for her indefatigable fight against the politics of hijabization of women by the Islamists would find anything of value in Rokeya's essay that argued for Burka.
For the record, I have had several publications, and presented scholarly papers in at least five International Conferences and Workshops on gender and religion in the last eight years. Here is a reaction e-mail that I received after my article was published in the Daily Star in 2004:
· More death threat issued by a shadowy Bangla Islamist Group Sometime back, Farida Majid's well researced article about hijab, with Qur'anic reference titled "Fashioning Lies ...
o mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2004-July/003956.html
Champions of science are expected to welcome ideas and analytical approaches that open up new windows to old vistas. Science is explicitly connected with logic, objectivity, truth, laws, rationality, common sense, and so on. Yet, time and again, mukto-mona stalwarts are found to give preference to a previously held belief or a simplistic bias in the name of 'science' without even checking the facts or background. [A glaring example is the way the burning of Giordano Bruno in the year 1600 by the Vatican is cited every time Avijit wants to pit science against religion. Bruno was not a scientist by a long shot. And Vatican's gripes against him were mostly political]
Here, quickly, is what I like about Rokeya's logic and hard-nosed pragmatism in "Burka:"
Like many of her writings, this essay is primarily addressed to women. Hence the propositions presented in the essay are by a woman, for the women, and the issue of how women of a particular class should dress in public is strictly an issue OF the women. It is in stance that she proposes to her fellow progressive, educated and urban females or "sisters": Amra onyaya porda chhaRiya aboshyok porda rakhibo." [I will analyze what she means by 'aboshyok porda' and I hope you will find her arguments through my analysis enlightening and sophisticated]
Contrast her stance with that of Moududi's insistence on hijab-cladding Muslim women (even if such mandate is NOT found in the Qur'an) on account of their sexual attraction to men. All women – regardless of age – are objects of sexual desire of men. A woman is not a human being endowed with a mind -- all she has is a body. The sole value of that body is that it is coveted by men. Concept of hijab according to Moududibad therefore verges on pornography. It is strictly a male view of society and the Jamaatis are forever touting how that view alone should be in control of the morals governing the society.
For getting more idea about the real debate about the politics of hijabization, read:
Thanks again. Sorry for not writing the full article on Rokeya. Caring for a bed-ridden mother drains more time and energy than one thinks.Regards
Farida Majid
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Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm
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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
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MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
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German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/
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-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
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