[ Here are the notes I wrote after I returned from the beautiful campus of U. of Montana in Missoula, Montana, U. S. A. in 2005. My mother was stll alive then in Bangladesh. ]
The experience I had at the conference, "Islam, Women, the Veil and the West" held at the University of Montana (April 28-30, 2005), was truly remarkable not only because I found the mountainous scenery very moving, and not only because the local paper covered the news by putting my picture and praising my presentation. Getting to know other participants and hearing their papers confirmed what I have always been convinced of. Muslim women, despite the abysmal treatment of them by their own societies, can be proud of their achievements in the non-Arabic speaking world. Looked at closely, the Muslim women of India from the end of 19th and certainly with the trailblazing appearance of an exceptional intellectual like Begum Rokeya Shakhawat Hussain of Bengal in the early 20th Century, have made bold strides in progress that even Western women can envy.
How many Western countries could boast of a girls' boarding school like the one Begum Rokeya established in Calcutta in 1911? My mother had the privilege of attending Sakhawat Memorial Girls School as a day student for a short while, and she has wonderful memories! She even remembers climbing on the lap of Begum Rokeya when her father took her to the school, and had a meeting with the famous lady seated behind a lacy curtain. Yes, this, the earliest of 20th century's greatest feminists, observed purdah! That does not make her backward or a hypocrite. She was simply being pragmatic. Her short essay, "Burkha" (1904) is so deeply intelligent in presenting the case for burkha's practical usage for modern women that it is often interpreted as if she is being timid in this aspect of women's liberation.
The most important point about awareness of women's worth in those days is this: There were many educated Muslim fathers, inspired by Begum Rokeya's excellent writings and relentless campaign for women's education, who took an active interest in having their daughters educated, whether in Calcutta or elsewhere in Bengal.
Amongst the Muslims in the Western diaspora we often make the mistake of lumping the two fundamentalist Islamic countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Their differences are huge, not only because they are rivals - each wanting to be the master of the grand narrative of Islam - but in terms of who controls the most effective suppression of the potential of human power of women. The fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie was the rare occasion when a Shia Imam stole the world's limelight as the spokesman for all the Muslims. However, ever since the debacle of the Rushdie Affair, the Wahhabi Sunnis have vowed never to let any other sect have any say in defining what "pure Islam" is. They have spent billions of petrodollars in disseminating their version of Islam to the rest of the Muslim world in the form of free Quran translated in 40 different languages which contain obnoxious tafsir on women, along with other political Islamic writings by the intrepid Moududi.
Saudi Arabia is a surrealistic country. An American scholar who has studied it calls it "a hypnotized chicken that needs to wake up," calling to attention that this country does not have music, dance, art, literature, theatre or much of any intellectual activity. I can see from news clips that it is a completely materialistic society, where the only outdoor activity the women are permitted is to go to the huge shopping malls and buy European and American luxury items.
Recently, a few women are being vocal about this stultifying situation. Lubna Hussain is a journalist in Riyadh whose voice is being heard around the world. I would like you to read her piece in the Arab News in the following link:
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9ion=0&article=61400&d=1&m=4&y=2005
We should do something to help our sisters in that land resembling a "hypnotized chicken sitting on the edge of the barn roof."
Iran is also a fundamentalist Muslim country. But we should think about women in Iran by making a distinction between them and those in S. Arabia. Though Mullatocracy has forcibly thrust women in the shroud of this hideous black 'chador' and curbed many human rights, Iranian women still enjoy a certain freedom of movements and many civic rights that are denied to women in the Arab countries. Women can drive in Iran, own and run businesses, hold high offices in govt. and commercial outfits, etc. In Tehran, women will hail a taxi and jostle in it elbowing the sharing male passengers, in their black chador and all.
In institutions of higher education in present day Iran, 51% of students and 49% of staff are women. Historically Iranian women have led the Muslim world in gaining grounds in women's rights and gender equality. There are now world-renowned Iranian women film directors. In short, Iran is a land with a proud cultural tradition, much like Bangladesh.
Shirin Ebadi did not drop from the sky. She comes from a tradition and a society that looked up to higher education for women in well-off families. In societies like that of Iran or Bangladesh, educated women, coming mostly from upper class, are always engaged in works for the community, because the less fortunate are so backward.
Yet, veiling of women, traditionally, was a practice of the upper class. In my country that has a year-round pleasant tropical climate, the peasant women used to go about their business almost half-clad, not being able to afford the clothing to cover all of their hard-working limbs. Hence, in the village societies, the newly rich would show off their wealth by dressing their womenfolks in elaborate 'burkhas'.
But now, with petrodollar-fattened Wahhabism flowing in freely to corrupt our traditional culture and to impede its normal evolutionary flow towards progress, Bangladeshi women are being hijabized in the name of Islam. Tablighi Jamati brigade are knocking at every door proselytizing and traumatizing the women of the household: "Allah will punish you if anyone is attracted by your beauty." My question is: Who created the beauty of women? Tablighi Jamaat certainly did not. Obviously it is not created by Allah, because logically he cannot punish His own creation just for having been created. So some other Allah-like being must have created the ˜woman". Because the female of the species sure do resemble the shape of the same exalted being as the Allah-created male! Such unthinkable ˜shierk" is perpetuated in the name of a religion that is known for the strictest monotheistic tenet among the Abrahamic religions!
Farida Majid farida_majid@...
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