Reflections on Islamic Identity, Citizenship Rights and Women’s Struggle For Gender Justice: Illustration From India

Journal of International Women's Studies Volume 9 | Issue 1 Article 4 Sep-2007 Reflections on Islamic Identity, Citizenship Rights and Women’s Struggle For Gender Justice: Illustration From India Sabiha Hussain Follow this and additional works at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws Part of the Women's Studies Commons Cover Page Footnote: This paper was presented in an international conference jointly organized by GADNET and CWDS in December, 2006 in New Delhi, India. Recommended Citation Hussain, Sabiha (2007). Reflections on Islamic Identity, Citizenship Rights and Women’s Struggle For Gender Justice: Illustration From India. Journal of International Women's Studies, 9(1), 63-79. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol9/iss1/4 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Reflections on Islamic Identity, Citizenship Rights and Women’s Struggle For Gender Justice: Illustration From India Cover Page Footnote This paper was presented in an international conference jointly organized by GADNET and CWDS in December, 2006 in New Delhi, India. This article is available in Journal of International Women's Studies: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol9/iss1/4 This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. ©2007 Journal of International Women’s Studies. Reflections on Islamic Identity, Citizenship Rights and Women’s Struggle For Gender Justice: Illustration From India By Sabiha Hussain1 Abstract Women's rights face an uncertain future throughout much of the Islamic world. The fate of women's rights throughout the Islamic world crucially hinges upon the outcome of debates on reforms of family and penal codes including new understandings of Islamic law and teaching. It requires mention that there is no monolithic trend of women’s struggle for gender justice even in Islamic countries. It varies with the cultural setting, the political structure of the state and the location of the community. In the Islamic world, the question of gender justice often becomes a struggle to be fought at two levels: against the forces of conservatism in society and against its anti-democratic effects on the political structure of the country. There is growing tension between gender justice and rising conservatism. Fundamentalist forces try to impose greater control over women, even though this approach may or may not have to do anything with religion. In such a context, Muslim women face several new dilemmas. Do they stand with their community under attack and hold in abeyance their struggle against the fundamentalist leaders or do they foreground their critique of Islamic conservatism at a time when imperialism uses women’s unequal status under Islamic law to garner ideological support for their imperial project? A similar dilemma is faced by Muslim women in India as members of a minority community faced with majoritarian communalism. A significant challenge before Muslim women is to find ways to overcome the dilemma and question the foundations of Islamic law where it is incompatible with democratic rights without compromising their sense of solidarity with their community. What must be done to overcome the practical hurdles that stand in the way of reconciling Islam with universal principles of women's rights? How can Muslim feminists win the interpretive struggle against the conservatives? Keywords: Islamic Identity; Gender Justice; Citizenship rights; Introduction Research on Islamic identity and women’s rights is neither a new nor an easy task. It is not new, particularly in a period when discourses on the lack of women’s rights, in several Islamic states, have become useful propaganda for external interventions. It is a difficult task because despite Islam being a world religion, social practices, legal systems, and even religious mores and interpretations vary across regions, nationalities, cultures and even sects. Nevertheless, several studies have directly or indirectly, touched upon the way in which Islam interfaces with women’s participation in state formation, the labour market and the family sphere. The present challenge before progressive women within Muslim communities, is how to combat the mounting influence of discriminatory traditions, and their enforcement through 1 Currently working as fellow, centre for women’s Development Studies (CDWS), New Delhi India.This paper was presented in an international conference jointly organized by GADNET and CWDS in December, 2006 in New Delhi, India. Centre for Women’s Development Studiesv25 Bhai Vir Singh MargvvNew DelhivIndiavEmail: I would like to acknowledge my sincere thanks to my colleague, Indrani Mazumdar for her cooperation in revising the paper Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 9 #1 November 2007 63 political policy in a period when hostility to, and demonisation of Muslims makes intra-community criticism and debate difficult. When one talks about Islamic identity and the reasons for advocating this identity, two factors seem to be particularly significant in the contemporary era. First, invariably the vast majority of Muslims in most parts of the world have emerged from colonial rule or alien hegemonic rule and control. Many Muslim societies became nation-states without the benefit of an historical evolution of a nation, and all of them have had to cope with both the challenges posed by state-building and the burdens of dislocation of indigenous socio-economic structures and cultural systems caused by colonial imperial power. In the process of integrating the citizens of the state, political leaders selected an infinite range of possible cultural identities, which instead of giving equality of benefits and opportunities to its people, somehow deepened inequality as well as led to discrimination against the specific groups within the state (Taylor and M. Yapps, 1979; Shaheed, 2004) Second, the emergence of the ‘New World Order’, wherein the ground of politics generally seem to have shifted away from defining the nature of the state and the appropriate socio-economic and political system, to trying to work out the best deal within the existing system. This shift somehow reinforces the tendency to make demands on the basis of identity that demarcate the boundaries between ‘we’ and ‘they’ rather than a well-articulated political agenda that spells out economic and social programs. The question of women’s rights and gender justice both challenges and is challenged by cultural and political issues of identity/identities, in terms of how identity is formed, who defines it, how definitions of gender fit into definitions of community (and those of a collective and personal self), and finally how these (...truncated)