Traditional
Ignominies
Asma Barlas
How is it that when people speak of "Islamisation" they never speak about the radical
iconoclasm of the Qur'an's teachings that undercut the core of patriarchal
power as it has been defined historically
To
be born a Pakistani is to be born with the life-long burden of trying to make
sense of cultural practices that frequently are unintelligible,
incomprehensible, and monstrous, like the panchayat - sanctioned gang
rape of Mukhtaran Bibi as a
way to avenge tribal "honour". At first, I
was too overcome by rage, shame, and sorrow to want to write about it, but I realise that keeping silent in the face of this latest
ignominy would be to yield up too much to its perpetrators and even to become
complicit in it through inaction.
It's
not as if the rape or its circumstances were unusual, as many people have
pointed out. Hatred and violence towards women are the bedrock of the
feudal-tribal culture that masquerades as "Islamic" in Pakistan. What
may be unusual is that enough people who matter have decided to make this rape
actionable. However, it is unlikely that any action can deliver justice for a
rape victim in a society that views them as "damaged goods".
So
far, critics have focused - perhaps understandably - on the panchayat
and the police. It was, after all, the panchayat that authorised the rape and, to many, the panchayat is
the most representative form of self-governance, hence democracy; though how
anyone can regard as democratic an exclusively male body that helps to keep in
place reprehensible traditions is beyond me. In fact, this atrocity proves once
and for all that self-governance may not be democratic or even representative.
In other words, a democracy in form may not necessarily be a democracy in
content, a lesson that has been proven time and again by elected regimes (which
is not, however, to endorse militarism).
As
for the police, it is true that such incidents cannot occur without its
knowledge or tacit consent; indeed it is not unusual for the agents of law enforcement
themselves to violate the law much of the time. However, blaming only the
police and the panchayat or the 200 odd villagers who stood by as
onlookers to the rape obscures the fact that Pakistanis for the most part - in
spite of their claims to being moderate - countenance, if they do not actively
promote, the abuse and degradation of women in the name of honor, tradition, or
religion. The police, the panchayat, and the villagers are all products
of a social matrix in which tradition, culture, and misogynistic
interpretations of religion intersect to produce a view of women as "paoon ki jooti"
(a slipper, to be changed at a man's will). That such views should generate ritualised rape, the "honour"
killing of women (as in karo-kari), and watta-satta, where women are
"legally" exchanged like commodities, is then hardly surprising.
Crimes against women don't count for much because women themselves don't count
for much.
I
have heard enough people blame Islam for such debased views of women to have
spent the last several years researching and writing about the interpretive
strategies, by means of which the precept of male superiority and female
inequality and subordination to men has been projected onto the Qur'an ("Believing
Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal
Interpretations of the Qur'an, University of Texas Press, 2002). I have
found that the Qur'an does not, in fact, elevate men in their biological
capacity as males over women, notwithstanding customary exegesis of the verses
on the "degree" that men have over women, "wife-beating,"
the giving of evidence, polygyny, etc. Not only that, but the Qur'an prohibits
killing girls or keeping them on sufferance and outlaws all those actions that
constitute a rape, such as lust, sex outside marriage, and taking women against
their will (the Qur'an extends the notion of will even to female slaves,
countering their sexual objectification). Further, it counsels sexual chastity
for men and women, equally.
As
Pakistan's case illustrates, however, the Qur'an's teachings have been buried
under the rubble of pre-Islamic customs that continue to thrive in this
"Islamic" Republic. To elevate these traditions over the teachings of
the Qur'an constitutes a double heresy both because the traditions explicitly
violate its teachings and because the Qur'an itself is unremittingly critical
of blind adherence to tradition. As it tell us, whenever God
sent a Warner
Before thee [the Prophet] to any people
The wealthy ones among them
Said: 'We found our fathers
Following a certain religion,
And we will certainly
Follow in their footsteps.'
He [the Warner] said: 'What!
Even if I brought you
Better guidance than that
Which ye found
Your fathers following?'. . .
So We exacted retribution
From them: now see
What was the end
Of those who rejected (Truth)
(43: 23-25; in Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The
Qur'an, 1989: 1328-29).
Similarly,
it is the Arabs' imprudent embrace of their traditions that keeps them from
heeding the Prophet's call to the right path, as another ayah makes
clear:
When it is said to them:
'Come to what God
Hath revealed; come
To the Apostle:'
They say: 'enough for us
Are the ways we found
Our fathers following.'
What! Even though their fathers
Were void of knowledge
And guidance?
(5:10; in Ali, 275).
One
can read these ayat narrowly or, more
universally and timelessly, as illustrating the natural conflict between
monotheism and patriarchal tradition for, what else is patriarchal tradition
but following the "ways of the fathers?" How is it that when people
speak of "Islamisation" they never speak
about the radical iconoclasm of the Qur'an's teachings that undercut the core
of patriarchal power as it has been defined historically?
Meanwhile,
we need to devise a fitting punishment for rape. Customarily, Muslims have
reverted to stoning to death, but the Qur'an does not prescribe stoning for any
crime. (The Prophet once sanctioned the stoning of a Jewish man and woman taken
in adultery because he was applying Jewish law to them.) Shahid
Nadeem suggested castration (Daily Times, July 10) and it certainly fits the
crime. Since the men who kill and rape women seem to have a notion of honour that is tied to their reproductive organs, that
would be the logical place to start if one wants to change their ideas about
(self-)respect.
Asma Barlas
is associate professor and chair of Politics at Ithaca College, New York
For more information on Asma Barlas' book "Believing Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an, click here
Posted July 19, 2002. This article was
printed in the Daily Times in Pakistan, July 16, 2002. It is posted here with
the permission of the author.