REASONS MEN AND HIS FAMILY GIVE TO JUSTIFY POLYGAMY

 

REASONS MEN AND HIS FAMILY GIVE TO JUSTIFY POLYGAMY

Dr. Noorjehan Safia Niaz

 

If polygamy was not so hurtful, it would be a fascinating insight into the human psyche. Look below at some of the reasons given by the husband and his family to justify polygamy. Patriarchy remains an overarching reason, but greed, insensitivity, inhumanness, selfishness, greed, ego, immorality and many more of such human frailties surface.

 

A study done by BMMA, 'Status of Women in Polygamous Marriages and the Need for Legal Protection, published by Notion Press in December 2022, revealed some of these frailties through the eyes of the victim/survivor. Women who suffer polygamy tend to be in a state of shock initially but soon gather themselves to witness the most basest human emotion - crass, uncaring and immoral. They enter the marital relationship in vulnerability and remain in it as polygamy remains one of the reasons for that vulnerability.

 

This study brought out the reasons why a man gets into another marriage in the subsistance of his first marriage. It also brought forth justifications given by the husband's family to cover up for the act of their son. In most cases as expected the in-laws of the victim supported their son. In most cases they also knew that their son has remarried. In fact in one instance they blamed the woman for signing a letter which was actually a permission for his remarriage. In another instance they said wife must bear the violence and insults and if she does not then the husband will marry.

 

In one case she was beaten up by her husband and made to run away from his house. Depressed and dejected she came back to her in-laws. They told her that they cannot do anything about this and that she should take her children and go away wherever she can. That they have now nothing to do with her. When she refused to leave the house, they beat her up so much that she lost consciousness.

 

In one instance the parents of the daughter confronted the in-laws. Her in-laws told them that they cannot keep their daughter as they have decided to marry off their son somewhere else. Her mother asked them what her daughter’s fault was. They said their daughter is barren. Who will carry the name of their son? They asked her mother to leave. They said why can’t we marry our son again? We will get him married the third time. Her mother cried but nothing moved them. They came back home and after two days her belongings also came back. In another instance they said they cannot afford to bear her and her children’s expenses.

 

In Mumbai the victims says her in-laws had anyways not accepted her. So she was not welcome there. They called her son also illegitimate. That is why they married him off so that she cannot come to their house. In another case too in- laws did not like her. They never supported her. For them she did not exist at all. The second wife was as per their wishes. She was also poor and did not have anyone to speak on her behalf.

 

In another case her in-laws refused to give her share of the property where she was staying with her children. When the will was made her name was missing. They said as long as we are staying in this house, she will also have to stay there. So her husband left her and her in-laws did not give her the share in the matrimonial home.

 

In Odisha the victim checked with her mother in law who confirmed that her son has remarried. She said ‘so what if he has not divorced her. He is keeping you happy. He has married you so that you can give a child’.

 

In another family, only her elder brother in law was angry with his brother but the rest of the family said shariah allows 4 marriages. So what if he has remarried they asked. Another victim says her in-laws favoured their son. They said he disliked her and so he remarried. What is wrong with that?

 

In Tamil Nadu his parents said that he never took care of them nor listened to them. He does not even stay with them. They were not aware of his second marriage. They said she is the first person to tell her about their son’s remarriage and that they too are shocked. It is not their fault and they are not responsible for it. In another case her in-laws were under the control of their son. They could not do anything for her.

 

Now let us look at some of the reasons given by the husband justifying his second marriage. Men have remarried because they have fallen in love with another woman. In one case in Odisha the man warned his first wife that if he does not give him permission to remarry he will divorce her and then remarry. To which she relented and gave permission. In Karnataka one man says he is in love with a widow. The larger society calls her a prostitute so he wants to marry her. He also loves her and she believes in him and is dependent on him so how can he leave her.

 

One marriage as per his liking and one marriage as per the liking of the parents. How convenient is that! In Mumbai the husband’s parents did not like her and so made their son marry another woman as per their choice. He came to her after a month and told her that he was forced into marriage by his parents. They said if did not marry as per their choice they would not give him his share of the property. He was forced into marriage. She forgave him because she did not have a choice. In a reverse case the husband blames her parents for his second marriage. He did not get enough dowry from them so he harassed and beat her up and remarried

 

Marriage in our country, does it even go beyond looks and physical characteristics! In Madhya Pradesh one man said that he remarried because he does not like her and that she is thin and dark. Another woman was dark and short and he wanted to marry someone of his choice. Another said he hates her because she is short and that she does not have knowledge and not mentally grown. Another said that she is not fit for him.

 

In Karnataka one man say he tortures and beats her up because that is his right as a husband. And he beats her up because she wants to go to her parents’ house every time and he does not like her attitude. Since she anyway faces his violence, it is ok if he remarries. Going off to mother’s house is another man’s complaint and the reason for his remarriage.

 

Let us look at some statistics. Out of the 250 women interviewed for the study, 35% of the husbands gave the reason that they fell in love with someone else, 11% gave the reason of not having children, 11% were not happy with her body [too dark, too fat, too thin etc.], 6% said they remarried to support a widow or divorcee, 12% said their parents asked them to, 4% said their wives were bed-ridden, 10% blamed their first wives and 6% remarried because they wanted a son.

 

BMMA has been demanding a comprehensively codified family law, but till such time, although piecemeal, polygamy must end legally so that Muslim women have legal protection and Muslim men realize that they cannot remain above the law all the time.

 

See the full report:

https://notionpress.com/read/status-of-women-in-polygamous-marriages-and-need-for-legal-protection

OUR STRUGGLE OUR LEADERSHIP - TO SUM UP MUSLIM WOMEN'S ACHIEVEMENTS

DAY 30

OUR STRUGGLE, OUR LEADERSHIP

Indian Muslim Women – Who they are and What have they Achieved

Why the need for a Muslim women’s movement? 

Since the inception of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan [BMMA] in a January 2007 it has been asked by many as to the need for Muslim women to organize themselves? Kya zaroorat hai Musalman aurton ko apni tehreek tayar karne ki? After 14 years of BMMA, it is amply clear why it was so important that Muslim women take a lead. The reasons are many. To start with, no community can develop if its women remain behind and conversely the women of the community cannot progress unless the larger community also takes the onus to lend her a helping hand in playing her role in public life.

BMMA has not only created an alternative liberal voice in the Indian Muslim community but has also brought Muslim women in the forefront by raising a sensitive issue of law reform towards which the larger community had adopted an ostrich approach. Creating a membership base on more than a lakh, creating an draft of Muslim family law, creating Darul Uloom-e-Niswan-a centre for Islamic teaching, winning a PIL in the Supreme Court against the Haji Ali dargah Trust, filing a PIL in Supreme Court against the practice of triple talaak and halala, running vocational training centres in 7 cities for the socio-economic development of Muslim girls and boys, running Aurton Ki Shariah Adalats in 4 cities-in short creating secular, liberal space within the community and reclaiming Islam from misogynist and conservatives to secure human rights of Muslim women. With Muslim women taking lead, especially on matters of personal law reform and issues of women’s access to sacred spaces, we have also seem the Muslim male secular liberal voice rising to support women. 

What is its vision and goals? 

The vision of the Andolan is to create conditions within the Indian society where the Muslim community and especially the Muslim women are able to eradicate their own poverty and marginalization and live a life of equality, justice and with respect for human rights. It believes in the values of democracy, secularism, equality, non-violence, human rights and justice as enshrined in the Constitution of India. These are the guiding principles in their struggle. It believes in the inherent capacity of women to lead and ameliorate the social, economic, political, legal and educational backwardness. It also seeks to carry out positive, liberal, humanist and feminist interpretations of religion for ensuring justice and equality to Muslim women. And to achieve its vision of an equal society it seeks collaboration and alliance with other movements and networks that are fighting for social equality and human rights and are opposing forces of fascism, capitalism, communalism and imperialism in all its forms.

What is the pathway to achieving this vision? 

To achieve this vision and objectives the Andolan through its well laid out administrative structure reaches out to Muslim women in villages, towns and cities and organizes them into pressure groups under the leadership of a committed woman leader. The emergent leadership of Muslim women at the national, state, district, block and village level carries out programmes and activities related to education, livelihood, law reform and health services. Amongst its many achievements the Andolan in all the states where it is active, has mobilized Muslim women and exerted pressure on local government machinery to issue important documents like voter I-cards, ration cards, widow pension cards etc. Perspective building and inputs and information-giving workshops are organized on various issues on a regular basis. 

These initiatives of Muslim women need to be further supported and complimented by other Muslims so that the community as a whole is able to lead a life of dignity and safety. It cannot be that the community demands security and democracy for itself from the state but does not allow the same for the women. Democracy within is the crying need of the time.

How has rise in global conservatism affected the community? 

While we see a rise in conservative forces within the community, we also see the world not doing anything better. With conservative political parties rising in the Europe and USA and within our own country, Islam and Muslims continue to remain the villain. Notwithstanding the fact that the highest number of victims of Islamic terror continues to be fellow Muslims. Closer home, rise of cultural and political hindutva groups has ensured that Muslims remain under siege. This socio-political environment has a direct bearing on women and youth. Lack of educational and livelihood opportunities, ghettoized living conditions and an atmosphere of being hated, feared and despised have pushed the community to the wall. 

How has privatization, globalization, liberalization, in short an open capitalist economy impacted our struggles? 

The arrival of the forces of globalization and privatization in India since early 1990s has also led to the poor - dalits, adivasis, women and minorities being driven further to the margins with a direct onslaught on their lands and livelihoods. Civil society organizations have been protesting about the widespread exclusion of India’s large masses due to the very questionable notions of development which are increasingly finding deep roots into the successive governments and their policies. A malfunctioning PDS and nonfunctional primary schools both aggravate the social exclusion faced by the minorities as by the dalits and adivasis. Today the impact of state withdrawal from welfarism and inclusive development is for all to see. It is important to see BMMA’s work emerging and impacted by these conditions. 

Does the answer lie in building up movements of people? 

Indian history is replete with instances of struggle for social change and justice. Women and especially Muslim women have also initiated and actively participated in many historical movements for justice. These struggles are still on with increasing strength of women. Yet women’s participation and the articulation of her perspective of social justice and development have always been ignored traditionally. This alternative voice of women which is concerned with just, fair and humane society never got due recognition. And this fuelled in some Muslim women a strong need to create a collective that will not only address the concerns of the Muslim community and particularly of the Muslim women but also take concrete steps to ameliorate this situation. They felt that a mass organization is required where the most oppressed and marginalized sections gets a voice and are able to mobilize themselves to create conditions in society which will ensure social, economic and political justice, upholding of human rights, equality and peace. This urge led to the formation of the BMMA. Over the last 14 years it has established itself as an alliance of like-minded individuals that take upon themselves the onus of taking up the issues of the Muslim women and Muslim community head on. In such grim and testing times, Muslim women have led the community restoring faith in the secular, liberal values on the Indian Constitution and reclaiming a humanist Islam from dark forces. 

When will development become a political agenda and how does BMMA contribute to it? 

The BMMA works towards all the rights and duties emanating from the Constitution. In its 14th year its membership has crossed one lakh members across 15 states. It raises issues of education, jobs, security, law and health. It being a national entity seeks to carry out its activities through a formal national democratic structure with a system of accountability. It addresses the issues of education, employment, security and legal reforms and takes proactive and concrete steps towards these. It not only works at the grassroots on these issues but also does political advocacy to raise issues at the appropriate fora. In short it seeks to create an alternative voice of Muslim women and works for its leadership development.

Can religion ever play an enabling role given that it has been usurped by conservative, patriarchal forces, world over? 

BMMA has compelled the community to understand Islam and Quranic teachings from a feminist perspective. It has uncovered Islam from a labyrinth of patriarchy, misogyny and conservatism and reasserted its ideals of equality, justice, wisdom and compassion. Within the Islamic framework there is a strong need to appreciate and distinguish between the normative and contextual writings in the Quran. There are many verses of the Quran which have a normative, immutable and prescriptive appeal. They point towards universal values of justice, equality, wisdom and compassion which must permeate life of each and every human being for all times of come. On the other hand are the contextual and descriptive verses which were relevant for those times and for that particular society. As a principle new age Muslim women through BMMA have rooted for the universal principles and based their laws and their way of life on those. In other words a humanistic understanding of the Quran has resurfaced which will ensure that as Muslims we are able to live in peace with other communities and also ensure justice within. 

We do see many women activists and scholars of Islam challenging the old paradigm.

And these set of women have done amazing work to reassert the basic notions of what Islam is. Allah is a universal power which as per the Tawhidic understanding permeates all beings, living and non-living. This universal power is rahman and rahim, merciful and beneficent and is embedded in the Islamic notion of Taqwa or moral/ethical notions.* It is very heartening and encouraging to note that across the Muslim societies Muslim women are embracing this very Islamic and universal ideas of Tawhid and Taqwa which encourages us to love all as creations of one God and live and let live everyone in peace and tranquility. Emboldened by the conceptualization of God as merciful and just, Muslim women are now seeking justice and equality within the families and are reclaiming their right to read the Quran and arrive at their meanings based on their own lived realities. In the last couple of decades we have had Islamic feminist scholars like AminaWadud, Fatima Mernissi, Riffat Hassan, Ziba Mir Hosseini and many others who have taken up the challenge of rereading, retranslating and reinterpreting the Quran from a feminist perspective. And what has emerged is a vast amount of literature which debunks many misgivings and misunderstandings about Islam and women’s rights. What has been liberating and empowering is the assurance that the Quran wants justice for all humans so that life can be led peacefully and in tranquility and in complete harmony with everything around us. So ‘…. problem is not with the text but with the context and the ways in which text is used to sustain patriarchal and authoritarian structures’.*

Women are no longer recipients but creators of religious knowledge ……

With the emergence of Muslim women’s religious leadership, we get to hear a completely humanistic and enabling version of Islam. Women are no longer just recipients of knowledge and objects to be studied but are now agents of knowledge creation including religious knowledge. Islamic laws and understanding of Islam itself has been the domain of men for many centuries now. Extremely patriarchal interpretations and even translations have created a hierarchy in women-men relationships. Superiority of men over women is God-ordained and hence cannot be challenged at all. This understanding closes all doors of negotiations within the familial relationships. Contemporary Muslim women, including Indian Muslim women through BMMA have inadvertently opened the doors of ijtihaad by creating knowledge from their own perspectives and their own lived realities which are largely experiences of injustice and inequality. In other words there is a move towards ‘democratization of the production of religious knowledge’.* Women are no longer dependent on men to know what God wants from them. They no longer have to accept what men have been telling them. They no longer have to believe that God has created them as inferior to men. They now read, translate, interpret and explain to the world that their God is just, loving and merciful and has created them on par with men.

As Muslim women gain strength and voice there is hope for the community as well, for women’s voices will be voices of peace, harmony, justice and equality. The BMMA which is growing from strength to strength with each passing year has given a platform for Muslim women to emerge as leaders and take their community out of its stagnation. Muslim women are taking tremendous interest in the affairs of the community as well as the country. This churning amongst the Muslim women has a historical significance as they have never been organized on a national scale ever before. Their dreams and aspirations of a prosperous, just, plural and democratic Indian society and Muslim community are matched equally well by their administrative and organizational skills. This development only confirms that that the deliverance of the community lies in the hands of its women.

 

DIVERSE VOICES OF FEMINISM

DIVERSE VOICES OF FEMINISM

Lecture in SIES College, Mumbai

18 February 2019

The reason behind starting Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan [BMMA] was to include the diverse voices within the women’s movement; voices that have been neglected, voices that have not been heard. BMMA helped in bringing a structure to that voice, to make it more organic, systematic so that the community and governments can hear them.  

Muslim community has been lagging behind on all socio economic indicators. Somewhere the community leaders failed. State as an instrument of social development also failed. So as Muslim women we felt we need to take that initiative, we need to come forward, we need to lead the community, we need to lead the Muslim women so that an alternative voice, alternative perspective emerges from within the community. 

We are a movement so we are not registered. We are autonomous; we are not associated with any political party or organization. We have more than one lakh members across the country and the issues on which we work are education, health, livelihood, law reform and security. 

In the last 12 years our contribution has been on this whole debate around the issue of law reform. Our effort has been to bring about a comprehensive change in the MPL. To put it briefly, the Hindu community, which includes the Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists, is governed by the Hindu code bill or a set of 4 different laws. The Christian and the Parsis are also governed by their own codified personal law. But due to partition and other events that happened 70 years back and the kind of state patronage, which religious groups got from amongst the community, the Muslim family law got neglected. Which means we don’t have a codified law and which means all practices related to marriage and divorce are open. They are carried out by the information given out by the religious groups in the community. For so many decades these religious groups decided how the marriages will happen, what will be the age of marriage, divorce procedures etc. As a result we had rampant underage marriages because we don’t have a law, which defines marriage age for the community. We have rampant one-sided divorces as a result the marriage is terminated immediately. This was given legal validity and legal legitimacy by religious groups. So when a woman approaches a qazi and tells him that she is divorced like this, she is told that the divorce is done. And if she wants to go back to him or if the husband wants to stay with her, then she has to undergo the practice of halala. We have practice of muta marriages as well. Such practices are clearly patriarchal, anti women and clearly going against the values of human dignity. Because of the politics that we have had, these were allowed to perpetuate. 

Our organization took up this issue because we felt that if we don’t speak nobody else will. If we don’t speak, the state, the political parties, the men, the religious groups, nobody else will. So last 12 years our demand is that the MPL must be codified. What should be the age of marriage, what should be the divorce method, what about polygamy and inheritance rights, halala and muta – laws related to this must be made and it is the Parliament that should make this law. The Supreme Court passed a judgment against the practice of triple divorce. The legislation against it got passed in the Lok Sabha but got rejected in the Rajya Sabha twice. Now we have an Ordinance against it, which will lapse as we move towards an election. So the politics that has been played around by all political parties around the issue of Muslim women’s legal rights and the kind of exclusion that we have faced, is there for all to see. 

We have been told to work on the issues of health, employment, and education but not on the legal issues. They said don’t touch triple divorce, polygamy or for that matter any shariah issue. So what do we do, should we continue to perpetuate the injustice that is happening? We are Muslim women, but we are also citizens of this country. And as a citizen, if a Hindu women has legal protection, if she has a law, which says that, her husband cannot have another marriage and if he does then she can file a complaint under IPC 494, why cannot the Muslim women have that legal protection? 

There is a lot of talk about criminalization of divorce. So if a Muslim woman goes to the police station to say that she has been divorced on phone, the police says, what can we do? There is no law, which tells me to arrest this person. And now there is an Ordinance, which says that he can be arrested and can be put behind bars, we have a whole lot of people talking against it. So a Hindu woman has got the protection of a criminal law, which is ok but if a Muslim woman is asking for protection for herself and criminalizing certain activities, entire religious group are standing against her. And not just them but the entire feminist groups stood against her saying triple divorce should not be criminalized. This is the exclusion of the highest order. When will she be considered a human being, a citizen? 

So the work that we have been doing is to bring about a structural change within the community, by talking about codification of law, we have got the issue out in the open. We still don’t have a law but the triple divorce bill was discussed not once but twice in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and that itself is an achievement. The fact that this issue was discussed itself indicates that there was a structural change within the community. 

We also challenged the Haji Ali dargah Trust. They stopped women from going inside the sanctum sanctorum of the dargah. We started to negotiate with the management of the dargah trust but that did not heed. As a citizen of this country nobody can stop me from going there just because I am a woman, as simple as that. Why should I be denied the privilege of the Articles 14,15 etc. of the constitution?

We are trying to break that exclusion, we are the community, we are citizens of this country, and you cannot exclude us. We are part of this community and we are part of this nation and we are going to demand what rightfully belongs to us. 

We set up an organization called Darul Uloom-e-Niswan through which we trained 30 women to become qazis. Again a male bastion was challenged. Men in all religions do that; they appropriate religion for themselves as if it is their private property. Why should women not become qazis, why should they not solemnize marriages or undertake divorce proceedings? Nothing stops me, neither the constitution of the country nor my religion. Quran has multiple verses, which talk of equality of women and men. It talks of equality of all human beings. It is our own fears and our own hesitations that stop us. We prepared our own syllabus with no help from no alim or religious institution. We asked ourselves; how should a modern Muslim women work as a qazi? And we got our answers. 30 women enrolled for the course and it took us two years to carry out that programme. And now we have 15 women in the country who are trained qazis. It is the first of its kind, formal, organized institutional training for women qazis. 15 women are ready, now the community has to come forward. And just last week, a couple from Kolkata came forward where the women insisted that her nikaah would happen only through a woman qazi. These are structural changes and this is the democratization of the community; democratization of the institutions, democratization of the mindset of our community leaders. 

You cannot ignore a certain section for too long. You cannot repress a certain section for too long. You cannot also repress the diversity within the community. We are not one. We are divided on sect lines and on so many other parameters. Yes we are one at a certain level but we are also different. What a Muslim woman undergoes because she is a Muslim is very difficult to capture. What a woman undergoes when she has to work for 12 hours will be completely different from a woman who teaches in a university. We need to acknowledge the diversity within the women’s experiences; the lived reality of all must be taken into consideration. And that willingness to accept the diversity, to accept that women’s movement is not one big stream, but multiple streams and that there are multiple women who are fighting for a cause. We need to cede that space for women coming in with diverse experiences. And we also need to accept that we need to take on that challenge and that leadership. 

Our slogan is, our struggle, our leadership. If Muslim women do not have a law which gives them protection, and then who will ask for it? I will have to ask for it. If I am thrown out of my house, then I will have to make a demand for a better law. It is my problem, and it is going to be my leadership and I am going to take it forward to ensure that the community lives in peace and the women live in peace. So our struggle for a codified law is going continue. I don’t see when it will happen, because the politics around it has become so difficult. So we have all political parties wanting to take advantage, but for 70 years they did nothing about it. For the Haji Ali issue I remember meeting a Muslim cabinet minister and he refused to even talk to us. He said it is a matter of religion; we will not talk about it. We went to the minority commission and they said go and talk to the women’s commission, this is a women’s issue. We went to the women’s commission and they said talk to the minority commission because it is a matter of the minority community. So when the community does not listen to you, when the stakeholders within the community do not listen to you, when the government also does not listen to you, where do we go? 

We started to talk about human rights around the time of UNDHR and then around the 70s we started to talk of women’s rights by saying that lets not club women’s rights under the larger human rights framework. Now after many decades, dalit women are talking about their specific issues, look at the diversity that is gradually emerging. Trans women emerging, having issues simply because she is not heterosexual. How do we work together, understand each other?

At another level we have also challenged and reengaged with certain concepts. For many years we believed that to be a secular person is to be an atheist person. To be secular one has to give up religion. How does secularism work out in my life? I may be a believing Hindu or Muslim and how does that make me less secular? To be secular is to love and accept each and every kind of diversity that exists-religious, caste diversities etc. and just because I am a believing Hindu or Muslim women does not make me less secular. 

For me to be a Muslim is to be able to love each other. As simple as that. One of our slogans is where there is no justice, there is no islam. Jaha insaaf nahi hai vaha hum musalmaan hone ka daava kar hi nahi sakte.We have also challenged feminism. For me to be a feminist is not to be anti-man, anti-family or anti-child bearing. These are newly emerging concepts and experiences. How do we understand these concepts from newly emerging groups? How do I understand Islam? My understanding of Islam is very different from the Islam of conservative religious groups and the same of feminism and secularism. So diversity is also to conceptually see things and understand concepts differently. 

Indian Muslim Women's Tryst With Herself

INDIA MUSLIM WOMEN’S TRYST WITH HER SELF
Genesis and Need of Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan

Dr. Noorjehan Safia Niaz

Since the inception of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan [BMMA] in a January 2007 in New Delhi, it has been asked by many as to the need for Muslim women to organize themselves? Kya zaroorat hai Musalman aurton ko apni tehreek tayar karne ki? After 10 years of BMMA, it is amply clear why it was so important that Muslim women take a lead. The reasons are many. To start with, no community can develop if its women remain behind and conversely the women of the community cannot progress unless the larger community also takes the onus to lend her a helping hand in playing her role in public life.

BMMA has not only created an alternative liberal voice in the Indian Muslim community but has also brought Muslim women in the forefront by raising a sensitive issue of law reform towards which the larger community had adopted an ostrich approach. Creating a membership base on more than a lakh, creating an draft of Muslim family law, creating Darul Uloom-e-Niswan-a centre for Islamic teaching, winning a PIL in the Supreme Court against the Haji Ali dargah Trust, filing a PIL in Supreme Court against the practice of triple talaak and halala, running vocational training centres in 7 cities for the socio-economic development of Muslim girls and boys, running Aurton Ki Shariah Adalats in 4 cities-in short creating secular, liberal space within the community and reclaiming Islam from misogynist and conservatives to secure human rights of Muslim women. With Muslim women taking lead, especially on matters of personal law reform and issues of women’s access to sacred spaces, we have also seem the Muslim male secular liberal voice rising to support women.

While we see a rise in conservative forces within the community, we also see the world not doing anything better. With conservative political parties rising in the Europe and USA and within our own country, Islam and Muslims continue to remain the villain. Notwithstanding the fact that the highest number of victims of Islamic terror continues to be fellow Muslims. Closer home, rise of cultural and political hindutva groups has ensured that Muslims remain under siege. This socio-political environment has a direct bearing on women and youth. Lack of educational and livelihood opportunities, ghettoized living conditions and an atmosphere of being hated, feared and despised have pushed the community to the wall.

The arrival of the forces of globalization and privatization in India since early 1990s has also led to the poor - dalits, adivasis, women and minorities being driven further to the margins with a direct onslaught on their lands and livelihoods. Civil society organizations have been protesting about the widespread exclusion of India’s large masses due to the very questionable notions of development which are increasingly finding deep roots into the successive governments and their policies. A malfunctioning PDS and nonfunctional primary schools both aggravate the social exclusion faced by the minorities as by the dalits and adivasis. Today the impact of state withdrawal from welfarism and inclusive development is for all to see. It is important to see BMMA’s work emerging and impacted by these conditions.

Indian history is replete with instances of struggle for social change and justice. Women and especially Muslim women have also initiated and actively participated in many historical movements for justice. These struggles are still on with increasing strength of women. Yet women’s participation and the articulation of her perspective of social justice and development have always been ignored traditionally. This alternative voice of women which is concerned with just, fair and humane society never got due recognition. And this fuelled in some Muslim women a strong need to create a collective that will not only address the concerns of the Muslim community and particularly of the Muslim women but also take concrete steps to ameliorate this situation. They felt that a mass organization is required where the most oppressed and marginalized sections gets a voice and are able to mobilize themselves to create conditions in society which will ensure social, economic and political justice, upholding of human rights, equality and peace. This urge led to the formation of the BMMA. Over the last 10 years it has established itself as an alliance of like-minded individuals that take upon themselves the onus of taking up the issues of the Muslim women and Muslim community head on. In such grim and testing times, Muslim women have led the community restoring faith in the secular, liberal values on the Indian Constitution and reclaiming a humanist Islam from dark forces.

The BMMA works towards all the rights and duties emanating from the Constitution. In its 10^th year its membership has crossed one lakh members across 15 states. It raises issues of education, jobs, security, law and health. It being a national entity seeks to carry out its activities through a formal national democratic structure with a system of accountability. It addresses the issues of education, employment, security and legal reforms and takes proactive and concrete steps towards these. It not only works at the grassroots on these issues but also does political advocacy to raise issues at the appropriate fora. In short it seeks to create an alternative voice of Muslim women and works for its leadership development.

The vision of the Andolan is to create conditions within the Indian society where the Muslim community and especially the Muslim women are able to eradicate their own poverty and marginalization and live a life of equality, justice and with respect for human rights. It believes in the values of democracy, secularism, equality, non-violence, human rights and justice as enshrined in the Constitution of India. These are the guiding principles in their struggle. It believes in the inherent capacity of women to lead and ameliorate the social, economic, political, legal and educational backwardness. It also seeks to carry out positive, liberal, humanist and feminist interpretations of religion for ensuring justice and equality to Muslim women. And to achieve its vision of an equal society it seeks collaboration and alliance with other movements and networks that are fighting for social equality and human rights and are opposing forces of fascism, capitalism, communalism and imperialism in all its forms.

To achieve this vision and objectives the Andolan through its well laid out administrative structure reaches out to Muslim women in villages, towns and cities and organizes them into pressure groups under the leadership of a committed woman leader. The emergent leadership of Muslim women at the national, state, district, block and village level carries out programmes and activities related to education, livelihood, law reform and health services. Amongst its many achievements the Andolan in all the states where it is active, has mobilized Muslim women and exerted pressure on local government machinery to issue important documents like voter I-cards, ration cards, widow pension cards etc. Perspective building and inputs and information-giving workshops are organized on various issues on a regular basis. 

These initiatives of Muslim women need to be further supported and complimented by other Muslims so that the community as a whole is able to lead a life of dignity and safety. It cannot be that the community demands security and democracy for itself from the state but does not allow the same for the women. Democracy within is the crying need of the time.

BMMA has also compelled the community to understand Islam and Quranic teachings from a feminist perspective. It has uncovered Islam from a labyrinth of patriarchy, misogyny and conservatism and reasserted its ideals of equality, justice, wisdom and compassion. Within the Islamic framework there is a strong need to appreciate and distinguish between the normative and contextual writings in the Quran. There are many verses of the Quran which have a normative, immutable and prescriptive appeal. They point towards universal values of justice, equality, wisdom and compassion which must permeate life of each and every human being for all times of come. On the other hand are the contextual and descriptive verses which were relevant for those times and for that particular society. As a principle new age Muslim women through BMMA have rooted for the universal principles and based their laws and their way of life on those. In other words a humanistic understanding of the Quran has resurfaced which will ensure that as Muslims we are able to live in peace with other communities and also ensure justice within. 

Allah is a universal power which as per the Tawhidic understanding permeates all beings, living and non-living. This universal power is rahman and rahim, merciful and beneficent and is embedded in the Islamic notion of Taqwa or moral/ethical notions.* It is very heartening and encouraging to note that across the Muslim societies Muslim women are embracing this very Islamic and universal ideas of Tawhid and Taqwa which encourages us to love all as creations of one God and live and let live everyone in peace and tranquility. Emboldened by the conceptualization of God as merciful and just, Muslim women are now seeking justice and equality within the families and are reclaiming their right to read the Quran and arrive at their meanings based on their own lived realities. In the last couple of decades we have had Islamic feminist scholars like AminaWadud, Fatima Mernissi, Riffat Hassan, Ziba Mir Hosseini and many others who have taken up the challenge of rereading, retranslating and reinterpreting the Quran from a feminist perspective. And what has emerged is a vast amount of literature which debunks many misgivings and misunderstandings about Islam and women’s rights. What has been liberating and empowering is the assurance that the Quran wants justice for all humans so that life can be led peacefully and in tranquility and in complete harmony with everything around us. So ‘…. problem is not with the text but with the context and the ways in which text is used to sustain patriarchal and authoritarian structures’.*

With the emergence of Muslim women’s religious leadership, we get to hear a completely humanistic and enabling version of Islam. Women are no longer just recipients of knowledge and objects to be studied but are now agents of knowledge creation including religious knowledge. Islamic laws and understanding of Islam itself has been the domain of men for many centuries now. Extremely patriarchal interpretations and even translations have created a hierarchy in women-men relationships. Superiority of men over women is God-ordained and hence cannot be challenged at all. This understanding closes all doors of negotiations within the familial relationships. Contemporary Muslim women, including Indian Muslim women through BMMA have inadvertently opened the doors of ijtihaad by creating knowledge from their own perspectives and their own lived realities which are largely experiences of injustice and inequality. In other words there is a move towards ‘democratization of the production of religious knowledge’.* Women are no longer dependent on men to know what God wants from them. They no longer have to accept what men have been telling them. They no longer have to believe that God has created them as inferior to men. They now read, translate, interpret and explain to the world that their God is just, loving and merciful and has created them on par with men.

As Muslim women gain strength and voice there is hope for the community as well, for women’s voices will be voices of peace, harmony, justice and equality. The BMMA which is growing from strength to strength with each passing year has given a platform for Muslim women to emerge as leaders and take their community out of its stagnation. Muslim women are taking tremendous interest in the affairs of the community as well as the country. This churning amongst the Muslim women has a historical significance as they have never been organized on a national scale ever before. Their dreams and aspirations of a prosperous, just, plural and democratic Indian society and Muslim community are matched equally well by their administrative and organizational skills. This development only confirms that that the deliverance of the community lies in the hands of its women.

Marathi version published by Loksatta

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