RIGHTS: Still a man’s world for Muslim women

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

IPS World Desk, Mexico City, Dec 30 1999 (IPS) - As the debate over how to reconcile women’s rights with Islamic doctrine continues, a leading United Nations official visiting Pakistan this month used the opportunity to speak out against the subjugation of women in that South Asian nation.

. During talks with high-ranking members of the Pakistani government, Nafis Sadik, the executive director of the United > > Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said that women “must be given > > equal rights, and they must be treated as individual human beings and not lesser vessels of society.” Sadik was particularly critical of the “anti-women” laws in that Muslim-dominated country, which she said excluded half of the nation’s women from development activities. The situation in Pakistan, however, is emblematic of the discrimination women face in a number of Muslim countries throughout Asia, the Arab world and Africa. The only variable is the level of subjugation. In nearby Bangladesh, for instance, legal experts concede that discrimination against women is “ingrained in society” despite clauses in the nation’s constitution that guarantee equal rights for women. According to Salma Khan, a prominent Bangladeshi lawyer, women in her country “suffer injustices from birth, particularly when it comes to issues like property rights, marriage, divorce and child custody. In the Arab world, the prospect of gender equality is even more distant. Seven of 13 Arab countries that are members of the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) have yet to ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), while the six who have signed it have done so with “significant reservations.” According to Fatma Kassem of ESCWA, “It’s still a man’s world.” What happened in Niger in September illustrates the formidable hurdles faced by women’s rights activists working in Muslim majority countries. When the government of that African nation attempted to implement CEDAW, it ran into a storm of protest by enraged Islamist groups. “The government’s decision to close its eyes and sign a convention whose essence is counter to the Islamic Sharia law has shocked Islamic groups,” said Malam Sani Adamou, the spokesman for the religious groups. In his view, Muslim men “do not lock up (their) women and beat them. Women have complete liberty in accordance with Islamic principles and the Sunna (the body of ancient Muslim law based on the words and acts) of the Prophet Mohamed.” According to Elhadji Yahaya Mahamadou, the president of the Association for the Proliferation of Islam in Niger, “One cannot pick and choose about what to follow in the Koran, which is divine law.” For him, the international barometer of gender equality, CEDAW, has no place in the Islamic world because the “issues of equality between men and women in the home, as well as in matters of succession, are completely out of place in Islam’s holy book.” But Sigma Huda, a lawyer and member of the Bangladesh Society for the Implementation of Human Rights, counters that reforming Muslim inheritance laws, for example, would not necessarily clash with personal laws. CEDAW, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 18, 1979, entered into force as an international treaty on Sept. 3, 1981. Since then, 165 nations have ratified it. The convention seeks to reaffirm the dignity of women and ensure their equality through clauses dealing with issues like legal, civil and reproductive rights. What its framers had in mind was not only an international bill of rights for women to combat the “extensive discrimination against women (that) continues to exist,” but also “an agenda for action by countries to guarantee the enjoyment of those rights.” Nevertheless, according to reports by the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), CEDAW has had little impact in many countries notorious for discriminatory practices against women. “Despite commitments made under the Convention and ‘national platforms for action’ to implement the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women Platform for Action adopted in Beijing, many states continued to enforce discriminatory laws and to tolerate discriminatory practices under customary law,” an HRW report on Women’s Human Rights revealed. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan stands out, according to HRW, as a glaring example of one of the most repressive forms of gender discrimination. Since it came to power following a drawn-out civil war, the hard-line Islamic group “stripped women of their rights to work, travel and attend school.” And following attempts by the international community and women’s groups to protect basic rights in that Middle Eastern nation, the clerics at the helm of the Taliban responded with more restrictive policies — including limiting women’s access to health care, even in emergency situations. For activists like Khan, the only hope for women in her native country of Bangladesh is that the political leadership will take the lead. “There is no doubt that in doing so some obstacles must be faced, but the government and all concerned have to move forward with firm determination,” she said. A similar view was echoed by a female lawyer in Niger. Rather than be intimidated by religious groups, she said, governments should pay more heed to the guarantees in Islam for women’s rights when addressing this issue. For her, “The Muslim religion gives women a special place. If the Koran was correctly practiced, women would be cherished.”