By Zofeen Ebrahim
HYDERABAD, India, Oct 30 2007 (IPS)

They twisted it, turned it and tore it apart, but the term ‘religious fundamentalism’ defied definition. But they were certain that it worked against women’s rights.

Religious fundamentalism made for a lively and animated discourse on Tuesday, the second day of the 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights being held at Hyderabad’s International Convention Centre from Oct. 29 -31.

Kalpana Kannabiran, founder of the Asmita Resource Centre for Women, India, thought of fundamentalism as "inhospitable terrain for feminist mobilisation". For Zaitun Mohammad Kasim of the Sisters in Islam, fundamentalism worked for the "perpetuation of images that feed Islamophobia".

The impact of fundamentalism, said Jashodhara Dasgupta, executive director of the non- governmental organisation (NGO) Sahayog, fell particularly on women who took the brunt of regressive measures taken to protect minority culture. Religious and other laws on abortion may result in women being criminalised. They may suffer gender stereotyping, discrimination, forced early marriage, ritual pollution (the way menstruation is looked upon) and from population control methods, she said.

Religious fundamentalism can take extremely violent forms in some Islamic countries. They include female genital mutilation, honour killings, wife-beating, virginity testing and marital rape. In most there are restrictions on attire, mobility and economic and political participation.

"These violations have little to do with Islam and everything to do with abuse, scapegoating and politicisation of Islam," said Kasim who called for replacing the notion of obedience with mutual consent, for demystifying Shariah (Islamic laws) and bringing in ideas such as democracy and human rights into religion.

Acknowledging that Asia was a conflict-rife region, experts talked about the endless victimisation of women and the impact of wars and strife on women’s sexual health.

"The woman’s body is the site of community or family honour … the women of one’s own community have to be strictly guarded and those of the ‘other’ can be sexually violated to punish the community," said Dasgupta.

She cited the example of the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan that left innumerable women raped, murdered or abducted, but was never officially acknowledged. In more recent times, the anti-Muslim pogrom in India’s western Gujarat state targeted women. According to civil society reports a large number of women were raped and murdered and some that were found pregnant had their wombs sliced open.

Kannabiran said there was no relief for women even in times of peace when "fundamentalist movements appropriate women’s bodies and sexuality in violent ways."

She cited the case of Gudiya whose personal predicament became the subject of religious dispute in India. Gudiya’s husband, Arif, went missing during the 1999 Kargil conflict with Pakistan but resurfaced in 2004 during a prisoner exchange programme. But by then she had remarried and no scholar could say for sure whether she should go back to Arif or remain with her second husband Taufiq. To complicate matters she was pregnant. Peace finally came to her when she died alone in an army hospital, deserted by both husbands.

Prof. Elizabeth Aguiling-Pangalangan, from the College of Law and ReproCen, University of Philippines suspects that there could be many unhappy couples trudging on with failed marriages in her country because of religion. Along with Malta the Philippines is the only country where divorce is not recognised (except for Muslims).

She said the failure of the government – of what is a constitutionally a secular country – to bring about true reforms and "directly lift the lives of people from poverty has led to distrust and hopelessness’’. This, she said, made them turn to religion and the predominant Catholic Church that doles out "arbitrary religious conclusions unsupported by biblical teachings".

While right-wing outfits frequently abuse religion, culture and human rights, delegates blamed governments for extending political cover to these groups for narrow political gains.

"They do it by calling it Shariah, deliberately or unwittingly confusing textual Islam and political Islam; creating and inventing codes and equations (for example Arab and Islam are equated) or by substituting basic tenets with rituals and restricting discussion of Islam to a few," said Kasim. "If Islam is used as a source of public policy, everyone must be able to discuss it.’’

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