Crime & Justice, Development & Aid, Gender, Global, Global Geopolitics, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Poverty & SDGs

Q&A: Women Must Challenge the "Gatekeepers of Culture"

Nastassja Hoffet interviews women's rights activist AISHA SHAHEED

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 2009 (IPS) - “In order to be a good Muslim, a good Hindu, a good Pakistani, a good woman, you need to act in certain ways,” says Aisha Shaheed. “And all these parameters are defined by [male] self-proclaimed cultural leaders.”

Aisha Shaheed Credit: Nastassja Hoffet/IPS

Aisha Shaheed Credit: Nastassja Hoffet/IPS

Shaheed is part of the Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) network, which links individuals and rights groups in more than 70 countries to provide information and support to women in Islamic communities.

Given that the Qur’an could be translated in a multitude of ways, WLUML addresses misconceptions surrounding Muslim laws, reinterpreting religious texts to be implemented in a way that is more equitable to women and fighting for the preservation of secular spaces.

Shaheed was born in Pakistan, raised in Canada and now lives in Britain. She also contributes to a global campaign to end the practice of stoning, which is a legal form of capital punishment for the crime of adultery in Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.

“It is difficult to say that religions as they are practiced today are equitable for women,” she told IPS at U.N. headquarters, where hundreds of delegates are attending the ongoing U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.


Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: What are the next steps to strengthen advocacy and end violence against women? AS: I think that a really unexplored area is the issue of culture. The women’s movement, in Muslim contexts especially, has been looking at legal reform and family law reform. However, we can only get implementation at this ‘in between’ level which is culture in both its positive sense of reclaiming and redefining culture and also addressing the misuses to justify violence, violations and exclusion of women.

Work has been done on women as bearers of culture but they are not the gatekeepers of culture – the ones who define what the culture is – at the level of women’s bodies and sexuality. They are expected to stand for the group identity.

IPS: How would you rate the United Nations on women’s rights? AS: Emphasis always has to be given to local needs and local desires. It could be extremely dangerous if international pressure is put on without really understanding the implications for women on the ground. The United Nations is an important body in terms of standard setting, of holding governments accountable, but it is a collection of member states and so much violence is perpetrated by non-state actors, by family and community members, by armed groups, and fundamentalist groups that are not connected with the state.

I think that in the U.N. there are some gaps in how can they address violations by non-state actors. Women need to explore other areas of the U.N. – for example, the work done by the special rapporteurs is very useful to bring in this language of non-state actors, culturally justified violence.

IPS: What are the tools to fight culturally justified violence against women? AS: Sometimes local problems require local strategies. For example in South Asia, violence against women’s rights comes from local councils, which are not formally part of the state system but from the local customary system of justice. To counter that there have been women on the council, this means reformulating a local justice system to bring in women.

IPS: What are some of the achievements in terms of women’s rights under Islam? AS: Let me give you the example of Mokarrameh Ebrahimi, a woman in a remote part of Iran who spent a decade in jail with her partner and young son. They were accused of adultery – subject to stoning- because they were unable to obtain divorce. It was really the strength of the women’s movement that revealed the case and kept it in the newspapers.

In 2006, the Stop Stoning Forever in Iran Campaign was launched. A number of women lawyers in Iran went to find out how many women and men were in jail awaiting stoning sentences. They were extremely brave, they mobilised the local and national women’s movement, and when they thought the time was right they mobilised the international community and international women’s movement.

Human rights lawyers took on their case and campaigned using urgent action alerts and legal mechanisms at the international level. Eventually, she [Ebrahimi] was released. This is an achievement – but in Iran stoning has not been removed in the law.

IPS: How can men and youth get involved? AS: Certainly it is mostly men and boys who are the perpetrators of violence. One campaign, ‘Ring the Bell’, is encouraging men, boys and members of the community to ring the doorbell if they see acts of domestic violence.

At the international level, with the secretary-general’s campaign, there is a lot of attention on men and boys. I do not know if the time is right now for men and boys to be at the forefront or to have a very large role in issues which have been put on the agenda by the women’s rights movement.

At the local level, with our campaign “Stop Killing and Stoning Women!” it is important to be working with men and boys and religious leaders, but I have trepidation about the movement being taken over at the decision-making level.

IPS: Do you think religious law and cultural issues can be reconciled with international conventions on women? AS: Absolutely, it is the core of many religions. Despite the technicalities, there are underlying principles of peace and harmony, things that are in line with human rights. However, there is a word of caution – that it is very difficult for religions as they are practiced here and now to say they are truly equitable for women.

 
Republish | | Print |


decoding advertisements