Muslim Women and Gender Justice
Jones has pointed out that since its foundation in 2007, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan20 (henceforth referred as BMMA) has established itself as one of India’s most influential Muslim women’s organizations.
It engages both liberal and Islamic discourses in its promotion of women’s justice and equality. It is also associated with the campaign for the reform of Muslim Personal Law. The BMMA’s draft Act received input, over a long consultation process, from a range of legal professionals, advocates, academicians and Islamic scholars including Asghar Ali Engineer. In an exhaustive national survey of Muslim women’s perspectives on family law in 2015, the BMMA stated the following interesting finding: 83% of respondents believed that the codification of Muslim Personal Law would help to protect women’s rights. A substantial number of the respondents supported in favor of codification. The draft Act synthesizes discourses on women’s rights drawn from a series of Qur’anic, constitutional and transnational reference points. BMMA has succeeded in its efforts in the first quarter of the twenty-first century owing to some social power of the ‘Ulama’ and religious organizations, who have acted in the past as a force, blocking state intervention in Muslim Personal Law, which has been eroded (emphasis added, mine).21It is true that gender injustice has been an issue for Muslim women in terms of ownership, control, use and inheritance of land. Development measures are generating contradictions between Muslim men and women. There is no reason to disbelieve that patriarchy is a founding structure of all contemporary societies. It is characterized by the institutionally enforced power and authority of males over females and their children in the family, and in the socio-biological reproduction of the species, as historically and culturally framed.
For this power and authority to be exercised, patriarchalism must permeate the entire organization of society: from production and consumption to law, politics and culture. However, the cornerstone of patriarchalism (patriarchal family) is being challenged since the second half of the 20th century owing to the process of transformation of women’s work and the transformation of women’s consciousness.22 Driving forces behind this process is informationalism.23 In an era of globalization, information society is witnessing the reproduction of the human species, and the powerful surge of women’s struggles, and of a multifaceted feminist movements. Contraception, in vitro fertilization and genetic manipulation looming on the horizon are giving women, and society, growing control over the timing and frequency of child bearing. Thus family in India is undergoing change24 and also at the global level.25No wonder why Asaf Ali Fyzee (1899—1981) has advocated for an urgent need for reform in Muslim Personal Law by the modern Muslims to ensure gender justice especially due to polygamy, triple talaq and denying inheritance rights to women including Hanafi Sunnis, Shafi, Ahl-I Hadith, Sunnis, Bohras and others. Fyzee’s advocacy for the so-called permissive laws and specific amendments of the Muslim Personal Law in the light of Quranic precept of justice within the framework of Islamic jurisprudence, rather than opting for UCC on the Muslims, deserves serious attention in this discourse for codification. He has pointed out that polluted law and custom among Muslims drifting from the rules of the shari’ah26 as expounded in the classical texts owing to Muslim Personal Law (earlier known as Anglo-Mohammedan Law) was an outcome of triangulation between traditional Islamic jurisprudence and the British colonial legal system. Therefore, a reform movement is required by modern Muslims for their codification of personal law in association with the ulemas, elites27 and the civil society in pursuit of gender justice rather than the political game in pursuit of power.28 It is evident from the preceding discussion that Muslims in India have experienced uncodified personal laws.29 Therefore, a model is desirable for replication. Kokal has critically examined legal pluralism in a very interesting, creative and rigorous manner for rural India.30 Its relevance for codification for Muslims for personal law may be explored.
IV.
More on the topic Muslim Women and Gender Justice:
- All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board and Gender Justice
- Muslim women’s movements and women’s NGOs in Indonesia
- Women, Gender
- While men and women are considered equal under the Quran, Muslim women in the twenty-first century are still being burdened by conservative and patriarchal interpretations of the Quran.[943]
- Women’s movements in Muslim societies
- The Concepts of Justice through the Ages: The Example of Gender Relations
- Section 1. Gender (in)equality, women's rights and the problem of domestic violence
- Political struggles of women in Muslim societies
- Women in Muslim societies
- Inheritance Rights and Gender Justice in Contemporary Indonesia
- 3 Gender and women’s movements in Aceh
- Women’s identity and gender relations in Aceh
- Conclusion: Saint Paul, the Language of Gender, and the Philosophical Life of Women
- 1 Women’s movements in Muslim societies
- Reforms: Assisting Muslim Women
- Justice and Equality and Muslim Family Laws: New Ideas, New Prospects[116]
- Ahearne-Kroll Stephen P., Holloway Paul A., Kelhoffer James A. (eds.). Women and Gender in Ancient Religions: Interdisciplinary Approaches. JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck),2010. — 518 p., 2010
- Democratizing Muslim Legal Pluralism? Parity and Muslim Dispute Resolution