Women are looking within and stepping out
The recent debate on the issue of triple talaq has put Muslim women at the centre of the mainstream discourse and there is a burning desire to break the security barriers of home and marriage
NEWDELHI: Safia Jamal first wore the hijab at 20, when she moved from her hometown of Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi, for her graduation. “I lived in a small locality back home, but this was the first time I felt uncomfortable,” she says. “People stared on the streets, passed comments, so I opted to cover myself.”
Religion may have been one of the factors for her, but others did not see it the same way. While she was studying MCA at an all-woman’s university near Jaipur, a male teacher told her to “dress properly” for a viva. Taken aback, Safia asked him what he meant. “He told me, remove that ‘round thing’ you wear around your head, you don’t have to show you’re Muslim here”.
As a ‘visible’ Muslim woman, Safia often runs up against prejudice, from those who question her decision to wear a hijab, and very often, from those who expect her to behave a certain way because of it.
Twenty-seven years old Saman Quraishi is familiar with this dilemma. “I am a hijab-wearing Muslim woman, who dances the salsa, goes to Midnight Mass, makes rangoli and has friends who are boys. I don’t know why people find this so difficult to digest,” she says.
In a political climate where triple talaq is a hot-button issue on television news, Muslim women are suddenly at the centre of mainstream discourse. But what are their concerns and apprehensions?
THE ROAD TO EMPOWERMENT
“Education, education, education”, says Kouser Fatima, a Bangalore-based dentist who curates Muslim Voices India, a crowd-sourced Twitter handle. “Muslim women need to think of educating themselves, their daughters because this is where the community lags behind.”
Numbers tell the same story. The total number of literate Muslim women is 51.8%, as against the national average of 55.9% for all religious communities. The n gap is wider for higher education. A 2007 study by the ministry of women and child development found factors contributing to low enrolment and high incidence of drop outs among Muslim girls were a combination of poverty, absence of separate girls’ school, conservative attitudes and early marriages.
For Safia, coming to Delhi for BSc from Jamia Millia Islamia was not negotiable. “My elder sister is the first woman graduate in my family. The extended family and neighbours back home didn’t approve, but my parents were supportive of our decision,” she says.
WORKING FOR A FUTURE
If the numbers in higher education are low, the poor representation of Muslim women in the workforce is shocking. The work participation rate for Muslims in general, is the lowest at 31.3, eight points lower than the national average. But Muslim women’s presence is a minuscule 14.1, compared to the national average of 25 for women.
In 2000, Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, a former member of the planning commission, authored Voice of the Voiceless, a report on the status of Muslim women. Seventeen years later, the needle hasn’t moved much. “No miracles have been created for Muslim women as far as government schemes are concerned. The biggest challenge facing them is dire, abysmal poverty,” says Hameed.
Most Muslim women in India are selfemployed in sewing, embroidery, chikan kari, zari, beedi or agarbatti rolling, but the work is usually sub-contracted and poorly paid. “There is a lack of skill and livelihood, when it is there, is meagre,” explains Hameed.
To make matters worse, ever so often, some obscure cleric pipes up with a fatwa that women should not work outside, making things even more complicated.
Safia points to another reason. “In our community, a girl’s security and settlement is not a job, but marriage,” says Safia. “A lot of distant relatives tell my mother, your eldest daughter is 27, she’s past the marriageable age.”
REPRESENTATION MATTERS
“The triple talaq debate is an example of how the All India Muslim Personal Law Board missed an opportunity for reform,” says Hameed. “We need better representation of women in these bodies. Not women that are rubber stamps, but who have an agency or voice of their own.”
The All India Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board was formed in 2005, but has hardly ever taken a position contrary to the larger organisation. As in religion, politics too is strewn with hurdles.
Back in 2013, Saman was figuring out what to do with life after finishing a social work degree from Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences. One day, her father asked if she would like to attend a political rally by Arvind Kejriwal near their home in Old Delhi’s Daryaganj.
“When I reached there, I was among a handful of women. It was such a novelty that I was invited on the stage and asked to give a speech,” she recounts. Saman’s speech on women’s safety moved Kejri- wal and he invited her to join AAP. She worked for the party’s outreach, and since she was too young to contest at 23, she was made the campaign manager for Matia Mahal. “For the first campaign meeting, people said they couldn’t come before 10 because of special Ramzan prayers. No one believed me when I said, I’ll come at 10.30 at night,” says Saman. But slowly, word spread that she was, indeed, at every campaign meeting — the only woman among 60 men, an indicator of how women are missing from politics.
“They listened to me because I had conviction. But soon, the character assassination and personal comments started.”
For Kausar, the issue of representation is one she wrangles with every day, on social media. Here, as in other areas, representation matters. “I feel we have to engage, most people are really ignorant. But the kind of anti-Muslim vitriol you see online, I have never seen in real life.”
“Our issues are hijacked by Muslim men or liberal, feminist voices who very often look down upon the same people they claim to defend. Muslim women need to form a community and reclaim our own voice,” she says.