When a Saudi cleric issued a ‘fatwa' few months ago suggesting women can "breastfeed their co-workers" to overcome the ‘khalwa' code [which forbids a man and woman who are not immediate family from being alone in the same room], he was ridiculed. The fatwa was so funny it became the subject of endless cartoons in newspapers across the region for months.
But he was not trying to be funny at all. He was dead serious. He is one of the ‘generals' in a new war waged by the conservatives in our Arab societies against the ascendance of women.
Last week brought good and bad news from that front. The good news is the UAE came ahead of all Arab Gulf states in gender equality. The bad news is that all Arab states fared poorly compared to other nations. The rankings were released in a World Economic Forum (Gulf News, 12/10/2010) that "assesses disparities between genders in terms of economic opportunities, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment." The results are not really surprising. We knew this all along. Women in the Arab world, in the Gulf particularly, have a long way to go before they become fully participating, equal citizens in all the fields mentioned in the report.
Let us put things in perspective. In our region, women continue to be the target of conservatives, especially among religious authorities, who will not stop trying to impose some sort of a ‘police regime' on women. It is worth looking at some recent fatwas with regard to women's ‘behaviour' to understand how some, albeit influential, men are threatened by the increasing demands of Arab women for equal rights and their struggle for empowerment.
The position of Islam towards women is known since the dawn of the religion more than 14 centuries ago. The Islamic Fiqh (jurisprudence) didn't discriminate in anything of substance between the genders. Of course, there are different responsibilities and privileges with regards to worship or inheritance. But there is hardly any difference between the responsibilities and privileges in most matters of daily life, including education, work and politics. It is not necessary to list the names of famous Muslim women who played major roles in our history. They are known to even those clerics who try to impose their draconian worldview on Arab women in the 21st century.
One of those clerics, who seems to need primary school lessons in history, issued a fatwa last month in which he said "a woman cannot reveal her hair even before other women"!
Shaikh Abdul Rahman Al Barrak, a former religion ‘professor' in Riyadh's Imam Mohammad Bin Saud Islamic University, stressed in his fatwa that women "must cover their hair even in [women-only] wedding parties and schools". This weird statement came a few months after the similarly ridiculous ‘breastfeeding fatwa' , aimed at, according to that cleric, "allowing women to work with [male] strangers".
The two men are part of an endless list of senior clerics who are seemingly preoccupied with what a woman should and should not do. They try hard to ‘restructure' women's way of life according to their backward way of thinking. They try to dictate to a woman how she should dress, walk, talk and interact with others.
The painful fact is that despite our claims to the contrary, the rigid perspective of the ultra-conservatives has become the prevailing way of thinking in our increasingly male-dominated society. The role of women is being reduced to that of bearing more male children.
But what gives us all hope is that today's woman is silent no more. She will not accept the attempts to relegate her to the status of a second class citizen, not any more valuable than a piece of home furniture. Today's woman fortunately recognises her full rights and intends to get them. She is fighting back, which leads to an inevitable clash with backward-thinking clerics.
The Saudi cleric — the one of the breastfeeding edict — didn't expect the unprecedented reaction of women to his silly suggestion. The reaction was a signal to all concerned that societies must start addressing women's issues rationally, in line with their educational, economic and political gains and with international commitments that Arab countries can no longer ignore. Societies must realise the clock cannot be turned back. Gulf states are actually required to submit regular reports on women rights to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The expected resistance of women to any plan to act on those outrageous fatwas could be met with a counter-offensive from the regressive religious establishment in some countries. This might translate into actual domestic violence against women — the wife, the daughter, or some form of ‘state-sponsored' ban on certain rights. For example, banning women from driving, working in certain sectors or travelling without a male companion.
Backward policies
The increasing number of anti-women's rights fatwas can be interpreted as an introduction to those measures or a justification of some existing backward policies. Therefore, those fatwas cannot be looked at from a purely religious angle. They are part of persistent attempts to stop women from gaining their God-given rights. And a desperate self-defence mechanism against an imaginary ‘threat' to the male-dominated values and traditions posed by women's empowerment.
One may argue that governments increasingly adopt policies and legislations to protect women's rights and encourage women to fully participate in almost all aspects of life. The problem is that most of these governments still yield to the shadow religious governments. The effect of a cleric issuing take-away fatwas on a satellite channel is one thousand times stronger than a government legislation.
Thus it is a battle against heavy odds. Governments, especially those allied with the religious currents, shoulder some responsibility. But the frontline is actually at home. The way we, as men, look at women is shaped at home.
