Contested Identities: gendered politics, gendered religion in Pakistan

Contested Identities: genderedpolitics, gendered religion in Pakistan

FARIDA SHAHEED

ABSTRACT In Pakistan, the self-serving use of Islam by more secular elementsalongside politico-religious ones facilitated the latters increasing inuence andthe conation and intricate interweaving of Islam and Pakistani nationhood. Aparadigm shift under Zias martial law revamped society as much as state laws,producing both religiously dened militias and aligned civil society groups.Examining the impact on women of fusing religion and politics, this paperargues that women become symbolic markers of appropriated territory in thepursuit of state power, and that the impact of such fusing, dierent fordierently situated women, needs to be gauged in societal terms as well as interms of state dynamics. Questioning the positing of civil society as a self-evident progressive desideratum, the paper concludes that gender equalityprojects seeking recongurations of power cannot be eective withoutvigorously competing in the creation of knowledge, culture and identity.

The fusing of politics and religion and its impact on women is too frequentlyexamined from an exclusive political science perspective centred on statepower dynamics. This approach is inadequate. The interface of religion,politics and gender illustrates the impossibility of separating out the realms ofthe social from the political, the public from the private, for everyday life isnot neatly packaged into self-contained spaces but ows freely, aectingdierent dimensions simultaneously. In real life the conceptual separations ofthe political from the cultural, social or economic spheres blur. Publicpolitical contestations are often provoked by womens actions in what aredened as social, rather than political spaces and, conversely, politicaldiscourses aect the everyday. Of course, both are aected by cultural andeconomic factors. Importantly, a vigorous cultural agenda prescribingeveryday norms is a hallmark of all politico-religious projects, in whichgender-normative regulations are most visible as dress codes, womensseclusion and restricted activities. In conforming to such prescriptive normswithin socio-cultural spaces women become poignant symbolic markers ofappropriated political territory.Religion was always conjoined to politics in Pakistan as a state created for

Indian Muslims. Islams metamorphosis from the religious identity of the

Farida Shaheed is Director of Research at Shirkat GahWomens Resource Centre, 68 Tipu Block, New

Garden Town, Lahore 54600, Pakistan. Email: [email protected].

Third World Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 6, 2010, pp 851867

ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/10/06085117

2010 Third World Quarterly, www.thirdworldquarterly.comDOI: 10.1080/01436597.2010.502710 851

majority population to the privileged reference point for state and society wasnot inevitable, however. Short-sighted attempts to harness the emotiveappeal of religion (to quell political opposition or justify undemocraticmeasures) by secular actors, the civil/political as well as the militaryestablishment, legitimised religion as political coinage and paved the way forpolitico-religious forces to assert discursive hegemony. The mostly politicallymotivated usage of Islam peaked under General Zia-ul-Haq (197788) whoseIslamisation policies both negated state promises of equality for female andnon-Muslim citizens and encouraged societys most bigoted sections.The question is why the legacy of Pakistans most unpopular dictator

should persist so long after his demise. The rst part of this paper traces howthe basis for such a privileging of politicised religion had already been put inplace through the opportunistic use made of Islam by non-religiously denedstate actors, and not merely by religiously dened ones. The paper thendiscusses why the long-term gender impact of the Zia era stems as much fromthe reshaping of societal mores as from revamped state laws and policies, andhow Islamisation aected diversely situated women. It goes on to examinethe challenges facing gender equality projects that, typically, are more state-oriented, lack a conscious cultural agenda and are grounded in a humanrights discourse unconnected to peoples cultural moorings.

Inserting the Islamic into the republic

The paradox in Pakistan is that, although its founder, Mohammad AliJinnah, envisaged a secular not a theocratic state,1 politico-religious partiesmanaged to elide the creation of a state for Muslims into the creation ofan Islamic state, despite consistently losing elections, enabling minorityelements to override majority views. That the process commenced in thestates formative years when most politically active ulema (religious scholars)suered from a serious credibility decit because they had opposedPakistans creation, suggests the need to seek answers in dynamics outsidepolitico-religious spheres.Soon after Jinnahs death the passage of the Objectives Resolution in 1949

was a crucial rst victory in redrawing state parameters. The resolution waspassed by an Assembly in which politico-religious elements were nominal anddespite the opposition of all non-Muslim members.2 In this, Maulana AbulAla Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JL) played a pivotal role.Maududi had at rst opposed the creation of Pakistan as detrimental to theinterests of Muslim Indians. When it became inevitable, correctly foreseeingthe far greater scope for inuencing the polity in the new state, Maududimigrated and embarked on his new mission of making shariah, ie a Muslimway of life or path, the foundation of the new states legal system. Hispersonal political acumen and intellectual abilities, supported by thedisciplined organisational strength of a dedicated party cadre, were crucialin advancing the politico-religious agenda. Decades later, in 1977, thepolitico-religious parties spurred the mass agitation against election riggingby a motley collection of political parties and supplied the movement with its

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organisational underpinnings, as well as the now popular mantra equatingPakistan exclusively with the Muslim creed.At the societal level those acceding to power had no cohesive cultural

agenda; their uncertain liberalism consistently ceded ground whenconfronted by the strident, strong-willed religious orthodoxy.3 At the statelevel using Islam was convenient for entirely secular reasons: the arithmeticof democracy ill suited those in power, who therefore expended considerabletime and eort to circumvent the logic of universal franchise. For the mostpart the real power contestation has been between the Punjab-dominatedcentre and the sub-national political elites. Dominance of the civil andmilitary bureaucracies in a typical postcolonial state with a weak politicalframework enabled the PunjabiMohajir elite to wield power to thedetriment of the severely under-represented Bengali-speaking majority. Inthe centreperiphery tussle the invented parameters and imperatives of aMuslim nationhood were regularly ourished to deny greater autonomy tothe ethnically diverse units constituting Pakistan; politico-religious groupswere supported and instigated to attack un-Islamic, foreign-inspired, left-leaning groups.4

At independence Pakistan was still very much a nation-in-becoming. Withimmense short-sightedness successive elites in central power bypassedterritorially rooted nation building that could have melded the manylinguistic and ethnic populations. Instead, facilitated by the blanching ofnon-Muslims from the population, they opted to fashion a national identityout of religion, utterly failing to see how much more eectively this would beused by politico-religious groups. Political manoeuvring to sidestep demo-cratic arithmetic and consolidate centralised power has left the countryoscillating between a presidential and parliamentary form of government,between long periods of martial law and short bursts of unstable civilian rule,and with a frequently and radically amended Constitution.Had the secular elements not used Islam for political ends so consistently,

in the process promoting a notion of Muslim nationhood, politico-religiousgroups could not have so steadily inscribed religion into the body text ofpolitics, state and society. Examples abound, an early one being the PunjabChief Minister encouraging Pakistans rst religious riots in 1953 todestabilise the central government. Uncertain liberalism became evenshakier when it came to women. The socially liberal General Ayub Khan(195868) had no compunction about mobilising an anti-woman-head-of-state fatwa (religious opinion) in the 1965 presidential elections against hisopposing candidate, Fatima Jinnah. Ironically this followed oppositionpolitico-religious parties upending their previously-held position with fatwasin her support. Rulers regularly caved in to the demands of the religious rightto curtail womens rights and spaces, starting with the 1954 closure of theWomens National Guard and Naval Reserve, following an outcry bypolitically peripheral religious elements that young women being trained forself-defence by males was un-Islamic.Islam remained a presence in the political sphere under progressive

governments, albeit with a changed orientation. Under ZA Bhutto (197177)

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Islamic Socialism declared Discrimination against women is contrary to theinjunctions of Islam,5 and passed Constitutional Articles prohibiting sex-based discrimination and promoting armative action. But the 1973Constitution privileged Muslims; religiously dened discriminatory familylaws remained intact; and a Ministry for Religious Aairs was introduced.Socially, links with the Middle East petrodollar powers unhelpfully createdspace for refashioning collective identity in the likeness of those with oilpower. Then, in 1977, trying to out-manoeuvre or placate the religious right,Bhutto introduced a series of cosmetic Islamic measures: banning alcohol,gambling and betting, and making Friday the weekly holiday.Islamisation has been engineered in the pursuit of greater power

alignments. Even under Zia, the disempowerment of women (and non-Muslim minorities) was the means, however purposeful, to an end. Theultimate aim of politico-religious elements is to capture (or retain) statepower; disempowering women is only one eective tool of assertinginuence and, in terms of state power, is peripheral in comparison to themilitarymosque nexus. While religiously dened political parties have beendecisively rejected by the electorate, military dispensations have lastedmuch longer than civilian ones. The military has alternately counteredreligious groups and parties by force and re-congured them as allies assuited its purpose. If, earlier, the Pakistani army never assumed the role ofdefender of the faith, neither was it ever a defender of secularism a` laTurkey, despite the generally secular outlook of ocers. Zia completelydismantled the armys secularist tradition. The sheer numbers in the statesmost powerful institution and the worlds sixth largest military (wellover half a million), means that attitudinal changes in the army inevitablyinuence society. The nexus largely stems from the militarys expansionin the context of a security state and attendant quest for resources, thedeeply antagonistic relationship with a far larger and better equippedIndia, and a desire to achieve strategic depth by exerting inuenceover neighbouring Afghanistan. The quest for military funds includedselling the idea of an Islamic barrier against the Soviets, especially tothe US.6

Finally, international events conspired to bolster Zia, whose tenurecoincided with the USSoviet proxy war in Afghanistan. It is hard tooverstate the impact of Pakistan playing cats paw in the US proxy war.Any questioning of Zias wide-ranging use of Islam to justify his illegalregime, rescind womens rights, and introduce undemocratic measures andbarbaric punishments was swept aside as the US-led international discoursepromoted, lauded and legitimised the mujahideen as freedom ghters.Mujahideen, literally meaning those ghting a jihad or holy war, became alabel applied to all politico-religious militants. In Pakistan the call for holywar against the godless enemies of Islam in Afghanistan was to inspire awhole generation of born-again Islamist army men.7 Intricate connectionsforged between specic religious seminaries (madrassahs8), armed militantgroups, the mujahideen and the military state during and after the Afghanwar9 blurred the statenon-state divide, allowing non-state politico-religious

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actors to push their agendas in social spacesincluding through armedtacticsalmost unfettered.

Disparate realities, dissimilar impact: women, state and Islam

Under Zia the states punitive, anti-democratic and misogynistic Islamisa-tion brought about a virtual paradigm shift in which reshaped laws, stateinstitutions and societal norms adversely aected women. The era dieredfrom previous ones in several fundamental ways. First, before 1977, womenhad been victims of the states gross negligence and patriarchal outlook thatblocked progress but there had never been any serious attempt to reversetheir rights or push them back into domestic seclusion. Second, legal andinstitutional changes were accompanied by state-sponsored religious ortho-praxy. No previous government had ever launched a societal agenda of thiskind in which gender featured so prominently. Drawing strength from deepreservoirs of patriarchy, the reconguration eventually made individualcitizens complicit enforcers and propagators of the states agendaa processthat may be even more dicult to reverse than specic laws and policies. Butwomen do not constitute an undierentiated mass and Islamisation did nothave the same impact on all women.Womens social reality is complex, mediated by multiple elements outside

the mainstream political and state framework. These include: traditional self-governance structures of dispute resolution that parallel and often override thestates mechanisms; patronage systems premised on kinship, tribal and ethnicaliations; and, now, militant, often armed political groups. Pakistans womenpresent a collage of startling contrasts and contradictions.Market savvy youngcommerce professionals, high-ranking bankers, doctors, academics, pilots andengineers dier radically from the rural majority, whose lives seem petried inanother century, untouched by developments outside their immediate circlesthat are tightly controlled by male family and community gatekeepers.Exceptional women have always broken through to positions of pre-eminenceacross all sectors, but their presence has failed to signicantly alter a structuralconguration that only enables a miniscule minority to excel while condemningthe majority to a life of unchanging deprivation.Complex intersecting webs of formal and non-formal decision making

prevent what supportive policies and legal rights do exist from reachingmost women. Constrictive gender-normative rules imposed in the family andcommunity commonly countermand both state laws and religious tenets,although customs diametrically opposed to religious tenets are posited andinternalised as religiously ordained. While empirical research indicates thatpeople do not desire the imposition of religious laws so much as an assurancethat the laws are not against their religion,10 the general ignorance aboutboth state laws and religious precepts unquestionably aids those using therhetoric of Islamic justice to both mobilise support and silence potentialopposition.Women who are poorly represented in the civil bureaucracy, judiciary and

political process, who are marginalised in the economy and possess little


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organisational strength, have limited capacity to resist when their rights arebartered to appease conservative forces. Reined in by restrictive gender rules,women in culturally traditionalist societies become easy victims of retro-gressive socio-political religious projects. The struggle for gender equality inPakistan, while robust and vociferous, has been waged from a narrow,numerically small, class-base of the relatively privileged. Having mostsuccessfully altered gender rules, such women are especially targeted byIslamisation projects as the easiest symbols of an antithetical world-view toattack in a deeply patriarchal society. Until the 1970s women mainlyleveraged reform through personal connections to men in positions of power.Commonly, rulers paid lip service to womens demands, but proposedmeasures frequently remained paper statements. For instance, since 1955,repeated policy calls to integrate primary schooling and employ women-onlysta to overcome drastically low female literacy have consistently fallen ondeaf ears. A decit of political will, and poor governance, have obstructedmeaningful modications of deep-rooted systemic and structural problems.Commissions on women have periodically been appointed but theirrecommendations largely ignored; the womens ministry and departmentslack the nancial resources and personnel to be eective; employment quotasare poorly implemented. Frequent prolonged military rule tends to eliminatewomen from the ranks of policy shapers and decision makers for extendedperiods, token women notwithstanding. This reinforces a predisposition tobelieve that women are incapable of, and thus should be excluded from,assuming decision-making positions.Until Zia women from the middle and upper classes could largely ignore

the normative prescriptions advocated by the religious right; manysubstantially altered gender rules for themselves. For decades decisiontakers, opinion makers and trendsetters came from fairly narrow intersectingcircles in which the ulemas inuence was minimal. Socio-political cong-urations changed in the 1970s. Pockets of economic prosperity threw upnew classes with dierent social moorings. Traders in particular acquiredmore economic, and eventually political, clout, which gravitated to moreconservative agendas, including those of politico-religious parties.The battle over womens rights, usually couched in religious terminology

on one side and human rights on the otheralthough the lines are nowblurringhas seen women of one class pitted against the men of a dierentclass. The religious right draws its leaders and cadre from the lower middleclass desirous of upward mobility; womens rights activists belong largely tothe professional middle classa divide thrown into sharp relief under Ziaand the intense polarisation around the issue of Islam and women.

The Zia Years: 197788

On taking over, the general announced that Pakistan was created in thename of Islam . . . I consider the introduction of [an] Islamic system as anessential pre-requisite. Towards this end, he launched an all-out two-pronged campaign. First, legal measures radically altered selected laws and

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state institutions; second, society was reoriented to religious orthodoxyand attendant orthopraxy through direct state measures and by grantingunprecedented space to non-state politico-religious elements. Unprepared forthe lethal militarystatereligion combo, women were severely handicappedin countering the onslaught that progressively reversed the gains they hadmade, including several considered secure. The space for resistance wasnarrow and risky: human rights were suspended, military courts operated;political activists were unceremoniously jailed and tortured, including, for therst time, women political workers. With the most to lose in terms of rightsand privileges and as the best placed to take the risk, urban middle and uppermiddle class women led the resistance, spearheaded by working professionals.On the legal front independence had granted women a host of de jure rights

at par with men (the major exception being family law matters), but thechasm separating de jure from de facto rights is vast and few women wereeven aware of the state-granted rights now under attack. The sheer speedwith which rights were overturned attests to the vulnerability of entitlementswhen these are only enjoyed by a miniscule proportion of those aected.Islamised laws were used to lend religious gravitas to brute force. In

February 1979 a few supposedly religiously inspired criminal laws bandedtogether as the infamous Hudood Ordinances introduced inhumane punish-ments: amputations, public whipping and stoning to death. Criminalisingconsensual sex (zina), the laws also covered an array of sexual crimesincluding rape and abduction, as well as theft, drunkenness (newly crimi-nalised) and perjury. The fundamentally awed and most widely applied zinasection caused the greatest injustice, especially for women. Rape and othersexual oences were confounded with zina and the police authorised todecide the nature of the oence. Hence, parents attempting to annul theirdaughters unsuitable marriages by ling complaints of abduction, foundtheir daughter instead accused of zina and jailed when police failed to ndevidence of either marriage or coercion. Zina became a crime against the stateand the principle of presumptive innocence was annulled. By the timesuperior courts overturned sentences, the accused had been jailed, sociallycondemned and stigmatised. In a travesty of justice rape survivors unable toprovide sucient evidence to convict the accused, were deemed to haveconfessed to sexual activitysometimes by virtue of pregnancyand weresentenced under zina. Disturbingly, the concept of statutory rape wasoverturned, girls were held to be liable as of puberty, and even nine-year oldswere prosecuted as adults.The judiciary was restructured, a new Federal Shariat Court (FSC)

mandated to decide whether laws and provisions were in accordance withIslam and a parallel judicial system erected to administer new Islamiclaws. Legal changes eectuated two critical and related shifts. First, theobfuscation of legal parameters enabled individual judges personal inter-pretations of Islam to override legal text and precedent, especially after theObjectives Resolution was made a substantive part of the Constitution in1985. Hence FSC case law on zina indicated a disturbing . . . moral judgmentwhich the court seems to be making about the woman victim/accused.11


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Other laws with less tangible impact nevertheless reinforced the idea that thestatus of Muslim women and all non-Muslims was half that of Muslimmenvirtually half-human. In its original form the new criminal lawon retribution and compensation (qisas and diyat) for injury and deathcategorically stated that compensation for women and non-Muslims wouldbe half that of Muslim men.Second, some legal changes, such as the amended blasphemy laws,12

encouraged the public to become the enforcers of new religious mores in lieuof the state. Numerous non-Muslims and Muslims were murdered; culpritswere never punished. Virtually condoning violence in the name of religion,the state allowed violence-prone bigotry to ourish. This continued long afterthe end of Zias regime, suggesting that his most damaging legacy may not bethe laws, but bringing about a signicant shift in outlook and everydaynorms towards an orthodoxy and orthopraxy based on bigotry, intoleranceand even violence.At the social level aggressive state measures worked in tandem with state-

condoned, occasionally sponsored, non-state actors to render self-servingconstructions of good Muslims synonymous with good Pakistanis.Religiosityovert usually public acts and signs of orthopraxisbecame agovernment hallmark. State orthopraxy included mandatory recitationsfrom the Quran at every public function, airports, etc, prayer-breaks anddedicated prayer spaces in public oces and venues. Islamic studies(Islamiyat) became compulsory in all schools,13 and Islamiyat tests manda-tory for higher education (regardless of subject) and public sector employ-ment. New textbooks refashioned history as an Islamic narrative, censoringJinnahs speeches and erasing inconvenient truths (such as most ulemasopposition to Pakistans creation).The agenda included undermining religious pluralism and heterodoxy. The

JIs Islamic discourse asserted hegemony by being granted power denied bythe ballot box. Political parties were banned but the JI was inducted into thegovernment as a junior partner and given free rein over state monopolisedbroadcast media. Press censorship muzzled dissent; intimidation muedother voices. Student unions were banned but not the JI student-wing, theIslami Jamiat-Tuleba (IJT). Consequently the JI continued recruiting andtraining future cadre unhampered (most JI members elected in 2002 were ex-IJT) while no other party could do so. Exemption enabled the IJT to establisha repressive moral stranglehold over youth in colleges and universities,including through strong-arm tactics.State sponsorship changed the salience of madrassahs, which have always

been part of the Pakistani and South Asian landscape (Jinnah studied inone). With madrassahs erupting across the country, ocial patronageradically transformed the average mullah, or preacher, from someonedependent on social charity and occasional government honoraria, whosecompany was suered rather than welcomed, to being far better resourcedand linked to circles of inuence.Gender was central to the discourse; sexual mores a particular focus. The

notion of a Pakistani woman was replaced by an Islamic woman who

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dressed in a particular manner, was educatedif at allin certain subjectsand segregated institutions, and was preferably silent and invisible. Incontrast to national dress for men, womens Islamic dress meant com-pulsory chadors for all government school students and teachers as well aswomen state employees. Here, too, enforcement shifted to private actors.State calls for upholding public morality insidiously licensed any male onthe streets to admonish, even physically assault, any woman he regarded tobe improperly dressed; sexual harassment in public spaces spiralled. Harassedand under societal pressure, Parsees and Christians abandoned skirts anddresses, Punjabi peasants their sarong-like apparel. Bleaching out diversity,the ocial view on Islamic dress transformed into a cultural norm withoutneeding legislation.Gender segregation was a central pillar: prohibiting joint malefemale

stage shows and performances in colleges, attempting to ban malegynaecologists and the autopsy of female cadavers by male doctors, stoppingfemale athletes from competing in front of men. Encouraged by staterhetoric, some teachers refused to teach improperly attired girls; otherssegregated classrooms; a few refused to teach girls at all. A governmentcampaign against obscenity and vulgarity (a pet peeve of the religious right)managed to suggest that women per se were somehow obscene. On televisionwomen newscasters, hosts and actresses in commercials or plays had to covertheir heads at all times or lose their jobs. State broadcast media extolled thevirtues of the good self-sacricing woman, domestic or domesticated, andblamed other publicly visible women (particularly working women) for thedisintegration of the family, of moral rectitude and values as well as forcorruption and other social ills. An entire generation imbibed propagandathat womens only place was in the home, their role reproduction andmotherhood, their status and rights subservient to men.Paradoxically, womens resistance concentrated on combating the legal

changes that least aected the personal lives of its activists but did notstrategise on societal shifts which did. If poor illiterate women experiencedthe brunt of the zina laws (although several prominent cases have involvedauent middle class families and rural landholding families), sexual andsocial harassment transcended class barriers. Variations in the extent, natureand consequences notwithstanding, all women confronted greater hostility inpublic spaces and all working women faced increased impediments, includingsometimes at home. Activists prevented the passage of some proposals andobtained amendments that limited the potential damage of others. Theycould not stem the entrenchment of retrogressive attitudes proposed asreligious, nor did they focus on this aspect. This was not an oversight, but adecision propelled by the need to respond to negative state proposalsvirtually on a daily basis.

Post-Zia

It took 27 years and a parliament under the aegis of a president-cum-chief-of-army-sta to amend the zina laws. Societal shifts will take much longer and


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require an entirely dierent approach, for religious orthopraxy had taken on alife of its own. Many practices introduced under Zia became unquestionednorms. Religion became marketable: its symbols adorn cars, private andpublic buildings, public spaces and living rooms; its language has beenadopted by banks and commercial enterprises. Given the elaborate collectivepreparations by excited expectant pilgrims, increasingly popular grouppilgrimages seemingly full needs beyond the religious. Growing religiousreferencing in everyday life is not limited to Pakistan but part of a worldwideascendancy of identity based politics. In essentialist identity politics, symbolsand signiers resonating with peoples lived realities, or collective identities,are harnessed to promote political agendas frequently couched in a religiousidiom, but also in the idiom of ethnicity, culture and race. If many are seducedby the discourses, many others may hesitate to reject such an agenda becauseto do so feels like rejecting essential parts of their own identity (eg faith orculture). Both tendencies are visible in Pakistan.Nevertheless, attesting to peoples resilience, after 11 years of misogynistic

rule wrapped in Islamist rhetoric and despite the greatly strengthenedpresence of politico-religious elements, Pakistan elected a woman primeminister, Benazir Bhutto. Between Zias death in 1988 and 1999, when themilitary again directly assumed the reins of power, four short-lived electedgovernments failed to seriously dent Islams inscription into the state.Heading minority governments, Bhutto (198890, 199396) was unable toand Nawaz Sharif (199193, 199699) disinclined to.Bhutto could not repeal any of Zias so-called Islamic laws which, having

been indemnied by the 8th Constitutional Amendment, required a two-thirds parliamentary majority. But procedural directives did reduce thenumber of cases and the abuse of zina laws; government support enabled therst-ever acquittal under the amended blasphemy law, despite threats todefending lawyers, the accused and judges hearing the cases.14 In social termswomen re-emerged from relative obscurity assisted by new state broadcaststhat promoted womens rights while highlighting problems. Most striking,however, was the transformative impact of a woman heading government,which instantly eased the hitherto oppressive atmosphere. Still, short tenurescould not reverse societal trends and the militaryreligious nexus remainedbeyond democratic control.As Zias political heir Sharif could not be expected to undo Islamisation.

Instead, with a two-thirds majority in his second round, he moved toconsolidate absolute power. The media was hounded, journalists arrested,attempts made to close down thousands of non-governmental organisations(NGOs) and intra-party dissent was gagged through a constitutional amend-ment. The pie`ce de resistance was the 15th Constitutional Amendment Billpropagated as the Shariat Bill which, purporting to enforce Islamic law,proposed unfettered power for the prime minister. The Bill failed to musterthe necessary support in the senate before General Musharaf ousted Sharif in1999.Musharafs inaugural speech promised equal treatment of all citizens

regardless of province or religion. Several long-standing demands of women

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(and minorities) were met,15 including legislation that substantially increasedthe presence of women in legislative bodies. The most important legislativemeasure by far was the Women Protection Act 2006, which nally removedthe teeth, if not the entire text, of the infamous zina laws (consensual sexremains technically criminalised but virtually impossible to prosecute).Crucially the Act nally overturned the notion that merely labelling a lawIslamic rendered it sacrosanct and unchangeable.On the other hand, Musharaf called upon the clergy to curb elements

which are exploiting religion for vested interests, but continued making self-serving arrangements with politico-religious groups. The unprecedentednumber of politico-religious candidates elected in 2002 owed their success tounbridled anger at the US-led military attack on Afghanistan, but werefacilitated by granting madrassah education equivalency with universitydegrees to meet the newly imposed requirement of graduation for candidacy.Armed militants were not curbed and an alarming Talibanisation culminatedin a full-edged armed insurrection in some areas.Post-Zia, while pockets of liberalism have surfaced and the pressure

on professional working women and upper and middle class women haseased considerably, no ruler has taken on the challenge of reversing statesponsorship of religious orthopraxy. Signalling the altered social landscape,the number of religion-focused civil society initiatives continues to grow, asdoes religiosity among the inuential classes, including among women.

Gender, justice and civil society in unjust societies

Shaping the cultural milieu in which political and legal discourses andbattles unfold, civil society institutions operate in both social and politicalarenas that are separated by only a porous dividing line. Before enteringelectoral politics, the JI would have qualied as a civil society organisation.Unexpectedly there is a remarkable resonance between Antonio Gramscisdenition of critical civil society as autonomous groups aiming to challengethe state without being a part of this apparatus,16 and Maududis self-dened aim to try to awaken and guide the popular will to base thefoundation of our state on the law and constitution which we Muslimsconsider to be divine and to shape the ideas, beliefs and moral viewpointsof the people into an Islamic mould, reform the system . . . and revive theIslamic . . . attitudes in general.17 Maududi, whose texts are standardreading for both para-state armed groups and religious parties, assiduouslypursued these aims. Placing primacy on transforming the political,administrative and judicial systems, the JI strategically focused on gainingcontrol over educational institutions and consolidating inuence in the civiland military bureaucracies. The disjuncture between constitutional andpolicy promises of equality, equal opportunities and justice for all, on theone hand, and the painful reality of injustice, deprivation and discrimina-tion on the other, allows religiously dened political agendas to emerge assignicant forces in peoples lives, especially in the absence of progressivemovements.


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Blending religion and politics inevitably reshapes practised religion as well.The overwhelming emphasis of politico-religious elements on punitive lawpares down the faith of Islam to Muslim jurisprudence. Political Islamistssystematically seek to delegitimise and eradicate the diverse perspectives ofthe faithful, especially the mystical Su traditions which are antithetical totheir positions and perspectives. The popularly rooted, pluralistic anddecentralised Su traditions in many parts of Pakistan are being eroded bythe rise of a centralising, institution-based WahabiSala Islam. Ironicallythis is partly facilitated by the modernisation ethos that gives unprecedented,and increasingly exclusive, pre-eminence to the written word as the only validknowledge base. It has been argued that the pre-eminence of scripturalinterpretation has displaced womens religious traditions with their ownunderstanding . . . that was dierent from mens Islam. In contrast to theinner, pacist and generous tradition ascribed to women, most mensmosque-centric, institution-based tradition, more narrowly focused on thescriptural text, propels a more literalist interpretation of faith. Moreover, ifeducation is reduced to literacy and skill acquisition, the very ability to readenables the prolic writings of religious conservatives to reach ever-wideraudiences.18 The strong centralising institutional base of one side and itsabsence in the other may be a pivotal factor.Viewing civil society as uniformly progressive merits serious reconsidera-

tion, since a substantial portion of Pakistani civil society is busy carving outniches of inuence and privilege at the expense of other peoples rights.Numerous politico-religious groups expressly exclude women and non-Muslims from the purview of the community deserving benets; manysocio-religious entities complement more politically engaged ones throughactual or discursive links. Most madrassahs unconnected to militant activitiesnevertheless produce narrow-mindedness and xenophobia; signicant tieslink armed madrassahs, militant groups and religious political parties.Religious instruction (dars) through both traditional informal groups andnew modern academies (hugely popular across classes of urban womensince the Zia era), as well as preachers on new cable television channelsbolster a religious outlook that transforms matters of rights and social normsinto sins and evils. Some sections of civil society are decidedly uncivil, devoidof any compunction about attacking other citizens, with those deningthemselves in religious terms especially condent of enjoying impunity.The states radically dierent treatment of civil society groups self-

identied as religious19 and others was illustrated in the 2007 Red Mosqueasco, in which black chadored, stave-wielding women from its Al-Hafsamadrassah shot to prominence. Al-Hafsa women focused on sexualcorruption and government failure to provide justice.The rhetoric of religiously dened groups, with its emphasis on gender

segregation, controlling sexuality and dress codes, the equation of the Westand selected elements of modernisation with decadence, often depicted interms of sexual mores, echoes Maududis 1939 Purdah and the Status ofWomen in Islam, in which, largely addressing the newly emerging middleclasses, he justied a strict gendered division of labour and social

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organisationalthough the level of violence may not have been anticipated.The Red Mosque imam averred: We will not allow dance and music inPakistan . . . We will not wait any more . . . if a few pious men can take overKabul, why cant we bring about the Shariat law in [Pakistan] . . . wherewe number in the thousands.20 His female supporters likewise declaredIf [immoral sexuality is] what liberal people want, they should . . . leave . . .Pakistan is ours, and . . . and we will cleanse it. Women journalists visitingthe Red Mosque complex were made acutely conscious of their ownsexuality, as one said:

With my head uncovered while I lm, I feel the burden of being a woman, ofmy morality being under scrutiny. I am extremely conscious of my sexualitywhich, I learn, through my interaction with my Hafsa sisters, is a possible threatto a pristine world. And I thought only men could make me feel sovulnerable!21

The journalists also noted that, while individual students said they werepromoting womens rights, donning the black chador uniform instantlytransformed individuated ordinary college students into a more strident,uncompromising and anonymous mass. Their cleansing campaign includedattacking shops, burning CDs and DVDs, kidnapping and taking over agovernment building. Had secular womens rights activists undertakensimilar action, they would have been unceremoniously arrested. Instead thepresident excused these young misguided daughters.The issue here is not whether Al-Hafsa students and teachers were

struggling for womens rights, but that the states dierentiated treatmentunquestionably puts secular gender equality advocates at a distinct dis-advantage in countering religious militancy. Although rights activists poselittle threat to the far larger, better resourced and organised politico-religiousparties, they are perceived as the principle opponents in discursive con-testations. While verbal and physical attacks aim to intimidate and silence,labelling rights activists Western agents is intended to undermine credibilityand public support, similar to accusations of NGOs promoting a foreign-funded agenda, an accusation that conveniently overlooks foreign fundingfor religious groups.Although frameworks, tactics and end-goals dier radically, rights

advocates and political Islamists both focus on the legal system and statedpositions can be disconcertingly similar.22 Giving primacy to the state as theprinciple guarantor of rights, the narrow legal focus of the womensmovement in Pakistan overlooks the fact that citizens rarely access the statescourts, opting for more accessible traditional dispute resolution forums.Moreover, an inadequately resourced judiciary hampered by frequentdisruptions, suspensions and military regimes is perceived as rarelydelivering justice. For political Islamists, especially those outside electoralpolitics, condemning the existing legal (and political) order as incoherentand ineectual is an essential counterpoint to their own promises ofspeedy Islamic justice. That promised justice is part of their appeal is


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reected in the growing number of unocial shariah courts that havecropped up.23

Unlike the considerable time human rights activists expend explaining atlength the exact phraseology of standards and norms referencing a mostlyunknown world, religiously dened groups never bother elaborating theirproposed system. Resonating deeply with the cultural lexicon, Islamicjustice is deemed self-explanatory. When rampant class-bias enables betterconnected, more auent people to regularly out the law while penalising thepoor; where the state and its resources mean one thing for the poor andanother for the rich, the rhetoric of shariah as a one-stop justice window isseductive because, as cynically observed by a female madrassah student,Even if people dont want Islam, they do want justice.24

Conclusion

In Pakistan the self-serving instrumental use of Islam by groups that do nothave religiously dened agendas bolstered those that do, enabling draconianchanges under Zia. Dierentiating Zia was not only a more systematicinscription of religion into politics, the state apparatus and the legalframework, but a proactive social change agenda. Social transformation waseected through both rewards and punitive coercion (such as obliging allMuslims to sign an endorsement of the states excommunication of an entiresect from Islam or risk forfeiting national identity cards and passports). Itentailed direct state interventions and creating spaces for non-state actors,including civil society groups, who then took forward the agenda as theirown. It is the combination that eventually reoriented large sections ofPakistani society, enabling Zias legacy to continue long after his demise, foronce social norms are altered, the enforcer need no longer be the state.Penalties can beand indeed aremeted out by non-state actors acting withimpunity derived from state support. Under Zia, women were penalised moreby men in the public arena than by ocials for contravening the statesprescriptive Islamic dress code; no one has been executed for blasphemy butmany have been murdered. Post-Zia, state pressure on women has eased, butthe societal transformations that were triggered pose serious challenges.The ability of an individual woman to resist the negative impact of the

religionpolitics nexus depends on factors such as class, economic resources,the community and family in which she is located and, of course, her ownpersonal inclinations. Collectivised resistance confronts other dynamics.Centralisation, a driving principle of asserting political power, plays out

in social as well as politicalterritorial terrains.25 Politico-religious forcesconsciously seek centralisation in both arenas. In the social terrainveiled women adhering to religious orthopraxy become striking symbolicmarkers of appropriated political territory through their engagements andcomportment in socio-cultural arenas. Human rights and gender equalityactivists, who are numerically small and often stand accused of beingWesternised, lack an equivalent proactive social agenda and visible markers.This suggests that activists, who have developed fairly well established

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political state-oriented initiatives, must also devise strategies for the socialterrain: a socio-cultural agenda to counteract the hegemonic politico-religious discourse; an agenda that can mobilise support through engage-ments that encourage larger numbers to adopt the discourse and practice ofgender equality.The subtext of labelling womens rights activists Western or Westernised

is that these people are aliens and, much as germs diseasing the body, needto be expunged from society. (The fear, maybe, is that such women mayencourage emulation by other women, including the female relatives of themore conservative.) The tendency to focus on the state as the guarantor ofrights, essential as it is, leaves the shift towards religious orthopraxy,manifesting underlying orthodoxy, unaddressedsomething those in statepower also hesitate to address head on. The discourse of womens rights inparticular and human rights in general would have greater resonance if,without abandoning references to international human rights, it were alsoembedded within societys more liberal popular traditions and idiom. Itseems equally important to liberate history from the distortions institutedunder Zia so as to surface other rooted realties and traditions. In the Ziayears women activists eectively used references to Pakistans own history,Jinnah and other leaders to both counter oppositional positions and promotetheir own views (in addition to more liberal interpretations of religion).Without such enterprises those struggling for gender equality risk ndingthemselves increasingly marginalised and de-legitimised within their ownsocieties.In the nal analysis, however, resistance, as well as bringing about change,

is about power. Womens power decit in state and society makes theirresistance often contingent upon borrowing power, that is, by mobilisingallies. Signicantly, at the height of Zias Islamisation programme, theregime entirely ignored women protesting against the injustice anddiscriminatory treatment of women and non-Muslims of the proposed qisasand diyat laws that introduced blood money and capital punishment for evenaccidental death. But it rapidly amended the law after a lightning nationwidestrike by transport workers threatened to bring the economy to a halt,following a truck driver being awarded the death sentence for causing theaccidental death of a pedestrian. Regardless of personal connections topower, women as a group simply do not have this kind of leverage. Thegender equality movement would be strengthened by mobilising largernumbers of women, but women do not comprise a homogeneous collectivewith identical interests. They are divided by class and privilege anddistinguished by culture, upbringing, personal experiences and life choices,to name but a few dierences. They dont think alike. And, while the majoritymay feel unable to participate in resistance, a signicant number of womenactually subscribe to the views of religiously dened groups and are activeproponents of these views, as illustrated by the Al-Hasfa women; othersempathise with such views. In the nal analysis it is well to remember thatwomen inhabit the same socio-political spaces as menalbeit with dierentgendered rules of belongingand that gendered problems are created and


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contested within the reality of the broader state and society. It seemsappropriate, therefore, to conclude with a comment from the Report of the1953 Munir Commission (investigating the countrys rst religious riots)regarding the tension between theocracy and democracy in Pakistan:

[A] lack of bold and clear thinking, the inability to understand and takedecisions which has brought about in Pakistan a confusion which will persistand repeatedly create situations of the kind we have been inquiring into . . . [A]slong as we rely on the hammer when a le is needed and press Islam intoservice to solve situations it was never intended to solve, frustration anddisappointment must dog our steps.26

Had the countrys rulers heeded the important lessons of this early analysis ofthe dynamics of religion and politics, Pakistan would be a very dierentcountry indeed.

Notes

1 This was elaborated in Jinnahs 11 August 1947 address to the Constituent Assembly; Zia latersuppressed the full text.

2 The resolution promotes life in accord with the teachings and requirements of Islam. In contrast, theconstitution only safeguards minorities legitimate rights.

3 A Rashid, Pakistan: the ideological dimension, in A Khan (ed), Islam, Politics and the State: ThePakistan Experience, London: Zed Books, 1986, pp 6994.

4 H Abbas, Pakistans Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and Americas War on Terror, New York:ME Sharpe, 2005; Z Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam, Lahore: VanguardBooks, 2007; and H Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Lahore: Vanguard Books,2005.

5 Declaration of the Rights of Pakistani Women, 1976.6 A Jalal, The State of Martial RuleThe Origins of Pakistans Political Economy of Defence, Lahore:Vanguard Books, 1991.

7 Hussain, Frontline Pakistan.8 Madrassah, a generic term for a school, is now used to denote seminaries.9 Abbas, Pakistans Drift into Extremism; Haqqani, Pakistan; and Hussain, Frontline Pakistan.10 F Shaheed, Imagined Citizenship: Women State and Politics in Pakistan, Lahore: Shirkat Gah, 2002.11 N Ahmad The superior judiciary: implementation of law and impact on women, in F Shaheed,

SA Warraich, C Balchin & A Gazdar (eds), Shaping Womens Lives: Laws Customs and Practices inPakistan, Lahore: Shirkat Gah, p 13.

12 Amended blasphemy laws no longer attribute signicance to motive and allow personal imputations topass for evidence.

13 Technically non-Muslims have other options but few schools are equipped to provide suchcourses.

14 In the 1994 case of Salamat, Rehmat and Mansur Masih, Mansur was killed outside the court; one ofthe two judges was subsequently murdered.

15 Among these: a permanent womens commission, amended Family Courts Act, reserved seats in thesenate, 33 per cent directly elected local government seats for women, and the reversal of Zias separateelectorate for minorities.

16 A Gramsci. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed and trans Q Hoare &G Smith, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971.

17 Maududi, cited in Rashid, Pakistan, p 83.18 L Ahmed, A border passage, Dossier 25, October 2003, London: Women Living Under Muslim Laws

(WLUML), pp 3141.19 While numerous groups dene their agendas in religious terms, classifying some as faith-based, as

done by the UN and donor agencies, is unhelpful. By suggesting all others are faithless the binarysuits the agenda of the self-appointed guardians of religion and unhelpfully feeds identity politics.

20 Newsline, May 2007, p 37.21 A Salahuddin, Rendezvous with the others, Newsline, July 2007, p 39.

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22 See F Shaheed, Gender, Religion and the Quest for Justice in Pakistan, at http://www.awid.org/Issues-and-Analysis/Library/Gender-Religion-and-the-Quest-for-Justice-in-Pakistan-Final-Research-Report.

23 Fifty-four private shariat courts were operating in 2007, excluding Taliban-style travesties. TheHerald, May 2007.

24 R Karrar, Inside the mosque, The Herald, May 2007, p 55.25 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks.26 Government of Pakistan, Report of the Court of Enquiry Constituted under Punjab Act II of 1954 to

Enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953, p 141.

Notes on Contributor

Farida Shaheed, based in Lahore, is director of research at Shirkat GahWomens Resource Centre, visiting fellow at City University of Hong Kongand deputy director of Womens Empowerment in Muslim Contexts, amulti-country research project. In November 2009 she became the rst UNindependent expert in the eld of culture. Extensive writings on womensrights, the interface of culture, religion and politics include the co-authoredbook, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? Women of Pakistan, for which shereceived the Prime Ministers Award. A new book, Great Ancestors: Women,Deance and Muslim Contexts, is being published by Oxford UniversityPress.


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Contested Identities: gendered politics, gendered religion in Pakistan