WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT AND ISLAM

[Introduction]    [Our Contemporary World ]   [The Problem ]    [Is empowerment the Solution ]   [What has Islam to offer ]   [Islam's own empowerment ]   [Clarification of certain issues ]   [Would Muslims allow.... ]  Introduction Men have always assumed some superiority over women and have sought to dominate the world and relegate women to the background. Cultures and civilisation have sought to confer legitimacy to this male superiority and have accordingly developed myths and conventions that tend to perpetuate them. Through time women have consistently, if grudgingly, borne the brunt of this male domination. Such inequities have been a feature of all human societies, from antiquity to our contemporary times. Religions, especially revealed ones, often intervene to redress such intrinsic imbalance in human relations. Christianity, at least in the form we know it today, rather unfortunately, did not help matters, for by blaming a woman (Eve) as the source of the down-fall of man, it in fact compounded this inequity, and unwittingly gave men a new impetus to relegate women to the background. It accordingly denied women even their independent identity, having to dissolve in to that of their husbands on marriage. Islam, however, dealt with the issue decisively, but ignorance and enduring male arrogance have always connived to deny women what Islam has given them. This was further compounded by the incorporation of the Muslim world in to the contemporary world, shaped as it had been by Western liberalism which is rooted in a rebellion against a Christian God. With both Christianity and Islam marginalised in our contemporary world, the job of intervention and the restoration of equity in this gender relationship has now been taken over by the United Nation and chains of NGO’s. The idea of women empowerment is a concept created by the UN, championed by UNIFEM and supported by the various NGO’s. Is Empowerment of women the answer to the problem? Can the UN, supported by the host of, admittedly good intentioned agencies, redress the imbalance and restore equity in gender relations? Does Islam offer a better hope and if it does, will our contemporary Muslims allow it? These are some of the questions that this paper seeks to address. But first some caution. Foremost, the relation between men and women, which this paper is obliged to touch, is too often clouded by emotion. This may have to do with the nature of the relationship between men and women which is essentially emotive. For it is difficult to explain rationally why we love the people we love or why we marry the spouses we marry. Emotions, we hardly need say, cloud vision, obstruct rationality and make it difficult to fathom issues. Second, Muslims scholars have remained decades (some would say centuries) behind the very societies they are supposed to guide. Many of them appear to be oblivious of the age in which they live and seem unwilling to exert themselves as their predecessors had done in developing rulings (fatawi) which takes into account the dynamics of society and address their immediate context. This not only stultifies the Sharia, especially in the eyes of the uninformed, but, it also holds the Muslim community hostage to the imbecility and ineptitude of those who are supposed to lead it. Many followers are consequently left to wallow in increasing confusion as to the position of the Shari’a on many issues, especially the issue of women. Third, the prevailing intellectual decadence of the Muslim community has over several decades forged a timid mind which had been keen on conformity and weary of creativity. Thus the average Muslim mind has lost its analytical capacity and has become mechanical in its thinking, content with whatever is passed to it as knowledge. The mind has been particularly intimidated into conformity by a clergy who have masked their incompetence by curtailing the kind of questions that can be raised and by raising the qualification of the jurist who could answer these questions to such humanly unattainable heights, that we are left to helplessly and endlessly wait for some imaginary mujtahid to emerge from only God knows where. Thus the average Muslim mind fears raising questions and finds it easier to evade rather than face issues, leaving many topical questions unanswered. Far from deterring us, these problems ought to in fact motivate us the more, they are raised here mainly to help explain some of the questions to be raised and put in context some of the liberties the author may wish to take. But it seems necessary to first appreciate the features and contours of our contemporary world, the terrain within which we shall be applying what ever ideas we may come up with.