Earlier this month, Imam Shabbir Ahmed Siddiqui of the Jama Masjid in Ahmedabad ordained that Muslim women should not be given election tickets. He has claimed that Islam itself is against women coming out in the open and hence, it is against them standing for elections and campaigning or even visiting mosques for prayers.
Islam is Siddiqui’s religion as well as mine. So, without the benefit of his pulpit, here’s a factual pushback.
The Imam said that political parties are giving election tickets to Muslim women for general seats because they aim to weaken Islam. “Are there no men left? Is there a dearth of men,” he asked. The answer, Shahi Imam saheb, is “no”. There are plenty of talented men — as well as women. There’s also a Constitution that forbids discrimination against women. The Quran, the holy book you claim to uphold, too makes no such discrimination.
Benazir Bhutto was the elected prime minister of Pakistan twice (1988 and 1993). Khaleda Zia was the elected prime minister of Bangladesh in 1991. Megawati Sukarnoputri served as the president of Indonesia from 2001-2004. Vjosa Osmani is the president of the de facto Republic of Kosovo, and before her was Atifete Jahjaga. In 2010, Roza Otunbayeva became the president of Kyrgyzstan, Ameenah Fakim became the president of Mauritius in 2015 and Mame Madior Boye became prime minister of Senegal in 2001. I would like to tell the Imam and his ilk that all these women are Muslim and that he should not be letting down both the Constitution and the Quran in such a pitiable manner.
Sadly, not a single Muslim voice has called out this religious leader’s patriarchal diktat. Will one amongst them speak up against discrimination within the larger community, openly practised under the guise of religion?
Some fellow Muslims I know stay away for reasons of political convenience. Their existence rests on citing Islamophobia and crying persecution — anything, as long as the ruling dispensation is pilloried. It is not for them to cite a solid example of religious discrimination by this political regime in its policy, governance or dispensation of welfare schemes.
In percentage terms, my Muslim brethren only outnumber the other religions, proportionally to their population, as beneficiaries of housing, educational and all other welfare schemes because of the base effect (being consigned to the lowest socio-economic indices by the secular rahnumayiat [leadership], the mercenary politics of tokenism and appeasement).
Most of the clergy in India have led unsuspecting millions astray. Consumed by a visceral hatred for the Narendra Modi juggernaut of vikas and vishwas, this tribe of medievalists thinks nothing of disfiguring the word of the Holy Quran, undermining its authority and supremacy over all other interpretative texts.
On triple talaq and hijab, for instance, they decided to undermine the holy book as opposed to either the Hadith or local norms. Talaq-e-biddat or triple talaq — the annulment of a marriage by the oral denouncement of a man to his wedded wife — is banned in most Islamic nations (including Pakistan). The enactment of the legislation banning triple talaq saw resistance from the same “secular brigade”, which used the minority card to build political capital but worked against the real “minority within the minority” by opposing the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage), Bill, 2019, popularly called Triple Talaq Bill, in Parliament.
I wonder when the “liberals” of India will expose the obvious marginalisation of the “minority within the minority” by the so-called secular parties. Or do they also believe that Muslim women are less than Muslim men and, therefore, not worth defending?
Similarly, during the hijab controversy, the Islamists could not cite a single verse from the Quran that espoused the burqa for women. Arab men, like the women, also wear the traditional kufiyah or ghutra, a headdress to protect them against heat and sand.
Is it possible that this Imam and his kind have no idea that women not only congregate in mosques in many Islamic and non-Islamic countries, but also at the Masjid Al Haram itself? So, while Muslim women are welcome in Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia and at the holy Al Aqsa mosque in Israel, they must not congregate in Indian mosques. My women friends and I too have offered prayers in various masjids, including Al Aqsa, unhindered.
The denial of political participation for women and their invisibilisation should be taken up by every Muslim man or woman. Intervention by courts or political entities is misinterpreted as interference. Muslims must rely on their own conscience, instead of ceding their powers to a regressive clergy or political parties whose raison d’être is a hatred of PM Modi. The truth must be spoken and articulated from within the community.
Many will predictably have just a single point of contention: That this author is from the BJP. Yes, the same party that enabled 40 per cent more Muslim girls to pursue primary education. “The school dropout rate among Muslim daughters was more than 70 per cent and this situation persisted for 70 years,” the PM said in a speech. “The government started the Swachh Bharat Mission, built toilets for school-going girls. Now, this (dropout) rate has fallen to nearly 30 per cent,” he added.
I contend that my political moorings are preceded by my birth and upbringing in a Muslim neighbourhood in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, and by my being the daughter of a Maulana and being given the title of “Ilmi” by the Deoband seminary. Those who think that I’ve written this article because I’m in the BJP must realise that they have gotten the theory of cause and effect all wrong. First-hand experience of leftist hypocrisy is what has led to this moment.
And I will never allow any intermediaries between my Allah and I.
The writer is a women’s rights activist and national spokesperson, BJP
