Haseena Khan Mumbai

I am thankful to the organisers for inviting me here to speak about the multiple identities of Muslim women. One is usually asked to speak only on personal laws because one is a Muslim. Certain boundaries seem to have been demarcated, and there are many silences; today I have been given an opportunity to break some of these silences.

When we talk about censorship in our work, we have to think about who is imposing this censorship. One type of censorship is imposed by our society, one by the State, one by communal forces. Of course, it is necessary to address these. However, it is also crucial that we talk about another kind of censorship that is there within our movement, within our social groups, our thinking, our strategies. If we only talk about what is happening outside, and fail to look within, then in some ways we are justifying censorship.

In this context I will speak a bit about communal riots and their resultant ‘ghettoisation’. In 1992-93, during the Bombay riots, when the Muslim community became target of large-scale violence, ghettos began to be formed for their safety and security. We acknowledged that it was a difficult situation, and somewhere we supported their formation because there seemed to be no alternative. But as the ‘ghettoisation’ increased, the community started deciding which issues of the Muslim women could be discussed within the community, and which could be taken outside. Domestic violence, insistence on purdah etc. were on the rise. But we couldn’t go to the police since they had proven themselves to be communal. Inside, we couldn’t talk about it because it was a male-dominated community. Issues related to polygamy, failure to pay maintenance after divorcing a woman, no rights to divorced women were other problems. The community however decided that these are matters of religion, and should not be taken up. Taking them up would be un-Islamic and would not be tolerated by the community.

In 2002, the genocide happened in Gujarat, and we all know how it was done, how the Muslim community, especially Muslim women were targeted. Once again ghettoes were formed and this time, on a larger scale and with more dangerous implications. We saw little girls being married off in relief camps. Nobody wrote about this. Many social groups were working both in Gujarat in 2002, and in Bombay a decade earlier, and they all claimed to be against fundamentalism and patriarchy.  Their method of working however remained conservative and routine. Here I am addressing in particular, women’s groups, theatre groups, social organizations who lay claim to being progressive, secular, feminist etc. This is one kind of censorship that we must put an end to.

After the riots and the genocide, communalism became the main issue for everyone. Issues of gender were not even touched upon. We are not supposed to talk about violence against women within the Muslim community. We are not supposed to talk about Personal Laws because it is a sensitive issue. We are told that we should avoid talking of these issues because the Muslim community has already been heavily targeted by BJP, VHP, RSS etc because of these.  We are not supposed to talk about sexuality because our society is not ready for it. But who decides who this ‘society’ is; who decides that the time has not come, who will tell us when the time comes and give us permission to speak? We need to realize that in this avoidance, we are actually allowing the mullas and the Muslim fundamentalists to flourish. We are all going after the bigger animal, but the smaller one that is there within the community, that which directly affects the lives of the Muslim women is being allowed to roam freely. If we don’t talk about this, then who will?

Sometimes students come and tell us that their teacher has asked us to make a 10-minute film on Muslim women and that they would like to highlight the burqa. If a journalist wants to write about talaq, she wants a photograph of a woman in a burqa. We have to end this stereotyping of identities. Why do we want to talk only about the burqa when it comes to Muslim women? Are Hindu women not subject to purdah? When we talk of Hindu women we do not talk just of the bindi, sindoor and mangalsutra!. The image of the Muslim women has been reduced to triple talaq, poor education and burqa. She is a Muslim who wears a burqa, is very religious, and heterosexual. For example, when we talk about Muslim women, we never talk about sex workers. In a meeting of womens’ groups, everyone said that the issue of Muslim women sex workers is very sensitive. Everyone said that they should be rehabilitated. I wonder why are we so worried about rehabilitation. Why do we hold the sex worker in such aversion? For years we have seen that our experiences in marriage have been so bad, even then we push women to get into it, but we say sex work is very bad.

We are often told, “You should gather all the Muslim women and give them education and information, empower them. Then your problem will be solved.” But I want to ask who is this ‘We’ and who is this ‘You’? If we believe that we are all human beings regardless of which religion, background or sexual leaning we belong to, then we all have to raise these questions.

Unless we get rid of the censorship within and the restrictions that we impose on ourselves, we cannot change the way things are. While we continue our fight against the conservative forces that try to mainstream us, we also have to look inward and break the silences within. Otherwise it will be very difficult to conceive of a different and better world.

Haseena Khan has worked for more than a decade with the Mumbai-based group, Awaz-e-Niswan which  works primarily on issues concerning Muslim women.

While we continue our fight against the conservative forces that try to mainstream us, we also have to look inward and break the silences within.