Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Reading Benazir’s Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West There are some important books that Muslim world should have taken better note of. They have something important to say though certain things might be objected to on both religious and philosophical grounds. Some selections from them deserve serious consideration. Such works include works of almost all the authors approvingly quoted in the last chapter of Benazir Bhutto’s Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West . The problems that Benazir highlights are indeed noteworthy. She notes, for instance, that “now almost half the world’s Muslims are illiterate. The combined GDP of the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is about the same as that of France, a single European country. More books are translated annually from other languages into Spanish than have been translated into Arabic over the past one hundred years. The 15 million citizens of tiny Greece buy more books annually than do al...

Reading Nayeema Mehjoor’s Lost in Terror It is undeniable that Kashmiri resistance movement has been weakened by its (mis)association with puritanical Islamist ideology, unbearable – and some inadequately documented – human costs, violence against minorities, women and imagined/projected other. It needs rare courage to report from ground zero, to direct gaze to the problematic within, to avoid mincing words and call spade a spade. To attempt to write without imposed or imagined blinkers and threats, to write back to the Empire of oppression and violence, to speak on taboo issues and take strong positions outside the comfort  zone of hypocrisy or neutrality is what a writer-journalist can aim at and to succeed to a significant extent in this endeavour is indeed an achievement.This success story deserves our attention this week.       A Kashmiri woman stranding between tradition and modernity, Kashmir and London, and caught up in transition...

Reading Muslim Philosophers on Women Question Granting that the term feminism would be understood rather loosely as struggle to restore women’s legitimate dignity or rights as humans would not be objected, and rescuing it from loaded ideological content given to it in academic discourse by extremist secular and fundamentalist elements alike, one might note that there are Islamist feminists who defend what they see as rights of women given by Islam and interpreted by traditional scholars, especially medieval authorities or fuqaha (such women wear and ideally preach niqab/ hijab and believe in normativity of home or private vs. public binary as far as possible). There are secularist feminists who though may be culturally a Muslim or otherwise or even devout Muslim in their own view  say invoking historical Islam is part of a problem and struggle for women’s rights should be purely secular (they generally resist hijab ) and Muslim feminists who say Islam is part of solution...

For most women living here, Kashmir has always been hell. To live as a daughter is hell, to leave one’s home for the spouse’s home is a bigger hell. To continue to live in alien house (that rarely becomes home) is like serving a life sentence. Most homes are a hell for daughters-in law. Mothers-in law have their own hell to keep burning. But let us today focus on the hell of our daughters who suddenly get deprived of the status as daughters and become only legal subjects, who are no longer humans. One daughter-in-law reaches her home by   6pm   where everyone including the mother-in-law and husband’s brother, are waiting for her to prepare tea and dinner for them. She is unable to take tea before 7.30pm .  Kitchen odour must not spread to irritate anyone in the house and she must be very careful in the kitchen. Another has to buy the milk she boils that curdles for no fault of her own.  Another is caught between two dictators – mother-in-law and husband who make it...

Questions for State Women’s Commission We have one of the most violent societies with respect to women. All of us know cases of violence against women. All of us are responsible in some measure. Have we participated in any movement that targets this issue? Aren’t we violent in our own homes? Do we recognize her rights, her right to be herself, her right to choose modest way of dressing, her right to pursue education and travel to fulfil her dreams, and many more such rights? To put my case clearly let me state some of the lesser known points for consideration of the State, State’s women commission, NGOs, religious authorities who can make the difference. Islamic law doesn’t oblige daughters-in-law to: ·         Do domestic chores in husband’s family. ·         Accept any dictation regarding preparation of meals, washing of clothes from either husband or mother in law or any member of h...

Without confounding any rights movement for feminism and without commenting on feminism as such I want to note the key statements of certain important texts that state the case of gender discrimination so well. There is a very profound observation by Iqbal; he is troubled by the problem of women’s oppression and sees hardly any neat solution. Today it should be contrasted with the confidence with which people comment on the question and assert that they have all the answers, that if we could enforce certain laws the problem will be over. They bring the sacred authority of Islam to clinch the case as if Islam is not an open enquiry and call for using reason to solve our problems. They think we can bank upon clear, concrete legal opinions that need simply to be implemented missing to note that neither Capitalism nor the State nor the violence that is peculiar to Modernity were there 1400 years before, so calling for far more nuanced understanding of gender discrimination and Islam’s ...