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Interpreting Islam, Modernity, and Women’s Rights in Pakistan

Author: A. Weiss

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-10-02

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1137389001

In Pakistan, myriad constituencies are grappling with reinterpreting women's rights. This book analyzes the Government of Pakistan's construction of an understanding of what constitutes women's rights, moves on to address traditional views and contemporary popular opinion on women's rights, and then focuses on three very different groups' perceptions of women's rights: progressive women's organizations as represented by the Aurat Foundation and Shirkat Gah; orthodox Islamist views as represented by the Jama'at-i-Islami, the MMA government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (2002-08) and al-Huda; and the Swat Taliban. Author Anita M. Weiss analyzes the resultant "culture wars" that are visibly ripping the country apart, as groups talk past one another - each confidant that they are the proprietors of culture and interpreters of religion while others are misrepresenting it.

Women, the Koran and International Human Rights Law

Author: Niaz Shah

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2006-11-01

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 9047410173

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Religion plays a pivotal role in the way women are treated around the world, socially and legally. This book discusses three Islamic human rights approaches: secular, non-compatible, reconciliatory (compatible), and proposes a contextual interpretive approach. It is argued that the current gender discriminatory statutory Islamic laws in Islamic jurisdictions, based on the decontextualised interpretation of the Koran, can be reformed through Ijtihad: independent individual reasoning. It is claimed that the original intention of the Koran was to protect the rights of women and raise their status in society, not to relegate them to subordination. This Koranic intention and spirit may be recaptured through the proposed contextual interpretation which in fact means using an Islamic (or insider) strategy to achieve gender equality in Muslim states and greater compatibility with international human rights law. It discusses the negative impact of the so-called statutory Islamic laws of Pakistan on the enjoyment of women’s human rights and robustly challenges their Koranic foundation. While supporting the international human rights regime, this book highlights the challenges to its universality: feminism and cultural relativism. To achieve universal application, genuine voices from different cultures and groups must be accommodated. It is argued that the women’s human rights regime does not cover all issues of concern to women and has a weak implementation mechanism. The book argues for effective implementation procedures to turn women’s human rights into reality.

Pathways to Power

Author: Arjun Guneratne

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2013-12-19

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1442225998

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Pathways to Power introduces the domestic politics of South Asia in their broadest possible context, studying ongoing transformative social processes grounded in cultural forms. In doing so, it reveals the interplay between politics, cultural values, human security, and historical luck. While these are important correlations everywhere, nowhere are they more compelling than in South Asia where such dynamic interchanges loom large on a daily basis. Identity politics—not just of religion but also of caste, ethnicity, regionalism, and social class—infuses all aspects of social and political life in the sub-continent. Recognizing this complex interplay, this volume moves beyond conventional views of South Asian politics as it explicitly weaves the connections between history, culture, and social values into its examination of political life. South Asia is one of the world’s most important geopolitical areas and home to nearly one and a half billion people. Although many of the poorest people in the world live in this region, it is home also to a rapidly growing middle class wielding much economic power. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, together the successor states to the British Indian Empire—the Raj—form the core of South Asia, along with two smaller states on its periphery: landlocked Nepal and the island state of Sri Lanka. Many factors bring together the disparate countries of the region into important engagements with one another, forming an uneasy regional entity. Contributions by: Arjun Guneratne, Christophe Jaffrelot, Pratyoush Onta, Haroun er Rashid, Seira Tamang, Shabnum Tejani, and Anita M. Weiss

Secularizing Islamists?

Author: Humeira Iqtidar

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-02-15

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0226384705

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Secularizing Islamists? provides an in-depth analysis of two Islamist parties in Pakistan, the highly influential Jama‘at-e-Islami and the more militant Jama‘at-ud-Da‘wa, widely blamed for the November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India. Basing her findings on thirteen months of ethnographic work with the two parties in Lahore, Humeira Iqtidar proposes that these Islamists are involuntarily facilitating secularization within Muslim societies, even as they vehemently oppose secularism. This book offers a fine-grained account of the workings of both parties that challenges received ideas about the relationship between the ideology of secularism and the processes of secularization. Iqtidar particularly illuminates the impact of women on Pakistani Islamism, while arguing that these Islamist groups are inadvertently supporting secularization by forcing a critical engagement with the place of religion in public and private life. She highlights the role that competition among Islamists and the focus on the state as the center of their activity plays in assisting secularization. The result is a significant contribution to our understanding of emerging trends in Muslim politics.

The Women's Movement in Pakistan

Author: Ayesha Khan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-11-30

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1786735237

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The military rule of General Zia ul-Haq, former President of Pakistan, had significant political repercussions for the country. Islamization policies were far more pronounced and control over women became the key marker of the state's adherence to religious norms. Women's rights activists mobilized as a result, campaigning to reverse oppressive policies and redefine the relationship between state, society and Islam. Their calls for a liberal democracy led them to be targeted and suppressed. This book is a history of the modern women's movement in Pakistan. The research is based on documents from the Women's Action Forum archives, court judgments on relevant cases, as well as interviews with activists, lawyers and judges and analysis of newspapers and magazines. Ayesha Khan argues that the demand for a secular state and resistance to Islamization should not be misunderstood as Pakistani women sympathizing with a western agenda. Rather, their work is a crucial contribution to the evolution of the Pakistani state. The book outlines the discriminatory laws and policies that triggered domestic and international outcry, landmark cases of sexual violence that rallied women activists together and the important breakthroughs that enhanced women's rights. At a time when the women's movement in Pakistan is in danger of shrinking, this book highlights its historic significance and its continued relevance today.

Faith and Feminism in Pakistan

Author: Afiya S. Zia

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2017-11-30

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1782846670

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Are secular aims, politics, and sensibilities impossible, undesirable and impracticable for Muslims and Islamic states? Should Muslim women be exempted from feminist attempts at liberation from patriarchy and its various expressions under Islamic laws and customs? Considerable literature on the entanglements of Islam and secularism has been produced in the post-9/11 decade and a large proportion of it deals with the Woman Question. Many commentators critique the secular and Western feminism, and the racialising backlash that accompanied the occupation of Muslim countries during the War on Terror military campaign launched by the U.S. government after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Implicit in many of these critical works is the suggestion that it is Western secular feminism that is the motivating driver and permanent collaborator -- along with other feminists, secularists and human rights activists in Muslim countries -- that sustains the Wests actual and metaphorical war on Islam and Muslims. The book addresses this post-9/11 critical trope and its implications for womens movements in Muslim contexts. The relevance of secular feminist activism is illustrated with reference to some of the nation-wide, working-class womens movements that have surged throughout Pakistan under religious militancy: polio vaccinators, health workers, politicians, peasants and artists have been directly targeted, even assassinated, for their service and commitment to liberal ideals. Afiya Zia contends that Muslim womens piety is no threat against the dominant political patriarchy, but their secular autonomy promises transformative changes for the population at large, and thereby effectively challenges Muslim male dominance. This book is essential reading for those interested in understanding the limits of Muslim womens piety and the potential in their pursuit for secular autonomy and liberal freedoms.

Interpreting Islam

Author: Hastings Donnan

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2001-12-07

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1412931843

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`Interpreting Islam is a useful contribution in the field of Islamic studies, not because of the questions it happens to answer - not too many - but because it helps one udnerstand why some of the questions are at all posed′ - Kingshuk Chatterjee, The Statesman Islam is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the West. Myths and stereotypes surround it. This clear and penetrating volume helps readers to make sense of Islam. It offers a penetrating guide to the diversity and richness of contemporary knowledge about Islam and Muslim society. Throughout, the emphasis is upon the value of pluralistic approaches to Islam, rather than condensing complexity with unifying concepts such as `Orientalism′. Interdisciplinary in scope and organization, the book cuts through the bewildering and seemingly anarchic diversity of contemporary knowledge about Islam and Muslim society. The methodological difficulties and advantages of Western researchers focusing on Islam are fully documented. The book demonstrates how gender, age, status and `insider′/`outsider′ status impacts upon research and inflects research findings.