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ShareThough there is a lot of wailing about the unveiling and veiling of Muslim women, the truth is that their real problems have still not been addressed. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France can imply that a burkha is not in line with modern civilisation. But if he really knew about the sorry plight of Muslim women, he'd have asked for better schools for them.
A hue and cry is raised over issues like talaq (divorce), polygamy, family planning and the purdah or burkha (veil) -- all issues that have been tirelessly talked over for decades without any consensus. But clerics, scholars or politicians rarely bother to promote education of Muslim girls.
Nowhere in the holy Koran has it been mentioned that women should wear a burkha except the words jilbaab (a piece of cloth covering the outer body) and khimaar (covering the head). Moreover, purdah doesn't mean a closet from head to toe with just two holes for eyes! Before the advent of Islam in the Arab, Persian and Turkish societies veiling and seclusion appear to have existed.
When this author contacted some girls and even elderly women, they were not at home with the burkha. Some wore it while they were in the boundaries of their locality and then packed it in a bag as it was considered an impediment in many ways. Similarly in the Vedic families, sati, ghunghat and so on have been more a mark of patriarchal values that women have to follow as they have been trained to that particular style and whether they like it or not (no one likes it), they have to adhere to it.
According to a study by Syeda Hamid, a member of the Planning Commission, owing to domestic violence and a situation where women are divorced if there is extra salt in the food or they don't wear the clothes of their husband's choice, they are forced to wear burkhas. Defiance would mean bashing or talaq. For many Muslim women, wife-bashing is a normal act, unfortunately.
When Rubina's parents asked her to wear burkha while attending classes at the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, she refused to comply. The result was that she was barred from going to the university and the girl sat at home washing dishes. Similarly, Fauzia, a graduate from Delhi University's upmarket Lady Shri Ram College, joined a computer programming course. When her parents asked her to marry the boy of their choice, she committed suicide as she liked someone else.
Abject illiteracy among Muslim women still lies at the root of the endemicbackwardness of the community. More than veils, it is education that will make the Muslim women safer. A veil is a handicap to them in that they get identified as women belonging to a particular faith. The illiteracy figures among Muslim women are as high as 90 per cent while the all-India literacy figure stands at 65 per cent, according to a survey among 80,000 Muslim females by the Friends for Education group.
The hardliners maintain that veiling protects women from lecherous eyes. But if a woman is pious and faithful, she will never be affected by anything whether or not she puts on a hijab. At the same time, if a woman is of low morals, she will be so no matter how many burkhas she wears.
If we study the condition of women during the time of Prophet Mohammed, it would be clear that they were not as suppressed as they are today. To say that Muslim women have no rights would be a misnomer. The problem is that most clerics have misinterpreted the Koran with an anti-women tilt.
The truth is that Afghanistan of late has become the new rape capital of Asia where umpteen women are raped each day despite assertions that the Taliban are most concerned for women's safety. Let's hope that women in our community get their due.
The writer is acommentator on social, religious and politicalissues
