Third World Quarterly, Vol. 31, No.

6, 2010, pp 851867

Contested Identities: gendered politics, gendered religion in Pakistan

FARIDA SHAHEED
ABSTRACT In Pakistan, the self-serving use of Islam by more secular elements

alongside politico-religious ones facilitated the latters increasing inuence and the conation and intricate interweaving of Islam and Pakistani nationhood. A paradigm shift under Zias martial law revamped society as much as state laws, producing both religiously dened militias and aligned civil society groups. Examining the impact on women of fusing religion and politics, this paper argues that women become symbolic markers of appropriated territory in the pursuit of state power, and that the impact of such fusing, dierent for dierently situated women, needs to be gauged in societal terms as well as in terms of state dynamics. Questioning the positing of civil society as a selfevident progressive desideratum, the paper concludes that gender equality projects seeking recongurations of power cannot be eective without vigorously competing in the creation of knowledge, culture and identity. The fusing of politics and religion and its impact on women is too frequently examined from an exclusive political science perspective centred on state power dynamics. This approach is inadequate. The interface of religion, politics and gender illustrates the impossibility of separating out the realms of the social from the political, the public from the private, for everyday life is not neatly packaged into self-contained spaces but ows freely, aecting dierent dimensions simultaneously. In real life the conceptual separations of the political from the cultural, social or economic spheres blur. Public political contestations are often provoked by womens actions in what are dened as social, rather than political spaces and, conversely, political discourses aect the everyday. Of course, both are aected by cultural and economic factors. Importantly, a vigorous cultural agenda prescribing everyday norms is a hallmark of all politico-religious projects, in which gender-normative regulations are most visible as dress codes, womens seclusion and restricted activities. In conforming to such prescriptive norms within socio-cultural spaces women become poignant symbolic markers of appropriated political territory. Religion was always conjoined to politics in Pakistan as a state created for Indian Muslims. Islams metamorphosis from the religious identity of the
Farida Shaheed is Director of Research at Shirkat GahWomens Resource Centre, 68 Tipu Block, New Garden Town, Lahore 54600, Pakistan. Email: farida.shaheed@gmail.com. ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/10/06085117 2010 Third World Quarterly, www.thirdworldquarterly.com DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2010.502710

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majority population to the privileged reference point for state and society was not inevitable, however. Short-sighted attempts to harness the emotive appeal of religion (to quell political opposition or justify undemocratic measures) by secular actors, the civil/political as well as the military establishment, legitimised religion as political coinage and paved the way for politico-religious forces to assert discursive hegemony. The mostly politically motivated usage of Islam peaked under General Zia-ul-Haq (197788) whose Islamisation policies both negated state promises of equality for female and non-Muslim citizens and encouraged societys most bigoted sections. The question is why the legacy of Pakistans most unpopular dictator should persist so long after his demise. The rst part of this paper traces how the basis for such a privileging of politicised religion had already been put in place through the opportunistic use made of Islam by non-religiously dened state actors, and not merely by religiously dened ones. The paper then discusses why the long-term gender impact of the Zia era stems as much from the reshaping of societal mores as from revamped state laws and policies, and how Islamisation aected diversely situated women. It goes on to examine the challenges facing gender equality projects that, typically, are more stateoriented, lack a conscious cultural agenda and are grounded in a human rights discourse unconnected to peoples cultural moorings. Inserting the Islamic into the republic The paradox in Pakistan is that, although its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, envisaged a secular not a theocratic state,1 politico-religious parties managed to elide the creation of a state for Muslims into the creation of an Islamic state, despite consistently losing elections, enabling minority elements to override majority views. That the process commenced in the states formative years when most politically active ulema (religious scholars) suered from a serious credibility decit because they had opposed Pakistans creation, suggests the need to seek answers in dynamics outside politico-religious spheres. Soon after Jinnahs death the passage of the Objectives Resolution in 1949 was a crucial rst victory in redrawing state parameters. The resolution was passed by an Assembly in which politico-religious elements were nominal and despite the opposition of all non-Muslim members.2 In this, Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JL) played a pivotal role. Maududi had at rst opposed the creation of Pakistan as detrimental to the interests of Muslim Indians. When it became inevitable, correctly foreseeing the far greater scope for inuencing the polity in the new state, Maududi migrated and embarked on his new mission of making shariah, ie a Muslim way of life or path, the foundation of the new states legal system. His personal political acumen and intellectual abilities, supported by the disciplined organisational strength of a dedicated party cadre, were crucial in advancing the politico-religious agenda. Decades later, in 1977, the politico-religious parties spurred the mass agitation against election rigging by a motley collection of political parties and supplied the movement with its 852

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organisational underpinnings, as well as the now popular mantra equating Pakistan exclusively with the Muslim creed. At the societal level those acceding to power had no cohesive cultural agenda; their uncertain liberalism consistently ceded ground when confronted by the strident, strong-willed religious orthodoxy.3 At the state level using Islam was convenient for entirely secular reasons: the arithmetic of democracy ill suited those in power, who therefore expended considerable time and eort to circumvent the logic of universal franchise. For the most part the real power contestation has been between the Punjab-dominated centre and the sub-national political elites. Dominance of the civil and military bureaucracies in a typical postcolonial state with a weak political framework enabled the PunjabiMohajir elite to wield power to the detriment of the severely under-represented Bengali-speaking majority. In the centreperiphery tussle the invented parameters and imperatives of a Muslim nationhood were regularly ourished to deny greater autonomy to the ethnically diverse units constituting Pakistan; politico-religious groups were supported and instigated to attack un-Islamic, foreign-inspired, leftleaning groups.4 At independence Pakistan was still very much a nation-in-becoming. With immense short-sightedness successive elites in central power bypassed territorially rooted nation building that could have melded the many linguistic and ethnic populations. Instead, facilitated by the blanching of non-Muslims from the population, they opted to fashion a national identity out of religion, utterly failing to see how much more eectively this would be used by politico-religious groups. Political manoeuvring to sidestep democratic arithmetic and consolidate centralised power has left the country oscillating between a presidential and parliamentary form of government, between long periods of martial law and short bursts of unstable civilian rule, and with a frequently and radically amended Constitution. Had the secular elements not used Islam for political ends so consistently, in the process promoting a notion of Muslim nationhood, politico-religious groups could not have so steadily inscribed religion into the body text of politics, state and society. Examples abound, an early one being the Punjab Chief Minister encouraging Pakistans rst religious riots in 1953 to destabilise the central government. Uncertain liberalism became even shakier when it came to women. The socially liberal General Ayub Khan (195868) had no compunction about mobilising an anti-woman-head-ofstate fatwa (religious opinion) in the 1965 presidential elections against his opposing candidate, Fatima Jinnah. Ironically this followed opposition politico-religious parties upending their previously-held position with fatwas in her support. Rulers regularly caved in to the demands of the religious right to curtail womens rights and spaces, starting with the 1954 closure of the Womens National Guard and Naval Reserve, following an outcry by politically peripheral religious elements that young women being trained for self-defence by males was un-Islamic. Islam remained a presence in the political sphere under progressive governments, albeit with a changed orientation. Under ZA Bhutto (197177) 853

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Islamic Socialism declared Discrimination against women is contrary to the injunctions of Islam,5 and passed Constitutional Articles prohibiting sexbased discrimination and promoting armative action. But the 1973 Constitution privileged Muslims; religiously dened discriminatory family laws remained intact; and a Ministry for Religious Aairs was introduced. Socially, links with the Middle East petrodollar powers unhelpfully created space for refashioning collective identity in the likeness of those with oil power. Then, in 1977, trying to out-manoeuvre or placate the religious right, Bhutto introduced a series of cosmetic Islamic measures: banning alcohol, gambling and betting, and making Friday the weekly holiday. Islamisation has been engineered in the pursuit of greater power alignments. Even under Zia, the disempowerment of women (and nonMuslim minorities) was the means, however purposeful, to an end. The ultimate aim of politico-religious elements is to capture (or retain) state power; disempowering women is only one eective tool of asserting inuence and, in terms of state power, is peripheral in comparison to the militarymosque nexus. While religiously dened political parties have been decisively rejected by the electorate, military dispensations have lasted much longer than civilian ones. The military has alternately countered religious groups and parties by force and re-congured them as allies as suited its purpose. If, earlier, the Pakistani army never assumed the role of defender of the faith, neither was it ever a defender of secularism a` la Turkey, despite the generally secular outlook of ocers. Zia completely dismantled the armys secularist tradition. The sheer numbers in the states most powerful institution and the worlds sixth largest military (well over half a million), means that attitudinal changes in the army inevitably inuence society. The nexus largely stems from the militarys expansion in the context of a security state and attendant quest for resources, the deeply antagonistic relationship with a far larger and better equipped India, and a desire to achieve strategic depth by exerting inuence over neighbouring Afghanistan. The quest for military funds included selling the idea of an Islamic barrier against the Soviets, especially to the US.6 Finally, international events conspired to bolster Zia, whose tenure coincided with the USSoviet proxy war in Afghanistan. It is hard to overstate the impact of Pakistan playing cats paw in the US proxy war. Any questioning of Zias wide-ranging use of Islam to justify his illegal regime, rescind womens rights, and introduce undemocratic measures and barbaric punishments was swept aside as the US-led international discourse promoted, lauded and legitimised the mujahideen as freedom ghters. Mujahideen, literally meaning those ghting a jihad or holy war, became a label applied to all politico-religious militants. In Pakistan the call for holy war against the godless enemies of Islam in Afghanistan was to inspire a whole generation of born-again Islamist army men.7 Intricate connections forged between specic religious seminaries (madrassahs8), armed militant groups, the mujahideen and the military state during and after the Afghan war9 blurred the statenon-state divide, allowing non-state politico-religious 854

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actors to push their agendas in social spacesincluding through armed tacticsalmost unfettered. Disparate realities, dissimilar impact: women, state and Islam Under Zia the states punitive, anti-democratic and misogynistic Islamisation brought about a virtual paradigm shift in which reshaped laws, state institutions and societal norms adversely aected women. The era diered from previous ones in several fundamental ways. First, before 1977, women had been victims of the states gross negligence and patriarchal outlook that blocked progress but there had never been any serious attempt to reverse their rights or push them back into domestic seclusion. Second, legal and institutional changes were accompanied by state-sponsored religious orthopraxy. No previous government had ever launched a societal agenda of this kind in which gender featured so prominently. Drawing strength from deep reservoirs of patriarchy, the reconguration eventually made individual citizens complicit enforcers and propagators of the states agendaa process that may be even more dicult to reverse than specic laws and policies. But women do not constitute an undierentiated mass and Islamisation did not have the same impact on all women. Womens social reality is complex, mediated by multiple elements outside the mainstream political and state framework. These include: traditional selfgovernance structures of dispute resolution that parallel and often override the states mechanisms; patronage systems premised on kinship, tribal and ethnic aliations; and, now, militant, often armed political groups. Pakistans women present a collage of startling contrasts and contradictions. Market savvy young commerce professionals, high-ranking bankers, doctors, academics, pilots and engineers dier radically from the rural majority, whose lives seem petried in another century, untouched by developments outside their immediate circles that are tightly controlled by male family and community gatekeepers. Exceptional women have always broken through to positions of pre-eminence across all sectors, but their presence has failed to signicantly alter a structural conguration that only enables a miniscule minority to excel while condemning the majority to a life of unchanging deprivation. Complex intersecting webs of formal and non-formal decision making prevent what supportive policies and legal rights do exist from reaching most women. Constrictive gender-normative rules imposed in the family and community commonly countermand both state laws and religious tenets, although customs diametrically opposed to religious tenets are posited and internalised as religiously ordained. While empirical research indicates that people do not desire the imposition of religious laws so much as an assurance that the laws are not against their religion,10 the general ignorance about both state laws and religious precepts unquestionably aids those using the rhetoric of Islamic justice to both mobilise support and silence potential opposition. Women who are poorly represented in the civil bureaucracy, judiciary and political process, who are marginalised in the economy and possess little 855

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organisational strength, have limited capacity to resist when their rights are bartered to appease conservative forces. Reined in by restrictive gender rules, women in culturally traditionalist societies become easy victims of retrogressive socio-political religious projects. The struggle for gender equality in Pakistan, while robust and vociferous, has been waged from a narrow, numerically small, class-base of the relatively privileged. Having most successfully altered gender rules, such women are especially targeted by Islamisation projects as the easiest symbols of an antithetical world-view to attack in a deeply patriarchal society. Until the 1970s women mainly leveraged reform through personal connections to men in positions of power. Commonly, rulers paid lip service to womens demands, but proposed measures frequently remained paper statements. For instance, since 1955, repeated policy calls to integrate primary schooling and employ women-only sta to overcome drastically low female literacy have consistently fallen on deaf ears. A decit of political will, and poor governance, have obstructed meaningful modications of deep-rooted systemic and structural problems. Commissions on women have periodically been appointed but their recommendations largely ignored; the womens ministry and departments lack the nancial resources and personnel to be eective; employment quotas are poorly implemented. Frequent prolonged military rule tends to eliminate women from the ranks of policy shapers and decision makers for extended periods, token women notwithstanding. This reinforces a predisposition to believe that women are incapable of, and thus should be excluded from, assuming decision-making positions. Until Zia women from the middle and upper classes could largely ignore the normative prescriptions advocated by the religious right; many substantially altered gender rules for themselves. For decades decision takers, opinion makers and trendsetters came from fairly narrow intersecting circles in which the ulemas inuence was minimal. Socio-political congurations changed in the 1970s. Pockets of economic prosperity threw up new classes with dierent social moorings. Traders in particular acquired more economic, and eventually political, clout, which gravitated to more conservative agendas, including those of politico-religious parties. The battle over womens rights, usually couched in religious terminology on one side and human rights on the otheralthough the lines are now blurringhas seen women of one class pitted against the men of a dierent class. The religious right draws its leaders and cadre from the lower middle class desirous of upward mobility; womens rights activists belong largely to the professional middle classa divide thrown into sharp relief under Zia and the intense polarisation around the issue of Islam and women. The Zia Years: 197788 On taking over, the general announced that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam . . . I consider the introduction of [an] Islamic system as an essential pre-requisite. Towards this end, he launched an all-out twopronged campaign. First, legal measures radically altered selected laws and 856

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state institutions; second, society was reoriented to religious orthodoxy and attendant orthopraxy through direct state measures and by granting unprecedented space to non-state politico-religious elements. Unprepared for the lethal militarystatereligion combo, women were severely handicapped in countering the onslaught that progressively reversed the gains they had made, including several considered secure. The space for resistance was narrow and risky: human rights were suspended, military courts operated; political activists were unceremoniously jailed and tortured, including, for the rst time, women political workers. With the most to lose in terms of rights and privileges and as the best placed to take the risk, urban middle and upper middle class women led the resistance, spearheaded by working professionals. On the legal front independence had granted women a host of de jure rights at par with men (the major exception being family law matters), but the chasm separating de jure from de facto rights is vast and few women were even aware of the state-granted rights now under attack. The sheer speed with which rights were overturned attests to the vulnerability of entitlements when these are only enjoyed by a miniscule proportion of those aected. Islamised laws were used to lend religious gravitas to brute force. In February 1979 a few supposedly religiously inspired criminal laws banded together as the infamous Hudood Ordinances introduced inhumane punishments: amputations, public whipping and stoning to death. Criminalising consensual sex (zina), the laws also covered an array of sexual crimes including rape and abduction, as well as theft, drunkenness (newly criminalised) and perjury. The fundamentally awed and most widely applied zina section caused the greatest injustice, especially for women. Rape and other sexual oences were confounded with zina and the police authorised to decide the nature of the oence. Hence, parents attempting to annul their daughters unsuitable marriages by ling complaints of abduction, found their daughter instead accused of zina and jailed when police failed to nd evidence of either marriage or coercion. Zina became a crime against the state and the principle of presumptive innocence was annulled. By the time superior courts overturned sentences, the accused had been jailed, socially condemned and stigmatised. In a travesty of justice rape survivors unable to provide sucient evidence to convict the accused, were deemed to have confessed to sexual activitysometimes by virtue of pregnancyand were sentenced under zina. Disturbingly, the concept of statutory rape was overturned, girls were held to be liable as of puberty, and even nine-year olds were prosecuted as adults. The judiciary was restructured, a new Federal Shariat Court (FSC) mandated to decide whether laws and provisions were in accordance with Islam and a parallel judicial system erected to administer new Islamic laws. Legal changes eectuated two critical and related shifts. First, the obfuscation of legal parameters enabled individual judges personal interpretations of Islam to override legal text and precedent, especially after the Objectives Resolution was made a substantive part of the Constitution in 1985. Hence FSC case law on zina indicated a disturbing . . . moral judgment which the court seems to be making about the woman victim/accused.11 857

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Other laws with less tangible impact nevertheless reinforced the idea that the status of Muslim women and all non-Muslims was half that of Muslim menvirtually half-human. In its original form the new criminal law on retribution and compensation (qisas and diyat) for injury and death categorically stated that compensation for women and non-Muslims would be half that of Muslim men. Second, some legal changes, such as the amended blasphemy laws,12 encouraged the public to become the enforcers of new religious mores in lieu of the state. Numerous non-Muslims and Muslims were murdered; culprits were never punished. Virtually condoning violence in the name of religion, the state allowed violence-prone bigotry to ourish. This continued long after the end of Zias regime, suggesting that his most damaging legacy may not be the laws, but bringing about a signicant shift in outlook and everyday norms towards an orthodoxy and orthopraxy based on bigotry, intolerance and even violence. At the social level aggressive state measures worked in tandem with statecondoned, occasionally sponsored, non-state actors to render self-serving constructions of good Muslims synonymous with good Pakistanis. Religiosityovert usually public acts and signs of orthopraxisbecame a government hallmark. State orthopraxy included mandatory recitations from the Quran at every public function, airports, etc, prayer-breaks and dedicated prayer spaces in public oces and venues. Islamic studies (Islamiyat) became compulsory in all schools,13 and Islamiyat tests mandatory for higher education (regardless of subject) and public sector employment. New textbooks refashioned history as an Islamic narrative, censoring Jinnahs speeches and erasing inconvenient truths (such as most ulemas opposition to Pakistans creation). The agenda included undermining religious pluralism and heterodoxy. The JIs Islamic discourse asserted hegemony by being granted power denied by the ballot box. Political parties were banned but the JI was inducted into the government as a junior partner and given free rein over state monopolised broadcast media. Press censorship muzzled dissent; intimidation mued other voices. Student unions were banned but not the JI student-wing, the Islami Jamiat-Tuleba (IJT). Consequently the JI continued recruiting and training future cadre unhampered (most JI members elected in 2002 were exIJT) while no other party could do so. Exemption enabled the IJT to establish a repressive moral stranglehold over youth in colleges and universities, including through strong-arm tactics. State sponsorship changed the salience of madrassahs, which have always been part of the Pakistani and South Asian landscape (Jinnah studied in one). With madrassahs erupting across the country, ocial patronage radically transformed the average mullah, or preacher, from someone dependent on social charity and occasional government honoraria, whose company was suered rather than welcomed, to being far better resourced and linked to circles of inuence. Gender was central to the discourse; sexual mores a particular focus. The notion of a Pakistani woman was replaced by an Islamic woman who 858

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dressed in a particular manner, was educatedif at allin certain subjects and segregated institutions, and was preferably silent and invisible. In contrast to national dress for men, womens Islamic dress meant compulsory chadors for all government school students and teachers as well as women state employees. Here, too, enforcement shifted to private actors. State calls for upholding public morality insidiously licensed any male on the streets to admonish, even physically assault, any woman he regarded to be improperly dressed; sexual harassment in public spaces spiralled. Harassed and under societal pressure, Parsees and Christians abandoned skirts and dresses, Punjabi peasants their sarong-like apparel. Bleaching out diversity, the ocial view on Islamic dress transformed into a cultural norm without needing legislation. Gender segregation was a central pillar: prohibiting joint malefemale stage shows and performances in colleges, attempting to ban male gynaecologists and the autopsy of female cadavers by male doctors, stopping female athletes from competing in front of men. Encouraged by state rhetoric, some teachers refused to teach improperly attired girls; others segregated classrooms; a few refused to teach girls at all. A government campaign against obscenity and vulgarity (a pet peeve of the religious right) managed to suggest that women per se were somehow obscene. On television women newscasters, hosts and actresses in commercials or plays had to cover their heads at all times or lose their jobs. State broadcast media extolled the virtues of the good self-sacricing woman, domestic or domesticated, and blamed other publicly visible women (particularly working women) for the disintegration of the family, of moral rectitude and values as well as for corruption and other social ills. An entire generation imbibed propaganda that womens only place was in the home, their role reproduction and motherhood, their status and rights subservient to men. Paradoxically, womens resistance concentrated on combating the legal changes that least aected the personal lives of its activists but did not strategise on societal shifts which did. If poor illiterate women experienced the brunt of the zina laws (although several prominent cases have involved auent middle class families and rural landholding families), sexual and social harassment transcended class barriers. Variations in the extent, nature and consequences notwithstanding, all women confronted greater hostility in public spaces and all working women faced increased impediments, including sometimes at home. Activists prevented the passage of some proposals and obtained amendments that limited the potential damage of others. They could not stem the entrenchment of retrogressive attitudes proposed as religious, nor did they focus on this aspect. This was not an oversight, but a decision propelled by the need to respond to negative state proposals virtually on a daily basis. Post-Zia It took 27 years and a parliament under the aegis of a president-cum-chief-ofarmy-sta to amend the zina laws. Societal shifts will take much longer and 859

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require an entirely dierent approach, for religious orthopraxy had taken on a life of its own. Many practices introduced under Zia became unquestioned norms. Religion became marketable: its symbols adorn cars, private and public buildings, public spaces and living rooms; its language has been adopted by banks and commercial enterprises. Given the elaborate collective preparations by excited expectant pilgrims, increasingly popular group pilgrimages seemingly full needs beyond the religious. Growing religious referencing in everyday life is not limited to Pakistan but part of a worldwide ascendancy of identity based politics. In essentialist identity politics, symbols and signiers resonating with peoples lived realities, or collective identities, are harnessed to promote political agendas frequently couched in a religious idiom, but also in the idiom of ethnicity, culture and race. If many are seduced by the discourses, many others may hesitate to reject such an agenda because to do so feels like rejecting essential parts of their own identity (eg faith or culture). Both tendencies are visible in Pakistan. Nevertheless, attesting to peoples resilience, after 11 years of misogynistic rule wrapped in Islamist rhetoric and despite the greatly strengthened presence of politico-religious elements, Pakistan elected a woman prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. Between Zias death in 1988 and 1999, when the military again directly assumed the reins of power, four short-lived elected governments failed to seriously dent Islams inscription into the state. Heading minority governments, Bhutto (198890, 199396) was unable to and Nawaz Sharif (199193, 199699) disinclined to. Bhutto could not repeal any of Zias so-called Islamic laws which, having been indemnied by the 8th Constitutional Amendment, required a twothirds parliamentary majority. But procedural directives did reduce the number of cases and the abuse of zina laws; government support enabled the rst-ever acquittal under the amended blasphemy law, despite threats to defending lawyers, the accused and judges hearing the cases.14 In social terms women re-emerged from relative obscurity assisted by new state broadcasts that promoted womens rights while highlighting problems. Most striking, however, was the transformative impact of a woman heading government, which instantly eased the hitherto oppressive atmosphere. Still, short tenures could not reverse societal trends and the militaryreligious nexus remained beyond democratic control. As Zias political heir Sharif could not be expected to undo Islamisation. Instead, with a two-thirds majority in his second round, he moved to consolidate absolute power. The media was hounded, journalists arrested, attempts made to close down thousands of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and intra-party dissent was gagged through a constitutional amendment. The pie`ce de resistance was the 15th Constitutional Amendment Bill propagated as the Shariat Bill which, purporting to enforce Islamic law, proposed unfettered power for the prime minister. The Bill failed to muster the necessary support in the senate before General Musharaf ousted Sharif in 1999. Musharafs inaugural speech promised equal treatment of all citizens regardless of province or religion. Several long-standing demands of women 860

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(and minorities) were met,15 including legislation that substantially increased the presence of women in legislative bodies. The most important legislative measure by far was the Women Protection Act 2006, which nally removed the teeth, if not the entire text, of the infamous zina laws (consensual sex remains technically criminalised but virtually impossible to prosecute). Crucially the Act nally overturned the notion that merely labelling a law Islamic rendered it sacrosanct and unchangeable. On the other hand, Musharaf called upon the clergy to curb elements which are exploiting religion for vested interests, but continued making selfserving arrangements with politico-religious groups. The unprecedented number of politico-religious candidates elected in 2002 owed their success to unbridled anger at the US-led military attack on Afghanistan, but were facilitated by granting madrassah education equivalency with university degrees to meet the newly imposed requirement of graduation for candidacy. Armed militants were not curbed and an alarming Talibanisation culminated in a full-edged armed insurrection in some areas. Post-Zia, while pockets of liberalism have surfaced and the pressure on professional working women and upper and middle class women has eased considerably, no ruler has taken on the challenge of reversing state sponsorship of religious orthopraxy. Signalling the altered social landscape, the number of religion-focused civil society initiatives continues to grow, as does religiosity among the inuential classes, including among women. Gender, justice and civil society in unjust societies Shaping the cultural milieu in which political and legal discourses and battles unfold, civil society institutions operate in both social and political arenas that are separated by only a porous dividing line. Before entering electoral politics, the JI would have qualied as a civil society organisation. Unexpectedly there is a remarkable resonance between Antonio Gramscis denition of critical civil society as autonomous groups aiming to challenge the state without being a part of this apparatus,16 and Maududis selfdened aim to try to awaken and guide the popular will to base the foundation of our state on the law and constitution which we Muslims consider to be divine and to shape the ideas, beliefs and moral viewpoints of the people into an Islamic mould, reform the system . . . and revive the Islamic . . . attitudes in general.17 Maududi, whose texts are standard reading for both para-state armed groups and religious parties, assiduously pursued these aims. Placing primacy on transforming the political, administrative and judicial systems, the JI strategically focused on gaining control over educational institutions and consolidating inuence in the civil and military bureaucracies. The disjuncture between constitutional and policy promises of equality, equal opportunities and justice for all, on the one hand, and the painful reality of injustice, deprivation and discrimination on the other, allows religiously dened political agendas to emerge as signicant forces in peoples lives, especially in the absence of progressive movements. 861

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Blending religion and politics inevitably reshapes practised religion as well. The overwhelming emphasis of politico-religious elements on punitive law pares down the faith of Islam to Muslim jurisprudence. Political Islamists systematically seek to delegitimise and eradicate the diverse perspectives of the faithful, especially the mystical Su traditions which are antithetical to their positions and perspectives. The popularly rooted, pluralistic and decentralised Su traditions in many parts of Pakistan are being eroded by the rise of a centralising, institution-based WahabiSala Islam. Ironically this is partly facilitated by the modernisation ethos that gives unprecedented, and increasingly exclusive, pre-eminence to the written word as the only valid knowledge base. It has been argued that the pre-eminence of scriptural interpretation has displaced womens religious traditions with their own understanding . . . that was dierent from mens Islam. In contrast to the inner, pacist and generous tradition ascribed to women, most mens mosque-centric, institution-based tradition, more narrowly focused on the scriptural text, propels a more literalist interpretation of faith. Moreover, if education is reduced to literacy and skill acquisition, the very ability to read enables the prolic writings of religious conservatives to reach ever-wider audiences.18 The strong centralising institutional base of one side and its absence in the other may be a pivotal factor. Viewing civil society as uniformly progressive merits serious reconsideration, since a substantial portion of Pakistani civil society is busy carving out niches of inuence and privilege at the expense of other peoples rights. Numerous politico-religious groups expressly exclude women and nonMuslims from the purview of the community deserving benets; many socio-religious entities complement more politically engaged ones through actual or discursive links. Most madrassahs unconnected to militant activities nevertheless produce narrow-mindedness and xenophobia; signicant ties link armed madrassahs, militant groups and religious political parties. Religious instruction (dars) through both traditional informal groups and new modern academies (hugely popular across classes of urban women since the Zia era), as well as preachers on new cable television channels bolster a religious outlook that transforms matters of rights and social norms into sins and evils. Some sections of civil society are decidedly uncivil, devoid of any compunction about attacking other citizens, with those dening themselves in religious terms especially condent of enjoying impunity. The states radically dierent treatment of civil society groups selfidentied as religious19 and others was illustrated in the 2007 Red Mosque asco, in which black chadored, stave-wielding women from its Al-Hafsa madrassah shot to prominence. Al-Hafsa women focused on sexual corruption and government failure to provide justice. The rhetoric of religiously dened groups, with its emphasis on gender segregation, controlling sexuality and dress codes, the equation of the West and selected elements of modernisation with decadence, often depicted in terms of sexual mores, echoes Maududis 1939 Purdah and the Status of Women in Islam, in which, largely addressing the newly emerging middle classes, he justied a strict gendered division of labour and social 862

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organisationalthough the level of violence may not have been anticipated. The Red Mosque imam averred: We will not allow dance and music in Pakistan . . . We will not wait any more . . . if a few pious men can take over Kabul, why cant we bring about the Shariat law in [Pakistan] . . . where we number in the thousands.20 His female supporters likewise declared If [immoral sexuality is] what liberal people want, they should . . . leave . . . Pakistan is ours, and . . . and we will cleanse it. Women journalists visiting the Red Mosque complex were made acutely conscious of their own sexuality, as one said:
With my head uncovered while I lm, I feel the burden of being a woman, of my morality being under scrutiny. I am extremely conscious of my sexuality which, I learn, through my interaction with my Hafsa sisters, is a possible threat to a pristine world. And I thought only men could make me feel so vulnerable!21

The journalists also noted that, while individual students said they were promoting womens rights, donning the black chador uniform instantly transformed individuated ordinary college students into a more strident, uncompromising and anonymous mass. Their cleansing campaign included attacking shops, burning CDs and DVDs, kidnapping and taking over a government building. Had secular womens rights activists undertaken similar action, they would have been unceremoniously arrested. Instead the president excused these young misguided daughters. The issue here is not whether Al-Hafsa students and teachers were struggling for womens rights, but that the states dierentiated treatment unquestionably puts secular gender equality advocates at a distinct disadvantage in countering religious militancy. Although rights activists pose little threat to the far larger, better resourced and organised politico-religious parties, they are perceived as the principle opponents in discursive contestations. While verbal and physical attacks aim to intimidate and silence, labelling rights activists Western agents is intended to undermine credibility and public support, similar to accusations of NGOs promoting a foreignfunded agenda, an accusation that conveniently overlooks foreign funding for religious groups. Although frameworks, tactics and end-goals dier radically, rights advocates and political Islamists both focus on the legal system and stated positions can be disconcertingly similar.22 Giving primacy to the state as the principle guarantor of rights, the narrow legal focus of the womens movement in Pakistan overlooks the fact that citizens rarely access the states courts, opting for more accessible traditional dispute resolution forums. Moreover, an inadequately resourced judiciary hampered by frequent disruptions, suspensions and military regimes is perceived as rarely delivering justice. For political Islamists, especially those outside electoral politics, condemning the existing legal (and political) order as incoherent and ineectual is an essential counterpoint to their own promises of speedy Islamic justice. That promised justice is part of their appeal is 863

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reected in the growing number of unocial shariah courts that have cropped up.23 Unlike the considerable time human rights activists expend explaining at length the exact phraseology of standards and norms referencing a mostly unknown world, religiously dened groups never bother elaborating their proposed system. Resonating deeply with the cultural lexicon, Islamic justice is deemed self-explanatory. When rampant class-bias enables better connected, more auent people to regularly out the law while penalising the poor; where the state and its resources mean one thing for the poor and another for the rich, the rhetoric of shariah as a one-stop justice window is seductive because, as cynically observed by a female madrassah student, Even if people dont want Islam, they do want justice.24 Conclusion In Pakistan the self-serving instrumental use of Islam by groups that do not have religiously dened agendas bolstered those that do, enabling draconian changes under Zia. Dierentiating Zia was not only a more systematic inscription of religion into politics, the state apparatus and the legal framework, but a proactive social change agenda. Social transformation was eected through both rewards and punitive coercion (such as obliging all Muslims to sign an endorsement of the states excommunication of an entire sect from Islam or risk forfeiting national identity cards and passports). It entailed direct state interventions and creating spaces for non-state actors, including civil society groups, who then took forward the agenda as their own. It is the combination that eventually reoriented large sections of Pakistani society, enabling Zias legacy to continue long after his demise, for once social norms are altered, the enforcer need no longer be the state. Penalties can beand indeed aremeted out by non-state actors acting with impunity derived from state support. Under Zia, women were penalised more by men in the public arena than by ocials for contravening the states prescriptive Islamic dress code; no one has been executed for blasphemy but many have been murdered. Post-Zia, state pressure on women has eased, but the societal transformations that were triggered pose serious challenges. The ability of an individual woman to resist the negative impact of the religionpolitics nexus depends on factors such as class, economic resources, the community and family in which she is located and, of course, her own personal inclinations. Collectivised resistance confronts other dynamics. Centralisation, a driving principle of asserting political power, plays out in social as well as politicalterritorial terrains.25 Politico-religious forces consciously seek centralisation in both arenas. In the social terrain veiled women adhering to religious orthopraxy become striking symbolic markers of appropriated political territory through their engagements and comportment in socio-cultural arenas. Human rights and gender equality activists, who are numerically small and often stand accused of being Westernised, lack an equivalent proactive social agenda and visible markers. This suggests that activists, who have developed fairly well established 864

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political state-oriented initiatives, must also devise strategies for the social terrain: a socio-cultural agenda to counteract the hegemonic politicoreligious discourse; an agenda that can mobilise support through engagements that encourage larger numbers to adopt the discourse and practice of gender equality. The subtext of labelling womens rights activists Western or Westernised is that these people are aliens and, much as germs diseasing the body, need to be expunged from society. (The fear, maybe, is that such women may encourage emulation by other women, including the female relatives of the more conservative.) The tendency to focus on the state as the guarantor of rights, essential as it is, leaves the shift towards religious orthopraxy, manifesting underlying orthodoxy, unaddressedsomething those in state power also hesitate to address head on. The discourse of womens rights in particular and human rights in general would have greater resonance if, without abandoning references to international human rights, it were also embedded within societys more liberal popular traditions and idiom. It seems equally important to liberate history from the distortions instituted under Zia so as to surface other rooted realties and traditions. In the Zia years women activists eectively used references to Pakistans own history, Jinnah and other leaders to both counter oppositional positions and promote their own views (in addition to more liberal interpretations of religion). Without such enterprises those struggling for gender equality risk nding themselves increasingly marginalised and de-legitimised within their own societies. In the nal analysis, however, resistance, as well as bringing about change, is about power. Womens power decit in state and society makes their resistance often contingent upon borrowing power, that is, by mobilising allies. Signicantly, at the height of Zias Islamisation programme, the regime entirely ignored women protesting against the injustice and discriminatory treatment of women and non-Muslims of the proposed qisas and diyat laws that introduced blood money and capital punishment for even accidental death. But it rapidly amended the law after a lightning nationwide strike by transport workers threatened to bring the economy to a halt, following a truck driver being awarded the death sentence for causing the accidental death of a pedestrian. Regardless of personal connections to power, women as a group simply do not have this kind of leverage. The gender equality movement would be strengthened by mobilising larger numbers of women, but women do not comprise a homogeneous collective with identical interests. They are divided by class and privilege and distinguished by culture, upbringing, personal experiences and life choices, to name but a few dierences. They dont think alike. And, while the majority may feel unable to participate in resistance, a signicant number of women actually subscribe to the views of religiously dened groups and are active proponents of these views, as illustrated by the Al-Hasfa women; others empathise with such views. In the nal analysis it is well to remember that women inhabit the same socio-political spaces as menalbeit with dierent gendered rules of belongingand that gendered problems are created and 865

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contested within the reality of the broader state and society. It seems appropriate, therefore, to conclude with a comment from the Report of the 1953 Munir Commission (investigating the countrys rst religious riots) regarding the tension between theocracy and democracy in Pakistan:
[A] lack of bold and clear thinking, the inability to understand and take decisions which has brought about in Pakistan a confusion which will persist and repeatedly create situations of the kind we have been inquiring into . . . [A]s long as we rely on the hammer when a le is needed and press Islam into service to solve situations it was never intended to solve, frustration and disappointment must dog our steps.26

Had the countrys rulers heeded the important lessons of this early analysis of the dynamics of religion and politics, Pakistan would be a very dierent country indeed.

Notes
1 This was elaborated in Jinnahs 11 August 1947 address to the Constituent Assembly; Zia later suppressed the full text. 2 The resolution promotes life in accord with the teachings and requirements of Islam. In contrast, the constitution only safeguards minorities legitimate rights. 3 A Rashid, Pakistan: the ideological dimension, in A Khan (ed), Islam, Politics and the State: The Pakistan Experience, London: Zed Books, 1986, pp 6994. 4 H Abbas, Pakistans Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and Americas War on Terror, New York: ME Sharpe, 2005; Z Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam, Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2007; and H Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Lahore: Vanguard Books, 2005. 5 Declaration of the Rights of Pakistani Women, 1976. 6 A Jalal, The State of Martial RuleThe Origins of Pakistans Political Economy of Defence, Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1991. 7 Hussain, Frontline Pakistan. 8 Madrassah, a generic term for a school, is now used to denote seminaries. 9 Abbas, Pakistans Drift into Extremism; Haqqani, Pakistan; and Hussain, Frontline Pakistan. 10 F Shaheed, Imagined Citizenship: Women State and Politics in Pakistan, Lahore: Shirkat Gah, 2002. 11 N Ahmad The superior judiciary: implementation of law and impact on women, in F Shaheed, SA Warraich, C Balchin & A Gazdar (eds), Shaping Womens Lives: Laws Customs and Practices in Pakistan, Lahore: Shirkat Gah, p 13. 12 Amended blasphemy laws no longer attribute signicance to motive and allow personal imputations to pass for evidence. 13 Technically non-Muslims have other options but few schools are equipped to provide such courses. 14 In the 1994 case of Salamat, Rehmat and Mansur Masih, Mansur was killed outside the court; one of the two judges was subsequently murdered. 15 Among these: a permanent womens commission, amended Family Courts Act, reserved seats in the senate, 33 per cent directly elected local government seats for women, and the reversal of Zias separate electorate for minorities. 16 A Gramsci. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed and trans Q Hoare & G Smith, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971. 17 Maududi, cited in Rashid, Pakistan, p 83. 18 L Ahmed, A border passage, Dossier 25, October 2003, London: Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), pp 3141. 19 While numerous groups dene their agendas in religious terms, classifying some as faith-based, as done by the UN and donor agencies, is unhelpful. By suggesting all others are faithless the binary suits the agenda of the self-appointed guardians of religion and unhelpfully feeds identity politics. 20 Newsline, May 2007, p 37. 21 A Salahuddin, Rendezvous with the others, Newsline, July 2007, p 39.

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GENDERED POLITICS, GENDERED RELIGION IN PAKISTAN 22 See F Shaheed, Gender, Religion and the Quest for Justice in Pakistan, at http://www.awid.org/Issuesand-Analysis/Library/Gender-Religion-and-the-Quest-for-Justice-in-Pakistan-Final-Research-Report. 23 Fifty-four private shariat courts were operating in 2007, excluding Taliban-style travesties. The Herald, May 2007. 24 R Karrar, Inside the mosque, The Herald, May 2007, p 55. 25 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks. 26 Government of Pakistan, Report of the Court of Enquiry Constituted under Punjab Act II of 1954 to Enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953, p 141.

Notes on Contributor Farida Shaheed, based in Lahore, is director of research at Shirkat Gah Womens Resource Centre, visiting fellow at City University of Hong Kong and deputy director of Womens Empowerment in Muslim Contexts, a multi-country research project. In November 2009 she became the rst UN independent expert in the eld of culture. Extensive writings on womens rights, the interface of culture, religion and politics include the co-authored book, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? Women of Pakistan, for which she received the Prime Ministers Award. A new book, Great Ancestors: Women, Deance and Muslim Contexts, is being published by Oxford University Press.

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