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Dossier 17: The Muslim Religious Right ('Fundamentalists') and Sexuality
Ayesha M. Imam (Published: November 1997)
Discussion about how human beings understand and apply Islam in their contemporary realities and daily lives.
As increasing numbers of
scholars have pointed out, the study of Muslim peoples and their societies -
including their faith, histories, behaviours etc. - has often been made
difficult by a number of essentialisms and conflations. Before turning to the
specific concern of this paper, I want to deal with some of these because of
their implications for the issue of sexuality. First, the point has been made
more than once that there is a tendency to essentialise 'Islamic societies.'
That is, there is the habit of "reducing everything to a given set of doctrines,
with a given set of edicts on women [or anything else], and attributing the
practices and ideology of Islamic movements to the implementation of these
doctrines" (Najmabadi 1991:63 - my insertion).
The Confusing Conflation of
Islamic and Muslim
One reason for this is the
conflation between 'Islamic' and 'Muslim.' Islam is the religion or faith (the
way of Allah), while Muslims are those who believe in Islam and attempt to
practice it. Islam is an issue of theology. However, what Muslims (human
fallible people) make of Islam is an arena open to social scientific inquiry. In
other words how human beings understand and apply Islam in their contemporary
realities and daily lives can be seen to be often contentious (or a the least an
area of debate). This is so not only in the present but throughout the past
history of Muslim communities. The recognition that Islamic and Muslim are not
synonyms is important because it helps avoid essentialising Islam and reifying
it as an a-historic, unembodied ideal which is more-or-less imperfectly
actualised in this or that community. It also refuses to privilege the dominant
discourses of one particular Muslim community at one particular time over all
others hence avoiding essentialising the histories of Muslim communities (see
Shaheed 1994).
Muslim societies do, of
course, have commonalities. An acceptance of the Qu'ran as the holy book of
Islam and of the hadith[1] as exemplary
sources of knowledge of Islam is one.[2] As a direct
revelation, the text of the Qu'ran is not questioned. Nonetheless,
interpretations of what the message of the Qu'ran means in the daily life of
Muslims are - and always have been. There are debates about how particular
verses should be understood and what their implications are for contemporary
life. Furthermore, there are
debates on the reliability of particular hadith themselves, as well as on their
implications for the everyday lives of Muslims. Similarly the development of
various schools of sharia[3] testify that there
are diverse understandings about how Islam should be practiced. The Hanafi,
Hambali, Maliki and Sha'afi schools of Sunni Sharia as well as the Shi'a school
provide differing understandings of Islamic legal opinion, all of which are
Muslim. They vary, for instance, in their opinions about the permissibility of
the use of contraceptives and abortion. (See, amongst others, Mernissi 1993,
Ahmed 1992.)
Essentialising 'Islamic
societies' ignores the real existence of a multiplicity of ways of being Muslim.
Amongst all the possibilities who can authorise the 'the essential Islam'? This
question hence directs attention to the power relations in Muslim communities -
who has the power to define and enforce particular ways of being good Muslims -
including dealing with the sexualities of Muslims?
Muslim and Islam
are not synonymous with Arab and Middle East
A second common conflation
is to make Muslim and Islam synonymous with Arab and Middle East. Despite its
historical origin in Arabia and the honourable status accorded the Arabic
language, there are far more non-Arab and non-Arabic speaking Muslims than there
are Arabs or Arabic speakers. This is evident in Asia. Indonesia is, after all,
the largest Muslim country with a population of nearly two hundred million,
which alone outnumbers Arab Muslim populations. Similarly Pakistan and
Bangladesh between them account for around another hundred million or so
Muslims.
It is
also the case in Africa, where it is less obviously evident for a number of
reasons. First, there is the habit of referring to much of North and East
Central Africa, (all the way from Morocco on the far north west coast of the
continent, to Sudan and Somalia on the east of the continent down as far as the
equator), as pan of "the Middle East." Second there has in these countries been
a series of processes of Arabisation. These began with the early Muslim
expansions in the first two centuries of Islam (i.e. the seventh and eighth
centuries of the Gregorian calendar), during which time, for example, the
indigenous languages of lower Egypt disappeared They move on, more recently, to
the periods of nationalist independence in the 1960s - as in Algeria, where
state policy deliberately ignored other Algerian languages, like Berber, in
favour of Arabic. They also include the increasing influence of fundamentalist
movements in the 1990s, as in contemporary Sudan.
However even in less
Arabised areas, there have been many Muslim communities for a long time. Parts
of East Africa have been Muslim influenced since the seventh century, and
particularly since the eleventh century. In some areas of West Africa Islam has
been recognised as a state religion since the eleventh century. In fact, there
are almost as many Muslims in West Africa as in the whole of the 'Middle East'
(Nigeria alone has about 50 million) and Islam remains the largest growing
religion in Africa.
This recognition of the
geographical variability and historical spread of Islam points to the fact that
the practice of Islam in Muslim communities is neither identical nor static.
Each community has its own history - and hence there is the need also to
periodise Muslim discourses in specific locations as well as referring to broad
similarities. The actual lives of women and men in Muslim societies show not
only similarities, but also enormous differences from one time period to
another, between different communities, and within the same societies at any
point in time. For instance, in very many countries in Africa and Asia (as in
Egypt and in Nigeria), the past shows elite women recognised and esteemed as
scholars (Badran and Cooke [eds.] 1992, Boyd 1982, Keddie and Baron [eds.]
1991). However, often in the contemporary world, schooling for girls is resisted
on the grounds that Muslim girls should marry early and not waste time
studying.
Divorce and polygyny are
very common and unremarkable in Muslim communities in Nigeria (Smith 198l,
Pittin 1979), but uncommon and currently regarded as shamefully embarrassing in
India and Bangladesh (Rehnuma?). Similarly, women's seclusion[4] practices are
generalised in Bangladesh, in northern Nigeria, in Mombassa, Kenya and in
northern Sudan, where they are regarded as intrinsic to Islam (see Papanek and
Minault 1982, amongst others). Yet seclusion is virtually unpracticed in
Indonesia, Senegal, the Gambia, Burkina Faso and Niger. Further, the very forms
of seclusion and the strata of women and men implicated in seclusion practices
in both northern Nigeria and in Bangladesh have changed in the last fifty or
sixty years - but for different reasons and in different ways (compare Feldman
and McCarthy 1983 and Imam 1994, for instance). Evidently the simple reference
to 'Islamic seclusion' in discussions of sexuality may obscure more than it
clarifies.
Muslim Discourses of
Sexuality
The issues of divorce,
seclusion and even access to education all have implications for considerations
of sexuality. Thus, evidence of their variability points to the need to
recognise and distinguish different Muslim discourses of sexuality. There is a
dominant discourse and stereotype about 'Islamic sexuality' which presents
Muslim women as always both submissive to and tightly controlled by men who have
the capacity to marry four wives. Sexuality in this discourse is, of itself,
neither good nor bad, but an elemental and natural force that should however be
suitably channelled in society. Both men's and women's sexuality are seen as
naturally active, and while men's arousal pattern is faster, 'foreplay' is
enjoined as a religious duty on men as women also have a desire for and right to
sexual pleasure and satisfaction. Women are thought to have a greater potential
for sexual desire and pleasure, nine times that of men. However, it is women's
passive exudation of sexuality to which men are vulnerable which provokes men
who then deliberately arouse and fulfil desire in women. Thus women's sexuality
is seen as naturally both greater and more passive than that of men. The idea of
natural sexuality here is not solely reproductive, but it is definitely
heterosexual with masturbation, homosexuality and bestiality condemned as
unnatural (see Boudhiba 1975, Mernissi 1975, Al-Hibri 1982, Sabbah 1984 for this
and opposing views).
Muslim patriarchs conspire
with the salacious 'other' gaze of the West to present this as a single
monolithic discourse of sexuality in Muslim societies - but realities are very
different. The infamous honor-shame complex, where a man's honor lies in the
control of the bodies and sexual practices of women in the same family, is
widespread in the Mediterranean area,[5] Arabia and parts
of South Asia (see Antoun 1968, for example). However, it is virtually unknown
in sub-Saharan Africa and much of South East Asia. For instance, in Hausaland
'honor' killings are unknown, even as a bad joke. Men marry prostitutes eagerly
and women may be known to be prostitutes by their families. It is not a favoured
profession but women are not killed for it either - much less for suspicions of
non- or extra- marital affairs (Imam 1994).
Similarly, the view of
women's sexuality as threatening to the social order, overwhelming, impossible
for women to control themselves and/or impure and therefore needing purification
and control lo protect women's virtue which is behind the practice of clitoral
amputation[6] is commonly
practiced in some countries (like Egypt, Sudan, Mali, the Gambia). Clitoral and
labial amputation and labial closure makes sexual intercourse painful and
difficult for women - sometimes necessitating re-opening with a knife, razor
blade or other sharp instrument (see El Saadawi 1980, Toubia and An-Na'im 1993).
In all these countries, it is defended as a requirement of Islam. Yet, in other
countries with Muslim communities it is wholly unknown (e.g. Algeria, Tunisia,
Pakistan, Singapore) or (as in northern Nigeria) not common among Muslims and
considered to be a pagan practice (Dorkenoo and Ellsworthy 1992, Mandara 1995).
In fact, by contrast, in northern Nigeria a baby girl may be made to undergo
hymenectomy[7] in order to ensure
she can be easily penetrated, although this is apparently a disappearing
practice (Mandara 1995).
Muslim discourses of
sexuality vary not only by community, but also over time. For example, northern
Nigeria has been dominantly Muslim at least since the eighteenth century, some
argue the fourteenth century. But, even in the last sixty or seventy years there
have been changes in the discourse of sexuality such that tsarance (Hausa
- institutionalised pre-marital lovemaking or sexual play that stops short of
actual penetration) which used to be a common and unremarkable practice up to
the 1940s and 1950s (Smith 1981) is now considered to be unislamic and 'rural.'
To the other extreme, girls are frequently now not being allowed even to dance
at the kalangu (Hausa - drumming and dancing held each market day - Imam
1994).
The
Nature of Sexuality and Subjectivity
The analysis of different
discourses of Muslim sexuality - their conditions of possibility, their
histories, their implications in daily life - depends, of course, on our
understanding of the nature of sexuality. In general terms one needs to have an
understanding of the processes by which selves (always gendered, always sexual)
are formed, in order to investigate the ways in which people realise themselves
in, resist, or support particular ideologies and practices of sexuality. This
historical and comparative approach to sexualities clearly rules out biologistic
premises. But what is sexuality? A fundamental component of identity is our
sense of being not simp1y human, but male or female in sex and with particular
gender formations. Juliet Mitchell (1980 argues that this is a relational
difference, based on the necessity of heterosexual reproduction. However, she,
along with many others, stresses that the 'contents' of sexuality are social,
rather than a matter of reproductive biology, since what masculinity or
femininity entail is not the same universally.
Although we may feel our
sexuality as emanating from and personal to each of us, it is constructed and
regulated publicly in many different ways. These include in customs or laws
defining who may marry or engage in sexual practices with whom, in which ways
and in what circumstances. They also include policies (formal or informal) about
the control of fertility and so forth. Sexuality is not restricted to physical
sensual gratification either, but informs, for instance, senses of self-worth
(indicated in statements like "I'm only a woman") and modes of self-fulfilment
(such as that Hausa men may feel their virility is bound up in economic control
of their households but not in carrying out domestic labour, or Arab men that
their manhood is expressed in controlling the sexual conduct of wives and
sisters). Sexuality also has to do with how one relates to people of one's own
or other genders, regardless of any intention of seeking sensual gratification
with them (for instance, with avoidance, contempt, deference, competition,
bonding...). Finally it is structured also into the organisation of social space
and relations of production (e.g. gender divisions of labour in agrarian
societies, and occupational sex segregation and the 'woman's wage' virtually
world vide). See Weeks 1985 and 1986, Coward 1980 and 1983, Burniston et al
1978, Milchell and Rose 1982.
Subjectivity (including
sexual, gender identity) should be seen as constructed not through entry into
one symbolic order but possibly through a number of discourses (Coward 1983,
Mama 1987, Imam 1988). In so doing, one moves toward seeing the subject as
constituted through taking subject positions in a number of (often intersecting)
discourses. Thus subjectivity entails sexual identity, but also positioning in
ethnic, religious and other forms of identity.
Foucault suggests the
importance of looking at the constitution of the subject "at the level of those
continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our
gestures, dictate our behaviours etc." (1986:233), regarding subjugation to the
'how' of power operations as itself constituting the subject. That is to say
that our subjectivities and sexualities are themselves partly constituted in the
ways in which we daily act in the discourses which govern gender divisions of
labour, daily dress, behaviour towards spouses and so on.
Discourses are themselves
historical products however. The conditions of their existence and the
historical terrains they construct are not static. However, new ideological
terrains are not so much completely new fields but the reordering,
dis-articulation and re-articulation of ideological elements in new ways, as
well as to new elements (Gramsci 1971, Laclau 1979, Hall 1988). And, I might
add, so that they intersect other ideological terrains at different points or in
new ways. Further some ideological elements are more crucial and stable than
others in the constitution of the fractured and unsecured subjectivity - not
around the Phallus alone, as Lacan suggests - but certainly around key questions
of sexual, ethnic, class and other forms of identity. The work of Gramscian
intellectuals can be seen as transforming subjectivities to the extent they are
able to keep a resonance with these key elements while forging new articulations
of other ideological elements with them.[8] And this is where
we can begin to consider the discourses of sexuality being (re-)constructed and
(re-)invented by contemporary religious and other movements and their
implications for changing ideas about and practices implicated by
sexuality.
'Fundamentalism'?
Here, I wish to enter a
caveat on the term 'fundamentalism' which has come into use to describe all
sorts of conservative right-wing movements, and particularly on the phrase
Muslim or Islamic fundamentalism. First, it is a term which derives from
Christian history, and is not particularly appropriate to other religions. The
common usage also causes political difficulties as many Muslims have no
objection to being termed those who are concerned with the fundamentals or the
roots of the faith. Many of these are not otherwise supporters of the types of
movement referred to as 'fundamentalist,' but who then have declared an affinity
with them through acceptance of the nomenclature. In addition, it is a misnomer
as what the fundamentals of a faith are depend very much on who is doing the
defining - they are not a simple or uncontested issue. Furthermore, it is
necessary to distinguish between general moves to increased religiosity and
cultural assertions - such as Muslim renaissance or revivalism - and what many
of us prefer to term the 'religious right' or 'religious conservatives' who are
only one strand of a broader phenomenon.
Muslim religious right
movements share a number of characteristics - which are shared with all
religious right movements (see ROAPE 1991, Sahgal and Yuval Davis 1992, WLUML
1992, Yuval Davis 1980). First, they claim a return to the fundamentals of faith
and to a tradition unsullied by modern excesses. Subjected to inspection this is
actually a creative vision (re/construction) of 'Islamic society' and not
a return to any known historical past nor actual literal interpretation of
surahs. There is selection and interpretation always. Second, there is the claim
to the only true vision and an intolerance of all other views, whether or not
also Muslim. Muslim dissenters are denied with the argument that Islam is
danger, therefore all protesters against their views are traitors to Islam -
hence giving the excuse for forcible suppression (Helie-Lucas 1993). Third,
there is the seeking of power to impose their own vision forcibly on others.
Fourth, the community of identity focused upon is the Umma, the community of
Muslim believers, and all other forms of identity (national, ethnic,
occupational) are considered irrelevant. Fifth, they excoriate 'western
feminism' and attempt to brand all forms of women's assertions to autonomy as
foreign, western and anti-lslamic. Finally, there is the objective of the
control of women (including women's sexuality) by men and the wish to legislate
what women can or cannot do and to punish non-conformers. It is this view of
sexuality that is discussed below.
Commonalities of Muslim
Religious Right Views on Sexuality in keeping with their vision of a
boundary-less Umma, Muslim religious right movements - from Afghanistan to South
Africa, and Iran to Bangladesh, and including in Muslim minority communities in
countries like Britain and France - have a remarkable consistency of vision
regarding gender relations and sexuality. Commonalities include the centrality
of concern with women, an asceticism about the body, a focus on (in particular)
women's sexuality as a source of immorality, the increase in means for men to
satisfy hetero-sexual desires, and, the reconstruction of patriarchal control
over women and their sexuality.
At the heart - so to speak
- of Muslim religious right groups is their concern with women (see Helie-Lucas
1995). Where logically one might expect a focus on the (gender neutral) five
pillars of Islam - the profession of belief in Allah and the prophet, the five
daily prayers, the annual month-long fast, the giving of a tenth of one's goods
for charity each year, and the pilgrimage to Mecca - there is instead a
preoccupation with women. It is women's dress and behaviour which is frequently
made a symbol of new 'Islamic' orders from Iran to Sudan and now in Afghanistan.
When women refuse to conform, by wearing other than the movements' prescribed
dress code or continuing to go to work or to school, they are threatened and
violent attacks made on them (see Benoune 1995, WLUML 1995, for instance). As a
huge literature has pointed out with regard to nationalism also, women are made
the repositories of culture, as opposed to participants and co-creators (see
Yuval-Davis 1980). Thence interests in the control of women's reproductive
powers and their influence in social transmission to children to ensure a proper
next generation becomes stronger. And 'authentic' Muslim culture becomes the
(re)invention of customs which lower women's autonomy - such as in Algeria
empowering men to vote for their wives and daughters - while delegitimating or
ignoring all other practices. The objective is the increased domesticity of
women, their identities and sexualities tamed into a restriction to women's
"primary roles as wife and mother."
Asceticism (one hesitates
to say "Puritanism") about the body, particularly for women, is another
characteristic of religious right movements, where it is generally referred to
as the requirement of 'modesty.' In Muslim religious right groups modesty is
expressed through the imposition of dress codes - most particularly for women,
though the Taliban in Afghanistan is requiring presently that men grow beards.
Muslim women's dress codes are often misleading referred to generically as
veiling or the hijab. This obscures both historical changes in modes of
dress and cultural contexts - and thus the fact that people may be talking of
quite different modes of dressing when they refer to increased veiling or
women's hijab. The black loose cloak covering head to ankles known as the chador
in Iran is not the same as the loose swathe of sometimes diaphanous cloth draped
around the body called the tobe in Sudan. Both are unlike the headscarf
and maiyafi (cloth covering head and shoulders) of 'modest' women in
Nigeria. Nor are any of these identical with the headscarf (sometimes worn with
jeans) that is acceptable in South Africa. All however signify a control of
women's sexuality, indicating that women need to be covered in some way to
prevent their exudation of sexuality. Increasingly Muslim right groups are
taking the most restrictive dress codes, homogenising them and imposing them on
varied Muslim communities. The Bashir regime in Sudan, for instance, attempted
to impose the Iranian chador on Sudanese women in the early
1990s.
In
addition to increasing restrictive dress codes 'modesty' is often also seen as
requiring a denial of sensuality or openness in body care. The wearing of
make-up, jewellery, or perfume is frowned at in many places. Hammans (even for
single sex use) and massages, despite the long historical and cultural
traditions of their use and enjoyment, are now not licit or at least
questionable in Iran and Turkey. It has been suggested that this unwillingness
to see or touch the unclothed body is resulting in unease in touching oneself
and thence in lower standards of personal hygiene in Iran, particularly where
households do not have private bathrooms (Homa Hoodfar - personal
communication). It certainly has implications concerning the control of
sexuality and the permissibility or not of open enjoyment of bodily
sensations.
Muslim religious right
groups focus on sexuality as a source of immorality. There is the commonly
stated assumption that if un-related women and men are together they must be
engaging in (illicit) sexual acts. This unrestrained sexuality is dangerous to
morality and social order. However, it is women's sexuality that is peculiarly
responsible and culpable. It is women who must abide by restrictive dress codes
that signify asexuality. It is women who must be segregated or secluded so as
not to tempt men. Thus it is women's very presence that is so powerfully sexual
that men's restraint falls. And, it is women who are most at fault in any
situation suggesting possible 'immorality' because they should have avoided it.
Thus this discourse both finds women's sexuality to be naturally and
unconsciously powerful, and, simultaneously, blameworthy. Female sexuality must
therefore be constrained, controlled and punished in Muslim religious right
practices.
Thence, in Nigeria local
state decrees penalise girls engaging in street hawking of goods, rather than
the men who harass and molest them (Pittin 1991, Imam 1991). Thence too, in
areas where the honor-shame complex is found, women are killed by fathers and
brothers, sometimes on mere suspicion of having engaged in non-marital sex.
However, neither female nor male relatives of the men who are suspected of
immorality find it incumbent upon them to kill their sons or brothers. 'Honor'
killings of women are condoned by the communities in which they occur (in the
Arab- speaking Middle East, for instance). Often enough 'honor' killings are
also condoned by the state (for example, Iraq and Israel - see Al-Fanar 1995,
WLUML Dossiers, Shirkat Gah Newsheets), who accept suspicion of immorality as a
defense precluding murder charges. While. in Bangladesh, there has in the past
few years been a surge of completely extra-legal decisions by village salishes
or councils to stone and burn women they charge with immorality (see the
award-winning documentary Eclipse made by Ain-o-Salish Kendra). Or, in Sudan
since the 1990s, a woman can be legally stopped and questioned by any man who
feels she is not wearing appropriate attire. Or she can be harassed, picked up
and held by the police until her husband, father or brother arrives to guarantee
her suitable dress in the future (Sudan Women and Law Project 1996).
This control of women's
sexuality is particularly clear in the stances concerning women's fertility
management. Most typically the whole range of practices which relate to managing
fertility are removed from women's control to that of men and the state. This
ranges from decisions over whether or when to have intercourse, to decisions
over knowledge of and access to different types of contraception, to
permissibility or not of pregnancy termination. Neither women nor men are
expected to have intercourse before marriage - although, as mentioned above, the
penalties for women are far more severe. However, as wives, women may never
refuse to have sexual intercourse - it is their husbands who have the right to
decide. Muslim religious right groups also frequently initially refuse any form
of birth prevention (whether pregnancy prevention or abortion). This often
ignores the fact that there are different positions on this permissibility
within Sharia over fertility management. Even with abortion this often hinges on
when the soul is infused into the foetus and hence at what stage of development
abortion is permissible. Instead, the most restrictive formulations are
postulated - a complete ban or the only defense that it is to save the mother's
life. New restrictions may also be instituted in Sharia, such as that the woman
must have been raped as well as in the first trimester of pregnancy (e.g. Sudan
in the 1990s), before it is defensible to carry out an abortion. Attitudes to
pregnancy avoidance can, nonetheless vary. In the early days of the Iranian
revolution use of contraception was considered antithetical for good Muslims. Of
recent however, the Iranian religious right (still in state power) have started
to encourage family planning and list acceptable forms of contraception. Even
so, in either case it is not women themselves who may judge and decide whether
and how to manage their fertility.
Men's sexuality is also
channelled, but in a way that gives them more control. The religious right
discourse gives men more means and avenues of satisfying desires - if
heterosexual. Polygyny frequently becomes an unbridled right of Muslim men - in
some cases (like Nigeria) almost an obligation. The right to marry girl children
is defended and promoted as men's right and the prevention of immorality. There
is increasingly a lack of concern for the consent of the bride to marriage.
Women's right to choice of marriage partner is increasingly whittled down or
removed altogether, as in Sudan where there has been a shift from allowing women
to make the choice to enabling her waliyi (guardian, always male) to
enforce his choice on her. Mut'a (temporary marriage permitted in Shiite
Sharia)[9] is on the
increase, including in Sunni communities where it was previously unknown or
condemned as Shiite apostasy, such as Algeria and Sudan (WLUML 1995, Sudan Woman
and Law Project 1996). The treatment of rape militates against women. It not
only refuses categorically to recognise rape within marriage, but also poses
such severe conditions (such as the eye witness testimony of four upright men)
that a woman charging rape or pregnant as a result of rape may well find
herself, rather than her rapist, punished on the grounds of 'self-confessed
immorality' or 'unfounded charges' as has happened in Pakistan (see Shirkat Gah
Newsheets).
In
general terms, one might say that the Muslim religious right (like Christian and
Hindu religious right groups - see WAF Journals) have been reconstructing
patriarchal control over women and their sexuality. The locus of control has
been shifting from the patriarch proper (father as household or family head)
with control over women and men of his household/family) to state control of
women (and men), to state-sanctioned control of all women by all men (i.e. any
individual man in street or house). Thus, any man may enforce his idea of
women's appropriate dress on any woman he sees in Sudan. There is the use of
salishes to condemn women for adultery or bigamy etc., in Bangladesh even when
the act in question is done with her father's permission. There has been tacit
state toleration of acid-throwing when a woman refuses intercourse with a man,
even if that refusal was in the name of modesty and chastity in Algeria, or of
women's abduction for being in public spaces in Nigeria. There has been
increasing violence against women who refuse to conform in Algeria, Sudan,
Bangladesh and Afghanistan amongst others.
Finally, there is the issue
of same-sex relations, about which there is still rather little literature or
research. Muslim establishments converge with religious right groups in
condemning 'unnatural deviations' (homosexual relations of men or women,
transvestitism, transsexuals and so on). There seems always to have been a loud
silence on women's same-sex relations. However, in many Muslim communities in
the Middle East, in east coast Kenya or in Northern Nigeria for example, there
has been a centuries long history of quiet toleration of male same-sex relations
(including sexual intercourse and forms of cross dressing). The condemnations of
these practices, often now explicitly including women's same-sex relations, have
become increasingly strident. They are denounced as not only unnatural, but also
anti-Islam and due to the corrupting influence of the West and/or feminism
(which is itself viewed as a solely Western construct).
Specificities of Muslim
Religious Right Discourses of Sexuality
However, the ideal of a
boundary-less Umma is just that - an ideal. Despite the many commonalities of
rhetoric there is a need to periodise and contextualise religious right
discourses also, and not to assume that they are all the same. There are many
links and the internationalising of the Muslim religious right (in political
links, money circulation and donations, printed, audio and visual matter,
scholarships) is an important topic not yet well researched (but see ROAPE
1991). Where and how the ideologies and programmes are decided, passed on and
shared, what the links are between religious right groups in different
communities are issues yet to be elucidated. Even so, how ideologies are
reconstructed, transformed, influenced and construed in the practices of
specific communities is extremely important. It does make a real and crucial
difference if exhortations for women's modesty are couched in terms of men's
lack of culpability in killing women on 'honor' grounds (Iraq) or relatively
lightly in terms of wearing a headscarf outside one's home (South Africa). There
is a substantive divergence in effects on women's and men's lives and sexuality
between the religious right saying in one place that any form of contraception
is anti-lslamic (immediate post- revolution Iran), and in another place or at
another time that Allah has provided certain safe and legitimate means for
spacing births (contemporary Iran).
Despite the commonalities
and the similar rhetorical flourishes, Muslim religious right groups are not
identical to each other. The appendix to this paper is a table of differing
principles and claims of the religious right in different countries. It is
incomplete, but it serves to illustrate the point. Nor are the contexts in which
Muslim religious rights groups operate, the ideological-political state and
content of hegemony in each community, or the arrangement and power of groups
who are not part of the religious right, and/or non-Muslim groups all the same.
In addition, it behoves us to remember that Muslim is not the only identity that
groups (even religious right groups) may choose to inflect in particular
circumstances. Other identities - post-colonial, ethnic or regional,
professional, gender... - may be also drawn upon. In every community these and
probably other issues have a recursive effect on discursive practices at
ideological levels and in behaviours.
There is, furthermore, a
need to look at the varying impacts of religious right discourse by social
relations in communities. In Pakistan, for instance, the hudood ordinance
affects mostly poorer women who have not the social and economic resources to
avoid being entangled in it. Restrictions on formal sector work affect mostly
middle class women (for instance in Algeria, Sudan, Nigeria). Segregation and
seclusion, and the lack of work outside the home affects poorer women the most
in Bangladesh and in Sudan, where women street food sellers are being picked up,
harassed and fined. There are reports that female genital mutilation is on the
increase in refugee camps, which affect the poor and displaced of both Somalia
and Sudan.
Finally, women's and men's
relations with religious right discourses of sexuality (or other) are likewise diverse. As mentioned
'modesty' may lead lo a dislike of undressing or touching one's body. But dress
codes may also be rejected even in the face of death threats as in Algeria and
Sudan, or resisted in favour of a modesty of demeanour demanded from both women
and men (northern Nigeria), or adopted for a whole parade of different
rationales. These could include acceptance of the view that women's sexuality
must be hidden and controlled, as a symbol of one's faith in minority
communities, as a means of protection from harassment, as a means of asserting
mobility outside one's home (i.e. achieving some freedom of movement), or fear
of the consequences if it is not worn. Restrictive dress codes have also been
adopted in ways which subvert any hope of making women socially invisible or
diminishing their sexuality - there are women's magazines which advise on how to
wear hijab in an attractive manner, as well as fashion parades and designer
chadors in countries as varied as Egypt and Nigeria, at least.
Similarly, the adoption of
seclusion or acceptance of segregation may be the expression of a view of
sexuality as uncontrollable in the presence of non-related women and men. Or, it
may also be a result of the renegotiation of the patriarchal bargain (see
Kandiyoti) so that men take the responsibility of household maintenance (Imam
1994), or because there is no option of work outside the home, or because of
social pressure - or a mixture of all of these. Obviously each of these
situations has different implications for sexuality. Conforming behaviour alone
is not sufficient to establish conforming realities.
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Appendix:
Table of Various Practices/Claims of Religious Right in Different
Countries
|
Iran |
Sudan
|
Nigeria |
Bangladesh |
Pakistan |
|
Religious right in state
power |
Religious right in state
power |
Religious right in not power,
but increasingly vocal and influential |
Religious right not in state
power, but very vocal and influential |
Religious right in power, but
access to influence on state |
|
legal imposition of dress
code |
legal imposition of dress
code but won battle ref tobe. However non-compliance is grounds for sack
or lack of promotion |
social imposition of dress
code - but affects also non-Muslim women in multi-religious
state |
|
women-Islamic dress but men
national dress |
|
Iranian women may not marry
non-lranian men Rafsanjani now talking of more open relations between
women and men |
(1994 revival of 1959 law)
Sudanese men students abroad may
not marry non-Sudanese women
(unless Egyptian) without diplomatic
permission |
in principle women should not
marry non-Muslim men but is done and accepted |
|
|
|
cannot give self in
marriage |
rejection of Hanafi law that
woman can give self in marriage in favour of Maliki where it is more
difficult |
both women and men have
waliyi -often consent sought but father has right to compel
virgins |
|
|
|
women first eliminated from
urban work outside home (especially formal sector). gradual return in some
areas |
women being eliminated from
urban work (especially public sector, and in judicial
system) |
increasing pressure for dress
code, calls for gender segregated work, failed attempt to ban women from
civil service |
attacks on NGOs working on
issues of women's economic autonomy (tree-planting now unlslamic') or
education |
|
|
contraceptive use/abortion
unIslamic first-now regarded as permissible. Both positions with fatwas to
support |
abortion legal only if in
first trimester and woman was raped |
abortion - defense that
mother's life threatened dislike of contraceptive use - coitus interuptus
and safe period OK |
development of extra judicial
practices of salishes accusing women of adultery,
bigamy |
Jamaati-Islami resolve that
family planning unlslamic. abortion illegal (10
years) |
|
mut'a on increase polygyny on
increase |
mut'a introduced 1990s 'house
of obedience' legalised 1992 |
stress on men's right to
polygyny and to child brides |
|
hudood ordinance not
distinguish non-marital sex from rape. evidence rules favour men, but
punishment is same |
|
first women's sports
discouraged - now females do
sports covered up and swimming not televised or open to men
spectators |
|
girls not encouraged to do
sports. dancing now increasingly considered as not
licit |
|
music + dance banned in
girls' schools |
FOOTNOTES
[1] Sayings of the Prophet Mohammed or anecdotes concerning his life. as recounted by those who were his contemporaries and passed on to others in a traceable line of transmission.
[2] The historical
experience of colonisation and presently of being post-colonial subjects is probably another.
[3] Formally systematised bodies of Muslim laws - combining jurisprudence, law and theology.
[4] By seclusion I
refer specifically to the restriction of women's freedom of movement to domestic
space - rather than the whole panoply of dress codes, sexual segregation and
avoidance/deference behaviour that is frequently collectively referred to as
purdah. See Imam 1994.
[5] Including in non-Muslim communities, as in Greece (see Schneider 1971).
[6] The amputation
of the clitoris - in some areas including also the amputation of the vaginal
lips and/or sewing up of what remains - is often erroneously referred to as
female circumcision. Circumcision in males excises only the foreskin of the
penis, rather than the whole organ. The amputation of the prepuce of the
clitoris, commonly referred to as Sunna circumcision is the equivalent. It has
been noted to occur, but the frequency with which attempted Sunna circumcision
actually results in whole or partial clitoral amputation is still a question to
be researched.
[7] The removal of a
'too large' hymen, done usually 7 days after birth.
[8] See Coward 1983,
Mama 1987 and forthcoming, Imam 1988 and 1994 for further expositions of this
type of theorisation of the construction of subjectivity and sexuality.
[9] Some consider
mut'a to enable women to exercise more rights and autonomy and expression
of sexuality than standard marriage forms (see Haeri 1989). Others (Mir-Hosseini
1994) argue that it is women with social disabilities who are forced to accept
such unions, and who would prefer standard marriages. I suggest that mut'a could
be either potentially autonomy-giving or less advantageous depending on the
general social, economic and politic conditions of women as a group and as
individuals. Where women have high status and autonomy then mut'a is a
choice that may be advantageous and vice
versa.
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