Indian Muslim women condemn Taliban

[Guest guest]

Indian Muslim women condemn Taliban as un-Islamic

By Penny MacRae

NEW DELHI, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Indian Muslim lawmaker Shabana Azmi does not mince

her words when she talks about calls by a leading Muslim cleric for a holy war

to support Afghanistan's puritanical Taliban rulers.

Syed Ahmed Bukhari, chief priest of the country's biggest mosque, "should be

airdropped" into Afghanistan, says Azmi, an independent member of the upper

house and a film actress.

"Everything the Taliban has done in the name of Islam, especially what they've

done to women's rights, is a blot on the face of Islam. Islam does not advocate

any of these measures."

Other Muslim women living under India's secular democracy are appalled by

Taliban curbs on women that ban them from school and work, swathe them in

head-to-toe burqas and forbid them from leaving home without a male relative.

"No woman can support what the Taliban has done to women," says Mariam Imam, a

22-year-old biochemistry student at Delhi's Jamia Milia University, a Muslim

institution. "This is not Islam -- Islam teaches respect for women and

compassion."

The majority of Indians are Hindu, but more than 12 percent of its one billion

people are Muslim, making its Muslim population one of the largest in the

world.

Upper-class Muslim women in India live and dress in much the same way as their

Hindu counterparts. Like Azmi, many play leading roles in politics, government,

the arts and business.

NO STATE RESTRAINTS

"There are no state restraints on them (Muslim women). If there are restraints,

they come from the civil society, Muslim organisations and the leadership,"

said Zoya Hassan, who teaches political science at Jawaheral Nehru University

in Delhi.

While India is a secular country guaranteeing the same fundamental freedoms

irrespective of creed, there are important differences on civil matters that

have deeply affected Muslim women.

When India won independence from Britain in 1947, in order to ensure religious

harmony, the framers of the constitution agreed there would be no uniform civil

code.

This meant Muslim men could marry four wives and divorce them -- simply by

uttering the word "talaq" three times -- often for trivial reasons, said Syeda

Hameed, author of a recent study on the status of Muslim women in India.

Hindu men can only marry one wife and must obtain a divorce through the courts.

Politicians have shied away from instituting a uniform civil code for fear of

upsetting religious harmony even though "instant talaq," as it is known, has

been abolished in other Muslim countries.

Although Muslim law requires that multiple wives are treated equally, in

practice they are often "oppressed equally," said Hameed, convenor of the

Muslim Women's Forum. And while the marriage agreement mentions an allowance,

or "mehr," upon divorce it is often meagre or not paid at all.

MUCH WORSE FOR WOMEN

"Things are much worse for the Mulsim women in India than they are for any other

community in the country," Hameed said.

But the growing tide of fundamentalism among educated women in the Arab world

and some other Muslim countries has largely passed India by.

While it has always been a tradition among some poorer Muslim women to wear the

veil, there has been no move among educated women to adopt it.

At Jamia Milia University, for instance, none of the students seen walking on

campus on a recent visit were in burqas. Only a few had their heads covered

although some drew their saris over their heads when the Muslim call to prayer

was heard.

In Muslim-majority Kashmir, where separatists have battled Indian rule for 12

years, a Muslim militant group's threat last month to kill women who did not

adopt the burqa triggered widespread resentment, even though many women were

panicked into covering themselves.

Other militant groups in Kashmir, aware that Kashmiris have traditionally prided

themselves on the independence their community's women enjoy, swiftly

dissociated themselves from the diktat.

"We don't believe in forced imposition of Islamic values in the society," a

spokesman for the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group said.

The biggest issue for Muslim women in India, say many in the community, is that

they face a vicious cycle of poverty, illiteracy and unemployment.

While Muslims make up 12 percent of the population, only four percent of people

who finish school are Muslim and only four percent of Indians in government

jobs are Muslim.

"At the top of my wish list for Muslim women would be education, education,

education," Najma Heptullah, deputy chairman of the parliamentary upper house,

said.

23:26 10-18-01

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