Empowerment Through Education:
Women's Roles, Responsibilities,
and Rights in Muslim Societies

Opening words read by Laura Montgomery:

* Sura 49, al-Hujarat [The Inner Apartments], Verse 13 - Al-Qur'an.

O humanity! We created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other not that ye may despise each other.

Sermon

I shall begin my service with verses that illustrate the poetic beauty of the Qur'an and condemn the crime of "femicide." As you will see from this passage, Islam ushered an era of progress for women and girls in Arabia as compared to the previous period.

* Sura 81, al-Takwir [The Folding Up], Verses 1-9 - Al-Qur'an.

When the sun with its spacious light is folded up;
when the stars fall, losing their luster;
when the mountains vanish like a mirage;
when the she-camels, ten months young are left untended;
when the wild beasts are herded together in human habitations;
when the oceans boil over with a swell;
when the souls are sorted out, being joined like with like;
when the female infant buried alive is questioned, for what crime was she killed...

I must thank Ms. Laura Montgomery -- the member of your congregation who contacted me and has spent much energy arranging my service here today. I had the pleasure of meeting Laura at the Washington, D.C. Sociological Association conference held in April 1999. She has asked me to speak to you about a subject of my own choosing, and I have selected a theme on which I have worked in various capacities during the last five years -- efforts to vindicate the human rights of women and girls, particularly in Muslim societies.

My interest in this theme derives from personal and professional experiences. From a personal perspective, I grew up as a relatively secular Muslim in an Iranian immigrant family. Islam was not a part of my daily life per se, but rather an assumed aspect of the Iranian culture into which my parents socialized me -- even as they sought to adapt to life in the United States. Not until my adulthood did I recognize that my identity was relatively rare and even an occasional source of prejudice and discrimination by others in this society, despite its claims to multi-culturalism.

Only when I entered graduate school did Islam become a subject of my intellectual curiosity. Not coincidentally, I pursued my graduate studies in political science during the 1980s and early 1990s -- at the height of the so-called "Islamic revival" in the Middle East and other Muslim societies. However, the "Islamic fundamentalism" of television news reports captured not only my intellectual curiosity, but also fascinated me for its intolerance as supposedly justified by the Qur'an -- a book that I had perused myself.

As I read the Qur'an, I noted passages that could be interpreted variously -- about such subjects as the treatment of non-Muslims and women, for instance. With my intellectual curiosity and fascination intensifying and converging, in 1996, I happened upon a position as a researcher and writer with an international feminist organization, the Sisterhood Is Global Institute (SIGI). SIGI was just beginning to develop curricula for human rights education throughout the Global South but especially in Muslim societies. Much to my own surprise, I would become the co-author of two human rights education manuals:

* Claiming Our Rights: A Manual for Women's Human Rights Education in Muslim Societies (1997, 3rd edition), which has been used throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia.

* Safe and Secure: Eliminating Violence Against Women and Girls in Muslim Societies (1998) which is being tested in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon.

Motivated by these personal and professional experiences, I wish to pose the following three questions for our consideration:

(1) What are "universal" human rights?

(2) Why do some around the world dismiss notions of "universality"?

(3) How can women and/or other communities in distress render "universal" human rights more accessible/less dismissible?

Please allow me to address each of these questions briefly and with specific reference to the roles, responsibilities, and rights of Muslim women. Then, I will gladly take whatever comments and questions you have.

(1) What are "universal" human rights?

Human rights are "universal" because they derive from the individual's very humanity. This definition may seem rather circular. Put another way, human rights reflect what the individual needs to survive and thrive in society. Among these are:

* the right to innocent life;
* the right to subsistence -- food and shelter;
* the right to bodily integrity;
* the right to freedom in mate selection and marriage.
* the right to privacy;
* the right to freedom of association, beliefs, and expression;
* the right to participate in the political process.

This list may not be exhaustive but does reflect those rights defined in international legal documents since World War II. Why is this list the source of so much contention? Aside from debates about the precise substance of these rights, some around the world reject their very universality.

Arguably, when most Americans -- perhaps even most "Westerners," a term I use advisedly -- picture Muslim women in their mind's eyes, they do not subsequently rattle off this list of universal human rights. In fact, Muslim women have been stereotyped by media and even academia as the victims of male oppression which they do not understand or against which they have no recourse.

(2) Why do some around the world dismiss the "universality" of human rights?

Both in advanced, industrialized democracies and in the lesser developed state-societies of the Global South, some politicians and pundits claim that: (a) "human rights" are a uniquely Western concept; (b) other cultures have their own understandings of the duties and rights of individuals; and (c) applying Western notions of rights to non-Western societies is not only impractical but, even worse, immoral.

This threefold argument in favor of cultural relativism resonates throughout the Global South and particularly in Muslim societies that have experienced Western colonialism and imperialism. The question arises: If human rights are universal as Westerners have claimed, then why did they violate the independence and integrity of people in the Global South? Human rights must be a chimera!

Muslim fundamentalists -- from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1980s to Afghanistan's Taliban during the 1990s -- have made the case for cultural relativism, especially regarding their (mis-)treatment of women and girls. Fundamentalists have insisted that Islam offers prescriptions for the believers' personal and political life which transcend space and time. Consequently, believers, men and women, need not go outside Islam to discover their duties and rights. Rather, these duties and rights derive from no source other than God.

Not surprisingly, Muslim fundamentalists are joined by their counterparts from other religions in dismissing the universality of human rights, particularly as applied to women and girls. During the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women convened in 1995 in Beijing, Muslim and Christian fundamentalists joined ranks to oppose key aspects of the platform whose central assumption was that women's rights are not some special category of rights that societies can disregard, but rather women's rights are part and parcel of universal human rights.

The intransigence of those who perpetuate patriarchy in the name of faith and culture has inspired me to consider carefully the definitions of these terms. "Faith" refers to one's belief and relationship with the Creator; it is expressed in terms of religion -- the particular norms and practices that reinforce one's relationship with God. Religion is only one component of "culture" -- defined as those customs, myths, religious and other texts, and traditions that a group passes from one generation to the next in order to preserve the identity and integrity of its members. Cultures are not fixed and static, but rather fluid and changing. We are all the producers, disseminators, and consumers of culture. With these conceptualizations of faith and culture in mind, I will focus on my third question.

(3) How can women and/or other communities in distress

render "universal" human rights more accessible/less dismissible?

I do not underestimate the difficulty of this question, but I am not hopeless either, due to my experience with the Sisterhood Is Global Institute. During and since my time with SIGI, I have noted a trend: Women in Muslim societies -- spanning from North Africa to Southeast Asia -- are taking the lead in a process that I would call "indigenizing the universal." Particularly since the 1995 Beijing Conference, these women are striving to re-define their roles and responsibilities by developing culturally authentic expressions of human rights.

Women leaders have emerged in communities, small and large, to assert that they and their daughters have the right to participate fully in the life of their societies and that such participation will benefit not just them but everyone. These leaders reject the claim by vested patriarchal interests -- academicians, businessmen, clergy, etc. -- that females must assume roles and responsibilities that are complimentary but not equal to males. Instead, they contend that females and males have relatively equal potentialities and should be judged and treated accordingly.

Significantly, Muslim women are not advancing their universal human rights in a vacuum. Rather, in consultation with their feminist counterparts in other societies -- including those in the advanced, industrialized democracies -- Muslim women seek to place the universalist human rights discourse in their own local cultural, political, and socio-economic contexts.

As such, efforts to vindicate the human rights of women and girls have varied in form and content throughout the so-called Muslim world, which is not monolithic. In other words, these efforts are as diverse as the societies in which they are happening. Just to provide one comparison, and perhaps others will arise during our discussion:

* In the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the clergy have ruled for two decades, the state officially sanctions patriarchy with reference to Islamic laws. Yet an unintended consequence of the "Islamic revolution" of 1978-79 was the increase in female theological students who have offered what we might loosely call "feminist" interpretations of Islam, citing the Qur'an chapter and verse. Since the 1990s, a handful of younger male clerics have taken up the debate about the nature and substance of human rights, albeit at their own peril. Moreover, female professors and college-age women have organized quiet (read: secret) workshops on human rights under the guise of English and French lessons as well as poetry readings.

* In Malaysia, by contrast, the non-governmental organization Sisters In Islam operates openly, advocating the agenda of universal human rights through its lobbying, publications, and workshops. As the group's name indicates, Islam is its explicit point of reference -- although the Sisters collaborate with non-Muslim organizations around the world in the struggle to vindicate human rights. Perhaps most important was the Sisters' success in lobbying for the passage of Malaysia's Domestic Violence Act. Implemented in 1996, the DVA reflected Sisters' in Islam willingness to consult and compromise with Malaysia's clergy and legislators. Malaysia is the first Muslim society and the only Asian one to have laws on the books that make domestic violence a crime.

The comparison between Iran and Malaysia is instructive. Although Iranian and Malaysian women operate in vastly different political settings -- an authoritarian theocracy versus a pluralistic, secular government -- their aims are similar. Women in both societies aspire to achieve those human rights that they deem relevant in their daily lives -- whether the right to an education or to freedom from bodily harm. Equally interesting, women in Iran and Malaysia have articulated their demands more or less within the framework of Islam, which they perceive as a living religion open to interpretation by the human mind according to the individual's spatial and temporal circumstances. Indeed, women have the human right to be producers, interpreters, and disseminators of culture -- of which religion is one dimension.

I shall conclude my remarks here, recognizing that I may have raised more questions than the initial three that I tried to answer. I still have numerous questions in my own mind about how to champion most effectively the human rights of women and girls, whether here in the United States or in Muslim societies. For example, once Muslim or other women become conscious of the universality of their human rights, what resources do they have to vindicate those rights? Stated more dramatically: If we make a woman aware that she does not have to endure her spouse's physical abuse, do we have a responsibility to provide this survivor of domestic violence some sort of shelter as an alternative to her home?

These are vexing questions, and there is no magic wand. At least part of the answer lies with education! Arguably, education may not always feel satisfying because it is a gradual process. Yet I am unaware of a better alternative. I will end by noting that education -- like any effort to champion human rights -- is a community endeavor. Educating women is not enough. Ultimately, men must be part of the solution as we seek to eradicate abuses against women and girls. Consequently, I wish to close with a passage from the English translation of a poem that beautifully captures the idea that human rights are everyone's concern. Some seven to eight centuries ago, the Persian poet Sheikh Muslihu al-Din Sa`adi wrote in "The Rose Garden" [Golistan]:

All Adam's race are members of one frame.
Since all, at first, from the same essence came,
when by hard fortune one limb is oppressed,
the other members lose their wonted rest.
If thou feelst not for the others' misery,
a child of Adam is no name for thee.

[taken from Edward B. Eastwick's 1974 translation]