Muslim Women and the Challenge of Religion in

REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES

Muslim Women and the Challenge of Religion in Contemporary Mumbai Qudsiya Contractor

Two recent mobilisations of women in Mumbai expose the tension between Muslim patriarchies and women’s rights in contemporary Islam. The first case refers to a petition in the Bombay High Court filed by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan that challenged the prohibition of women in the inner sanctum of the Haji Ali Dargah. In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled against the governing trust of Haji Ali Dargah and restored women’s right to enter the inner sanctum. The second mobilisation was spearheaded by Sahiyo, a group of five women who started a public conversation around the practice of khafz or female genital cutting among Dawoodi Bohras. Their efforts brought attention to the violent control of female sexual pleasure in the name of religion and tradition. This paper argues that women’s critical voices from within the community challenge conservatism and redefine gendered selfhood within the religious realm.

Qudsiya Contractor ([email protected]) teaches at the Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Economic & Political Weekly

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eligious freedom for Muslims in general, and the rights of Muslim women in particular, has been a matter of serious contention in postcolonial India. Although the right to religious freedom is enshrined in the Constitution, and India is signatory to several international conventions, it continues to be highly contested not just in the courts of law, but also in everyday life. The rights of women to equality of religious practice seems to throw up greater political challenges since the guardians of most religions are men, while religion itself is seen by many feminists as another institution that constitutes patriarchal power, to which Islam is no exception. Religious personal laws, for instance, have posed a major challenge to the career of secularism and one such debate has been the role of religious orthodoxy on the question of Muslim women’s autonomy in marital and family life. The Shah Bano case (1985–86) highlighted how the interests of women are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by an alliance of religious and secular interests (Pathak and Rajan 1989). Muslim women’s activism in India has been trying to challenge patriarchal interpretations of the Quran, calling for broader and more inclusive interpretations of women’s social and religious identity within Islam; a perspective that has influenced change in other parts of the world (Mernissi 1991). Patriarchal interpretations of the Quran have not only been forced upon the unlettered Muslim masses, but also those who leave the interpretations to the male ashraf (high status)-dominated ulema (clergy). In recent times, there have been several efforts in various parts of the country for Muslim women to enter the religious realm as alimanas and qazis, interpreting the Quran and Shariat from a women’s perspective (Vatuk 2008; Albuquerque 2004; Schneider 2009). Although there continues to be much focus on Muslim women’s rights in marital life, the Muslim religious elite in India, much like their global counterparts, have also been preoccupied with dictating the terms of feminine modesty and piety. Globally, the issue of the veil has dominated questions of Islamic female modesty in ways that posit the conflict as between individual and cultural freedom verses collective, religious, and patriarchal orthodoxies (Moghadam 2002; Badran 2009). In India, Islamic notions of modesty and feminine piety have been deeply influenced by indigenous cultural practices of seclusion that differ across social hierarchies. The phenomenon of caste hierarchies among Muslims defines feminine modesty and piety that is largely dictated by the ashrafs.1 The norms of seclusion and purity seem to be more stringent for ashraf women while the non-ashrafs (ajlaf and 81


arzal) are expected to appropriate these norms to attain a higher status. Scholars have argued that the processes that enable social mobility also maintain a system of hierarchy among Muslims in order to address a spectrum of hierarchies (Ahmad 1976; Bhatty 1996). The anxiety of the male religious elite has been to rescue some ashraf women from “Westernisation” since a significant proportion of them have had access to secular and modern education, and integrated themselves into mainstream society by appropriating non-Islamic (majoritarian and Western) dress codes. On the other hand, non-ashraf women are seen as not “Islamic” enough and in the need of being rescued from indigenous cultural markers. The two issues on which this paper focuses—women’s right to worship at a Sufi shrine and the practice of khafz or female “circumcision”—reflect the new contests over Muslim women’s position and status. Muslim women’s activism on both these issues unsettles what religious freedom could mean to women of a minority group against, or in spite of, constitutional guarantees. Reclaiming the Right to Worship

The Haji Ali Dargah is an iconic Sufi landmark in Mumbai. It is a site of pilgrimage and recreation for several Muslim and nonMuslim residents and visitors in the city. The dargah is one of the many symbols of the city’s religio-cultural location in the rich and diverse trans-oceanic Sufi tradition of the Konkan region (Green 2012). The popular and public image of the dargah as a metaphor of a cosmopolitan subaltern devotion has inspired cinematic representations in Hindi cinema.2 Built in 1431, it is situated on an islet 500 metres from the coast in Worli, housing the tomb of Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari. The Haji Ali Dargah Trust was founded in 1916 to manage the upkeep of the dargah complex, which is now registered as a charitable trust under the provisions of the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950. Today the trust comprises male members of the Kutchi Memon community, which manages and maintains the dargah complex that includes the tomb, a ground (the entire structure is spread over 5,000 square metres), a two-storeyed sanatorium, a qawwal khana and a mosque. The dargah complex itself was constructed in 1944 and the trust has been involved in renovating and reconstructing it since the 1960s, including the construction of a concrete pathway through the sea. According to the shrine’s official website, it receives nearly 10,000–15,000 visitors everyday, which doubles over the weekends and during Muslim festivals.3 In March 2011, during one of their occasional visits to the shrine, a few Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) activists noticed that women were being barred from entering the inner sanctum of the shrine that held the Saint’s tomb (mazaar), which had not been the case earlier. Founded in 2007, BMMA is an autonomous, secular, rights-based mass organisation led by Muslim women that works towards understanding and addressing the marginalisation of the Muslim community, and women in particular. With its headquarters in Mumbai, it has nearly 30,000 members across 15 states. On a subsequent visit in June 2012, they discovered that a steel barricade had been 82

put up at the entry of the inner sanctum preventing the entry of women devotees. The managing trustees of the dargah, when questioned, justified the move on the grounds that they were upholding the purity of the shrine based on Islamic values by preventing women from entering the inner sanctum as they are rendered impure when they menstruate. According to them, women were also a source of sexual distraction to men because of their inability to maintain proper modes of modesty.4 They thought it was an error to have allowed the entry of women into the inner sanctum for years due to ignorance of the provisions in the Shariat. The imposition of a ban on the entry of women in the inner sanctum was a step towards rectifying this error. The BMMA made several attempts to have a dialogue with the dargah trustees through phone calls and letters, maintaining that they were not enemies, but just asking for their rights. These petitions were ignored and no audience was granted. The BMMA eventually approached various government bodies such as the State Minorities Commission (SMC), National Commission for Women, and even the chief minister of Maharashtra, stating their dissent and seeking intervention in the matter. Despite several formal meetings, including a joint meeting arranged by the state minorities development department, the dargah trust refused to meet members of the BMMA for an amicable resolution. Eventually, the dargah trust responded to the minorities development department through a letter stating that “the Holy Shrine was open to all persons regardless of gender, caste, creed, etc. It was also stated that to maintain sanctity, discipline, decorum, peace and to avoid chaos, they had earmarked separate entries for men and women devotees and visitors.”5 The letter clearly failed to address the issue raised by the BMMA, whose members again requested the trustees to agree to a dialogue facilitated by the SMC and the state minister of women and child development. Meanwhile, based on a series of visits to 19 dargahs in the city, BMMA members discovered that 12 out of these were allowing women whereas seven (including Haji Ali) prevented women from entering the inner sanctum. For instance, the shrine of Makhdoom Ali Mahimi in Mahim, which is incidentally managed by the same trust board as the Haji Ali Dargah, does not prevent women from entering the inner sanctum. The caretakers (mujawars) of some of these Sufi shrines stated that if such restrictions were enforced, they would have to close down since most of those who visit dargahs are women. Law as a Weapon of the Faithful

The BMMA decided to file a public interest litigation (PIL) in the high court following the managing trust’s insistence on preventing women from entering the inner sanctum of the shrine. The trust showed no further signs of a consensus through a dialogue. Although several lawyers that the BMMA consulted agreed that they had a case against the trust, finding one to take up their case proved to be challenging. One lawyer clearly said that, as a matter of principle, he does not take cases of one community against the other, while the current Hindu rightwing government being in power discouraged many. OCTOBER 28, 2017

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The BMMA finally found a lawyer and, in 2014, the PIL was filed in the Bombay High Court on the grounds of the rights enshrined in the Constitution and on the rights of women within Islam itself. The petition argued that the prohibition on women entering the inner sanctum was a violation of Articles 14 and 15 that guarantee citizens equality before law and nondiscrimination on the grounds of religion, caste, sex or place of birth, respectively. Furthermore, the move by the dargah trust also violated Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution that guarantee citizens the right to practise and propagation of religion, and the freedom to manage religious affairs. A second set of submissions made by the BMMA pertained to women’s rights in Islam based on a women-centred interpretation of the verses in the Quran and the Hadith to counter the dargah trust’s arguments before the court justifying their decision to prevent women from the inner sanctum. The information that the BMMA had collected through their visits to other Sufi shrines across the city was used in the petition to challenge the claim that Islam does not allow women into Sufi shrines and that the Shariat claims that women should be prevented from entering shrines and graves. Furthermore, Sufi shrines were open to people from all faiths and social groups, and BMMA activists were concerned about safeguarding them as spaces of cosmopolitan tolerance. Prevention of women from the inner sanctum could just be the beginning of many more restrictions in the future. Shrines in India have been places open to everyone from any religion, caste, etc. If this is not checked, this exclusion of women will be extended to the entire shrine, non-Muslim women will not be allowed. Gender was one argument. How does one safeguard that part of Islam that is tolerant, does not discriminate and respects all. (interview with Noorjehan Safia Niaz, BMMA founder, 16 January 2017)

The key arguments put forth by the BMMA lawyer were based on constitutional grounds, emphasising the fact that the Haji Ali Dargah Trust was registered as a charitable trust and needed to comply with government rules. However, the dargah trust maintained in response to the petition that (i) the entry of women in close proximity to the grave of male Muslim Saint was a grievous sin, as per Islam; (ii) that Article 26 of the Constitution of India confers upon the Trust a fundamental right to manage its own affairs in the matters of religion; (iii) that it is in the interest of safety and security of women; and (iv) at no point of time women were allowed to enter the close proximity of the Tomb.

In addition to the above, the trust, through their lawyer, maintained that “Islam discourages free mixing between men and women and that the intention of the said restriction is to keep interaction at a modest level between men and women.”6 The BMMA found many contradictions in the positions the dargah trust took throughout the interactions with them during the course of the case. Although the trust admitted to having allowed women into the sanctum in interactions, in court they denied any such concession. The trustees also came up with the justification based on their interpretation of the Quran and the Hadith, that women who visited the shrine did not observe proper menstrual taboos based on Islamic notion of purity and bodily pollution that required them to abstain from religious Economic & Political Weekly

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rituals such as ziyarat.7 The BMMA found these arguments based on patriarchal interpretations of the Quran that were being used against women’s right to worship. For instance, there was also no question of intermingling at the sanctum since there were always different entrances for men and women. Not surprisingly, the bench hearing the case rejected the trust’s justifications on the grounds that they were unconstitutional. Their arguments also attracted a lot of criticism from the media.8 On one hand, they were talking about women’s honour for them to not mingle with men in dargahs, claiming to protect them, and on the other, they were dishonouring them by talking about their menstrual blood. (interview with Khatoon Shaikh, BMMA activist, Maharashtra Convenor, recounting her conversation with the Haji Ali trust board, 2 March 2017)

The case also inaugurated a public debate on the ashrafisation of Sufi traditions and women’s status in Islam by the Muslim clergy and the dargah trustees, in which the BMMA activists, Muslim politicians, academics, and the general public participated. There were several instances of the Muslim clergy and ashraf-dominated political class emphasising the notions of purity and pollution in justifying the prevention of women from entering the inner sanctum in debates on national news channels.9 The BMMA conducted a signature campaign in the localities where they worked to garner public support for their petition, which met with a mixed response, exposing doctrinal fault lines within Islam itself. For instance, adherents of the Tablighi Jamaat (a Deobandi Islamic missionary movement) or the Wahabis (who belong to the Salafi school) are opposed to Sufi customs, including pilgrimage to graves of holy men and saints, a view that pertains to both men and women.10 Several BMMA activists found themselves in conflict with the beliefs of their own family members. However, some Sufi dargahs also wrote letters in support of the BMMA campaign. In a verdict in August 2016, the high court held that the ban imposed by the trust, prohibiting women from entering the sanctum sanctorum of the Haji Ali Dargah, contravened Articles 14, 15 and 25 of the Constitution. Women, therefore, must be permitted to enter the sanctum sanctorum on a par with men. The state and the trust were enjoined to take effective steps to ensure the safety and security of women at the said place of worship. The Haji Ali Dargah Trust appealed in the Supreme Court following the verdict, but they were asked to uphold the Bombay High Court verdict. There are various reasons why women and even men visit a dargah. As a child it was part of recreation for me, that I will be able to go for an outing with my siblings and play. For Muslim women it is a place of recreation, they come to shrines to rest, read, pray, and cry. How can you deny her experiences? And this is not about a handful of women, the number of women who visit dargahs is huge. In spite of what the Wahabis or atheists say, a lot of people are thronging to shrines. So somewhere there is a need that these shrines cater to the psychological, social, spiritual, recreational need that is being fulfilled of both men and women. So how can you deny someone this experience even if you may not agree with it? (interview with Noorjehan Safia Niaz, BMMA founder, 16 January 2017)

What is evident from the legal battle for women’s right to worship at the Haji Ali Dargah is that Muslim women challenged patriarchal interpretations of the Quran on modesty and 83


impurity perpetrated by the male religious elite. The latter’s views on feminine piety seemed to centre around women’s bodies as sites of perpetual impurity and perverse sexual desire that were justified as Islamic. The BMMA argued for Sufism as a vibrant form of Islam, a source of tolerance and healing social ruptures, and an integral part of the spiritual cosmology of subaltern everyday life beyond religious boundaries. While the mosque is often defined as a high cultural, exclusively male domain, Sufi orders not only welcome women supplicants, initiates and adepts, but, historically, there have been prominent Sufi women saints or shaykh and some even have shrines (Werbner 2010). For Muslim women elsewhere, Sufi shrines and sanctuaries have been the locus of anti-establishment, anti-patriarchal mythical figures that provide them with a space where complaint and verbal vituperations against the system’s injustices are allowed and encouraged (Mernissi 1977). Sufism in India has been associated with countering the dominance of the ulema and ashraf in matters of faith, and Sufi shrines as places of worship often surpass mosques in popularity. Reclaiming Female Pleasure, Remaining Bohra

In 2011, a pseudonymous online petition calling for a ban on the practice of khafz or female “circumcision”11 among the Dawoodi Bohras was filed by a woman calling herself Tasleem. The Dawoodi Bohras are an Ismaili Shia sect that trace their origins to the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt, whose missionaries spread their faith in India among a few Hindu trading castes of Gujarat (Engineer 1980). The customary practice of female “circumcision” as it is practised in Asia and Africa12 has attracted much attention in the international policy arenas for the past three decades (Rahman and Toubia 2001). However, this is the first time that this issue has gained public attention in India. The petition was addressed to the spiritual head of the Dawoodi Bohra sect, appealing for an end to a barbaric practice that was un-Islamic. Nearly 3,500 supporters signed the online petition. The practice of khafz as it is known among Dawoodi Bohras is seen as a rite of passage for a young girl to “become” one of the community. Unlike male circumcision, khafz is performed on seven-year olds, through the involvement of female family members, including mothers, in secrecy and mostly done without the celebratory fanfare (Ghadially 1991). The ritual involves the removal of the clitoral hood, earlier done by community midwives, although the practice now increasingly involves professional medical practitioners certified by the clergy to address contemporary concerns of hygiene and pain reduction. Although female “circumcision” may seem to imply an analogy with male circumcision, both practices have important distinctions. Male circumcision is cutting of the foreskin from the tip of the penis without damaging the organ itself. The degree of cutting in female “circumcision” is anatomically much more extensive having far more physiological implications (Gruenbaum 2001; Toubia 1994). Another important distinction is the social and sexual message associated with the practice. Male circumcision affirms manhood with its superior social status and association to virility. Female circumcision is explicitly intended to show a 84

woman her confined role in society and restrain her sexual desires (Rahman and Toubia 2001: 4–5). Women who conform to societal role expectations gain acceptance and are socially rewarded for perpetuating the system, whereas those who defy it stand the risk of social ostracisation. The practice has severe physical and emotional implications for Dawoodi Bohra women that remain largely undocumented, although there are now compelling personal testimonies gaining visibility.13 There are several conflicting and shifting versions of the origin and justification for the practice. However, the most commonly cited within the community is that the removal of haram ki boti, literally meaning the “flesh of sin,” protects feminine modesty and purifies a girl’s genitalia. Although Tasleem’s petition was the first of its kind, a public outcry against an accepted tradition that is still widely practised in the community was difficult since the petition was pseudonymous.14 Secrecy has been the key to survival of this practice and the petition did little to break the shroud of silence. Soon after, in 2012, three people were convicted of female genital mutilation in Australia, the first of its kind based on a testimony of two young Dawoodi Bohra sisters aged six and seven. A cleric of the sect was jailed for 11 months for his part in trying to cover up the act, while the mother and the midwife who performed the ritual were sentenced to 11 months of home detention (Crawford 2016). This case was widely reported in prominent Indian English newspapers and generated a debate about the persistence of an archaic practice in an affluent and otherwise progressive Shia sect, a majority of whom reside in Mumbai. Clerics from the Dawoodi Bohra jamaats in Australia, the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and Sweden sent out letters urging diaspora community members to adhere to the law of the land.15 However, in a public sermon in Mumbai, the religious head of the community, Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, making an indirect reference to khafz said that it has to be done and that community members should not pay heed to the criticism of others (Dasi 2016). A more recent case is that of a Detroit-based doctor from the community who was arrested for circumcising two young girls from Minnesota, the first case to be penalised under the US criminal law that bans genital mutilation. Beginning in 2015, a group called Sahiyo started as a conversation between five women who felt strongly about the ritual of khafz in the Bohra community. It started as a blog, but soon turned into an important web-based resource and social media interface on the issue of female circumcision among the Dawoodi Bohra community. The founders of Sahiyo or “friends” in Lisan-ud-dawat (a Gujarati dialect and the language of Dawoodi Bohras) are a diverse group of young women professionals that comprises survivors, community members, and a non-Bohra member based in India, the US and Hong Kong. Their stated mission is “to empower Dawoodi Bohra and other Asian communities to end female genital cutting and create a positive social change through dialogue, education and collaboration based on community involvement.”16 If you are not circumcised, you are not even identified as a Bohri. The women think that by continuing the practice, they are doing something very good for their daughters. Why not think of other ways of rite of OCTOBER 28, 2017

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REVIEW OF WOMEN’S STUDIES passage for women, why should it be painful, why not something positive. In order to beat the system you have to be part of the system. I/we are very much part of the community but I do not want a group of men (clergy) telling me what to do. (interview with Aarefa Johari, Sahiyo co-founder, 16 January 2017)

Sahiyo has since been a part of several public conversations, including an online petition towards stopping the practice that has gained nearly one lakh supporters17 and media campaigns on the issue.18 Sahiyo’s activities have rapidly expanded to conducting community outreach through education, collecting and disseminating testimonies of survivors and engaging with the mainstream media for well-informed and sensitive reporting on the issue. The individual members of Sahiyo had been engaging with the practice of khafz in their own lives at a personal and/ or professional level. Two of the members happened to be filmmakers who have explored the persistence of the practice and its implications in their work, one is a journalist who has “come out,” openly writing and speaking about her experiences of being cut, one is a social worker who works on the issue among the Dawoodi Bohra diaspora in the US, leading an initiative for passing state legislation against the practice in Massachusetts, and one is a public health researcher and policy analyst. ‘Coming Out’ about Khafz

In 2015–16, Sahiyo conducted an exploratory study to understand the extent of khafz practised within the community through an online survey that revealed some startling findings. Out of the 385 Dawoodi Bohra women who participated in the study across the world, 80% experienced khafz, while 88% know a family member on whom it was performed. In spite of the high prevalence, only 7% of the respondents stated that they had no issues with the practice continuing within the community (Taher 2017). The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies female circumcision/FGM (female genital mutilation) into four types based on the extent and severity of the practice, taking into account local variations.19 One of the key concerns articulated by Sahiyo members as part of their activism against the practice of khafz was the nomenclature of the practice and the resulting orientalist, Islamophobic representations of the community. They made a decision to use female genital cutting (FGC) instead of FGM since the practice among Dawoodi Bohras, they argued, could not be clubbed with other advanced forms. Not using the word “mutilation,” they argue, gives the community a chance to be more open about the practice, giving them an opportunity to convince them to stop practising it. The concern also emanates from the fact that Dawoodi Bohras are a minority within a minority and feel the need for positive engagement from the larger Muslim community to end the practice. Stigmatising the entire community, they feel, would make matters worse since it would push an already secretive practice underground, putting young Bohra girls at greater risk. We are extremely cautious not because we are scared for ourselves, but we are scared that all the hard work that has been put so far might just fizzle away if we make one wrong move. It takes a lot of trust for people to come out and share their stories with us, and also a lot of Economic & Political Weekly

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courage. So we do not want to breach that trust. And the reason why they are coming out and talking to us is because they look at us and see that we are not antagonistic, not talking bad about the community, not saying that you know we are ashamed that we are part of that. We are just saying that please do not do this to our children, it is going to affect them badly. Building trust of the community is most crucial. Our scale is very small, we hardly exist today. We are not affecting any political movements in the country, we are not on anybody’s map, we are insignificant, so to speak. We may have a place in commerce as a trading community, but not in politics. (interview with Insia Dariwala, Sahiyo Co-founder, 5 March 2017)

Sahiyo has been generating a debate within the community by raising two main concerns: one is the issue of consent of minor girls, and the other is questioning the Islamic basis of the practice itself. Although the practice still remains rampant among the community, the manner in which it is being practised is changing, and so are the justifications for it. Khafz is often justified by the Dawoodi Bohra clergy and proponents of the practice as “good” for a woman and to ensure her modesty and purity by reducing her sexual desire. Performing the practice is associated with the attainment of social status for Dawoodi Bohra women and a societal requirement for the marriageability of women within the community.20 With the growing criticism and disillusionment within the community regarding the practice, opposition to the practice is also being justified as a way to enhance sexual and spiritual intimacy with one’s partner. The medicalisation of the practice can also be seen as a way of finding solutions to anxieties around hygiene, pain reduction, and the prevention of haemorrhage. Dawoodi Bohras are an urban community with high levels of literacy, largely belonging to the middle and upper classes. Despite being close knit, the community has a vibrant global diaspora. The members of Sahiyo strongly believe that the best strategy to eliminate the practice is to urge the community members, both men and women, to question it themselves and collectively pressurise the clergy to call for an end to the practice. I think they are so insecure that if we do away with this we are actually bowing down to the world, we are admitting that we are wrong here. There is also a lot of ego, you know, to keep [the practice] going, that they do not care what is happening to the children. So there needs to be a little compassion in people. If they could at least think about what a seven-year old goes through you might want to do something about it. Otherwise, I don’t see anything changing. (interview with Insia Dariwala, Sahiyo co-founder, 5 March 2017) I think that it is a bit about the modernisation, it’s a bit about control … in fact it is all about control. The minute you find something slipping away from your hands you want to hold on tighter to it, right? (interview with Shaheeda Tavawalla, Sahiyo co-founder, 27 March 2017)

One of the key points of the group is urging the community to see the practice of khafz as an issue of violence against girls and women, an archaic cultural practice that has to be questioned rather than blindly perpetuated. There are laws against the practice of female genital mutilation in 42 countries across Africa, Europe, US, UK, and Australia. Penalties range from a minimum of six months to a maximum of life in prison, and several countries include monetary fines in the penalty.21 The other issue to counter is the Quranic justification of the practice, which seems questionable since not all Muslims practise khafz. 85


Many scholars have argued that female circumcision or FGM is a cultural practice that predates the arrival of Christianity or Islam in Africa and is not a requirement of either religion. In fact, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and indigenous religious groups in Africa practise it (Bloch 1986; Gruenbaum 2001; Rahman and Toubia 2001; Shell-Duncan and Hernlund 2000). However, despite the fact that female circumcision or FGM is not known in many Muslim countries, it is strongly identified with Islam in several African nations and many members of the Muslim community advocate for the practice. While neither the Quran nor the Hadith include a direct call for female circumcision or FGM, debate over interpretations of statements from one hadith continue (Rahman and Toubia 2001). If it is just another form of corporeal invasion culturally prescribed for women that has continued unquestioned all these years, it is probably high time to ask why. Sahiyo members argue that although it is only fair to be sensitive to the community’s need for ritualising the body as an act of defining Bohra personhood and community identity, why does it necessarily have to be an act of violence? What might hold the key to putting an end to the practice is creating a space for and paying attention to women’s perspectives. Sahiyo’s activism has opened up a floodgate of personal testimonies on the experience of female circumcision within the community, life as a survivor, and the moral dilemmas of being part of a community that perpetrates such a practice without being able to speak out against it. Gendering the Right to Religious Equality It’s a battle of ideas and as far as that is concerned they have won it. So they indoctrinated the woman. That’s where the challenge lies, in undoing the indoctrination, in undoing that belief system […] once you win that battle the system will reverse itself. — A Dawoodi Bohra woman in the documentary A Pinch of Skin (2012) Jahan insaf nahin, wahan Islam nahin. (Where there is no justice there is no Islam). — A BMMA slogan

In October 2016, a leading English language newspaper carried a report on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election campaign for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections during which he seemed to ask a rhetorical question, “Should not Muslim sisters get equal rights?” His statement referred to the practice of triple talaq. Also reported on the same page was an update on the Haji Ali case, where the Supreme Court had given the dargah trust a period of four weeks to remove all obstructions to women’s access to the mazaar. More recently, in May 2017, Union Cabinet Minister of Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi responded to an online petition to end the practice of FGC of which Sahiyo members are a part stating that any act of cutting or nicking a girl child’s genitals is a crime under Sections 322, 325, 326 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, which includes “voluntarily causing grievous hurt and causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means which includes causing grievous hurt by means of any instrument for shooting, stabbing or cutting.”22 Clearly, the recent rise of the Hindu right has brought the debate on Muslim women’s rights to the foreground, though 86

for reasons that do not really address issues of identity-based discrimination in educational institutions, employment, public institutions, socio-economic backwardness or communal violence. Muslim women’s activism for the right to equality of religious practice in this context is caught between the antiminority patronage of the Hindu right and feelings of mistrust within the community. The BMMA is wary of becoming a pawn in the Hindu right’s quest for power. This was most apparent in the early involvement and later dissociation of Trupti Desai23 from the “Haji Ali sabke liye” (Haji Ali for everyone) campaign that was meant to bring women and men of different faiths together in support of the petition. Her aggressive campaign strategies, including well-publicised attempts to enter the Haji Ali Dargah attracted a lot of criticism from Muslim groups and politicians such as those from the Samajwadi Party and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). “Haji Ali sabke liye” was a short-lived forum comprising 20 non-governmental organisations across the state that were asking the Haji Ali Dargah Trust to withdraw the prohibition of women from the inner sanctum before the high court verdict. The forum disbanded after Trupti Desai’s aggressive campaigning overshadowed the forum’s attempts at a peaceful protest against the prohibition of women in places of worship. Both the BMMA and Sahiyo face criticism for the positions they take within their communities, with some even accusing them of being Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh agents and questioning their faith. Being from within the community has given them an opportunity to participate in a dialogue with various view points within, demonstrating new possibilities of independent reasoning and religious interpretation that include women’s voices. Their work is also largely supported financially through donations from within the community. There have been some unintended, yet favourable consequences, of the BMMA activists winning the case, who feel that their experiences of dealing with state institutions like the police have become genial, while community critics have put their doubts to rest. Despite the growing criticism, Sahiyo has also been witnessing more women speaking out on their experience of khafz. Both these groups have also found some success in involving Muslim men in their crusade for women’s rights. They continue to be engaged with the global discourses on Muslim women’s rights, both as contributors, and as the groups that who translate ideas into action on the ground. Conclusions

The two recent mobilisations of Muslim women described in this paper challenge the content, purpose, and practice of contemporary Islam in India by initiating a debate within the community and society at large about who the appropriate authority is for determining such rights? Their activities clearly challenge the authority of the male religious elite and their exclusive claim to the interpretation of the Quran and the Hadith. Their activism complicates the constitutional right to religious freedom in illustrating that different actors within a group or community can use a variety of vocabularies to make religious claims that may not necessarily be congruent. A OCTOBER 28, 2017

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different set of expectations are raised of the state on the one hand, and civil society on the other, in acknowledging and accepting the uneven and even unjust proscriptions on women’s desires, whether they are of a spiritual or a sexual kind. At the Notes 1 Caste within Muslims has been a matter of contention between textual sanction and everyday practice, where the existence of a caste-like system of social stratification seems to be a product of a dynamic interplay between the two. Ashrafs are social groups that claim nobility and/ or “foreign” origin such as sayyids (direct descendants of the Prophet’s family), Mughals, Shaikhs and Pathans. Ajlafs are middle- and low-caste Hindu converts to Islam, and arzals are those engaged in “polluting” professions or converts from ex-untouchable castes. See Barth (1969), Ahmed (1973), Bhatty (1996), and Fuller (1997). 2 One such representation is in a song of a Bollywood movie Fiza (2000). The film is about a sister’s search for her brother who disappears after the 1992–93 communal violence in Bombay. The music was composed by A R Rahman and the song, a qawwali, was picturised in Haji Ali as sung by qawwals seated in the qawwal khana at the shrine, while women devotees of all faiths are shown worshiping at the shrine. 3 http://www.hajialidargah.in/index.html. It has also been voted as one of the seven wonders of Mumbai by local English language news daily, Mumbai Mirror, 31 December 2010, https:// mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/mumbai/cover -story//articleshow/16088281.cms. 4 The president of the Haji Ali Dargah Trust disclosed that the reasons for imposing such a ban/ rule were: (i) women wearing blouses with wide necks bend on the mazaar, thus showing their breasts; (ii) for the safety and security of women; and (iii) that earlier they were not aware of the provisions of Shariat and had made a mistake, therefore they had taken steps to rectify the same. 5 Bombay High Court, Public Interest Litigation No 106 of 2014, Dr Noorjehan Safia Diaz and one Another v State of Maharashtra and Others on 26 August 2016, p 5. 6 See note 5. 7 A visit or pilgrimage to a site of religious significance such as a mosque, grave, battlefield, mountain or cave associated with prophets, Sufi saints and Islamic scholars. 8 The trustees also came up with other superficial justifications based on their interpretation of the Quran and the Hadith. The petitioners found these highly unreasonable. One of them was that the prohibition of women near the mazaar (tomb) was justifiable because women appear naked to the souls of the deceased, as was also the case in graveyards. These too did not hold good in the courts. 9 For instance, see the debate on NDTV India https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHQA6 QxoztE&t=624s and on NDTV news, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=j59wWak51Yw (viewed on 26 May 2017). 10 Although Tablighi Jamaat engages in some form of mysticism (urging disciples to a monastic way of life and to stay away from the material world), it is against the veneration of saints or tomb visits. Wahabism compares these practices to idol worship and as the adulteration of “pure” Islam. 11 Female circumcision or female genital mutilation (FGM) is a collective name given to several different traditional practices that involve the cutting of female genitals (Rahman and Toubia 2001). There has been considerable debate around the nomenclature of the practice. According to Gruenbaum (2001), the term “female genital mutilation” or FGM has become more widely Economic & Political Weekly

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same time, the activists, rather than renouncing or campaigning against the religion, have made an ethical (and sometimes legal) appeal to the custodians of religion, not necessarily out of tactical necessity, but from a deeply held belief and practice.

acceptable since the 1990s. Also used by the World Health Organization, who defines it as “procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to female genital organs for non-medical purposes,” FGM is internationally recognised as a violation of human rights of girls and women. Although the use of the term FGM has been an effective policy and advocacy tool, organisations working with communities that practice FGM have found that this term can be offensive or even shocking to women who never consider this practice a mutilation. For a detailed debate on the terminology, see Rahman and Toubia (2001). According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), female “circumcision” or khafz is practiced in 30 countries worldwide and an estimated 200 million girls and women have undergone it, although the exact number remains unknown. See https://www.unicef.org/media/files/FGMC_2016_brochure_final_ UNICEF_SPREAD.pdf, viewed on 24 June 2017. One such testimony is titled “Damaged” (2015) written by Mariya Karimjee, a freelance journalist based in Karachi. https://thebigroundtable.com/ damage-7e7b16c9814e, accessed on 1 June 2017. According to a recent survey, 80% of the women surveyed had experienced khafz (n=385). See Taher (2017). https://sahiyo.com/2016/03/08/notices-by-sydney-melbourne-and-londons-anjuman-e-burhanitrusts-on-khafd-khatna-or-female-genital-cutting/, viewed on 26 May 2017. https://sahiyo.com. This petition was started by Masooma Ranalvi a publisher and an activist based in Delhi who started the Speak out on FGM campaign. https://www.change.org/p/end-female-genitalmutilation-in-india-3, viewed on 1 May 2017. “India’s Dark Secret: Female Genital Mutilation” (2015), a video report by Hindustan Times, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKXXVi lKCwc&t=114s. “A small nick or cut they say” (2016) features voices of resistance on khafz, https://youtu.be/A5F6OT5vwwY. WHO fact sheet on female genital mutilation, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/ fs241/en/, viewed on 25 May 2017. In a documentary by one of the Sahiyo founders titled, A Pinch of Skin (2012), several Bohra women describe their experiences of khafz and the justification given for the practice. The film was awarded the Special Jury award in the short films category at the National Film Awards in 2013. http://www.unfpa.org/resources/female-genital-mutilation-fgm-frequently-asked-questions #banned_by_law viewed on 10 June 2017. http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/voices/ thank-you-minister-maneka-gandhi-for-speakingout-on-fgm/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_ medium=referral&utm_campaign=TOIOpinion. Founder of the Bhumata Brigade, a Hindu women’s group that campaigned for women’s right to enter and worship at the Shani Shingnapur Temple in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra.

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