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| Morality: For Women and Girls
Only? Asma Barlas Why does the government believe that the
moral level of the citizenry can be improved simply by forcing girls to
wear headscarves and not listen to music? According to a recent report,
“Karachi’s city government will soon make it compulsory for girl
students in schools and colleges, under it, to cover their heads with
scarves, and music will be banned in vans carrying them,” all in an
effort to “improve morality in society,” per MMA Nazim Naimatullah
Khan (Daily Times, January 4, 2003). It is reassuring to hear that the
government is determined to improve morality in a society that has become
notorious for its “honour killing” rampages and panchayat-authorised
gang rapes of peasant girls. What is unclear, however, is why the
government believes that the moral level of the citizenry can be improved
simply by forcing girls to wear headscarves and not listen to music. In
the absence of measures to ensure morality on the part of boys and men,
what purpose can scarves and the banning of music for girls serve? Why
have the boys (and men) been left out of these efforts to “improve
morality?” Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, whenever
Muslim patriarchies have had to contend with issues of sexual morality,
they have been able to do no better than to create two separate and
unequal moral spheres, one for women and girls and the other for men and
boys. This is because historically patriarchies have assumed that morality
and, indeed the fate of civilisation itself, hinges on women or, what is
truer to say, on how well men can define, limit, and control women’s
behaviour. The fear is that, left to themselves, women will cause the
moral collapse of civilisation because of their weak and sinful natures. Such misogynistic views of women date from
the time of the ancient Athenians who linked women to what was dark and
“unspeakable” in human nature, viewed their bodies as evil, polluting,
and open to demonic possession, and believed that they threatened male
order, life, and sanity (Ruth Padel, “Women: Models for Possession by
Greek Daemons.” In Images of Women in Antiquity, edited by Averil
Cameron and Amelie Kuhrt. London: Routledge, 1993: 3-4). For centuries,
women also have been associated with sex, thought of as “an overpowering
force which the social/moral/medical has to control” (Jeffrey Weeks,
Sexuality and its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985: 8). Men therefore sought to
control women by veiling and secluding them and routinely committing
horrendous acts of violence against them. Such views have percolated down into
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim representations of women as “unclean,
sinful, and debilitating” as well (Kate Millett, Sexual Politics. New
York: Doubleday, 1970: 51). Among early Christians, for example, women
were veiled in order to protect men’s sexual virtue which was seen to
lie in sexual renunciation and abstinence even though many Christians also
had a “grossly male view of sexuality” that justified male sexual
abuse of women as a way to obtain sexual release (Geoffrey Parrinder,
Sexual Morality in the World’s Religions. Oxford: One World, 1996: 226). Conservative Muslims too view women as
morally lax, corrupt/ing and unclean and this is the basis on which they
demand that women cover their heads, and even their faces, hands, and feet
and remain in their homes, even though the Qur’an does not describe
women as morally or sexually corrupt/ing, or dangerous, or unclean or
explicitly mandate covering their head, face, hands, and feet, or advocate
domestic seclusion. Alongside this debased view of women, many Muslims
have an equally debased view of male sexuality which they regard as out of
control and in need of free outlet even though the Qur’an repeatedly
counsels modesty and restraint on the part of both the sexes. For
instance: Say to the believing men I do an extensive analysis of these ayat in
“Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of
the Qur’an (University of Texas Press, 2002). Here I will note only that
even on a cursory reading two things are clear. First, while the Qur’an
distinguishes between women’s and men’s dress, it does not suggest
that modesty lies only in how women dress or behave. Rather, one half of
its injunctions on modesty have to do with men’s dress and behaviour and
the other half with women’s; the two are mutually defining and
inseparable. Secondly, neither in these ayat nor in any others, does the
Qur’an tie modesty of dress on the part of women to the idea that women
are weak, unclean, sinful, or evil temptresses from whom men have to be
protected. Nor does the Qur’an suggest that men have been endowed with
an out of control libido that they can indulge in whatever way they want,
a view that also puts the onus on women to veil and seclude themselves in
order to protect themselves from barbaric and unIslamic conduct on the
part of men. In a truly Islamic society, men would not assume that
morality lies in how women dress and not in how they themselves view women
or behave towards them. Unhappily, however, Muslims have fallen into the impious and opportunistic habit of reading the Qur’an selectively, piecemeal, and in a decontextualised and misogynistic way. Otherwise, which ayat do they read as allowing men to circumscribe what women should wear or hear while letting their own dress and behaviours go unregulated? Asma Barlas is Associate Professor and Chair of Politics at Ithaca College, New York Source: |