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Zainah Anwar Tavaana Interview Transcript

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Zainah Anwar Tavaana Interview Transcript Zainah Anwar Tavaana Interview Transcript Vision and Motivation I’m Zainah Anwar. I’m a founding member of Sisters in Islam and currently I am a member of the board and I’m also the director of Musawah, which is a new group or movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. [My motivation is] injustice, you know, that women suffer. And the idea that discrimination, unfair treatment of women, is justified with the name of Islam, is something I could not accept. I was brought up as a Muslim and believing the idea that God is just, that Islam is just, and to be confronted by injustices as an adult justified in the name of Islam…for me, it was really outrageous. And the choice before me then, well, either you reject the religion in order to continue with the belief that women are human beings of equal rights and dignity, or really examine whether the religion, as these people in authority say, discriminates against women and is unjust towards women, and that men have the right to beat their wives, to take four wives, to demand obedience from their wives, and all these are supposedly sanctified by the religion, and you begin to question those assertions. And I wanted to remain a Muslim; leaving Islam was not even an issue. I want to be a Muslim and be both a Muslim and a feminist, and I don’t see any contradictions in there. So that’s why I made the decision then to really read the religious text again in order to find where is this justification for discrimination against women in the text? And that whole process of going back to the text again as a feminist with these questions in mind, it really opened up a new world and a new understanding, realizing that the Quran talks about justice, about compassion, about mercy, about men and women being each other’s guardian, and men and women being each other’s protector. There are many messages in the Quran and verses in the Quran that really opens itself to be interpreted as promoting gender equality and the relationships of kindness, compassion and understanding between men and women, and not a relationship of dominance of a man over a woman. Well then, given the fact that so much of the discrimination against women was justified in the name of Islam, we felt it was important that we shared this understanding of Islam that promotes equality and dignity and justice for women. We wanted to share with the public that there’s a different interpretation, an alternative understanding, to challenge the dominance of the orthodoxy, where women are treated as lesser human beings. So we felt that it was important, given the rise of political Islam, given the organization of groups that are really using Islam to perpetuate discrimination against women and to attack women’s groups for wanting change and wanting equality and justice and accusing us of being anti-God and anti- www.tavaana.org Sharia. We wanted to create a public voice in the public space where women like this engage in the discourse of Islam, that it’s not the monopoly of only those in authority, whether in government or in religious authority. Leadership I think there are many things: the ability to inspire, the ability to influence, the ability to listen is extremely important, to be inclusive of others. The ability to listen to others, to inspire others, to bring everybody together for a common cause. Goals and Objectives Well, I really want a world in which women are treated as human beings of equal worth and dignity. That is the objective, and I am outraged that there are people out there who use religion to justify women’s oppression and women’s discrimination. And how could you reduce God, you know…I mean, for me Islam is a just religion, God is a just God, and God cannot be God if God is unjust. So for me that is an article of faith. And to actually come across people who use religion to perpetuate injustice and discrimination is totally…I mean, I’m just outraged at that, and I have arrived to my claim, on my God that is just, and to my religion that is just, and to challenge those who use the religion in these unjust ways. For example, when we were campaigning for the Domestic Violence Act in Malaysia to make domestic violence a crime, we faced objections from the religious authority saying that this act cannot apply to the Muslims, it can apply to the non-Muslims of Malaysia, to the Chinese and Indians of Malaysia, but it cannot apply to Muslims, because in Islam, a man is a allowed to beat his wife, to discipline his wife. So therefore this act is “un-Islamic,” and it cannot apply to Muslims. And we campaign against that understanding of Islam. In fact, the first booklet that we did…One of the strategies that we use is to write question-and-answer booklets on these contentious issues; do Muslim men have the right to beat their wives? That’s one of the first booklets that we produced, and the other one “Are men and women equal before God, before Allah?” And so we campaigned and argued against the religious authorities’ position that a man has the right to beat his wife in Islam, therefore the law cannot apply to Muslims. We created a public space, we engaged with the media and demanded…you cannot have a country which has one set of laws that promote and protect the rights of non-Muslim women and their right to be treated as human beings of equal worth and dignity, and for Muslim women supposedly in the name of Islam, it is ok for a Muslim man to beat his wife. So it is a crime for a Chinese man to beat his wife, for www.tavaana.org one set of citizens, and for another set of citizens, it’s ok and Islamic. And this is totally unacceptable. So we were engaged with other women’s groups in a very public campaign of naming and shaming that in the end, we got the government, because of the public pressure and the support from the media that we got, we got the government then to finally agree that this law should apply to all citizens irrespective of religion. Civic Environment You know, constitutionally, Malaysia is a democracy, but of course there are many weaknesses in that democracy, and it’s challenging to create that space. But I think what has made a difference is the support that we got from the media. That’s extremely important, because without that support from the media, it would have been difficult for us to create that public voice, because, you know, who are we? We don’t have traditional religious authority, we don’t have access to mosques, to prayer houses where we can reach out to people, so we had to create our own authority and actually confer on ourselves the authority to speak on matters of religion, and to use the media to get our voice heard in the public space. And that has been actually a very effective strategy in getting our voice heard, in getting our positions out there in the public space. And then, because we were making comments on all these issues, we created a voice for ourselves, and it’s come to the point now where whenever an issue on Islam comes up, it’s not just the religious authorities, they’re not the sole reference point for the media and for the public; we have also become a reference point, so they come to us and ask for our position and our opinion, and that influences public policy and the debate on these issues. Audience It really depends… In terms of advocacy work for legal reform, we engage with the government to try to influence the policy makers, but at the same time, we realize that politicians are not going to change without public support and public outrage. I mean, all these men lead very privileged lives, and why would they want to see any change in that privileged status? So creating that public outrage is extremely important, so it’s a multipronged approach where we lobby the policy makers, the decision makers, the members of parliament in terms of reform we want, but at the same time, we also build alliances among women’s groups to speak up on the subject, so that there’s that public voice out there that is clamoring for change. So it’s a multipronged approach of decision makers, law makers, religious leaders, and the public constituency, creating that public constituency to support change and demand for change. www.tavaana.org Supporters and Opponents It’s kind of hard to generalize. I guess typically, many, many women, of course, support the work that we do; women who have suffered discrimination, women who have not suffered discrimination but know that the world out there is an unjust world. And there are men as well, and some religious people within the establishment who are also very supportive, but I would say that generally, it would be progressive women and men who want change and who want to see a better world …I think it’s interesting as well that as women, we’ve seen increasing support from men, because many men now have daughters who are high achievers, and I think that’s very interesting, because many of the sons that they thought would be the ones who are going to succeed and do well in university and do well in life…Many men are actually seeing that it’s their daughters who have more focus, who are actually doing well in school, who enter university, are getting into professions, being very responsible children.
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