Country Advice Pakistan Pakistan – PAK35842 – external advice – women – veil / purdah – marriage Background Please seek advice from ANU’s Dr Shakira Hussein on issues relating to the wearing of the veil and marriage. Questions 1 Please advise if in some cities the hijab and burqa is not commonly worn, such as Islamabad or Lahore or Karachi and whether women in those cities face any difficulties as a result. 2 Please advise if there are any laws regarding the wearing of the hijab or burqu. 3 Please advise whether the police protect women against harassment, by others and by their own family, who chose not to wear the hijab and burqua. 4 Please advise whether marriage between persons from different ethnic groups (eg: Pashtun, Punjabi, Mohajir, Sindhi, Baluchi, etc) are common and how a family might react to such a marriage. External advice On 2 December 2009 the Country Advice Service conducted an interview by telephone with Dr Shakira Hussein. Dr Hussein has appeared as a commentator on issues relating to Muslim women and veiling on a number of panels in recent years1; having undertaken field work in both Pakistan and Afghanistan as part of her recently completed doctoral dissertation on encounters between Muslim and western women.2 Dr Hussein is currently a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.3 The text below has been authorised by Dr Hussein as a 1 For examples, see: ‘The politics of the hijab’ 2009, Unleashed, ABC News, 21 April http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2548643.htm – Accessed 9 December 2009 – Attachment 1; ‘Should We Ban the Burka?; 2009, Australian National University website, 15 July http://www.anu.edu.au/discoveranu/content/podcasts/should_we_ban_the_burka/ – Accessed 9 December 2009 – Attachment 2; ‘Why is there fear and friction between Muslims and non-Muslims?’ 2007, Difference of Opinion, ABC News, 2 April http://www.abc.net.au/tv/differenceofopinion/content/2007/s1887181.htm – Accessed 9 December 2009 – Attachment 3. 2 For further background on Dr Hussein’s research work and views, see: Cambourne, K. 2008, ‘Fly into your fieldwork’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 April http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/fly-into-your- fieldwork/2008/04/11/1207856832463.html – Accessed 9 December 2009 – Attachment 4; Hussein, S. 2007, ‘The Limits of Force/Choice Discourses in Discussing Muslim Women’s Dress Codes’, Transforming Cultures eJournal, vol.2: no.1, November http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/TfC/article/view/612/547 – Accessed 9 December 2009 – Attachment 5; Hussein, S. 2009, ‘Face-veiling: a “conversation” between Islam and the West’, Australian National University website, 24 July http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/blogs/southasiamasala/2009/07/24/face-veiling-a-conversation-between-islam-and- the-west/ – Accessed 6 November 2009– Attachment 8. 3 ‘Speakers: Shakira Hussein’ (undated), Adelaide Festival of Ideas, 9–12 July 2009 http://www.adelaidefestivalofideas.com.au/speaker_20.htm – Accessed 9 December 2009 – Attachment 7; ‘Experts List: Hussein, Dr Shakira’ (undated), Australian National University website http://info.anu.edu.au/ovc/media/experts_list/_searchresults.asp – Accessed 9 December 2009 – Attachment 8. 1 record of the advice which she provided in her 2 December 2009 telephone conversation with the Country Advice Service.4 1 Please advise if in some cities the hijab and burqa is not commonly worn, such as Islamabad or Lahore or Karachi and whether women in those cities face any difficulties as a result. Dr Shakira Hussein advised as follows in a telephone interview of 2 December 2009: It is difficult to give a quantified estimate in response to this question as practices differ according to circumstance, suburb and family traditions. Clearly a visitor to Pakistan’s major cities will see plenty of women getting about unveiled and women in Pakistan who are full-time face veilers are in the minority. Nevertheless, most women will get about in public with at least a scarf draped about their shoulders and, under different circumstances, that scarf will be pulled up over their heads or even over their faces (either because they feel the need for a greater deal of security or because they are under scrutiny of some kind). For those women who do cover themselves completely, and who wear either the niqab or the shuttle-cock burqa, there can be a range of factors associated with such behaviours. It may, for instance, stem from a particular family tradition. It may be associated with a revivalist trend which is taking off among some affluent educated women in Pakistan, or it may be a consequence of living in a poorer suburb. A woman who goes unveiled will generally experience few complications if, firstly, her family and larger network are accepting of this behaviour and, secondly, if the woman does not move outside of this network. On the street, however, and especially in certain suburbs of Pakistan’s cities, an unveiled woman could find herself being chastised by strangers or the victim of sexual harassment (as some Pakistani communities see un-veiled women as being promiscuous and deserving of such treatment). If a woman’s family, and immediate social network, was not accepting of a woman’s going unveiled it is likely that family members would bring considerable pressure to bear in order to regulate the woman’s behaviour. Violence could be a part of such pressure. It is unlikely that there are any specific statistics available upon violence of this kind but statistics on “honour” related violence would serve as a good guide of the extent to which such violence may be taking place in certain locales. For a woman whose family has a culturally or religiously conservative tradition of purdah, veiling can be a way of negotiating greater mobility. Wearing a full dupatta can be the means by which a woman who belongs to such a family can negotiate permission to attend university unescorted or even to travel overseas for her education (and is arguably akin to the kind of process that Deniz Kandiyoti has labelled “patriarchal bargaining”). This noted, if such a woman did travel overseas and if the family were strict about such matters it is likely that the woman would have to live within an extended family network living in the overseas destination or within a family network of which her own family approved.5 2 Please advise if there are any laws regarding the wearing of the hijab or burqu. Dr Shakira Hussein advised as follows in a telephone interview of 2 December 2009: I have asked around about this with a number of contacts but no one I have spoken with is aware of any such laws. If any such laws were in existence, such as those which existed under the Zia regime, I think it is likely that the MMA coalition would have attempted to make something of such laws as part of their revivalist campaign. I cannot recall any reports of the MMA making reference to any such laws during their time in government in the NWFP. It should be noted, however, that both customary norms and formal laws could play a role in circumstances where a specific community wished to regulate a woman’s behaviour in this regard. Laws which have no explicit connection with the wearing of the veil could be made use 4 Hussein, S. 2009, Email to RRT: ‘PAK3584 Record of Conversation’, 7 December – Attachment 9. 5 RRT Country Advice Service 2009, Record of Conversation with Dr Shakira Hussein of the Australian National University on 2 December 2009, 2 December – Attachment 10. 2 of in such a way as to assist in compelling a woman to wear the veil or to adhere to whatever other family norms she might be in violation of.6 3 Please advise whether the police protect women against harassment, by others and by their own family, who chose not to wear the hijab and burqua. Dr Shakira Hussein advised as follows in a telephone interview of 2 December 2009: If such a woman turned to the local police for protection from her family it could not be guaranteed that local police would provide such assistance. It is in fact more likely that local police would side with the wishes the offending woman’s family. The level of local influence held by the woman’s family, as well as the caste and affluence of the various actors involved, can often determine how such incidents will play out.7 4 Please advise whether marriage between persons from different ethnic groups (eg: Pashtun, Punjabi, Mohajir, Sindhi, Baluchi, etc) are common and how a family might react to such a marriage. Dr Shakira Hussein advised as follows in a telephone interview of 2 December 2009: Marriage outside your own ethnic community is generally disapproved of by most Pakistani families. Arranged marriages within a person’s own ethnic community tend to be the norm. This is very much the case across Pakistan as a whole. Western observers are often surprised to discover that affluent urban Pakistani families (who may otherwise seem outwardly no different to a Western family in their dress and behaviours) will nonetheless still expect their children to meet the expectation of entering into an arranged marriage with a partner from their own ethnic community. Some inter-ethnic marriage does occur, with family approval, where there are family connections of a caste and/or tribal nature but, generally speaking, marriages of this kind are not the norm. Moreover, love marriages which transgress family expectations can result in considerable family pressure being brought to bear. Again, violence could be a part of such pressure. In instances where the male partner to the marriage was from an ill-regarded community or caste then he, as much as the female partner to the marriage, could likely find himself the subject of a violent reprisal.