Re-imagining Pakistan: In Search of a National Narrative Selected papers from the International Conference on Women, Religion and Politics Special Bullen 2013 Women’s Resource Centre Copyright © Shirkat Gah 2013 Edited by Shahina Hanif Designed by Muhammad Asim Printed by Creative Designing & Printing Published by Shirkat Gah - Women’s Resource Centre P.O. Box. 5192, Lahore - Pakistan E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.shirkatgah.org This publication has been made possible through the generous support of The Royal Norwegian Embassy. Contents Acknowledgements ____________________________________________________________ 4 Introducon __________________________________________________________________ 5 Refracted Dynamics of Gender, Polics and Religion _________________________________ 7 — Farida Shaheed Pakistan: A Pluralisc State? ____________________________________________________ 25 — Anita Mir Pakistan and Nature of the State: Revisionism, Jihad and Governance __________________ 41 — Khaled Ahmed Reconstrucng Patriarchies: Naonalism, Religion and Women’s Educaon ______________ 57 — Rubina Saigol Red Hot Chilli Peppers Islam: Is the Youth in Elite Universies in Pakistan Radical? _________ 85 — Ayesha Siddiqa Gender and Power: Challenges Surrounding Women’s Parcipaon in Naonal Polics ____ 113 — Amina Samiuddin Acknowledgements Shirkat Gah Women’s Resource Centre in collaboration with Heinrich Böll Stiftung, held a national conference in 2010 on “Women, Religion and Politics in Pakistan”. This was followed up with an international conference under the same theme in 2011. This publication is an outcome of this collaborative project. We would like to express our gratitude to Heinrich Böll Stiftung for their continued support and cooperation in making this publication possible. We would also like to thank the esteemed contributors – Farida Shaheed, Anita Mir, Khaled Ahmed, Rubina Saigol, Ayesha Siddiqa and Amina Samiuddin – for allowing us to publish their papers and for their constant patience and cooperation during the editing process. We would also like to thank The Royal Norwegian Embassy, as this publication has been made possible through their generous support. 4 Re-imagining Pakistan: In Search of a National Narrative Introducon The refusal of religion to remain confined to the private sphere makes it impossible to ignore its role as an important socio-political factor. From the national and regional to the global arenas, the political use of religion demands we re-examine our environment and the issues we face in the context of ‘religion and politics’. When viewed through the lens of gender it becomes clear that the political use of religion poses a major challenge to women’s representation and participation in the public domain. The rigorous regulation and politicization of the private sphere by religious actors blurs the boundaries between private and public, further challenging the struggle for gender equality and equity. Inevitably, when religion enters politics, women are the biggest losers. Recognising the significance of research and discourse in countering the status quo, Shirkat Gah Women’s Resource Centre in collaboration with Heinrich Böll Stiftung, held a national conference in 2010 on “Women, Religion and Politics in Pakistan”, and followed up with an international conference under the same theme in 2011. The aim of the conferences was to generate debate and new ideas so as to delineate possible pathways for future work on gender, development and democratization from the perspective of religion, politics, and gender. This publication brings together a selection of the papers presented at the conferences. As Farida Shaheed notes in her paper, “the religion-politics-gender nexus defies simplistic equations of the ‘1 + 1 = 2’ kind as well as the ‘if you have a, and then add b, this inevitably leads to c’ variety.” Reviewing the commonalities emerging from case studies of different countries undertaken as part of a collaborative international research project by HBS and the United Nations Research Institute on Social Sciences (UNRISD), her paper concludes that the interweaving of religion, politics and gender needs to be viewed through the lens of patriarchy. Any analysis of this nexus must focus on power dynamics as it is ultimately patriarchal structures – both religious and secular – that define the struggle for gender equality. While both pluralism and democracy value the citizen, Anita Mir feels that the added value of pluralism is that it celebrates differences and allows for a vibrant society. Examining periods in Pakistan’s history when the State imposed its own conceptualisation of ‘Muslimness’ on the nation, Mir analyses the concepts of identity and citizenship. Basing her argument on field research conducted with two minority communities in Pakistan, she proposes that instead of calling for Pakistan’s regressive Islamic laws and practices to be repealed and changed, we should be arguing from an ideal position that Pakistan become a pluralistic state. Tracing Pakistan’s path to becoming an ideological state and its move towards ‘revisionist nationalism,’ Khaled Ahmed contends that the nature of Pakistan’s nationalism was determined very early with the annexation of Kashmir by India and the subsequent Re-imagining Pakistan: In Search of a National Narrative 5 designation of India as the ‘enemy’ state. This nationalism determined the nature of the ‘revisionist’ state in Pakistan. Another aspect of Pakistani nationalism is its religious ideology. Threat perceptions are produced by the mind and national strategies by imagination on the basis of nationalism and geopolitical compulsions. Pakistan’s permanent danger is supposed to emanate from India; and, as a challenger state Pakistan is supposed to endanger India to a point where it relents on Kashmir. But the strategy of endangering India has its reverse side, that of an anticipation of counter-threat. From early days, Pakistan sought to endanger India in its tribal northwest, while India sought to endanger Pakistan in Baluchistan. From the 1990s, Pakistan enhanced its capacity to endanger and the two countries went into a whirlwind of action and reaction. Today it is difficult for most Pakistanis indoctrinated by the media to see who endangers first and who is merely ‘reactive.’ Among the fundamental human rights of every citizen is the right to education. The Hamburg Declaration of Adult Education describes the objectives of youth and adult education to be “to develop the autonomy and the sense of responsibility of people and communities … and to promote coexistence, tolerance and the informed and creative participation of citizens in their communities.” It further states, “It is essential that approaches to adult learning be based on people’s own heritage, culture, values…” Women’s education is considered essential to their empowerment and emancipation. Rubina Saigol’s research on women’s education in ‘faith-based’ organisations reveals that the curriculum and teaching methods of these organizations are designed to reinforce existing patriarchal realities, gendered division of labour and the public-private divide. Although religious organizations support women’s education, the emphasis is on a religious, conservative and patriarchal education that mass-produces good Muslim wives and mothers. She concludes that religion based education seems to be disempowering rather than empowering women. Conversely, Ayesha Siddiqa analyses the socio-political attitudes prevalent amongst youth in elite universities in three major cities of Pakistan. The study finds that the youth are prone to accept and internalize radical ideas and opinions popularised through the media. They oscillate between a socio-cultural liberal attitude and a narrow worldview in matters pertaining to geo-politics, geo-strategy and identity politics. The absence in society of an alternative discourse that would encourage independent thinking and promote the exchange of ideas and opinions is sorely felt. We repeatedly see that when religion and politics fuse, it is often women’s rights that are bartered for political expediency. The politicisation of religion creates an environment that facilitates further discrimination against women. Denied equal citizenship rights, women’s political participation also falls prey to the system. Amina Samiuddin examines the bases of women’s exclusion from the electoral process as both voters and candidates. Existing patriarchal interpretations of religion and culture create a disenabling environment for women and many women choose not to challenge the status quo. Furthermore, the internalization of this patriarchal ideology by the women themselves subsequently makes them players in reinforcing the gender stereotypes and systems that are in fact working against them. When culture and religion are used to justify women’s exclusion from political participation, she asks: in terms of cost of empowerment, what is more difficult to overcome, culture that justifies violence, threatened and actual, or the internalization of religious interpretations that views free choice as a transgression of religious laws? 6 Re-imagining Pakistan: In Search of a National Narrative Refracted Dynamics of Gender, Polics and Religion Farida Shaheed Introducon: emerging commonalies his paper draws upon my own research and pulls out some key threads that Temerge from the papers of the collaborative research project of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung and the United Nations Research Institute