*Sightings* 10/28/2010

*Religious Language and Women ¢â‚¬â„¢s Rights in Afghanistan*

– Helena Zeweri

Taliban officials have been engaging in secret talks with the Karzai
government to converge towards a prospective peace deal, according to a *
Washington** Post *report. In another report in the *Toronto Star*, Jennifer
Rowell, head of policy and advocacy for Care International in Afghanistan
expressed concern over the Afghan government ¢â‚¬â„¢s possible reconciliation with
Taliban militants, including the potential sacrifices of women ¢â‚¬â„¢s rights in
negotiations. She is not alone.

Almost nine years after the initial entry of American forces into
Afghanistan, the condition of Afghan women ¢â‚¬â„¢s rights remains precarious. Some
of the fears that have re-emerged in recent weeks among Afghan women ¢â‚¬â„¢s
rights proponents might stem, in part, from the possibility of intense
structural violence inflicted on women in the name of religion. In recent
years, however, women ¢â‚¬â„¢s activist organizations have come to realize that
religion does not have to be a tool of oppression.

Religious language could be used to articulate one ¢â‚¬â„¢s rights as an individual
and a contributing member of society. Many Afghan women-run organizations,
as of late, are encouraging the use of an Islamic language rooted in women’s
own religious worldviews, practices, and philosophies, to achieve long-term
rights (i.e. the right to be protected from emotional violence and the right
to choose one ¢â‚¬â„¢s profession, among others) along with so-called  ¢â‚¬Å“priority
rights ¢â‚¬  (i.e. the right to security, the right to freedom of movement, among
others).

For example, some Afghan women NGO leaders have vocalized in public
conferences that education, economic development, and social mobility are
hindered by the lack of public meeting spaces for women that would be
conducive for political and social organizing. This has prompted activists
to discuss the creation of women’s mosques that could serve as spaces in
which to discuss the relationship between religious rhetoric and democratic
governance and women’s roles within the family and larger society.

Women have also been increasingly enrolling in Kabul University to study
law, Arabic, and Islam in order to develop the discursive equipment to
potentially challenge prevailing attitudes about women’s familial and other
social roles. Engagement with religious texts and language has been
channeled towards advocacy, fundraising, and awareness raising efforts,
including the formation of mosque groups that gather women together for
sermons on women’s rights according to Islamic texts.

Using religious language to justify certain avenues for women’s social
advancement should be seen by activist organizations in Afghanistan as one
part of a multidimensional approach towards better enabling Afghan women to
transform how they perceive and practice their agency in different settings.
According to a briefing paper released in 2005 by the Afghanistan Research
and Evaluation Unit (AREU), the symbolic participation of women in public
institutions is too often positioned as a measure of success–the creation
of physical space for women or the numbers of women present at public
forums, such as *shuras *(local councils) are typically used to show
progress towards gender equality, even though women do not necessarily play
a greater role in such institutions’ decision-making processes.

The use of religious language has proven, for some, to be an effective tool
for justifying their ability to make decisions within these spaces, thus
contributing towards a more tangible vision of gender equity rather than
gender equality only. Activists have vocalized that the actions of Muslim
women like Khadija, the Prophet Muhammad’s first wife and ‘A’isha, a later
wife, serve as prime examples of women taking control of their economic
lives and marital choices, and thus legal precedents for women ¢â‚¬â„¢s agency in
these realms.

The AREU report also suggests that some Afghan women perceive themselves as
unfit for making decisions within local, social institutions due to a
perceived lack of knowledge of community. More opportunities to increase
women ¢â‚¬â„¢s knowledge of Islamic texts may contribute to the development of a
stronger sense of self and increased ownership over articulations of what
progress means for them.

The use of religious language through both formal education in Islamic
jurisprudence and the organization of more informal social spaces to discuss
religious texts must be accompanied by more locally nuanced approaches by
NGOs and top-down approaches that establish legislation that offers actual
consequences for systematic violence against women. Positioning religious
language as a mechanism to claim agency can be used as a way to tackle some
of the more deeply entrenched challenges women face that infrastructure
development and humanitarian assistance cannot directly affect–that of
negative self-perceptions and adherence to systems of subordination, gender
hierarchies, and family politics that are reinforced in realms in which laws
do not always have direct impact, most notably the home. The use of
religious language as an alternative paradigm for articulating rights should
not be viewed as promoting the language of subordination or as an apologetic
stance towards oppression, but rather as a way for women to assert power in
a more easily legible and decipherable way within some local contexts.

*References*

Karen DeYoung, Peter Finn, and Craig Whitlock,  ¢â‚¬Å“Taliban in Talks with Karzai
Government, ¢â‚¬ 
*The **Washington** Post*, October 6, 2010.

Olivia Ward,  ¢â‚¬Å“Alarm bells sound for women ¢â‚¬â„¢s rights in
Afghanistan, ¢â‚¬ 
*The Toronto Star*, October 6, 2010.

Margaret Mills and Sally Kitch,  ¢â‚¬Å“  ¢â‚¬ËœAfghan Women Leaders Speak ¢â‚¬â„¢: An Academic
Activist Conference, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Ohio
State University, November 17-19, 2005, ¢â‚¬  NWSA journal 18, no. 3 (2006):
191-201.

Masuda Sultan, *From Rhetoric to Reality: Afghan Women on the Agenda for
Peace* (Hunt Alternatives Fund,2005).

Shawna Wakefield with Brandy Bauer, *A Place** at the Table: Afghan Women,
Men, and Decision-making **Authority* (Afghanistan Research and Evaluation
Unit, 2005).

*Helena Zeweri* is Director of Research for Femin Ijtihad ¢â‚¬â„¢s New York
Chapter. She received her MA in Near Eastern Studies from New York
University.

———-

*Correction: *Monday ¢â‚¬â„¢s *Sightings* incorrectly mentioned  ¢â‚¬Å“the world ¢â‚¬â„¢s 13
billion Muslims and 60 percent of the world ¢â‚¬â„¢s billion Christians. ¢â‚¬  The
Muslim population worldwide is about 1.57 billion and there are more than
two billion Christians, according to 2009 reports by the Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life and the World Christian Database.

———-

*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Centerat the University of
Chicago Divinity School.

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