Tradition and Honour
You want tradition? Here’s some tradition.
In this quiet northern valley, tucked into the Himalayan foothills, tradition and threats have forced Shad into an electoral profile so low it is almost invisible. She will never leave this high-walled compound to canvass votes, never knock on a single door…And even if Shad wins a seat in Lower Dir, an arch-conservative corner of North West Frontier Province, there is no guarantee the local Pashtun men will allow her to occupy it.
They don’t like the idea, you see. It’s not the tradition.
Since 2001 four women councillors have been killed in Frontier province. The latest victim died in June. Zubeida Begum, a veteran women’s rights campaigner, was shot nine times at her home in Upper Dir, close to Shad Begum’s home. The gunmen, who included one of her own relatives, also killed her 19-year-old daughter.
Thorough.
Hostility has been stoked by tribal and religious leaders who view women politicians as an insult to Pashtun custom and an unforgivable affront to Islam. “There is no place for a woman’s authority under sharia law,” says Maulana Hifz ur-Rehman, a cleric and former jihadi fighter who runs a madrasa on a mountain slope outside Ziarat Talash.
No, of course not, for obvious reasons – because men’s authority is so much more wise, and just, and compassionate.
Still, intimidation and social pressure is rife. Shad Begum says she has been tarred as a “Jewish conspirator” in a whispering campaign against her family because her aid agency receives help from western donors. “They say we are brazen people without honour,” says her brother, Shad Muhammad, whose pharmacy in Ziarat Talash has been attacked. “They say you want to take your women into the streets, and take ours with them.” Shad says the struggle is worth it. In the cloistered, tradition-bound world of Lower Dir, where women hardly dare step on the street, access to health and education is woeful. The district has just three female doctors for a population of more than 800,000; hardly any girls attend school; and so-called “honour killings” are common.
Honour. What a joke.
You could add this too.
I wish the postmodernist multiculturalist types would tell us which of the many conflicting, contradictory ‘traditions’ are the real ones, and why. And why women’s rights must take a back seat to them. It seems that women count for less not only among many Third World tribesmen, but also among our own intellectuals.
Thanks, George, that’s a great article. Different from anything I’ve seen from Ziauddin Sardar before.
“And why women’s rights must take a back seat to them.”
And why women’s rights get labelled ‘Western’ and ‘monologic conception of Enlightenment’ as if only ‘Western’ women object to being bullied and beaten up and gangraped and murdered.
Hmmn, I often encounter this argument from apologists for muslim sexism: there have been far more muslim female heads of state , re Bangladesh(2), Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, than in western nations, so muslim oppression of women does not really exist.
Well, they often neglect to mention that, apart from Tansu Ciller, all the rest basically inherited their positions from a dead father or husband and in fact are profound examples of deeply patriachal and sexist, not to mention feudal, societies.
Same goes for Indira Gandhi and the Srilankan and Philippine versions- either they or their mothers had to sleep with men of power to get where they went and in ALL cases, each and every one of them was a hopeless leader.
I suppose it would be ungenerous of me to say: “Put them all to the sword. Allah will know His own.”
And why women’s rights get labelled ‘Western’ and ‘monologic conception of Enlightenment’ as if only ‘Western’ women object to being bullied and beaten up and gangraped and murdered.
Yes, that is sort of what I had in mind when I referred to contradictory or conflicting ‘traditions’in the Third World. We in the west don’t often hear about Third World feminists, but they are there, they do exist, and it is depressing, not to say infuriating, that we pay so little attention to them.
Hey! Thanks OB for quoting me, but might it be suggested that, not only is that not the “proper” application of the phrases, but “that” is not the real context in which they occur. The actual suggestion was that there are a complex variety of societal situations in which conflicts arise,- such that historical understandings are relevant toward resolving conflicts,- but in different ways in terms of the different (poltitical-economic) societies involved and their shameful reproductive “imperatives”. The corresponding suggestion about dialogue is that it involves an acceptance, willy-nilly, of wherever people stand, as its basic condition, not only because dialogue is productive of new information and corresponding perspectives, but because dialogue inevitably involves meta-communication, communication about how communication occcurs, and thus how the relations established by communication occur or might be altered. The notion that such a view might be an endorsement of violence against women, whether named or unnamed, is a malicious slander, while evading any complicity in much broader deployments of violence, and any question of the specificities involved in the development of particular (civil) societies, whether domestic or abroad.
“because dialogue is productive of new information and corresponding perspectives,”
Oh no it isn’t. Not when it’s engaged in by people who simply ignore questions they don’t know how to answer and resort to accusations of “malicious slander” instead.
Look, Halasz, I took you seriously enough to make several points in reply on the ‘Strident’ thread – the one where you wrote a book – and you can’t be bothered to answer, yet you deliver a lecture on what dialogue is?
Well don’t stop there. Give us a lecture on clarity and economy in writing, and one on not being boring, and one on humility, and one on cogency, and one on honesty in argument.
“…only ‘Western” women object to being bullied and beaten up and gangraped and murdered”- Do you really think that there’s anyone that believes that? Or is that not rather a blatently excessive rhetorical deployment of strident ad hominem invective to shore up a “position” by “proving” an imaginary point? When you command that we should support progressive individuals and programs abroad, is there any operationally specific meaning to the generic “support”, other than affirmation of your own point of view?
No, that is not what that is.
You said “But precisely here, undifferentiated polemics against Islam in general, from outside of any of its auspices, and peremptory demands that its adherents comply forthwith to Western norms, (as we define them), are only likely to prove counter-productive.”
You didn’t bother saying what you meant by “Western norms.” I took your very long unparagraphed diatribe to be a comment on what I’ve been arguing here (as opposed to simply an arbitrary surrealistic outburst, which perhaps it was). What I’ve been arguing here is that non-Western women object to being bullied and beaten up and gangraped and murdered – so that is what I took you to be disagreeing with. How am I supposed to know what you believe? As I have pointed out some four hundred times now, you don’t write clearly. I made several specific rejoinders to your long diatribe, which you ignored. You can’t both refuse to answer rejoinders, and accuse me of blatently excessive rhetorical deployment of strident ad hominem invective. That’s called having it both ways.
In short, Halasz, you’re a troll. You refuse to argue honestly and you drag down the level of discussion. I’m just about ready to ban you. If you want to take part in the discussion, you have to answer objections – you can’t just keep dropping in to deposit a new egg each time and never engage with the reactions. That’s your ultimatum: either engage in a dialogue rather than a monologue, or be banned.
The plot thickens….
OB,
JCH may well be a hitwith incomprehensiblyturgidproseandrun operator but what point exactly are you making with the ultimatum you just delivered?
What is your general policy on banning?
Mira, I’m not making a point, just doing a little managing. After a year and a half, I’ve had enough combined hit-and-run and vituperation. I don’t have a general policy. But I think a year and a half is a generous allowance of time for a troll.
The child in Halasz is cathected.