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 Listen To The Muslim Woman’s Voice:
India’s largest minority population
lives in poverty and socio-economic exclusion even after 62 years of
Independence. Muslims live in ghettos across the country with a
persistent feeling of fear and insecurity.....Read
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Countering the stereotypical image of
Muslim women as silent victims of patriarchy, the award-winning film
‘Shifting Prophecy’ highlights the struggle launched by a group of
Tamil Muslim women, led by the charismatic Daud Shareefa Khanum, to
have their muffled voices heard and to fight misogyny in the name of
Islam.
The film traces the origins of STEPS,
a women’s group based in the town of Puddukotai in Tamil Nadu, and
goes on to detail its remarkable efforts in mobilizing Muslim women
for their rights. It focuses in particular on Khanum and her own
story—the daughter of a Tamil Muslim couple who got separated soon
after her birth, who, defying all odds, went on to study at the
Aligarh Muslim University and then, on her return to Tamil Nadu,
immersed herself wholeheartedly in seeking to redress and protest
against the grievances of her fellow Muslim women.
Footage of public rallies bringing
together large numbers of these women, burkha-clad or demurely
dressed in dupattas wound round their heads, depict the traumas that
many of them have undergone. Breaking the veil of silence that has
been sought to be imposed on them and defying deeply-rooted
patriarchal customs, these women boldly relate their heart-rending
tales—of being married off to drunkards, drug-addicts, womanizers
and even, in one case, a murderer, against their will, of suffering
beatings, demands for exorbitant dowries and brutal torture, and off
being cast away by the mere pronouncement of the word talaq—now,
thanks to new technology, even through email and SMS. A common theme
runs through their tragic stories—the total indifference to their
plight, simply on account of them being women, of jamaat committees,
consisting entirely of males and based in local mosques, that
generally arbitrate in cases of marital dispute.
The film then shifts to outlining the
story of the origins of the Tamil Nadu Muslim Women’s Jamaat, led by
the redoubtable Khanum, who has received numerous awards for her
work. Khanum describes how the failure of the mosque-based jamaat
committees to sensitively respond to women’s issues forced her and
her colleagues to set up their own all-women’s jamaat some years
ago. Their jamaat meets once a month, where women collectively
study the Quran themselves (free from patriarchal
misinterpretations), and deal with cases of marital disputes and
other such problems that women face. So far, Khanum and her
colleagues have taken up some 10,000 petitions, trying to solve them
through mutual consultation or, if that fails, through the police
and the courts.
To galvanise their work, Khanum and
her team are now in the process of setting up their own women’s
mosque, where they can pray (in contrast to other mosques, where,
contrary to the practice at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, women
are generally debarred from worshipping), and discuss their own
issues and problems. At the same time, the group carries on with its
demand that existing mosque jamaat committees should also have
women’s representatives, something that is totally absent today.
Accused by traditionalist clerics
(some of who appear in the film) of being ‘anti-Islamic’, Khanum
repeatedly clarifies that she and her colleagues are all acting
within the Islamic framework, demanding the rights that Islam has
given women but which Muslim men, impelled by a distorted
interpretation of the faith, have snatched from them. ‘Many Muslim
women are even denied the right to their own identity, the freedom
to express themselves, their self-respect, all this based on wrong
interpretations of Islam,’ she stresses. Dowry, forced marriage,
arbitrary divorce, wife-beating and denying women the right to
worship in mosques—all of these, she points out, have no sanction in
Islam. The film reinforces this claim with a short interview with
the noted Mumbai-based Islamic scholar, Asghar Ali Engineer, who
expresses his solidarity with Khanum and her group.
Since her group’s demands are all
perfectly Islamically-legitimate, Khanum insists, the issue is not a
religious one, unlike what her detractors argue, Khanum insists.
‘Its simply about power’, she claims—some men, who have for long
misused Islam for their own power, just don’t fancy the idea of
power slipping out of their hands. That, in short, is the crux of
this extremely inspiring film.
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