Challenges to Secular Feminism in Pakistan

Ms. Afiya Zia

Ms. Zia argues in this talk (and the paper upon which this talk is based) that there has been a significant turn in the discourse of feminist politics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. She looks at the rise of a new feminism - rooted in Islamic discourse, non-confrontational, privatized and personalized, whose objective is to "empower" women within Islam. This is not post-9/11 but rather a result of unresolved debates on the issue of religion within the progressive women's movement. Ms. Zia suggests it has been the internal inconsistency of the political strategies as well as the personal, Muslim identities of secular feminists that has allowed for Islamic feminists to redefine the feminist agenda in Pakistan. Zia voices the larger concern over the rise of a new generation of Islamic revivalist feminists who seek to rationalize all women's rights within the religious framework and render secular feminism irrelevant. The danger is that a debate such as this will be premised on a polarized 'good' vs 'bad' Muslim woman, such that women who abide by the liberal interpretation of theology will be pitted against those who follow a strict and literal interpretist mode and associate themselves with male religio-political discourse. This is only likely to produce a new, radicalized, religio-political feminism dominating Pakistan's political future.

Bio

As part of a generation that may be called Pakistan's 'children of dictatorship', Afiya S Zia has been part of pro-democracy activism in the country that has opposed successive military dictatorships. As a student in a women's college in Lahore in 1990, she became an active member of Women's Action Forum, which directly challenged Gen Zia ul Haq's misogynistic and discriminatory religious state.

Afiya Zia read for her Master's in Women's Studies at the University of York, UK where she wrote her master's thesis on the cultural impact of the discriminatory religious laws in Pakistan and which was later published (Sex Crime in the Islamic Context; Rape, Class and Gender in Pakistan; ASR, 1994). She worked in the non-governmental sector on women and development projects between 1993 – 1997, wrote several papers for national and international forums, and has edited a series of books on women's issues - including, Unveiling the Issues ; Locating the Self ; and her own study of women and the media, Watching Them Watching Us , ASR, 1997.

Her areas of research interest include the challenges to the women's movement due to increasing fragmentation- both ideological and due to NGO-isation. Her current research in progress focuses on the challenges to secular feminism in Pakistan as the women's movement confronts growing conservatism and Islamic militancy. In recent years, she has worked and written on democracy, civil society and dictatorship.

Contact email: N.S.Al-Ali@soas.ac.uk