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Contributing editor Priya Ramachandran also blogs at Words on Water
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Indian actress Shabana Azmi, who was awarded the International Gandhi Peace Prize in London earlier this month, has triggered off a controversy with her statements that Islam did not require women to cover their faces. (Azmi is Muslim.) Predictably enough, the more conservative Muslim clerics in India are riled up about it.
Syed Ahmad Bukhari, grand imam of New Delhi's Jama Masjid mosque rather patronisingly said
"Has Shabana Azmi ever read a single page from the holy quran...., she is an entertainer and she should confine herself to her profession and must not speak on things she has no knowledge about," Bukhari told reporters here.
Saturday we were at an Id party where Shabana's statements were the hot topic of discussion. The group was evenly divided - near equal numbers of Hindus, Muslims and agnostics. Equal numbers of Indians and Pakistanis, so that made for a very interesting discussion.
Our Muslim friends believed that Shabana was in fact wrong, that the Koran was clear that women should cover themselves. The word that kept coming up in this context was 'hijab' which is what we typically see Muslim women in the West wearing - a covering that hides the hair, ears etc of the wearer, but leaves the face in full view. If the Koran is clear about the hijab, it sort of proves what Shabana was saying - that there is no Koranic requirement to cover women's faces, as practised by the use of purdah and niqab in the Middle East, South East Asia.
Sam at Islamic Science believes Shabana is wrong. He provides some verses from the Koran:
“And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what must ordinarily appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands' fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers, or their brothers' sons or their sisters' sons, or their women or the servants whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex, and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O you Believers turn you all together towards Allah, that you may attain Bliss.†(Quran 24:31).
“O Prophet, tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them (when they go abroad). That will be better, so that they may be recognized and not annoyed. Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful.†(Quran 33:59)
Farzana Versey at Cross Connections feels Shabana is jumping onto the veil bandwagon. She recounts watching an interview with the actress on Indian TV:
1. Ms. Azmi said that if someone asked her to wear a veil here she would never do so, but if Jack Straw asked her to not wear a veil in England, then she would wear three veils. Of course, it was the taaliyaan kind of statement that got the applause. I have yet to hear of such a simplistic analysis. This is the sort of knee-jerk rebellion that teenagers are given to. Is this even half an ideological position? I think some of these people really like riding on the wave of such storms in teacups...
2. Someone said that if Ms. Azmi decided to wear a veil she would be out of business. This the lady took as a “personal attackâ€. It wasn’t. I watched the whole programme. It was with reference to the matter of choice. And it is a fact that given her profession or that of the model is there any place for the veil?
Hindustan Times reports that "Senior vice chairman of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and renowned Islamic scholar Dr Kalbe Sadiq on Sunday announced that Islam was against "Talibani Purdah" (rigid purdah system imposed by Talibans in Afghanistan)."
Caroline's MySpace page provides a Western perspective on the whole issue, where commenter Stephen compares the situation to what the Dixie Chicks faced: "I suspect the potential parallels between Shabana Azmi and the Dixie Chicks drew you to this story. (Bukhari's quote that Azmi's "profession is to sing and dance" might as well read "Shut Up And Sing.")"
I'm left more confused than ever about these things. Is it wrong to want to rebel against any stricture
