Voices of Resistance
Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality |
by Sarah Husain (Editor)
Seal Press
2006
Revati Chawla
Voices of Resistance is just that: the voices of long silent
women writing about the issues they fear the most, matters
closest to their hearts. Over 40 women have contributed
to this anthology that is a collection of narratives, musings,
drawings, poems and prose by Muslim women from
across the globe including those from Palestine, Israel,
Yemen, India, Pakistan and even Thailand and Malaysia in
South East Asia. These diverse far flung nations bear little
commonality and this is clear from reading this anthology
– Muslim women are not homogeneous. However at the
heart of this book is the desire to learn how to take these
differences and use them as strengths.
Common elements throughout this book include stories of
war. Expressed as collective wars and individual struggles;
the individual desire not to fight a war and yet once the
decision is made, being dragged into it against one’s
will and being forced to take sides, to choose between
black and white when in reality a woman’s life is brown.
Particularly post 9/11, Muslim people and indeed anyone
mistaken to be Muslim, across the world have been
subjected to increased discrimination and violence against
them arising, most times, out of ignorance. ‘Hate crimes
filed shortly after 9/11’ describes in poetry, attacks on
Sikh men mistaken to be members of the Taliban, and a
21 year old woman of native American heritage; beaten;
mistaken to be a Muslim American. Resulting from the
twin tower attacks, the war on terror is being fought in
the name of protecting America, but tens of thousands of
people, Muslim women in particular, bear the burden of
the war. Those that profess the war is not in our names,
are given little option but to accept and embrace it. Shadi
Eskandani writes, ‘my role as a woman in the struggle has
become clear to me. I have thought about different ways
to resist, like writing or teaching or working for some
aid organisations. But I know now the only way to resist a
state of violence is through violence only. Armed struggle
is what this intifada is about. We fight their state terrorism
by resisting with our blood. By resisting with our bodies.
Flesh and blood is resistance.’
It is this flesh and blood that is the subject matter of a
number of other essays in the anthology. One writer
questions, ‘Why are we not taught that to love our bodies is
to love ourselves? Why were we taught that sexual pleasure
is forbidden in Islam? Why were we taught to be ashamed
of our bodies and sexualities? How do I struggle for self
ownership when my body is not my own but the property
of religion, family and community?’ Frustration at the
pressure of a patriarchal society comes out clearly in many
of the essays. A woman’s body is not her own; it is used
as a weapon of war, as a means of control over families
and society, it is inescapably linked to honor, shame and
guilt, all the burdens of which fall on women. To claim
your body as your own and do with it as you wish is haram.
But what is haram and halal, permissible and punishable, is defined by men. This too is a war which many women
wage; sometimes silently.
At the heart of this anthology is questioning; questioning
one’s identity and the perception of one’s identity by society
and the media. It also questions the privileged position the
contributors occupy as women living in the West and how
this position can be best used without ostracising families
and communities. Often the most severe critics of Muslim
women are other Muslims, women themselves, such as in
the story of moral policing by a grandmother, in ‘Haram!
Haram! Haram!’, and other religious guardians, as Samia
Saleem sketches the words ‘The literal word of god is
the antithesis of my being’. Whereas religion should be a
foundation that protects and gives comfort to women, it
is today used as an effective ‘tool’ to oppress and subjugate
women. In this subjugation many Muslim women are
increasingly marginalized and one of the most fundamental
elements of human security i.e. beliefs, faith and religion
are being ripped off them.
Published in 2006, Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on
War, Faith & Sexuality is edited by Sarah Husain. In her
introduction to the anthology she encourages the reader to
read. ‘Iqra’, she says – read and understand a different view
point, and arm yourself with knowledge; knowledge that
is fluid, contextually engaged and dynamic. Aim to create
a new world order, one that is against wars, Islamic in its
principles and feminist in its ideology.
Revati Chawla is an activist working on and HIV/AIDS,
gender and sexuality issues in the Asia Pacific Region. She is
based in Sri Lanka.
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