The recent sentencing of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, for contracting their marriage during the latter’s post-divorce Iddat period, has triggered political outrage. Khan is reported to have claimed that ‘this marks the first instance in history where a case related to iddat has been initiated’. Populists are not just skilled mythmakers – they’re often seduced by their own myths at the cost of political reasoning.

Of course, this is not the first case of state intervention in ‘private’ matters of marriage and sexual relations; British colonial and postcolonial Islamic judicial reasonings have consistently colluded and strengthened patriarchal strangleholds over Pakistani women’s consent, choice and agency (especially, sexual and marital).

From 1979, General Zia ul Haq instituted gender apartheid in the 80s and 90s when Islam was invoked to enable men’s legal, social control over marital rights and sexual dominance over women.

The Zina Ordinance (Adultery, Fornication) decimated the concept of sexual consent, enabled men to cast wrongful accusations of adultery on their wives with flimsy or no evidence and, even the admission of sexual violation of a woman, if unproven or if pregnancy resulted from the rape, could be taken as self-indicting evidence of committing the crime of adultery or illicit fornication.

Forty years of advocacy against the Zina laws resulted in constant allegations against protesting feminists and women’s rights activists as “foreign agents”, “westoxified elite women”, “enlightenment dupes”, “orientalist anti-Islamic demons” and “compromised NGO/civil society liberals”. Complicit in this patriarchal view was Imran Khan who abstained, along with the Islamists boycott, from voting to reform the Zina Ordinance. It was due to the votes of the opposition party of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) that the Musharraf government managed to pass the Women’s Protection Bill of 2006.

Confessing political complicity

Historical amnesia is a dangerous disease suffered by many millennial PTI supporters and this only widens the democracy deficit. The projection that state persecution of the PTI’s leadership is uniquely vicious, or that the party is constitutionally committed, anti-establishment and anti-elite, is text-book mythos over logos. In fact, it has been the politics of populist piety and not democracy, that was perfectly coupled under the governance of Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra, who he characterized repeatedly as ‘spiritual and domestic’.

Quite disconnected from his personal journey of pietist redemption, in 2018, ably assisted by the Jamaat e Islami, Imran Khan enthusiastically weaponized the piety clause 63 A of the constitution to disqualify PM Nawaz Sharif. He repeated such a ‘gaming of the constitution’ by barring 25 legislators from voting for a Chief Minister candidate from the opposition party in the Punjab Assembly in 2022. Intra-party elections in the PTI have been controversial since the time of Justice Wajih and split the party even before it was dharna-lifted into power by the establishment in 2018.

It has been the politics of populist piety and not democracy, that was perfectly coupled under the governance of Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra, who he characterized repeatedly as ‘spiritual and domestic’.

The most damning evidence of Khan’s pro-establishment credentials has been his regime’s exoneration of the indicted demagogue, (late) General Musharraf who defiled the constitution and sold the country in the war on terror and who this honest civilian premier had a chance to hold accountable through judicial process.

In 2018, Khan also rewarded another chief with a constitutionally dicey extension. Apparently, ‘anti-establishment’ depends on how anti the establishment is against you on any given day.

Dual standards

The political culture between 2018-2022 was dominated by fake news, innuendo, gendered attacks and piety performances. Under Khan’s governance, the red herring of financial corruption was provided by video and audio exposes of sexual indiscretions of opposition politicians. Sex and money were shaken into a political cocktail. YouTube tabloids offered peepholes into the personal affairs of opposition politicians yet, there were no PTI objections over privacy or propriety back then.

The public scrutiny of all politicians has heightened due to the use of social media – the elasticity of the public-private boundary has been stretched by this generation of social media political activists themselves. It’s baffling that, despite their proud manipulation of social media for political ends, the current PTI rhetoric pretends that Khan and Bushra are the exclusive and innocent victims of the weaponization of sexual politics.

For over a decade, Benazir Bhutto remained the target of vicious sexism – often within her own cabinet – and carried the ignominies targeted at her spouse, too. Lack of photoshop or AI technology did not prevent the spread of political porn even at that time.

Despite their proud manipulation of social media for political ends, the current PTI rhetoric pretends that Khan and Bushra are the exclusive and innocent victims of the weaponization of sexual politics.

Women remain the markers and symbols and physical targets of moral panics around the tryst of Muslim women’s sexuality. The focus on abstract morality and women’s fitna potential are a deliberate method to bury material and political equal rights of women. Inspired by such fears, male judicial sympathy for men’s fragile fears of being cuckolded and their cynical use of the law and religion remain firmly intact.

The gendered cost of faith-based politics

While piety may be about the self and inward, the politics of piety or religion are, by definition, public and instrumental. Khan preached morality that galvanized a generation that adulates him for his past picadillo performances, as much as his pious promises of turning Pakistan into a Riyasat e Medina.

As in all matters, the standard for lapse of self-righteous Muslim men in Pakistan is much lower than that for women, and the legal and moral impunity extended to them is much higher. Male leaders, military and civilian, have enjoyed lives of blatant indiscretions but former PM, Imran Khan, is arguably the most successful beneficiary of moral flex, separation of the personal from political, and the privilege to preach to the nation about vice, corruptive effects of film and arts, women’s rights as cultural alienation, on nepotism, clientelism and improprieties in office and, in his use of the religion card in politics.

However, none of this would be possible without Bushra Bibi – Khan’s redemption as the pious subject was very much enabled by the spiritual patronage of Bushra. When it suited this male-defined Islamic republic, Khan’s hypermasculinity remained immune to iddat requirements, improprietous haste, shrine prostrating and sexist thinking. His rumoured sexual transgressions and alleged spousal oneirocentric revelations about official appointments were defended in a way that no woman leader could expect or survive. His populism has politically mobilized more women than other parties or non-governmental movement in recent times, without offering any specific gender-based rewards, policies, or rights.

While Khan remains moral Teflon, the recent turn in narrative directed at the former first lady, Bushra Imran, reveals the tenuous placement of piety performance if she doesn’t maintain the male-defined Madonna gold standard. Since piety is exclusively about virtue, the risk of worldly or material compromises is high but moral lapses – even illogical ones like the incompletion of the iddat period for a woman in her 50s – elicits a very high price.

Piety politics, like all politics, is of course, performative and competitive and not some inward, discreet self-defining underground journey, as romanticized in recent scholarship. The pious are deeply invested in social norms such as purdah and observing sexual modesty and iddat rituals.

Dishing out moral condemnation boomerangs at the first opportunity precisely because there is no consistency.

Panic over immorality becomes personal when virtue is tied to religious belief rather than (secular) political ethical standards. It’s not consistent to have a leader use religious references, perform piety, cite divine purposes and conjoin religion with politics but refute the realm of punitive religious laws as ‘personal’ or ‘private’. That would qualify as secular laws and state.

No lesson learned

Today, the unrepentant Imran Khan and his injured followers show no signs of reconciliation or democratic collectivism. They ride the crest of moral indignation laced with the kind of piety that only qualifies them as first and exclusive civilian victims and mock and accuse anyone who remains sceptical, as collaborator and state sell-out. Refusing to acknowledge that Khan was the willing disciple and henchman for the Establishment, they sneer at human rights activists for not directing all their energies for PTI’s “real” democrats. The anti-democratic nature of exceptionalizing a party and its leader is not sinking in. Ironically, they insist that PTI associated women are entitled to the same feminist attention and activism that they discredited, demeaned and delegitimized for four years but offer no such support or collectivism in return – only snideness, moral exclusion and judgement.

Imran Khan’s followers insist that PTI-associated women are entitled to the same feminist attention and activism that they discredited and delegitimized for four years, but offer no such support or collectivism in return – only snideness and moral exclusion.

However, the youth bulge in Pakistan in the new millennium was never some lumpen blindly following a pious pied piper – it is gendered, globalized and even queer. Overlapping Khan’s election, a new wave of feminist intent arose comprising those who reject such imposed piety, virtuousity, modesty, propriety and insist instead, on pride, visibility and sexual autonomy.

This means that Pakistani women’s aspirations for equality and fundamental rights have increasingly narrowed to just two strategic options; the first is repentance, conformity and domestication (the kind that Khan glorifies as typified by his wife) which offer the consolation prize of secondary status and heavenly reward; the other is gendered, sexual and political defiance – which invites the risks of social and actual death and inspires persistent moral panic.

The contemporary generation witnessed how social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch pioneered the departure from the earlier practice of the pious disguise required of women celebrities who played out their on-screen scripted Madonna/Whore roles in their actual lives. Qandeel subverted the male notions of honor and shame and paid the price with her life. On the other hand, those women celebrities and artists who have taken the path of repentance have profited from the politics of piety. Veena Malik, Maria B, Mishi Khan and others become foot soldiers of the state and patriarchy by peddling a conservative gendered order. Then they wonder how the state weaponizes the war on women?

Which path?

After decades of state suppression, conservative backlash, and liberal hopes hinged to the promise of piety, the sexual politics of a new generation has rudely unsettled Pakistan’s gendered moral order. Moorat and Aurat March have become the vehicles for protest and celebration of sexual identities. Haya Marches and pious women’s movements celebrate abstinence, modesty and gender apartheid. Which one is the natural alliance in the Iddat case today? Why are PTI hardliners calling on feminists’ and not on pious women’s organisations to extend support to their leader? Do they now concede and support that ‘mera jisam meri marzi’ is the right of a woman to consent or refuse matters relating to her choices in ‘private’ matters and that the state and male guardian have no jurisdiction over these?

Further, if the objection is the targeted humiliation of Imran Khan and Bushra Imran, then does this imply that the lower class of men and women do not deserve our daily outrage at their routine humiliation at the hands of state and community gate-keepers of morality who police the sexual autonomies of women with exceptional zeal?

In a classic staging of the common practice of divorce blackmail and revenge, Bushra’s ex-husband, Khawar Maneka perjured himself by first insisting his pious ex-wife was pure and spiritual and later characterized her as the unfaithful, disobedient nashuz. Such deployment enables law to serve as a tool of controlling women’s choice and denying their free will in matters of marriage.

The lesson is clear – the hybrid middle-path approach of interpreting Islamic laws in a progressive light will not stabilize the personal or social rights of Pakistanis and women and civilians will pay the gendered cost of this, repeatedly.

It’s time for the outraged to extend their conscientious objection for ALL women, genders and exploited classes without discrimination and with historical objectivity, rather than spreading moral panic, practicing selective piety politics or, supporting anti-democratic populism.

Afiya Shehrbano Zia

The writer is a feminist researcher and activist based in Karachi. She is the author of “Faith and Feminism in Pakistan” and several published articles on women, secularism and religion

The post Is Imran-Bushra Iddat Case A Feminist Issue? appeared first on Dissent Today.

At the start of 2023, the only good news for Pakistan is that a clear democratic defiance has deepened across its citizenry (despite the military’s persistent interventions in governance and the political economy). This is a sign of an increasingly empowered electorate that is flexing its voting scrutiny over national and provincial parliamentarians. It is rewarding or punishing these representatives through the ballot box and challenging institutional over-reach through street and social media protests.

The former finance minister of the PML-N, Miftah Ismail, was ousted from his party five months into his appointment after he successfully negotiated a new loan scheme with the IMF and rescued Pakistan from bankruptcy in 2022. Since then, he channeled his defiance by a series of hardtalks across the country on the failing economy and frustration with nepotistic policies and decision-making that drive Pakistan’s mainstream parties. 

Ismail took the initiative to launch a pressure group that drew membership from outliers from other mainstream political parties, and which also includes several public intellectuals who want to ‘Reimagine Pakistan’. This forum, thus named, is also an expression of the shifting winds of political defiance under a collapsed economic scenario following the Covid pandemic and the devastating climate-induced floods that displaced millions and wreaked havoc in 2022. It is also indicative of an opportunity to develop a bi-partisan and potentially, re-structured political economy for Pakistan – something historically missing from the nation’s political culture. 

The bad news is the crude reality that Pakistan is a country of men, run by men and for men. (Zia 2015, Is Pakistan Male?; Zia 2023, A Response to Miftah Ismail’s six pillars). It’s not just a case of male-dominant public institutions such as the judiciary, government, political parties and religious bodies but public spaces and policies have enabled a hegemonic masculinity that excludes and polices women, non-binary genders, the poor and working classes and religious and ethnic minorities. 

Even liberal political parties such as, the PPP, continue the legacy of male heirs ‘inheriting’ the chair of the party instead of a daughter and, while Maryam Nawaz, the daughter of the former PM, Nawaz Sharif, has been ordained leadership position in the PML-N instead of her brother, such traditional dynastic continuity may be symbolic of an individual woman’s empowerment. But this is hardly the definition of feminism, or a democratic, collective, or, alternative politics.

Despite such political traditionalism, most political analysis in Pakistan from the Left to Right prefer to deflect blame to ‘culture’, the IMF, colonialism, imperialism and a series of abstract sources when in fact, other than the inequalities inherent in capitalist economies, it is Pakistan’s man-made discriminatory and elite-subsidizing laws and policies that have perpetuated unjust and unequal gendered and class dynamics and provincial inequalities. 

Surrender to religious lobbies by the conservatives, and far too many liberals, has further embedded bigoted and disconnected policies that are out of touch with global opportunities and standards and which deny the peoples’ desires, aspirations and which stymy normative gender and transgender relations and practices. 

Male elites

Even within the ‘Reimagine Pakistan’ collective, centering gender in the exercise of dialectics, dialogue and imagining structural change is a challenge. The core founders attempt to make space for feminist experts and feminist economics but do not take ownership for intersecting this as their own responsibility. The male members rightfully identify the issue of ‘elite capture’ in Pakistan despite the irony that the members of this platform are not just male elites but also, the biggest beneficiaries of such policies. This is not just in terms of their economic power but also, as institutional heads and influential voices and decision-makers.

Elite men in Pakistan instrumentalize such privilege in other ways; many do not distribute familial wealth, assets or inheritance equally to the women of their families but according to a shariah-based formula, which qualifies them for far less than male heirs. This way, they purport to have faithfully adhered to Islamic gender rights. These elite men have the privilege of automatic legal guardianship over children at a certain age, and enjoy unequal marital and divorce rights over women. There is no concept of joint marital assets or division of these at times of divorce and even the Pakistan citizenship act is gender discriminatory and violates the fundamental constitutional rights of women. In most countries, national identity is drawn from that of the mother but in Pakistan, unless a male relative testifies to a woman’s identity she cannot avail of her identity card or even buy a sim card for a cell phone. Why don’t progressive men distinguish and object to such ‘elite male capture’?

In the same way, male leaders, policy makers, bureaucrats, state bank officials refute their responsibility to scrutinize or amend the abysmally low Female Labour Force Participation. Nor do they pledge to increase bank accounts for women or ease the criteria for documentation for women entrepreneurs for ‘doing business’. No affirmative action is initiated for women agricultural workers who do not receive minimum wage for their work and while the cash handout under the Benazir Income Support Programme is a rare poly-successful initiative, there is no ideological or policy road-map to scale this to a universal income scheme for all of the country’s poor.

Feminism is more than women’s empowerment

Women’s economic empowerment is not just about adding women to the labour force, but requires a radical transformation in traditional attitudes and policies. Miftah Ismail rightfully identifies the complete silence on family planning and population management but a gendered understanding and radical ‘reimagine’ would mean framing and promoting this issue as men’s responsibility and not women’s.

All traditional vocations and roles of women – tending livestock or home-based exploitative work – needs to be reimagined by creating more non-traditional and innovative opportunities for women. Legal and economic autonomy is directly connected with social freedoms and mobility and so, freedom from sexual harassment and sexual objectification is a pre-requisite for productivity. Restricting and guarding women in the domestic realm or inflicting inhumane punishments for rapists is not the solution for such injustices. The driving mantra needs to be that, ‘There can be no production without protection or autonomy.’

Pursuing economic justice 

The concept of economic justice is under-discussed. Structural change means rethinking how wealth and resources are collected and distributed and to reimagine incentives other than those made in the recent World Bank report, which recommends cash handouts and increased wages. Fair access to work for women means much more — quality child care facilities, regular payment of wages and safe access to markets and labour courts; unrestricted access to basic services to the internet, phones, mobility or recreation, without the interference of male gatekeepers. 

Muslim morality (ikhlaaqiyat), corruption, religious rights are abstractions that delay or serve as impediments to social, political and economic restructuring and women and the economically marginalized are the biggest losers in this game of male elites across all classes and sectors.

Way forward 

Random seminars and occasional research projects on hurdles to women’s economic progress by business schools are eye-washes – instead, feminist economics needs to be curated into a discipline and taught in all institutions. Gender equality has to become a goal and benchmark and gender audits should be conducted as a policy requirement in all private and public sectors.

Judicial protection and safeguards in public spaces and transportation is critical for women’s economic progress – the promotion of feminizing these is imperative. Another urgent policy correction that is needed is the end of the concept of male ‘heads of households’ as a unitary measurement in government or private sector surveys or policies. 

Lack of incentivised, smart solutions that respond to the needs of women workers and entrepreneurs are due to material and bureaucratic impediments and non-responsive institutional weaknesses. These need to be addressed by acknowledging that women are already ‘doing’ business but they need direct access to technology and that bank account drives should be on a scale similar to voter registration campaigns. Women are already economic actors but they require financial literacy and instruments and issuance of NTN numbers. Women need banking services but there has to be ease in opening bank accounts and there must be customized schemes which provide easy loans and mortgages for women. The State Bank of Pakistan has to be committed to such policies.

Women want economic justice and they know their rights to inherit will ensure economic security but the legal system is not delivering these in a committed manner. Justice means redressing women’s systematic exclusion from the property regime or ownership of means of production. While some property rights of women are being realized, possession and entitlement are the problem and these need concentrated policy attention.  Further, many women do not know how to manage these assets. Technology (digitized land revenue records) is recognized as creating an enabling environment for realizing these rights but this requires empirical evaluation and political buy-in. 

Women are bold in seeking legal recourse for their fundamental rights (marital, property, political, harassment/violence) but are risk-averse in pursuing economic autonomy, markets and tech-related careers. Case studies of women entrepreneurs need to be documented to encourage more positive lessons.

Politically, evidence reveals that women are now voting differently from male relatives but a vicious cycle exists – women aren’t motivated to vote and politicians don’t seek their votes. Political parties must be committed to soliciting women’s votes and treating them as a valued constituency.

Women are breaking conventions and in non-traditional pursuits too, such as sports and popular culture but they need active encouragement, sponsorship and these activities need to be de-stigmatized. A feminization of public services is critical and it is imperative to normalize women in public spaces. Mobility is key for gender equality.

Women use tech in innovative ways to circumvent family restrictions but the State is not on their side – it imposes censorious laws and policies that restrict women. Women also want to be in tech-related occupations but tend to be scared of it and men distrust women’s access to means of communication. A gendered communication strategy that closes these trust deficits is imperative.

Pakistani media needs to transition urgently out of the profit-making scheme of tragedy-porn which portrays women as constant victims and panders to the Madonna/whore dichotomy. Media campaigns have to revise the victim narrative that defines women and the image of working women needs to be an appreciated and valuable one. If the Female Labour Force Participation is to be incentivized, then the working woman’s image (of all classes) needs to be developed as a strong, trustworthy, reliant citizen who must be rewarded and respected. 

Documentaries on rights of land/property/entrepreneurship of Muslim women in history are useful points for de-stigmatizing myths but exceptionalizing women’s roles by tethering them to religious identities is not going to lend to a gender equal productivity. Nor will this contribute to the growth of the country’s economy but it will barter off women’s autonomies in other aspects and deny them equal citizenship. 

The connection between women, sexual minorities and transcommunities’ education, economic equality, health of the family, community and nation needs to be promoted and sexual equality remains a central and original factor that has historically contributed to women’s other rights. Pakistani women are going to be no exception.

Pakistan’s male elites have to acknowledge the above dynamics and actively unpack the privileges that they currently enjoy and jealously guard, instead of merely paying lip-service to gender equality and women’s inclusion in the economy. Only then, there may be a chance of restructuring and re-imagining this country for women.

Afiya Shehrbano Zia

The writer is a feminist researcher and activist based in Karachi. She is the author of “Faith and Feminism in Pakistan” and several published articles on women, secularism and religion

The post ‘Reimagining’ a Pakistan for Women appeared first on Dissent Today.