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Presumably, members of the Council of Islamic Ideology aren’t on Twitter or Facebook, so they aren’t aware of how much ridicule was directed their way on social media recently for their advice to husbands to ‘beat their wives lightly’.
But what excuse does the head of Pemra, Pakistan’s electronic media watchdog, have? When this official banned ads for contraceptive products on TV channels, his decision was also greeted with mockery and disbelief on the Internet, as well as the traditional media around the world. For a country with a population of around 200 million, one would assume the government would actively promote population planning to lower our runaway growth rate.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey went a step further when he advised women not to use contraception so there could be more happy Muslims in the world. In fact, back in 2014, he denounced family planning as ‘treason’. Fortunately, he has not (yet) amended the Turkish criminal code to make contraception a crime.
Read: Family planning not for Muslims, says Turkey's Erdogan
What if women were to use heavy clubs on their husbands?
What all these three examples of male idiocy have in common is the assumption that men have the right to make decisions on what women can and cannot do. Above all, they presume to pronounce on personal matters relating to women’s bodies. How, for example, would the CII react if somebody were to advise women to use a heavy club on their husbands, and to swing it hard?
Surely it is not in a religious body’s remit to recommend violence against women. As it is, Pakistani women suffer enough abuse without the CII encouraging men to beat their wives. And it doesn’t end here: these same clerics have declared that under-aged girls can be handed over in marriage; that the consent of a wife is not a prerequisite for a second marriage; and that women must breastfeed their children for at least two years. They claim their pronouncements are based on the scriptures.
We have moved on since the seventh century. Even Saudi Arabia, that bastion of stone-age conservatism, has abolished slavery. True, it did so as late as 1962, and under heavy American pressure, but legally at least, one cannot buy or sell human beings, despite the fact that it is not banned by Islam. It is another story that Asian and African domestic workers are often treated worse than slaves in the kingdom.
The notion that Muslims should breed like rabbits to increase the size of the ummah is an old one. In Pakistan, mullahs have long agitated against planned parenthood. Where both Ayub Khan and Z.A. Bhutto once actively promoted official programmes to reduce our high growth rate, their successors have caved in before our zealots.
Our mullahs would much rather have a large, uneducated population they can control than a smaller but more literate citizenry that thinks for itself. Also, if women were to decide on the number of babies they want to have, they might start getting ideas about independence. Much better to keep them at home, preferably pregnant most of the time.
But can Muslim countries afford to cling on to such primitive ideas in the 21st century? Given the backwardness that defines much of the Muslim world, do we need larger populations to stretch our resources and infrastructure still further? Should we not strive for better education and healthcare for a population we can manage?
West Pakistan had a population of 32m in 1947; today it has grown more than six times to around 200m. There were around 20m Turks in 1960; this number quadrupled to 80m in 2010. So clearly, not many Turkish mothers were indulging in Erdogan’s version of ‘treason’ in this period. And while Turkey’s economy has done well in the past few years, Pakistan has been brought to its knees by this runaway population growth.
Far too many of our clerics spend their time and energy on placing more and more restraints on women. Witness the CII’s recommendation that women politicians should not entertain foreign dignitaries; that women must not appear in advertisements; and that there should be no co-education.
But it is only when women play an equal role that there will be meaningful improvement. All the countries that have made social and economic progress have done so after women carved out their own careers, and made space in society and the economy for themselves.
Thanks to the benighted attitudes prevailing in much of the Muslim world, women are still expected to stay at home, clean and cook for their husbands, and look after the children. With half the population effectively blocked from getting a decent education and hence good careers, the Muslim world is running on one leg in a race against fit global athletes.
Luckily, many determined Muslim women have chosen their own path and made significant contributions. But much remains to be done to cast off the shackles imposed by the likes of the CII.
Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2016
