Dr. Lamia Karim will undertake research on democracy, legal reform, and women's organizations in Bangladesh. Islamists and secularists have different visions of the ideal Bangladesh state and the roles of women in it. Karim will investigate the differential effects of secular and relgious women's organizations in promoting women's rights.
The study is comparative and ethnographic. The researcher will compare the strategies and effects of two human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and one conservative Islamic missionary group. The research is organized around four overaching topics: (1) the role of pro-women's organization in securing human rights for Muslim women; (2) how female beneficiaries of human rights programs evaluate Islamic laws, democracy and individual rights; (3) the role of Islamic women missionaries who advocate Islamic laws as the sole source of justice for women; (4) how rural male elites and clergy respond to the feminization of rural power structures by human rights NGOs. The research methodology is based on ethnography, focus group interviews, case studies, news reports, and interviews with a cross-section of rural and urban women and men.
The findings of this research will contribute to social scientific understanding of the relationship between democracy, law, religion, and human rights, particularly for women. The results also will inform culturally specific policies to increase the human security of women.
PI: Lamia Karim Awardee: University of Oregon Eugene Award Number: 0823088 Program Officer Name: Deborah Winslow Program Officer Email Address: dwinslow@nsf.gov Program Officer Phone Number: (703)292-7315 The project examined the role played by religion and democracy among a group of pietist women who belonged to the transnational Islamic movement known as Tablighi Ja’maat in Bangladesh. Women belonging to the Tablighi movement are asked to withdraw from public life and dedicate their lives to the study of Quran. They are expected to perform their duties as devout wives and mothers and raise proper Muslim children, and spread the message of Islam among women. Within this group, the Islamic notion of ijtihad or debate is strongly discouraged. Instead, the followers are required to obey the decisions of the male leadership. The women in the study were drawn from the urban middle-class. All the women were married and had college degrees. The research was conducted over a period of six months, and included ethnographic methods such as observation, life stories, interviews, and the analysis of their weekly sermons. The research resulted in the following findings: a) Women noted that the primary reason for belonging to the Ja’maat movement was piety and personal satisfaction. Women felt that modern life was corrupt and immoral, and an inner life of prayer gave them a moral compass that guided them through troubled times. The women did not believe in secular laws and democracy, and they did not participate in general elections. While the women supported the Muslim Personal Code known as sharia, they were not knowledgeable about those aspects of sharia that affected the lives of women, such as marriage, inheritance, divorce, alimony, child custody, punishment for adultery and rape. The women were taught that the clergy were the sole authority figures with regard to sharia laws, and the women deferred to the clergy’s decisions in these matters. c) In addition to piety, the Tablighi movement offered women economic and sexual security. In the majority of cases, women joined the movement because their husbands belonged to the Tablighi movement. Fellow Tablighi members closely monitored the adherence of members to the prescribed rules of conduct. The mosque leadership discouraged multiple marriages, divorces, and the exchange of dowry, and encouraged activities such as prayers, preaching the word of Allah, and building community through shared work and responsibility. These activities inculcated a strong sense of community and personal wellbeing. Men and women helped members in times of crisis, and poorer families received financial support. In this context of communal care, women indicated that as long as their husbands remained devout members, their marital status was secure. Their husbands were unlikely to go against the teachings of the mosque leadership that encouraged the unity of the Muslim family as an Islamic ideal that led to the production of strong Muslim children who were grounded in their faith. Overall, the Tablighi movement created a culture of care that was absent in wider Bangladeshi society due to urbanization and globalization. b) Globalization had affected Tablighi women in nuanced ways. In order to keep women within the fold, mosque leadership had organized women into neighborhood Quran reading committees, and given them more active roles in the mosque. Through these routes of circulation, women were able to expand their social networks. These expanding networks were scaled down to the domestic sphere, restricting women’s movements and roles within the sphere of the home. Prior to their organization in the late 1980s, women had experienced greater practical freedoms because the mosque leadership had focused on men’s roles. Thus, while globalization had increased women’s active roles within the mosque, it had also brought new forms of restrictions and surveillance over their lives. d) The secular feminist movement in Bangladesh is a small but vocal movement. While feminists have been able to implement laws that protect women’s rights such as the Women and Child Repression Prevention Act 1995, they have been less successful in mounting a challenge to Muslim Personal Code (sharia) that is followed by the courts in deciding inheritance, marriage, divorce, alimony, child custody, etc. The feminist movement has more appeal because of its economic message (the right to work and equal pay for women) than for its ideological message (women should be treated equally in all aspects of law). Hence, it is not surprising that feminists have made greater strides with poorer women, and very few gains among educated, middle-class women in urban areas. Unless feminists are able to critically reflect on the limited appeal of their message among urban women, the changes they are advocating can easily be overturned in the face of a mass religious movement. In short, popular women’s support for feminist legal reforms is uneven across class and religious membership.
