Sana Munir\u00a0:<\/p>\n
The status of women has always been a conflicted issue in Pakistan. One of the reasons there is no end to it, is that men have made it their business to classify and define womanhood for women. In fact, different mindsets, with varying points of view have their own theories about the \u2018status of women\u2019 with respect to certain popular keywords such as Islam, Household, Workplace, Society, Purdah, Four-Walls, Public Space etc. Some scholars have argued; the issue of women\u2019s status, has been \u2018created\u2019 through a widespread social narrative peppered with the rigid paradigms upheld by a vaguely defined pseudo-religious ideology. Among the very few masculine voices with a raised tenor for the women\u2019s cause in Pakistan is one of Waris Mir, a teacher, writer and intellectual, columnist for national dailies from 1967 until 1987.
\n\u201cWe believed once Pakistan would come into being, the Muslims of this country could get an environment where they could rid themselves of orthodoxy and backwardness for good, and look ahead towards a future laden with intellectual communication, enlightened discussions and freethinking,\u201d Prof Waris Mir once wrote in one of his columns, now a compilation in book form, titled Kya Aurat Adhi Hai? (Is Woman Half a Human?). \u201cTragically, as soon as this country came into being, the political and administrative setup fell into chaos due to internal fissures in the system and resultantly, fundamentalist forces paved their way up to the throne of the state,\u201d Waris Mir wrote in a newspaper column in the 1970s.
\nSpeaking about womanhood, or supporting the feminist cause, during the martial law era of General Ziaul Haq, was a feat in itself. That was a bleak period in Pakistan\u2019s history of the written word, when the Hudood Ordinance had been approved of, the protesting women of the Women Action forum had been brutally baton charged, when women were called names for wearing makeup and entering the National Assembly as elected representatives, school and college girls could not play sports, and women were encouraged (read, forced) to accept the concept of the chador and the four walls \u2013 chaadar aur chaar diwari.
\nWaris Mir, along with Habib Jalib, was among those who took to the roads to protest against the Hudood Ordinance and was beaten up by the police for a peaceful protest. That was the trigger which made Mir write extensively in favour of a breathable atmosphere for women in the Pakistani society, which was otherwise bent upon stifling a very vibrant and useful part of the population.
\n\u201cMan and woman are not supposed to be daggers drawn against each other. Both of them present two sides of the same picture\u2026 In reality, by creating a rift between both the genders no social structure can sustain for a longer period of time\u2026 The present requirement is to make the men accept and understand the issues related to women in an unprejudiced manner. Similarly, women must be given confidence and awareness to work as responsible members of the society.\u201d
\nWaris Mir fell out of favour with the rightist writers who insisted upon the theory of Behishti Zewar by Ashraf Ali Thanvi \u2013 Waris Mir quotes excerpts from the ten-volume book \u2013 \u201cIf a husband orders his wife to pick up a rock from one mountain and take to the other, and from there to another, she must comply. If the husband demands for anything at an inappropriate time, she must comply. She shouldn\u2019t read any book except Quran and Sunnah, nor go to school, nor go visit her relatives. It is her job to look beautiful for him and if she doesn\u2019t take care of her looks, it is rightful for the husband to hit her\u2026If the husband is seeing another woman, she can request him to stop doing so, in private but not protest about it. This shall ensure a high reward in the afterlife and lots of praise from family and neighbours in this world,\u201d the incongruent theory goes on and on, until Waris Mir flexes his intellectual muscles, and quotes Qasim Amin, an Egyptian scholar, who believed, the status of women has already been defined by the Quran and that is of partners with men. \u201cThe reason women are suffering from undue prejudice in Muslim countries is not to be blamed upon the religion but on the cultural setup of those countries.\u201d Mir writes, \u201cwhen Qasim Ameen wrote this book which encouraged Muslim countries to have their women educated and made to feel responsible for the development of a better culture, thirty or more books and journals were written to shun Qasim Amin and his theory. However, with the passage of time, things started to change, and the literacy rate for women in Egypt started to grow.\u201d
\nWaris Mir, a true champion of the feminist cause, was not against the concept of purdah, debating the fact that if a woman desires to opt for purdah, she needs no one\u2019s permission or the law for it.
\nIn this regard, modern theorists have started to question the \u201cwill\u201d of a woman, and rightfully so. Even if a woman takes purdah out of her own will, it is considered an extension of patriarchal paradigms. It must be kept in consideration, if wearing a burka or a hijab or a niqab is the condition upon which a young woman can acquire education, work in an amiable atmosphere with men, go out of the house to shop, socialize, et al, then it is more useful, in her context, than harmful. The argument Mir presents about giving a woman freedom of choice, is entirely scientific \u2013 Education alone, can equip her with the knowledge she needs to make clear decisions for herself. If the first step towards enlightenment would be to tug her away from what a woman has been believing to be her \u2018shield\u2019, it would certainly backfire.
\nWaris Mir does not use the word \u2018acceptance\u2019 liberally, but the undertones of his logic is all about giving respect to women as people of equal status, respecting their opinions and well as their intelligence. The Pakistani law, of considering the witness statement of a woman as half, had been a stronghold of Waris Mir\u2019s write-ups. In his lengthy series of articles and columns on the subject, he fought the case of women through religious, legal, philosophical and historical references. In one such column, Waris Mir quotes the Quranic commentary of Maulana Abdul Majid Darya Abadi regarding the issue:
\n\u201cO Faithful! When you borrow money from each other, it is better that you write it down, and if some third person writes it down for you, they must write it correctly. The writer must note down the amount lent and he must fear god (be honest). And if the one who has lent money, is forgetful, or is not capable of having his calculations written by someone else, must employ two witnesses \u2013 two men that you approve of and if not two men, then one man and two women so that if one forgets, the other can remind her (of the transaction) and whenever a witness must be called, they cannot refuse to show up.\u201d
\nThe lawmakers and writers of the 1970s era had begun to argue, since a woman\u2019s witness according to this quranic reference is to be considered half, in an extension to Ashraf Ali Thanvi\u2019s Behishti Zewar, the status of woman in comparison to a man\u2019s too, is half. This new commentary on the Quran, one neither supported by the Sunnah nor the Fiqh, created a havoc in the literary and feminist circles of Pakistan. Waris Mir, the man who fought duels with his pen, sat down to write his heart out: \u201cThis is an ignominious way to look at things. If this is how a woman\u2019s statement is to be taken, then would the health and birth certificate written by a female doctor lose its value? The result cards and character certificates written by a female teacher would be shaky? A professional female scientist or medicine practitioner\u2019s researches would be half nullified? It is ludicrous to think of this in a country (Pakistan) where women are going up and above men in every department.\u201d
\nSince religion is a touchy subject and usually literary and scientific logic is discarded, Waris Mir also presented the case from Islam\u2019s point of view: \u201cThe first woman to declare witness for Prophet Muhammad\u2019s prophethood was a woman \u2013 Lady Khadija (R.A) and Lady Ayeshah, a wife of the prophet, the collector and memorizer of the largest collection of Sunnah, about whom the Prophet himself once said, \u201cAcquire half the understanding of your deen from Ayeshah\u201d. Caliph Umar, had employed a woman mathematician to calculate his finances, and Caliph Abu Bakar considered \u2018women to have more knowledge about certain subjects than men.\u201d
\nWaris Mir was a student and teacher of journalism, an orator who knew how to present befitting rebuttals to his opponents, an unapologetic feminist who dedicated his print space and literary pursuits to dig up knowledge that benefits feminist researchers even today. More than all these, Waris Mir was a man of empirical evidence, of the science of logic. Indeed, it is impossible to silence logic with the loudest of screams \u2013 be it the threats coming from the throne of dictatorship, or losing at the hands of a youthful death at the age of 48. Waris Mir\u2019s words ring through the corridors of Time.
\nProfessor Waris Mir\u2019s death anniversary falls on July 9.<\/p>\n
The writer is a freelancer<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sana Munir\u00a0: The status of women has always been a conflicted issue in Pakistan. One of the reasons there is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warismir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}