'Muslim Women Missing Opportunities In India’

‘Conservative Male Leadership Further Hampering Status’. Muslim women’s poor status in the country is due to lack of knowledge, which is measured by literacy, average years of schooling and economic power, eminent political scientist Zoya Hasan said. 
    
Hasan was addressing a gathering at an international seminar on ‘Status of Muslim Women in Indian Sub-continent’, organised at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (Manuu). “Muslim women suffer from many disadvantages in areas such as education, employment and lack of access to welfare programmes. The appropriation of Muslim women’s issues by a vocal, politically influential and conservative male Muslim leadership poses a challenge to Muslim women’s empowerment,” Hasan said. While noting that the Sachar Committee report was an ‘eye opener’, she said the omission of Muslim women from its pages was a concern. 
    
Deliberating on the issue of personal laws, Hasan noted how they have created legal and social tangles for the Muslim community. She added that adopting a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) at the time of partition would have given Muslims an inferior status. “It will be difficult to accomplish this goal even with the best intentions and the involvement of Muslim women. Resistance of minority communities in the name of preserving their religious identities poses a problem,” she said. Hasan observed that the BJP was the strongest advocate of UCC while Muslim conservatives were among its opponents. The Muslim leadership fears that such laws would lead to uniform cultural practices and alien practices shoved on them, she said. 
    
In an argument which reflected a different point of view, Muslim Personal Law Board Member (MPLB) Uzma Naheed said that UCC was a Hindu code in guise of uniformity and that the Muslim community has failed to tackle it. “It is because of the UCC that development indicators such health, education and eradication of poverty of Muslims along with gender inequality have landed on the backburner. We should ask – will the other minorities also accept the UCC? Good governance for Muslims cannot let go of Islamic principles.” 
    
Naheed observed that secularists and conservatives should find common ground. She added that the secularists did not want to understand Islam. “Followers of other religions think of Muslims as Islam personified and draw conclusions when this is not the case. For instance, if a Muslim woman wears a veil out of her own accord, they should respect her choice,” she said. 
    
Among other speakers were Nadja-Christina Schneider from Humboldt University, Hameeda Naeem from Kashmir University and dalit activist Kancha Ilaiah.