Standing up for the Sisterhood

by Yvonne Ridley

There are times when we women are our own worst enemies. And I despair at the way the global sisterhood is often fractured and splintered by women who do more damage than any chauvinists. A classic example was brought to my attention recently after a group of long-suffering neighbours smashed their way into a Pakistan brothel and kidnapped the owner.

Hooray! I hear most feminists cry. But for some reason the reaction changes when you mention the activists wore veils and were from a nearby religious school. Suddenly there are outcries from the media about Taliban-style behaviour of burqa clad zealots. It was actually the first time such courageous, direct action had been taken against the growing prostitution and sex trade in Pakistan. A trade, may I remind everyone, which is illegal in most parts of the so-called civilized world as well as in Pakistan.

The madrassa girls also demanded that local video owners close their stores or start selling Disney instead of dirt. I have seen evidence of the sort of hard core porn videos they are complaining about.

We are talking about stuff you couldn’t even buy under the counter in most European red light districts. So did the global sisterhood rally around the Pakistan brothel busters and congratulate them? Sadly not, and one local writer in particular berated their actions but more about her later.

Of course the Jamia Hafsa madrassa has a reputation for being a thorn in the side of the city administrators and Pakistan's President General Musharraf. Shortly after the raid I saw some ridiculous media reports about the so-called Talibanisation of Pakistan and the behaviour of the students of the madrassa cited as a prime example. The porn and sex industry is loathed by all feminists because it feeds off the blatant exploitation of women in an industry set up purely for the gratification of men who hand over money to other men who control the women.

In Pakistan's tribal areas and in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), religious groups have sought to introduce Islamic law to stamp out the sex industry. These groups have, by the way, being democratically elected into Pakistan’s government so they are not exactly self-appointed. They did make their views known quite clearly in their election manifestos so if shops trading in sex and porn across the tribal areas and in parts of NWFP were forcibly closed it could hardly have come as a surprise. Yet the media calls it Talibanisation.

I would call it an attempt to introduce some respect towards women. Western feminists have been trying to put a spanner in the works of the sex industry for decades and certainly long before the arrival of Mullah Omar's long bearded and turbanned Talibs. The concept of the ‘Top Shelf’ in newsagents and supermarkets is a small tribute to the anti-porn campaigners.

But let’s get back to this brothel in Islamabad. It has been around for years and the authorities have conveniently turned a blind eye despite frequent protests. However, the Hafsa sisters insist they were prompted to take direct action when a young woman was forcibly recruited to become a prostitute, allegedly gang raped with the crime photographed so it could be used as blackmail against her should she complain.

It then transpired that other innocent girls had allegedly been abducted and forced into prostitution. Sadly, the male-dominated authorities in Islamabad and elsewhere in Pakistan continue to turn a blind eye and women continue to be exploited. It is an unjust story which is repeated all too often in corrupt, male-dominated societies East and West.

However, I really can not describe the despair I felt after being shown an article by a female writer Naushaba Burney in a recent edition of Pakistan's The Dawn Newspaper entitled ‘In The Name of Religion’. Does she praise the women from the madrassa for their heroic actions? Does she hell! Instead she pours forth criticism from a quill dipped in misogynistic bile against a group of women whose only crime appears to be their piety and poverty. She opens her article with the sentence: These days Talibanisation no longer creeps, as some newspapers like to say, it zips and flies straight to where it smells a kill, from wherever it rears its unwelcome head.

The Lal Masjid-like influence is all too visible over big cities today. It is surely quite easy to nip the disease in the bud in Islamabad, in the government’s own backyard, if the government so decides. But once it takes root in a teeming city like Karachi with its tentacles spread in every direction, the whole country risks being dragged back into the dark ages. I know very little about Naushaba Burney other than she seems reluctant to acknowledge that the wearing of the hijab or headscarf is an obligation for every practicing Muslim woman. She talks about women’s rights but not the rights of the women who are forced into prostitution at the brothel. What about them, Naushaba? Do they have no rights? She talks about how burqa-clad women are going into fashionable neighbourhoods making uncovered women feel uncomfortable.

Naushaba seems very highly disturbed by some minor hectoring but seems unmoved by the gang rape of young girls pressed into prostitution. She has the nerve to mention how upscale sections of Islamabad are afraid these days of being attacked when they step out of the house in their normal attire. Oh how awful it must be for the privileged few in Pakistan.

She also writes: ‘As for the Lal Masjid and its Hafsa Madrassas, mullas and students, if these self-styled reformers extremist zeal weren’t spreading so fast throughout our illiterate and ignorant populace, one could treat the whole episode as a big joke. Because, really, it is difficult to take black-draped girl students armed with sticks seriously as they go about attacking video shops.’ Naushaba, you have not only betrayed your Muslim sisters by writing this drivel but you have also let down the side as a woman. I, for one, don’t think prostitution is a joke. I regard brothels with despair and the rise in porn with revulsion. Your snooty outlook from your posh parlour tends to suggest that you regard as second class citizens veiled or hijabi women who value modesty. You have not one criticism, not one word of condemnation for Pakistan’s growing sex industry, brothel owners or purveyors of porn?

And I’d like to bet the majority are filthy rich men who have the wealth, power and status you seem to admire only because they have pimped off women. If you really cared about the status of women in Pakistan you would invest your time writing about the shocking rise in violence or sex attacks and you would be asking why the health of your sisters is among the worst in the world. Someone who could see the link between violence, prostitution and porn very clearly was feminist Andrea Dworkin. I have a feeling if she were still alive, she would salute those sisters in the Islamabad madrassa who took direct action against the brothel regardless of their class or wealth status.