Muslim Culture of Women in Britain - Report Example

Muslim culture of women in Britain s Submitted by s: Introduction Being a Muslim encompasses two very fundamental beliefs, one being a belief in God who is Allah, and the Belief that Muhammad is a messenger that was sent by God. The belief in the latter means that there is an additional belief in two more things which include the message that comes from Muhammad, which is considered to be the direct word of God and the example that is set by Muhammad himself which is referred to as the sunnah that was recorded by those that were close to him and has been kept under preservation over time. Being a Muslim requires that you perform the five acts that are associated with worship. This will entail testifying that there is no other god but God, making sure to take part in prayer at least five times a day, fasting during the Islamic month of Ramadan, making sure that a percentage of income every year goes to the needy and making sure that one takes part in the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lifetime. All this acts of worship have one ultimate goal that is to developing a consciousness that is extreme of the existence that of God (Alkouatli, 2007, p. 15). Islam prescribes that the people that follow it should be kind-hearted, reliable and sincere and this is supposed to be exhibited through worship and the way that they treat other people. The Muslims are supposed to always shoe respect to the prophets of Islam and will always say ‘peace be upon him’ in the instances that they mention the prophets by their names. For the people that believe in Islam, the last and most great prophet was Muhammad and the Quran is the final message that Allah gave that was supposed to guide the human beings in the ways that are supposed to lead them to the true religion (Egan, 2002, p. 3). Muslim culture in Britain The United Kingdom is regularly cited as successful in the panoply of experiences of minority relations in Europe and yet the actions that are taken by the government in the recent times harks towards European models that have refused pluralism and multiculturalism for assimilationist rhetoric and discourse (Ameli, 2006) There is very little empirical evidence that that documents the experience that is associated with the British Muslim Women as far as using Shari’ah councils to solve and resolve matrimonial disputes is concerned. The issues that are connected to choice and autonomy are more often than not based on fixed understandings. It is not a voluntary process in that the adherents have become members of the faith community and have the conviction to remain so; they are therefore mandated to use the religious courts. They are also bound within the faith of the community by the results that will ultimately come out of it. Opting out of the jurisdiction of the court may result in the consequence of having at the same time to leave the community of those that truly adhere to the faith. This means that it cannot be perceived as a type of alternative dispute resolution (Bano, 2012, p. 276). The engagement that the Muslim women have with the Shari’ah councils cannot be considered in relation to being either insiders or outsiders of their respective communities. Many people consider the use of this kind of bodies to obtain divorce certificates as a vital part of their religious identity even though it is neither fixed nor universal. The Muslim women are part of a heterogeneous group of individuals who belong to a variety of varied families and communities and who can be identified with the struggle of cultural and religious contestations. The liberal position on equality is regularly imbued with simplified and unqualified understandings of culture with the many positions that are occupied by the women in terms of race, ethnicity, class, religion, family and also the community (Bano, 2012, p. 276). For a long time, the subject that deals with women has been tied to the larger issue that is associated with the revival of Islam that is also referred to as the fundamentalism or Islamism. People have developed stereotypes about Islam particularly the idea that Islam is ubiquitous in its culture and politics, that the traditions that are associated with it are obstinate while the clergy possess the highest authority and the status that the women have everywhere is lower than that of men. There are quarters that have argued that Islam is incompatible with feminism and that the laws that are related to Islam are the main impediment to the advancement of the women that are Muslims. This can be said so because the religion looks at the women as being weak and the inferior sex. Others think that the women are not inferior and they had to be subdued by the use of the religion so that they could not remain as powerful as they were and to be kept in control. The people that are closest to Islam are convinced that the laws that are associated with Islam provide all the rights that are required for human beings and also the women and these rights are protected (Moghadam, 2003, p. 6). The status and position that women hold and their subsequent access to positions of power have undergone a metamorphosis that is extreme in the twentieth century. The Muslim women in the previous times faced a lot of uphill struggles that were characterized by restrictions that were extreme and ensuring that the legal right of the Muslim women that were prescribed by the Islamic law were reinstated while making sure that the female Muslims were educated (Haddad and Esposito, 1998, p. 124). There is a distinct thread of thought that can be considered to be feminist that always comes up in the narratives that comes from women even when they don’t necessarily identify with feminism. These women always assert the importance of garnering the right for Muslim women who are not accorded the rights that they deserve that have been bestowed on the by Allah and their religion that is Islam. Cultural practices that exist can be considered to have diluted the Islamic values and this leads the women to thought of activism, theological debate and the thoughts of challenging patriarchy. It is considered that Islam has always been characteristically just to both men and women, but as the religion spread, it was subjected to dilutions that were a result of interpretations that were not associated with the religion and its faith that had the effect of limiting the role that the women had. The Muslim women need to be made aware of the rights that they have and they are allowed to demand for them in the ways that can be considered to be correct in the Islamic point of view. In general, the male Muslims that reside in Britain are considered to be unusually patriarchal and also oppressive. On the other hand, all the Muslim women are collectively perceived to be passive submissive, inactive and overly dependent on other members of the society. The Muslim women that are in Britain have been stereotyped as depressed and isolated, subordinate to the men in general while being confined in the home to take care of the children. There is also a pervasive misconception that the second generation is stuck between two cultures whereby, one avails freedom to them while the other regulates their activity while denying them basic freedoms such as the choice of a marriage partner and a career field (Laird, 2008, p. 82). The readings of the foundation of the Islamic texts which include the Quran and the Sunnah reinforce the belief that Islam as taught by the prophet Muhammad frees women from pre-Islamic restrictions and consequently allowing them to live lives that are satisfying and complete. Nevertheless, not all the Muslim women get this chance to live lives that are characterized by ideal Islamic emancipation. In some of the Muslim communities, the women are not allowed to seek education opportunities. Neither are they allowed to engage in activities that are of an economic nature or property rights and this is usually based on the cultural values that exist within this communities (Contractor, 2012, p. 8). These women are more often than not ignorant to what the Quran and the Sunnah assures them in terms of the rights that they are entitled to. This is the point where the feminist struggle that is commonly seen that is directed towards universal patriarchy gets meaning in the struggles that Muslim women go through. The rights of the male members or society are normally given more preference than those that women are entitled to in history. Historically the women have always been marginalized from the process and the institutions of knowledge production and the suffragettes that are fought against patriarchal political structures that denied the women their political rights. In relation to the Muslim women, it is quite obvious that they had roles that were authoritative during the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad however there was a culture that thereafter spread across the nations that saw the Muslim women lose their rights. In many of the cases, the progressive corrosion of some of the rights that the Muslim women were entitled to may be attributed to the patriarchy that was common in their cultures and not necessarily in the Islamic religion. There is a great diversity in the Muslims that exist in Britain where the majority of these Muslims are Sunnis and some of them are Shi’ites. Within the Sunnis that exist in Britain, some sections such as the Deobandiscan be considered to be more traditional than the other sections. These sections of the Muslim communities that are more traditional impose restrictions to the women of their community. The restrictions though, are not specific to these groups since they are also evident in the Muslim families and the broader Muslim community (Kabir, 2010, p. 78). There is the widespread belief that the Muslim women are always under pressure to accept arranged marriages and many of the young Muslims go on to accept the marriages graciously as a norm even though there is a section that goes against it (Kabir, 2010, p. 78). Muslim women continue to face and overcome the obstacles to their rights and liberty that hinder their engagement to the labor market. This barriers and obstacles come from both within the Muslim community and outside it. It can be said to be an environment that is characterized by hostility that is directed at the Muslim women that is coupled with stereotype and gender based assumptions about them and their ability to fit in. Current research demonstrates the disparities that exist in education and employment statistics and also the consequences that arise as a result of this. An example of this is the manner in which the Muslim women have to confront the assumptions that are made not only from within their own communities but also from the greater British community. Therefore, even though the cultures that they come from might place restrictions on the lifestyles that they live, the sexist and racist stereotypes that exist in the British society further compounds this situation. Standing up for their rights as women will mean that they go against the traditional gender relations that exist within their cultures as well as fighting against their image that is perceived as exploited and oppressed victims which permeates common sense perceptions that the British have of the Muslim women in general (Bano, 2012, p. 48). In spite of the notion that is developed of strategic employment and numerous unpaid working roles on the part of many of the British Muslim women, the 2001 census shows that the formal economic inactivity rate that exists among the British Muslim women is almost double that of the other faith groups. More than half the population of the Muslim women can be said to be inactive though the same figures hide a lot of disparities that exist within and between the communities. This can be show in a situation where an Indian woman and a Muslim Pakistani or Bangladeshi woman seek paid employment, the Indian woman is more likely to get be employed than the Muslim woman (Gilliat-Ray, 2010, p. 214). The Muslim women that are in Britain not only suffer the effects of gender discrimination and the compact of discrimination that is associated with being Muslim, but they also face problems that are particular to the Muslim faith such as being penalized for praying, not being allowed time off to deal with religious requirements and festivals and lack of union support whenever they have to go through this discrimination (Ameli, 2006). In conforming to their idea of an umma that has no boundaries, the religious rights movements that are associated with Islam have a consistency of vision that is extraordinary when it comes to issues that deal with gender relations and sexuality. The common areas include the significance of the concern with women, abstemiousness about the body, the focus on the sexuality of the women as a source of immorality, the increase in the means that the men can be able to satisfy the sexual desires that they have and the reconstruction of the male control over the women and their sexuality (Moghissi, 2005, p. 58). In the absence of a worldwide social and political reform that is directed at the violent patriarchal cultures where masculinity and honor are connected to female control, it is imperative to draw on secular international human rights law so that those that are vulnerable in the society can be protected. Therefore, culture, tradition and religion can be used by the state as excuses that are meant to aid it in forfeiting the obligations that it has of protecting the women (Ahmad and Sardar, 2012, p. 136). In the United Kingdom, the women do not rely on their own resources in the civil society where the feminist activists have been able to draw on the broader political resources of the transnational movement against violence that is propagated by the male members of the society in the engagements that they have with the British state (Ahmad and Sardar, 2012, p. 136). The perception of women rights is still considered a taboo as far as British Muslim communities are concerned. Many women have spent a lot of time trying to challenge the discrimination that is gender based but there is a lot of resistance to the equality that should be the outcome of this endeavor. In the recent past there has been discourse about the rise of grassroots feminist organizations while a new generation of confident and well articulated Muslim women who are championing the fight for equality which has developed to be an integral part of the day to day activities for a good number of the British Muslim women. Very few Muslim women in Britain will refer to Islam as their way of life and at the same time stress the significance of social action as opposed to internal spiritual reflection and for the women that seek political posts, Islam has become a political badge for opposition and the tool that they employ in the fight for justice and in the process of creating a way forward in the politics that is supposed to provide an intervention making the Islamic ability that they had to move past the personal belief that they are supposed to possess (Kassam, 2010, p. 75). Conclusion Muslim women, their bodies and their mode of dressing have become the new source of both media and political discourse over the past several decades. These include the cases where the niqab was banned in some university campuses when the clothing was viewed as a security risk following the terror attacks that had escalated. This and other examples show how the bodies of the Muslim women and their apparent victimhood, and ironically their perceived threat to British values continue to be the genesis of excitement in the media and government led agendas. Generally looking at the situation, it can be seen to be a victim-focused and pathological discourse that repeats simplistic western versus Muslim dichotomous frameworks (Shirazi, 2010, p. 245). In other instances, the British Muslim women are seen to be perilous to the values of the white British people where in the news stories, the media bring into play the language of nationalism and patriotism alongside that of terrorism, fanaticism and extremism. This particular line of thought by the media is usually reinforced by singular images of Muslim women dressed in black niqabs and burqas portray the veil as a form of oppression or as a threat. This is consequently employed to come up with policies such as immigration controls and escalated security the ends up in the violation of basic civil rights and the perception that many Muslims are criminals (Bhimji, 2012, p. 51). Many feminists, including women who are Muslims state that the hijab is a primitive manifestation of female suppression while others look at it as a form of liberation from the superficial notions that are associated with the cultures that are western of female attractiveness and the attention that is unwanted from men. The modern Muslim woman in Britain considers it to be old fashioned and therefore would rather not wear it in the event that it is not a requirement (Hundley, 2006).   Bibliography Ahmad, W. and Sardar, Z. 2012. Muslims in Britain. Routledge. Alkouatli, C. 2007. Islam. Tarrytown, Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, NY. Ameli, S. R. 2006. Law & British Muslims. Islamic Human Rights Commission. Wembley. Bano, S. 2012. 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