Abstract
This paper looks at women who actively cultivate piety by coming together in religious discussion circles in the capital city of Dhaka in Bangladesh, and their efforts at making personal piety public. The women use the term “da`wa” to refer to their proselytizing activities by which they seek to transform both people’s inner spiritual lives as well as the public space. This chapter explores the modalities of the desired transformation, which includes conventional preaching to friends and family, and more importantly, going into the public space in a more thought-out and organized manner. I argue that the proselytizing women’s approach to transforming the public space is interesting in its deliberate attempt to play down the religious importance of the practice. Women use the word “secular” to describe their da`wa activities. This is interesting on many levels. First, the use reveals a plea from the religious quarter to the masses—those who have long considered the public space and public initiatives as non-religious. The generation of appeal, by recourse to ideas of the secular, also stems from the proselytizing women’s disavowal of the stringency, moral policing and violent political means used by Islamists whose entry in the public space is grounded in their efforts to establish the Islamic state. The women I discuss are different—perhaps not in the cultivation of personal piety, but in their outreach to the public space, where their use of the term “secular” speaks of a multiplicity and plurality that they as well as the less religious quarters in Bangladesh accuse Islamists of misappropriating. As one woman told me, “Surely, even in the time of the Prophet, not everyone excelled in piety…Piety has its ebbs and flows. But what was remarkable about the Prophet’s message and the golden era of the Islamic civilization is that Muslims were creative, innovative and productive. We feel that it is this message that needs to be sent clearly.” Thus, the priority given to “productive” over “pious” citizens allows the proselytizing women to reach into the public space using strategies that are new and that render pluralism and multiplicity not the sole mandate of secular quarters.
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Notes
- 1.
By developmentalist I refer to ways employed by NGOs and other development organizations that focus on tangible issues such as increasing income, providing education, and delivery of health services. In Bangladesh these services have mostly been offered by secular organizations that include Bangladesh’s thriving NGOs such as BRAC and Grameen Bank, while Islamic groups have been involved in door-to-door preaching. This trend seems to be changing, and Islamic groups are thinking up ways of being more relevant to the cultural, economic and even political landscape of Bangladesh. To that end, they are emulating secular NGOs and getting involved in development work.
- 2.
Of the three groups, the two that met in the organizers’ homes had mostly younger women, with one of these dedicated exclusively to young, university-going women. The group that congregated in the mosque three times a week had a greater number of older women.
- 3.
I am aware that the term “non-aligned” may spark some controversy, as claims are made about alignment with transnational groups, literally or ideologically. Thus, I use the term to clarify that in the local context, these groups are not a part of any other Islamic groups or parties that also have study circles.
- 4.
Huq (2011). Discussing the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) Rebellion: Non-Islamist women and religious revival in urban Bangladesh. Contemporary Islam 5(3), 267–283.
- 5.
Mahmood (2005); M. Canard, Encyclopedia of Islam (1999).
- 6.
Mahmood, The Politics of Piety, 58.
- 7.
Amina Jamal, “Global Discourses, Situated Traditions, and the Secular/Religious Framing of Muslim Women’s Agency in Pakistan” (Draft chapter used for forthcoming 2011).
- 8.
Amina Jamal, “Global Discourses, Situated Traditions, and the Secular/Religious Framing of Muslim Women’s Agency in Pakistan.” See also, Cooper (2008).
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
- 11.
In 2001, a bomb exploded in the largest celebration of Bengali New Year in Ramna, killing several people and sending shockwaves throughout the nation. This was the first major assault by Islamists on a celebration of Bengaliness through cultural activities such as singing. In 2005, a suicide bombing on Udichi, a cultural organization in Khulna, killed 5 people and injured approximately 50. In the early 1990s NGOs came under attack by Islamists for taking girls out of their homes and thus out of purdah in order to attend schools. For more see: “Defending Islam and Women’s Honour against NGOs in Bangladesh” in Women’s Studies International Forum 33 (2010): 316–324.
- 12.
Talal Asad. Formations of the Secular, 2003; and Saba Mahmood. “Is Critique Secular? Secular Imperatives?” Posted in The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere, 2008.
- 13.
Sufi practices in Bangladesh refer mainly to following a pir (live saint or just spiritual teacher and guide) and the veneration of dead saints’ shrines, which are bound by certain ritualistic practices. Many practitioners who follow a more literal understanding of religious texts argue that these practices are far removed from “authentic” prophetic practices. There is debate amongst the “pir” quarters as well, where different groups vie for legitimacy. They argue that the literalists are incorrect, and that while there are many fake pirs, there are also good ones remaining whose practices are prophetic indeed.
- 14.
On August 15, 1975, the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, his entire immediate family except for two daughters, some members of his extended family members, and a number of key figures from his regime were murdered by young army officers.
- 15.
For a discussion of smaller Islamist groups and their relations with the Jama`at, see Riaz (2004).
- 16.
In the BNP/Jama`at regime of 2001–2006, when there were several terrorist attacks in different parts in Bangladesh and when the presence of a militant outfit with Al-Qaida connections—the JMB—became increasingly fierce, the BNP declared that Bangladesh has no fundamentalists. Critics saw this claim to result from BNP’s strategic alliance with Jama`at. Towards the end of their tenure, the BNP did however declare JMB a banned outfit.
- 17.
The women’s development policy was proposed in 2008, when the past caretaker government stalled in its implementation due to a fierce outcry from Islamists. In 2011, the policy was resurrected again and was met with strong protests from Amini and his Islmai Oikyo Jot (IOJ). While the government is being strong in asserting that the policy will be put in place, many feel the government is failing to substantiate its claim that the policy is not anti-Islam. Thus, the issue of women’s (inheritance) rights, which is at the heart of the debate, has not been given serious thought. As a result, many progressive women’s groups are frustrated that the government is not doing enough, while there are others who despair that these and many other policies are not thought through within a broader progressive—but still Islamic—framework. The latter stance is taken up by those who feel the time has come to think about progress and development in a way that is neither anti-women not anti-Islam, even if simply to move beyond being stalled by regressive Islamists.
- 18.
Asef Bayat’s work on post-Islamism may be useful in understanding how the case I present corresponds to similar changes in Muslim majority countries. Bayat argues that the term post-Islamism is more descriptive than analytic, defining it through certain events such as internal changes in the youth, the religious clergy, women, students, along with “external” pressures of living in the era of globalization, and dealing with other non-Muslim nation-states whose combined effect has been the transformation of the public space from the “grim, dark and male-ness” that characterized the Islamist era or post-revolution Iran. Bayat argues that post-Islamism as a “condition” and a “project” may have originated in Iran in the 1990s but has consequently been taken up by many large and small movements in the Muslim world (2007: 10–15). While I am tempted to present CA as an example of post-Islamism, I must add that Bangladesh’s experience of Islamism is very different from Iran’s or even Pakistan’s in South Asia. Here, the Jama`at-e-Islamic has neither engineered a revolution, nor assumed power single handedly to establish an Islamic state. The term post-Islamism thus seems skewed given the Bangladeshi state has never been represented by Islamists and an Islamist agenda. However, the term post-Islamism fits if it is to denote how religious movements–those that are political in their overt quest for state power, and those that are political in a looser sense of the term by simply wanting to moralize individuals and society without going as far as talking about an Islamic state—are changing their tone as they undertake a more pluralistic and less rigid approach and generate appeal. In the case of Bangladesh, as my example will highlight, there is a strong tendency to distance oneself from existing Islamists. However, as Islamists also begin to change their tone and adopt a softer stance, it will be interesting to observe if groups such as Community Action become subsumed within the reformed and toned-down Islamist ambit. Thus, the question of how the different streams that seek to moralize/Islamize the public space may merge or remain separate remains an empirical question worth pursuing over long term.
- 19.
Interview held in January 2010 in Dhaka at Nadera’s residence.
- 20.
Ali Riaz, God Willing.
- 21.
Interview held in March 2011 in Dhaka, at Nadera’s residence.
- 22.
Interview held in September 2009, in Dhaka at Shehnaz’s residence.
- 23.
Zonta International, founded in 1919 in the United States, is an organization of women executives and professionals who work together to advance the status of women by supporting a range of development areas such as education and healthcare. Zonta exists in 64 countries and has had a presence in Bangladesh for nearly three decades. While “Zontians” argue that they do much good work, critics see Zonta as an affluent women’s pastime whose the achievements do not meet the potential that the Bangladeshi women’s collective wealth and connections offer.
- 24.
Mahmood, “Secular Imperatives,” 2.
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Huq, S. (2014). Religious Learning Circles and Da`wa: The Modalities of Educated Bangladeshi Women Preaching Islam. In: Finucane, J., Feener, R. (eds) Proselytizing and the Limits of Religious Pluralism in Contemporary Asia. ARI - Springer Asia Series, vol 4. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4451-18-5_5
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