Christian Women and Girls in Burkina Faso Wear Burqas to Avoid Attacks from Islamic Extremists
New Age
Islam News Bureau
03
May 20123
• Christian Women and Girls in Burkina Faso Wear Burqas
to Avoid Attacks from Islamic Extremists
• Arab World's First Space Flight by Woman Astronaut, Rayyanah
Barnawi, Delayed
• Saudi Program to Train Women from 28 Countries in
Data, Artificial Intelligence
• Muslim Women in Cork Enjoy Centennial Celebration That
Began With the Recitation of the Holy Qur’an
• Afghanistan’s Women and Taliban Vie for Spotlight at
Top UN Doha Meet
• Women Have Cultivated Religious Authority at Los
Angeles’s Women’s Mosque of America
• Muslim Women Workers in India: What the Data Doesn’t
Tell Us
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/christian-burkina-burqas-islamic-extremist/d/129692
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Christian Women
and Girls in Burkina Faso Wear Burqas to Avoid Attacks from Islamic Extremists
Muslim and Christian women and children, from same clan, in displacement camp near Ouagadougou. Image © ACN.
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The Catholic
Herald
May 3, 2023
CHRISTIAN women
and girls in Burkina Faso need to wear Burqas to avoid attacks from Islamic
extremists, according to a priest in the country.
Following an
explosion of jihadist terror in 2015, extremist groups are still terrorising
the Christian population, pressuring them to convert to Islam, Father Wenceslao
Belem told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.
According to
the priest, Catholic nurses pretend to be Muslims when travelling to patients
and Christian girls wear full face veils to school to protect them from being
assaulted or abducted.
Father Belem
said: “Over 2,000 schools have been closed. They attack modern schools and turn
them into Quranic schools.
“They attack
Catholic schools, killing or abducting Christians, especially catechists,
priests and committed laypeople.
“And they want
to force women to wear full face veils, regardless of their religion.
“Many Christian
girls have to wear veils to school in order to avoid being branded, maligned,
beaten or even kidnapped.”
Churches are
guarded because of the constant fear of terrorist attacks, Father Belem said.
He added: “The
terrorists mine the roads that lead to the villages to prevent us and the
military from having access.”
With terrorist
groups occupying 50 per cent of Burkina Faso’s territory, priests risk their
lives every time they travel to provide pastoral support.
On 2 January
2023, unidentified armed men murdered Father Jacques YaroZerbo when he was
travelling to a funeral.
Spanish
missionary Antonio Cesar Fernandez was assassinated by a group of jihadists in
2021.
Father Simeon
Yampa was murdered along with five parishioners during Sunday Mass in 2019, two
months after another priest, Father Joel Yougbare, was kidnapped.
Father Belem
said: “Before going out on pastoral missions we pray intensely, receive the
sacraments and go to confession, in case we do not return.”
Catholics, who
make up about 19 per cent of Burkina Faso’s population, have been increasingly
resorting to listening to Mass and catechesis over the radio.
Father Belem
added: “In Burkina Faso we currently have thousands of closed schools, many
parishes are inactive and there are over 1.7 million internally displaced.
“Facing this
threat requires both courage and imagination. [Nurses] continue to care for
people who need medical attention and who are often left in villages, with no
resources.”
He concluded:
“We believe that evil will not have the last word.”
(Photo courtesy
of Aid to the Church in Need)
Source: catholicherald.co.uk
https://catholicherald.co.uk/christian-women-and-girls-in-burkina-faso-wear-burqas-to-avoid-attacks-from-islamic-extremists/
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Arab World's First Space Flight by Woman Astronaut, Rayyanah Barnawi, Delayed
Saudi astronaut Rayyanah Barnawi is set for a historic space mission. Photo: Axiom Space
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May 03, 2023
The Arab
world's first space mission by a female astronaut has been put on hold, less
than a week before the historic event was scheduled.
Rayyanah Barnawi
and fellow Saudi astronaut Ali Al Qarni were due to blast off to the
International Space Centre from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on May 9,
at 6.43am UAE time.
The ISS on
Wednesday issued a statement confirming it was "no longer targeting
opportunities in early May" for the milestone journey.
It said Nasa,
SpaceX and Axiom Space, the company in Houston that has helped arrange the trip
for Saudi Arabia, were working to pinpoint a new date.
"Nasa,
Axiom Space and SpaceX are working together to identify the best available
opportunity to launch the Axiom Mission 2 to the International Space
Station," the ISS said in a message released on Twitter.
"We are no
longer targeting opportunities in early May. More information on the updated
target launch date will be shared soon."
No reason has
been given for the postponement.
Axiom Space
confirmed the delay in its own post on social media and said the crew remained
ready for its mission.
The Saudi space
travellers are to be joined on the planned 10-day mission by former Nasa
astronaut Peggy Whitson, as commander, and pilot John Shoffner.
They are
scheduled to join Emirati astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi on board the orbiting
space laboratory.
Dr Al Neyadi
arrived on the ISS on March 3 for a six-month stint, the first such
long-duration mission undertaken by an Arab astronaut.
Mishaal Ashemimry,
who leads microgravity research at the Saudi Space Commission, previously said
this would be the first flight under the kingdom's sustainable human space
flight programme that was announced in September.
Saudi Arabia
sent the first Arab into space in 1985 when Prince Sultan bin Salman took off
on a space shuttle for a seven-day trip, but no long-term exploration programme
followed.
“This is a
significant milestone for us in the kingdom as we launch our first female and
our second male to space,” Ms Ashemimry said.
“We're excited
about this mission because it's an inaugural mission of our human space flight
programme."
Twenty science
experiments had been assigned to the AX-2 crew and the Saudi astronauts are
expected focus on 11 that have been presented to them by universities in the
kingdom.
Source: thenationalnews.com
https://www.thenationalnews.com/gulf-news/saudi-arabia/2023/05/03/arab-worlds-first-space-flight-by-woman-astronaut-delayed/
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Saudi Program
to Train Women from 28 Countries in Data, Artificial Intelligence
May 02, 2023
RIYADH: The Saudi Data and Artificial
Intelligence Authority in cooperation with Google Cloud has launched the first
phase of an initiative aimed at training 1,000 women from 28 countries in data
and AI skills.
The Elevate
Program, which will run until Aug. 30, was initially announced during the
second edition of the Global AI Summit held in Riyadh in September.
In a statement,
the SDAIA said: “The first phase of the program is offered under the
supervision of 16 female and male trainers from the authority through two
tracks; one for technical specialists and the other for non-specialists who
wish to develop their skills.
“The program
offers free training sessions designed to equip participants with the skills
and experience needed for roles such as cloud engineer, data engineer, machine
learning engineer, or cloud business.”
The program has
been designed to empower women in global emerging markets to pursue new jobs in
AI and ML by training more than 25,000 women over the next five years.
It also aims to
close the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The launch of
the Elevate Program is part of the authority’s contribution toward the
Kingdom’s target of becoming a global leader AI.
Source:
arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2296376/saudi-arabia
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Muslim Women in
Cork Enjoy Centennial Celebration That Began With the Recitation of the Holy
Qur’an
WED, 03 MAY,
2023
AHMADI Muslim
Women of Ireland held a centennial celebration event in Ballincollig Community
Hall to commemorate the completion of 100 years of their women’s organisation.
The celebration
was attended by 35 members and 10 guests, including Cork City Lord Mayor
Deirdre Forde, members of An Garda Síochána, local school principals, and women
from various backgrounds.
The event began
with the recitation of the Holy Qur’an, followed by English and Irish
translations.
After that, a
presentation was given on the founding of the women’s organisation, its
charitable work in Cork, and its efforts to promote integration in line with
the slogan of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association: “Love for All, Hatred for
None.”
The Lord Mayor,
Deirdre Forde, congratulated the Ahmaddiya women’s group and said: “Your ideas
and your objectives are of the highest order. I want to commend you for playing
your role and your part in making our community better in Ballincollig or
wherever you are from throughout the city and the county.
The National
President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Women Association, Najia Malik said: “Many
women and girls travel tens of miles to collect water for their families every
day, which is often contaminated with dangerous pathogens. So, we have decided
to donate 10 water pumps in Mali, providing clean and sustainable water,
reducing disease, freeing families, and giving children back their childhood.”
The session
concluded with a silent prayer, followed by lunch and gift distribution to all
guests. The guests appreciated the Asian dinner and treats which were prepared
by the members of AMWA.
AMWA has been
working tirelessly to spread love, generosity, sisterhood, and peace around the
world. All Ahmadi Muslims adhere to two guiding principles: honoring the rights
owed to God and fulfilling the obligations toward God’s creation
The Ahmadiyya
Muslim Community is a revival movement within Islam that was founded in 1889.
It is the only
Islamic organisation that believes the Messiah has come in the person of Mirza
Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908).
“Jesus Christ
was second last prophet,” explains Faiza.
Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad, born in India, “was sent by God” to end religious wars and reinstate
morality, justice and peace. A century ago, Ahmad declared that an aggressive
‘Jihad by the sword’ has no place in Islam. In its place, he taught his
followers to wage a bloodless intellectual ‘Jihad of the pen’ to defend Islam.
With this goal, Ahmad wrote over 80 books and tens of thousands of letters as
well as delivering lectures and taking part in public debates. His rational
defence of Islam is a source of disquiet for conventional Muslim thinking. And
the Ahmadiyya Community is the only Islamic organisation to endorse a
separation of mosque and state.
Faiza says
there are about 40 members of the Ahmadiyya group in Cork out of more than
3,500 Muslims here. She and her fellow members believe that Ahmad was the
reformer of this age. Other Muslims are still waiting for the Messiah.
Born in Dubai,
Faiza’s family have been members of the Ahmadiyya organisation since her
grandfather joined it.
“The teachings
of Islam are an integral part of my life.”
She adds that
her beliefs give her clarity, peace and contentment as well as the drive to
become a better person.
Islamic
extremists have given the religion a bad reputation with terrorist atrocities
carried out in the name of Islam.
Faiza said:
“’Islam’ means peace. The terrorism is unrelated to Islamic teaching. Terrorism
in the name of Islam is less than 50 years old despite the fact Islam is about
1,400 years old. There is a lot of evidence that (terrorist organisations) have
a political objective. They justify their actions through political motives
rather than religious ones.
On the
differing roles of the sexes, Faiza says that Islam places the responsibility
for providing food, clothing and shelter on men.
“If the wife is
earning, she can keep her money for herself. One of our members in Dublin is a
primary school teacher. It’s difficult to get a job as a primary teacher if you
are a Muslim in Ireland. Another female member, a Harvard graduate, is a
professor of neuroscience in Dublin. All women in our organisation are allowed
to work.”
Mother-of-two,
Faiza, who is married to a German Muslim, chooses to stay at home to look after
her children aged seven and nine.
Faiza wears a
hijab and a long coat when she goes out. While the world was convulsed in anger
when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in Iranian police custody following her
arrest by the country’s ‘morality police’ for violating hijab laws, Faiza
insists: “There is no law that punishes a woman for not wearing the headscarf.
No-one has the authority to deliberately force a woman to wear a hijab.”
But why wear a
hijab and Burqa at all?
“Women in my
community are educated so they can understand the wisdom and benefits of the
beautiful teaching of Islam in relation to modesty. Out of their own free will,
they choose to follow the example of Mary, mother of Jesus, who is always shown
covered modestly.
“I choose to cover
myself. I actually feel more confident covered. I don’t have to worry about my
physical appearance.
Islam’s goal is
to “summon mankind to the one God almighty to spread the message of morality
and righteousness”.
Faiza believes
that death is followed by a day of judgement. She says that God/Allah is very
forgiving.
Source: echolive.ie
https://www.echolive.ie/wow/arid-41130070.html
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Afghanistan’s
women and Taliban vie for spotlight at top UN Doha meet
03-05-23
Hundreds of
Afghan women have taken part in protests to criticise what they see as an
intentional decision to sideline them from a key UN meeting in Doha.
The closed-door
meetings, which involve discussions on the human rights situation in
Afghanistan as well as on the removal of sanctions on the Taliban-led nation,
will see nations around the world take part.
The de facto
authorities from the Taliban have not been invited to the critical talks being
led by the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres.
During the
meeting, the UN will seek a “common understanding within the international
community on how to engage with the Taliban on these issues”.
Leaders from
several nations are expected to “reinvigorate international engagement around
key issues, such as human rights, in particular women’s and girls’ rights,
inclusive governance, countering terrorism and drug trafficking,” the UN said
in a statement on Sunday.
In Afghanistan,
various protests by women groups took place while the meetings went on. They
said they were angered by the talks looking to formalise the Taliban-led
regime, despite the erosion of women’s rights in Afghanistan by the interim
leaders, who call the handling of the affairs “an internal social issue”.
On Monday,
however, 64 Afghan women were reportedly invited to speak virtually, along with
a group of envoys, and asked to present their recommendations on reforms in
Afghanistan to the UN officials.
The collective
said this did not substitute for the official lack of presence of Afghan women
on the panel. Its leaders asked the UN and envoys to refrain from compromising
the rights of Afghan citizens in return for cooperation from the Taliban.
“Don’t be
deceived by Taliban’s promises. They cannot and should not be trusted. There is
no moderate Taliban. For us, they are all the same, the ones in Qatar, the
Kandaharis and the Haqqanis,” read the top recommendation offered to the
leaders in Doha.
It added that
the Taliban won’t “give women their basic rights without imposing conditions
and pressure from influential countries.”
The UN and
other nations have been asked to “refrain from public statements suggesting
recognition of the Taliban as such statements further strengthen [its]
propaganda as the legitimate government”.
Taliban’s
deputy spokesperson Bilal Karimi said they were hoping for the meeting to help
remove sanctions on their interim regime and chart out engagement with the
international community.
Reacting
sharply to the Taliban’s exclusion, Suhail Shaeen, the leader of the regime’s
office in Doha, said such meetings will be “unproductive, and even sometimes
counterproductive”.
“How will they
implement decisions while we are not part of it? Issues can be solved through a
pragmatic approach, not one-sided decisions,” he said.
Source: independent.co.uk
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-un-doha-meet-b2330764.html
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Women Have
Cultivated Religious Authority at Los Angeles’s Women’s Mosque of America
May 2, 2023
By Alejandra
Molina
LOS ANGELES
(RNS) — Tazeen M. Ali was a graduate student in Boston when she first learned
about the opening of the Women’s Mosque of America in Los Angeles, believed to
be the nation’s first women-only mosque.
Ali recalls the
social media debates that ensued around the mosque’s 2015 opening, with people
arguing over the Islamic legality of woman-led prayers as well as news coverage
about “Muslim women ‘fighting back’ against the patriarchy.”
These media
narratives informed Ali’s assumptions that the mosque was a “radical space”
made up of younger women who carried traumatic and negative experiences from
other Islamic worship centers.
Ali would later
learn it was much more than that.
In her recently
released book, “The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US
Islam,” Ali explores how Muslim women without formal Islamic training have been
able to cultivate religious authority in the congregation. The Women’s Mosque
of America, writes Ali, “demonstrates the dynamism of Islam and the women who
interpret it, who approach the Qur’an as a tool to resist social hierarchies,
build community, and empower themselves.”
At the space,
Ali — an assistant professor of religion and politics at Washington University
in St. Louis — found a multiracial and multigenerational group of women, some
who also occupied active roles in conventional mosques where they prayed and
participated in community with men. The women’s mosque, as Ali wrote, hosted
monthly jumah for Muslim and non-Muslim women, girls and boys under 12 years of
age. While for some, the women’s mosque was the only space they were a part of,
Ali learned it also functioned as a “complementary space” for many who belonged
to other worship communities.
Ali highlighted
how the mosque’s founder, HasnaMaznavi, a comedy writer, explicitly stated that
her vision for the Women’s Mosque of America was “rooted in Muslim history” and
the Muslim women’s leadership and women-only mosques that have existed for
centuries.
Lawyer Sana
Muttalib, WMA’s former co-president, credited the Quran for her understanding
of Islam as a “gender-egalitarian religious tradition” and her motivation for
immersing herself with the women’s mosque, Ali wrote.
Alongside
Maznavi and Muttalib, both millennials, were preachers like Gail Kennard, a
former journalist in her mid-60s who served as president of the oldest and one
of the largest African American architectural firms in LA.
Ali spent a
summer in Los Angeles in 2017, making connections with WMA members during
Ramadan social events and after jumah while socializing around a halal food
truck outside of the mosque. She interviewed more than 20 congregation members
at coffee shops and cafes around LA and some at the Islamic Center of Southern
California, one of the area’s largest mosques that WMA members also attended.
To Ali, it was
interesting to see the women’s mosque not as an escape, but as something that
added to the members’ spiritual lives. Their participation wasn’t reactionary
or politically driven, and it didn’t come from a place where they sought to
“make a stance” or “revolutionize anything.”
“They didn’t
see themselves as doing anything radical,” Ali told Religion News Service.
“They really saw it as this lovely organic space that seemed like a very
natural thing to be a part of.
“It was
different from their other mosque experiences that they weren’t necessarily
critical of. … They weren’t necessarily coming from these traumatic places,”
Ali added.
Ali was drawn
to the mosque after spending hours on YouTube watching videos of their sermons.
Ali found the khutbah (congregational prayer) and post-jumah discussion circle
were designed to be intimate communal experiences that mark the WMA as a safe
space for women.
She opens her
book with an anecdote of Kennard as the designated khateebah (female preacher)
that month in August 2015, as she spoke on the ways Prophet Muhammad’s 12 wives
were role models for all Muslim women. Kennard believed polygamy was oppressive
to women and noted that Muhammad’s multiple marriages came after the death of
his first wife, Khadijah, to whom he was monogamously married for 25 years.
As Kennard
turned to Islamic scripture to address her ethical concerns, she understood
Muhammad’s wives to be “divinely ordained to speak as religious authorities in
the early Muslim community,” Ali wrote. To Kennard, the marriages were the only
way Muhammad could “legitimize his close access to the women who had been
chosen by God to be his disciples.”
Kennard
highlighted that none of Muhammad’s wives after Khadijah bore him any children
who survived past infancy, which, Ali wrote, served her as further confirmation
that “there was a higher, divine purpose to their marriages.”
At the
beginning of her sermon, Kennard said she previously only considered Muhammad’s
first wife as an empowering role model for Muslim women, but by the end, she
advised the congregation to carry on the wives’ legacy of using their voices to
spread religious knowledge.
“Their spirit
is reaching across the centuries to remind us that we can do more than we think
is possible. If they could do what they did in their time, why not us and why
not now?” Kennard was quoted saying in her sermon.
Ali also
touched on ways the WMA preachers used “scriptural principles of God’s
compassion” when addressing social issues such as Black Lives Matter, environmental
justice and mass incarceration. Through her interviews, Ali learned that some
congregants felt the women’s mosque carried an “added layer of religious
legitimacy” because leaders there discussed social issues in ways they didn’t
see their respective mosques doing.
“One of the
major appeals to them was that this mosque was engaging with current social
justice movements and issues in a way that they felt was missing in their other
communities,” Ali told RNS.
Ali mentioned
an interview with a WMA member who was struck when their male preacher at their
regular mosque didn’t address the election of President Donald Trump during
Friday prayer that week in 2016.
“Muslims who
felt very unsafe were looking to religious leaders to open up some kind of space
to process that, and they were struck that that didn’t happen in those
communities,” Ali said.
Ali hopes her
book can show the U.S. “should be taken seriously as part of the Muslim world,”
as opposed to Muslims in the West only being seen as a “minority context that
exists on the margins.”
By doing so,
Ali said American Muslim women can be taken seriously as “these meaningful
actors who are contributing to the Islamic interpretive tradition as it’s
unfolding.”
“They’re
reading scripture and applying it to our understandings of how we should think
about domestic violence, sexual violence and gender-based violence,” Ali said.
The Women’s
Mosque of America, Ali said, “has global implications for how we study Islam.”
Source: religionnews.com
https://religionnews.com/2023/05/02/how-women-are-cultivating-religious-authority-at-las-women-mosque-of-america/
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Muslim women
workers in India: What the data doesn’t tell us
May 3, 2023
The pandemic
made it easier for middle- and upper-class Muslim women to find jobs, but
lower-income households struggled. Migrant workers from the community also
remained invisible.
Social
structures have always played a role in widening economic divides, and the
COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse for those marginalised by gender,
religion, caste, and their intersections. Muslim women, who constitute only
one-tenth of the working women population in India, bore the brunt of hate
campaigns, hiring biases, and state-sanctioned demolition drives.
We spoke with
nonprofit leaders and activists working with Muslim women workers in India and
found that even though all women from the community faced challenges in finding
and sustaining employment, their struggles varied based on factors such as
their socio-economic status, level of education, and the sector they were
employed in.
Muslim women
from the middle and upper classes with higher education degrees did
comparatively better and even saw some positive developments during the
pandemic, while those from low-income groups struggled for money and had to
start working to make up for the loss of family income. The migrant workers in
the informal sector were the most disadvantaged because in addition to the
other challenges, they lacked a social security net. In a way, the pandemic
again showed that even within the marginalised communities, one’s social
location plays a critical role in defining lives and livelihoods.
A section of
the population fared better
DeepanjaliLahiri,
chief operating officer of LedBy Foundation—an incubator that works on building
leadership among college-educated Muslim women—thinks COVID-19 had a positive
impact on the people they work with. She says, “While the pandemic has had many
other repercussions, remote work has actually played out quite well for the
LedBy cohorts. Many of the women we work with had restrictions on their travel
earlier. During the lockdowns, a number of them said, ‘I am able to work
comfortably because I can do it from home.’”
Since the
pandemic made remote work a possibility, young Muslim women from Tier-I and
Tier-II cities—whose families were otherwise wary of letting them go to
metropolitan areas in search of work—were able to tap into the job market. In
fact, the participants of LedBy’s leadership programme continue to negotiate
for remote and hybrid work even as employers are reopening physical offices.
Deepanjali worries that as jobs go offline again, seeking employment may be
difficult for hijabi Muslim women as some employers have previously asked them
to do away with the hijab at workplaces.
However, only a
fraction of the Muslim population in India has the higher education required
for formal sector jobs, where employees have the luxury of remote work. The
majority of Muslims in the country are employed in the informal sector, where there
are fewer choices and safeguards.
Demolition and
job losses changed low-income Muslim neighbourhoods
Muslim women
workers faced targeted campaigns that accused the minority community of waging
‘Corona Jihad’—wilfully spreading the COVID-19 virus among people from other
religions. There were calls for the economic and social boycott of Muslims. A
study on the effects of the first lockdown on informal women workers in Punjab
documented several instances of Islamophobia. It noted that a Muslim woman who
ran a grocery store with her husband reported incurring losses during the
pandemic because of social ostracisation.
The community
also suffered due to the ‘anti-encroachment drives’ that became a norm during
this time in states such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. While the
governments stated that these were meant to clear the footpaths and streets,
critics pointed out that the demolitions indiscriminately targeted low-income
Muslim neighbourhoods.
Shabnam Nafisa
Kalim, the founder of Khair Help Foundation—a nonprofit that works on education
and women’s empowerment in areas such as Delhi’s Jahangirpuri—says, “There were
five or six women who would set up stalls to sell perfumes and such items in
the market. So at the time of the demolition, whatever they were selling also
got bulldozed along with the stalls. And 15–20 thelas (carts) of kebab,
biryani, etc. were also damaged.”
As the
neighbourhoods faced the double salvo of pandemic and loss of property, incomes
plummeted. According to Shabnam, “Families that previously had a monthly income
of INR 15,000 had to make do with INR 10,000. Those who had been making INR
10,000 were not even able to make INR 5,000.”
There were
instances where the women of the family came together to supplement the men’s
income. Shabnam cites the example of a woman in North East Delhi’s KhajooriKhas
area. She started earning during the lockdown and ran the household by
stitching denims and processing bulk orders of clothes. Shabnam says, “For six
months, she and her daughter ran the household before her husband took up
driving an e-rickshaw in 2022.” During the lockdowns, more Muslim women—even in
low-income households—started working, and many of them continue to do so.
Shabnam adds, “Even those who didn’t work earlier, and whose husbands were the
sole breadwinners, are now working. It has become fifty-fifty.”
Khair Help
Foundation works in Muslim neighbourhoods where women are self-employed. Since
their businesses serve the locals, they don’t face religious discrimination in
the way that Muslims working in non-Muslim areas do. But what about the migrant
Muslim women workers who not only deal with religious persecution but are also
invisibilised in government records and left out of welfare programmes?
Migrant Muslim
women remained invisible
Shreya Ghosh, a
member of SangramiGhareluKamgar Union (a domestic workers’ union active in
North India) and Migrant Workers Solidarity Network, says, “Most of the migrant
Muslim women are employed in domestic work such as cooking and cleaning, and a
few of them are in garment manufacturing and construction. In fact, 65–70
percent of domestic workers in our union are Muslim, and the rest are mostly
Dalit.”
Domestic
workers were among those most affected by the lockdowns. They faced job losses
as movement was restricted and even criminalised and, according to a survey
conducted in eight states of India in 2020, 85 percent of them went without
pay.
Shreya says,
“Since migrant Muslim women are mostly employed as domestic workers, this also
meant that they suffered more.”
During the
lockdowns, there were many reported incidents of domestic workers facing extra
surveillance and increased violence and abuse. Shreya says, “In gated
communities, it was mandatory for the domestic workers to pass through
sanitising shower counters. Residents were not asked to do that. This
definitely meant that you were considering the domestic worker to be the
carrier of the virus.”
According to
Shreya, employers prefer to hire migrant domestic workers because they charge
less and often stick around. “At the height of COVID-19 and reverse migration
into villages, the domestic workers stayed back. Some waited for six months,
others up to a year in the hope that things will go back to normal. Despite
their struggle for food and rent in their adopted cities, they didn’t leave
because back home they have no land to cultivate, nor the resources to start a
small business,” adds Shreya.
What’s the
future of work for Muslim women?
The situation
for domestic workers, and by extension migrant Muslim women workers, is not
likely to improve even though COVID-19 no longer restricts movement in the same
way. Their struggles will continue because they lack the protection of labour
laws. Since 1959, several bills that would ensure basic safeguards such as fair
wage, pension, and maternity and health benefits to domestic workers have been
introduced in the Parliament. But none of them were passed as a law.
The migrant
Muslim women workers also suffer from error of omission. According to the 2011
Census survey, 67 percent of the migrating population are women, and an
estimated 11 percent of the women migrate with their families. This data
doesn’t show that many of these women who migrate with their husbands and
families continue to work, even if they don’t often see themselves as
breadwinners. “If you ask the domestic workers they will say, ‘We have migrated
because our husbands migrated,’ but they are all working women. It is a larger
question of how women’s labour is understood in our society,” says Shreya.
There isn’t
enough data on interstate migration in India and the government failed to
collect crucial information about loss of jobs and workers’ deaths during the
pandemic. Another critical gap is the lack of research on how identities impact
livelihoods. Without data, how will government schemes, policies, and welfare
benefits reach the population?
Shreya suggests
it is a wilful omission. “The government doesn’t count them because it doesn’t
want to hamper the industries that are benefitting from the large-scale
migration from some states to the special economic zones. They want the labour
to be seen as a mass rather than individual citizens with their own set of
challenges.”
This lack of
research is not limited to migrants. In 2022, Led By published a study on
hiring biases against Muslim women in entry-level jobs. Deepanjali says, “We
took up the study because we were tired of saying there’s no actual data. No
one is doing in-depth research [on Muslim women in the workforce]. For example,
there is no research on the challenges hijabi women face at work in India, even
though there are studies abroad that show rampant discrimination against them.”
Nonprofits
believe that only the government has the bandwidth to undertake research at a
scale in line with India’s vast and diverse geography and demography. Shreya
says, “While we work among the workers, we don’t have the kind of resources and
reach that you need to conduct a comprehensive survey. It is the government’s
job. Even the most resourceful nonprofits can’t undertake the kind of surveys
that the government office can.”
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/developing-contemporary-india/muslim-women-workers-in-india-what-the-data-doesnt-tell-us/
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