Globally renowned women’s activists assembled in Lahore to attend the international conference on Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Development for Democratization (WELDD) organised by Shirkat Gah, a women’s resource centre. WELDD is a transnational programme developed in partnership with the international solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) and the Asia based Institute for Women’s Empowerment (IWE). Addressing a special media talk held at the Lahore Press Club, the symposium expounded on ‘Political Islam’ being the root cause of rising fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism across the world. The coalition of activists hailing from a number of Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries confront commonalities in facing gender discrimination and oppression enshrined in conflict-ridden regions. Women in Muslim countries are increasingly faced with tyrannical traditional patriarchal social structures that don’t just undermine their basic rights of selfhood by subjugating their agency, but with the rise of autonomous self-styled quasi-religious political groups who are victimising and now even using women as a tool of war. Kurdish and Yezidi women are victims of systematic sexual violence and enslavement by the Islamic State in Syria, but warzone rape is not a problem confined to females only. Members of the Nigerian Boko Haram have allegedly kidnapped a number of young boys as well as girls to be used as sex slaves.
In the past decade, extremism has not just become a raging global terror movement but has also facilitated the rise of reactionary policies derived from a reductionist and blemished view of religion. Fundamentalism is not confined to Islam. Many Christian extremists in Senegal and radical Buddhists in places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka have employed religion as a political tool, leading to widespread violence and brutality. Twenty first century religious extremism and political terrorism has to necessarily be understood in its contextual origins and background, i.e. its political manifestation during and after the Cold War. To further their cause, women’s rights activists will need to overcome past reservations rooted in male domination and engage with politics through a collective effort in order to change oppressive political structures and chauvinistic power relations that obstruct critical discussions on gender. In today’s world, religion has become decisive in flaming conflicts and sustaining a disconnect between social and political elements in society. Now more than ever there is a dire need to infuse an atmosphere of secularism, one that doesn’t oppose religion but provides a neutral ground for it to thrive and develop, where everyone is allowed to practice their religion without politicising the dominance of one strand of belief over the other. Moreover, it is vital to re-examine religion in the light of a modern worldview that critically revisits archaic and antiquated interpretations. Women in the past have played a dominant role in the spread of Islam; it is time to re-enter the religious arena too through critical political engagement. *