Listen To The Muslim Woman’s Voice, Islam, Women and Feminism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam, Women and Feminism

Listen To The Muslim Woman’s Voice

By Zakia Soman

This sort of socio-economic backwardness could not have taken place overnight. Successive Governments have failed in their responsibility to enable Muslims to participate in India’s democracy. The nexus between the vote managers posing as community leaders and the supposedly secular political parties has ensured that the Muslim community remains mired in poverty, illiteracy, backwardness and insecurity. Living with communalism has become the fate of the ordinary Muslim. Since 1947 the community has been pushed to the margins, so much so that some experts feel that they are the Dalits of tomorrow. Worse, unlike the Dalits, Muslims do not have any legacy of social mobilisation and political consciousness. The Dalits were fortunate to have visionaries like B.R. Ambedkar and Jotiba Phule. Muslims have no leadership worth the name; and whoever claims to be a community leader should own up to the all-round failure.

There are two important reasons, among others, for this dismal situation. One, the failure of the state to fulfil its welfare responsibility towards citizens in spite of the guarantees given by the Constitution; and two, the failure of the Muslim leadership, if one believes it exists.

We are all aware how our democracy is marred by a corrupt and insincere polity which has no interest in the welfare of any of its excluded citizens, be it the Dalits, the Adivasis, the Muslims, the labour or the women. In the case of Muslims this is coupled with the failure to safeguard their lives and properties from communal violence. The discrimination faced by Muslims because of communal mindsets, particularly among the police and sections of the bureaucracy, is a commonly lived reality. Why else would the Sachar Committee recommend a full-fledged sensitisation programme? The community has little or no access to welfare schemes largely because of this communal mindset, apart from a general lack of education within the community. The rise of communal and fascist political parties has added to Muslim fear and insecurity.

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