Pakistan embodies both modernity and pre-modernity, in that it is a nuclear power with a feudal social system. Throughout Pakistan’s history, feudalism has put political and economic power in the hands of large landowners (essentially feudal lords) and has prevented the rest of society from prospering educationally or economically. Some have argued that feudalism in Pakistan originated with British imperialists, but regardless of how it began, it has played a significant role in our politics and society for hundreds of years, right up to the present. As the analysts Jahanzaib Khan, Humaira Arif Dasti, and Abdul Rasheed Khan have put it, describing the situation since Pakistani independence was achieved in 1947:

The feudal lords, with massive amounts of mortgaged capital, invested massively in industry and the service sector. Pseudo-landlords became pseudo-capitalists. Similarly these feudal lords held high position[s] in [the] army and civil service…[and] almost all Pakistani politicians are feudal [lords]. Almost half of Pakistan’s Gross National Product and the bulk of its export earnings are derived primarily from the agricultural sector controlled by a few thousand feudal families. Armed with a monopoly of economic power, [the feudal lords] easily [took] political power. Thus there are very few efforts to uplift [the] poor…and society is divided into two groups; [the] have[s] and have not[s].

Essentially, feudalism deprives most members of society of their basic rights and keeps them silent in the face of injustice. Feudal lords act like dictators. They always wish to suppress the rights of the people, so that no one can speak against or challenge them.

Education and economic development would challenge feudalism, hence why both are opposed by the system. Education would lead to people challenging irrational social and cultural norms, while economic development would decrease the dependency of the peasants on the lords, inspiring them to decide their future without any fear or pressure.

The Pakistani political and bureaucratic system is largely manipulated by these feudal lords. They have been part of every political system since Pakistan’s founding in 1947 and have strong connections in law enforcement departments and the judiciary. They have effectively bribed the whole system.

Recently, in Sanghar, a local feudal lord cut off the leg of a camel. Why? Just because the innocent animal had entered his field. Such is the arbitrariness and cruelty of the landowners in Pakistan.

That incident reminded me of the time I witnessed the system in action. I remember that, in my village, Chirra Polad, in 2006, a local feudal lord, Seth Abdul Rahman, beat a 19-year-old boy in the middle of the crossroads because the boy had dared to not vote for Rahman’s favoured religious party.

Rahman and 15 men armed with sticks and guns stopped a bus in the middle of the street, entered it, and brutally dragged the boy out. They took him away to be tortured. My father tried to save the boy but was unable to do so.

When the police asked for evidence from the victim of violence, no one apart from my father was willing to testify. When he did so, Rahman threatened him with dire consequences.

Rahman proceeded to disconnect our electricity and support the usurpers of one of the canals on our land. Meanwhile, he threatened people, warning them to not have any economic dealings with us. I was a young boy at this time, but already I had experienced the dangers of standing up to my country’s feudal system.  

Later, in 2016, also in our village, another feudal lord, Malik Kalo Khan, kidnapped and tortured another young boy (Suleiman) who had offended against the system. Khan forced Suleiman’s family to pay large amounts of money and give their teenage daughter’s hand in marriage (to give an unwed girl to an aggrieved party is a Pakistani custom known as Vani—the word is derived from vanay, ‘blood’, as in ‘blood for blood’).

I raised my voice against this and Khan tried to bribe me with 50,000 rupees. I rejected the bribe and publicised the incident on Facebook. Though this helped to resolve the Vani issue, the family was still forced to pay Khan money—this was how the police tried to settle things down. But I was now more determined than ever to use my journalism to oppose this oppression whenever it reared its head.

In 2018, again in my village, a person named Inayat Ullah was accused of having illicit relations with the daughter of a relative of Haji Nawaz Seth, another influential feudal lord, and he was punished for it. According to Ullah, ‘the whole community came together and found me guilty and gave us this punishment.’

Ullah and his entire family, including the women, were made to walk barefoot through the streets of our village with a necklace of shoes on their necks and forced to ask for forgiveness. After hearing this story, I immediately wrote a news article in the Daily Times. Soon after, the police arrested all the people who had decided to punish us so cruelly. Again, though, the feudal lords got off lightly.  

The feudal lords had already long since decided that my father, Malik Nazar Isra, and I, who were the only people consistently opposing them, had to be taught a lesson. We were a nuisance to them, always raising our voices against their oppression and cruelty. Perhaps the lords thought that if our resistance wasn’t crushed, it could pave the way for others to challenge their power—the one thing they fear most.

For example, in December 2013, we heard the news that two houses in the village had been robbed. One of them was Haji Nawaz Seth’s, and many tolas of gold and silver had been stolen. The local feudal lords sent out a team of search dogs. My family got the blame, of course. Even today, the words of the feudal lord Malik Kalu telling the dog owners that ‘the thief is none other than Malik Ramzan Isra’s family’ still ring in my ears. The dogs ran around our house while Seth’s supporters chanted ‘Thief, Malik Ramzan Isra, thief!’.

My father and I were taken away by Seth’s men and kicked and beaten and I was pushed around the streets of the village before Seth handed us over to the police—who tortured us in the lord’s presence.

I was chained upside down and plunged into the cold water of the canal (it was winter). Despite our treatment, we refused to bow. We knew we were innocent. The torture continued until my father couldn’t take it any more and made a deal with Seth to pay seven tolas of gold and 40 tolas of silver.

The consequences were terrible. We were isolated: others in our village were forced to cut off relations with us. We were forced to take out a loan to pay Seth (we are still in debt today). My whole family suffered stress, and my father had a heart attack.

Despite all of this, I remain determined to call out injustice. I have survived various attacks from people who feel threatened by my journalism. For example, I covered the Sharifa Bibi case of October 2017, calling out the men who assaulted this teenage girl and forced her to parade around her village naked.

The stories above are just a few of the thousands of stories that could be told about the barbarism imposed upon Pakistanis every day. They are perfect examples of Pakistan’s rotten feudal system, in which landowners, buttressed by the system, use their power to intimidate and control ordinary people.

Pakistan will never be free until the feudal system is broken. Perhaps by telling these stories and making more people aware of the problem, that day of reckoning will come sooner rather than later.

Related reading

How the persecution of Ahmadis undermines democracy in Pakistan, by Ayaz Brohi

From the streets to social change: examining the evolution of Pakistan’s Aurat March, by Tehreem Azeem

Surviving Ramadan: An ex-Muslim’s journey in Pakistan’s religious landscape, by Azad

Coerced faith: the battle against forced conversions in Pakistan’s Dalit community, by Shaukat Korai

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

The power of outrage, by Tehreem Azeem

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The post The evils of feudalism in Pakistan: a personal and political narrative appeared first on The Freethinker.

Introduction

In October 2023, a rather bizarre piece of news from Pakistan made the national and international news: a professor was forced by the clerics to apologise for teaching the theory of evolution and demanding basic human freedoms for women. Professor Sher Ali lives in Bannu, a Pashtun-majority conservative city in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan; many of its nearby villages are under Taliban control. Wanting to know more about this man standing up to the darkness in such a remote corner, I interviewed Sher Ali at the academy where he gives tuition to intermediate-level students. He is a well-read and humble person and provided much insight during our interview, a translated and edited transcript of which is below. I hope that the example of this brave and good man inspires others in Pakistan to embrace enlightenment over dogma.

Interview

Ehtesham Hassan: Please tell us about yourself. Who is Professor Sher Ali?

Sher Ali: I come from a small village in the area of Domel near the mountains. It borders the Waziristan District, not far from the Afghanistan border. My village is a very remote area and lacks basic facilities even today. In my childhood, we travelled for kilometres and used animals to bring clean drinking water to the village.

I started my educational journey in a school in a hut. In those days there was no electricity available so we would use kerosene oil lanterns to study at night. Luckily two of my uncles ran their schools in the village so I studied there. Both of them were very honest and hardworking. My elder brother would give us home tuition. After primary education, we had to go to a nearby village for further schooling. We would walk daily for kilometres to get to the school. We are four brothers and all of us are night-blind so we were not able to see the blackboard in the school. We would only rely on the teacher’s voice to learn our lessons and we had to write every word we heard from the teacher to make sense of the lessons. This helped sharpen our memories.

My grandfather was a religious cleric and he wanted me to be one also and I was admitted to a madrasa for this purpose. Life in the madrasa was really bad. I had to go door to door in the neighbourhood to collect alms for dinner. Another very disturbing issue was sexual abuse. Many of my classmates were victims of sexual abuse by our teacher. This was very traumatic to witness, so I refused to go to the seminary again.

After completing high school, I came to the city of Bannu for my intermediate and bachelor’s degree at Government Degree College Bannu. For my master’s in zoology, I went to Peshawar University and I later did my MPhil in the same subject from Quaid e Azam University, Islamabad. In 2009 I secured a permanent job as a zoology lecturer and was posted in Mir Ali, Waziristan, where I taught for almost 13 years.

Can you please share your journey of enlightenment?

I come from a very religious society and family. I was extremely religious in my childhood. I would recite the Holy Quran for hours without understanding a word of it. I had memorised all the Muslim prayers and was more capable in this than the other kids. This gave me a good social standing among them.

When I started studying at the University of Peshawar, I visited the library regularly and started looking to read new books. I found a book about Abraham Lincoln which was very inspiring. Later, I read books on psychology and philosophy which gave me new perspectives. But even after reading such books, I was extremely religious. One thing I want to mention is that after the September 11 attacks in the US, I was even willing to go to Afghanistan for Jihad against the infidels.

During my studies in Islamabad, I met Dr Akif Khan. He used to discuss various ideas with me and he introduced me to new books and authors. He also added me to many freethinker groups on Facebook. In these groups, I met many Pakistani liberal and progressive thinkers and I regularly read their posts on the situation of our country. This had a substantial impact on my thinking. I started hating religious extremism and I even stopped practicing religion. This change enabled me to see that the Pakistani military establishment and clergy were responsible for the bad situation in my region.

In those days, I also read On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, which helped me deeply understand the idea of evolution and natural selection as opposed to creationism. I became tolerant and I started believing in pluralism. I began to realise that tolerance for opposing views is very important for the intellectual nourishment of any society. I changed my views from being based on religion to those based on scientific evidence. Any idea not backed by scientific evidence lost its charm for me.

What were the hurdles and obstacles you faced when you started preaching a rationalist worldview?

In 2014 I started a tuition academy where I was teaching the subject of biology to intermediate-level students. My way of teaching is very simple and interesting. I try to break down complex ideas and try to teach the students in their mother tongue, which is Pashto. Gradually my impact increased as more and more students started enrolling in my class. Students were amazed by the simplicity of scientific knowledge and they started asking questions from their families about human origins and the contradictions between religious views and the facts established by evolutionary science.

This started an uproar and I started receiving threatening letters from the Taliban. On the fateful day of 19 May 2022, I was travelling back from my college in Mir Ali to my home in Bannu when a bomb that was fit under my car went off. It was a terrible incident. I lost my left leg and was in trauma care for months. But finally, after six months, I recovered enough to start teaching again. I wanted to continue my mission because education is the best way to fight the darkness.

Could you tell us about the controversy over your teaching last year?

In September 2023, local mullahs and Taliban in Domel Bazar announced that women would not be allowed to come out in the markets and the public square. This was a shocking development. I was worried about the future of my village and surrounding areas if such things kept happening.

I, along with some like-minded friends and students, decided to conduct a seminar about the importance of women’s empowerment. In that seminar, I made a speech and criticised the decision to ban women from the public square I also criticised the concept of the burqa and how it hides women’s identity. I talked about the freedom of women in other Islamic countries like Turkey and Egypt. I clearly stated that banning any individual from the right of movement is a violation of fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution of Pakistan.

This speech sent shockwaves through Taliban and mullahs alike. Local mullahs started a hate/smear campaign against me. They started naming me in all their sermons and a coordinated social boycott campaign was launched against me. My father is 90 years old and he was really worried. My elder brother and my family were also being pressured. It was a very tough time for me. I feared for my family’s safety.

Ten days later, the local administration and police contacted me about this issue. They wanted to resolve the issue peacefully, so I cooperated with them and in the presence of a District Police Officer and more than 20 mullahs, I signed a peace agreement saying that I apologised if any of my words had hurt anyone’s sentiments. The mullahs then agreed to stop the hate campaign against me. But later that night, around midnight, I received a call from the Deputy Commissioner telling me that the mullahs had gone back on the agreement and were trying to legally tangle me using Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws.

I was advised to leave the city immediately, but I refused to leave my residence. The district administration then provided me with security personnel to guard me. During this period, I met many religious leaders who I thought were moderate and many promised to stand with me. A week later, I received a call from the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, telling me that a major wanted to meet me.

Since I was vocally opposed to the military establishment on social media, I feared that they might abduct me, but I still went to the cantonment to meet the intelligence officials. They talked about the situation and how to resolve it. The ISI asked the mullahs to stop the campaign against me. I had to apologise again in the Deputy Commissioner’s office in the presence of the mullahs to save my and my family’s lives and the photo of the event went viral on the internet.

After that incident, I changed my approach. Now, I don’t want to attract any attention for some time and I am waiting for the dust to settle. Currently, I see many horrible things happening in my city, but I can’t speak a word about them.

Please share your thoughts about rationalist activism in Pakistan.

A long time ago I made a Facebook post in which I called Pakistani liberal intellectuals ‘touch me not intellectuals’. They block anyone who even slightly disagrees with them. On the other hand, I have added all the religious people from my village on Facebook so that I can present them with an alternative. I sit with the youth of my village. I talk to them. In their language, I give them examples of the problems with religious ideas and military establishments. I support people in different ways. I give free tuition to poor kids and those from religious seminaries. I give small loans to poor people. I let people use my car in emergencies.

In these ways, I am deeply embedded in this society. Many people love me and stand for me and therefore acceptance of my ideas has increased over time. Most young people in my village are now supporters of women’s education and they do not get lured by the bait of Islamic Jihad.

This change, to me, is huge. Don’t alienate and hate people. Own them. Hug them and in simple language, by giving examples from daily life, tell them the truth. People are not stupid. Education and the internet are changing things.

Some people have compared what happened to you with what happened to Galileo. What are your thoughts on that comparison?

There are many similarities. One is the battle between dogma and reason, between religion and scientific evidence. One group believed in the freedom of expression and the other believed in stifling freedom of expression. In both cases, the rationalist had to face a large number of religious people alone. Galileo’s heliocentrism wasn’t a new thing at that time. He developed it by studying previous scientific thinkers. What I teach about evolution isn’t a new thing either. I just studied scientific history and now I am telling it to new generations.

However, there are many differences between the situations. Galileo was a scientist for all practical purposes. He invented the telescope, too, while I am an ordinary science teacher. Galileo’s case was purely scientific but mine is social and scientific. I spoke about women’s empowerment. The last main difference is that many hundred of years ago, the Church had little access to the world of knowledge, while today’s mullahs have access to the internet, so ignorance is not an excuse for them.

Related reading

How the persecution of Ahmadis undermines democracy in Pakistan, by Ayaz Brohi

From the streets to social change: examining the evolution of Pakistan’s Aurat March, by Tehreem Azeem

Surviving Ramadan: An ex-Muslim’s journey in Pakistan’s religious landscape, by Azad

Coerced faith: the battle against forced conversions in Pakistan’s Dalit community, by Shaukat Korai

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

The power of outrage, by Tehreem Azeem

The post The Galileo of Pakistan? Interview with Professor Sher Ali appeared first on The Freethinker.

In 2018, a group of feminists in Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, decided to march for gender justice on 8 March, International Women’s Day. They named it Aurat March (Women’s March). Hundreds marched with colourful placards demanding immediate social change in the country. The march kept growing and in subsequent years marches were held in various other cities including Lahore, Islamabad, Hyderabad, Multan, Larkana, Faisalabad, and Sukkur. This year saw hundreds join the seventh Aurat March in several cities across Pakistan. Nevertheless, the march has seen severe backlash over the years, not only from the media and society at large but also from the state.

How did this radical and reviled movement begin? I spoke to classical dancer and social activist Sheema Kermani, who has been involved with the Aurat March Karachi Chapter since its inception. She said that their idea was to show society that women have had enough and that they were ready for change. They had no idea that the Aurat March would turn into such a massive movement:

‘Seven years ago, we did not know how far it would go or whether it would be more than that. We wanted to show our protest and resistance against patriarchy. More importantly, we wanted to show that women in Pakistan were ready for a change.’

The mainstream media mostly ignored the first march, but this is true for all social movements in the beginning. However, as the movement grew, some of the slogans from the march such as mera jism meri marzi (my body, my choice) went viral on the internet and inspired a huge backlash. The march was accused of being against the societal norms, religion, and culture of Pakistani society.

Some opponents of Aurat have tried to place restrictions on the march, claiming that the slogans were immoral and indecent. However, Islamabad High Court dismissed that petition and ordered that the words used in the slogans of the march should be understood based on the intentions of the marchers rather than through the mindset of a certain section of society who opposed the march. Another attempt to ban the march was rejected by the Lahore High Court. Since these cases, the organisers have worked hard to keep the march going every year while handling the backlash and court cases and keeping the marches in line with legal directions—not to mention keeping the marchers safe.

Journalist and feminist Sabahat Zakariya, a regular at Aurat March Lahore Chapter, told me that the march’s biggest achievement was to push people to talk about issues that they would not even normally count as issues:

‘The march did a lot to bring certain intangible ideas to the mainstream. Like [the slogan] khud khana garam karlo (warm your food yourself). It is not a light issue. It is about domestic burdens and who takes work responsibility in the house. These are very important things that need…to be reflected upon.’

The state has also resisted the march. The organisers of several chapters have faced issues with getting permits for the march and have had to deal with security arrangements, route approval, handling court petitions against the march, and filing petitions to seek assistance in carrying out the march. These things take most of their energy and resources, leaving them with limited room for focusing on the march itself. An organiser from the Lahore Chapter told me (on the condition of anonymity):

‘I think people did not understand the march in 2018. We started seeing resistance after the 2019 march, especially at the state level. Every year, the resistance is different. Last year, we were not permitted to arrange the march [in Lahore], though we have been marching for several years. Eventually, the court permitted us.’

The organiser said that some chapters face more difficulties than others. In some cities like Karachi and Lahore, the march is more or less accepted, while in Islamabad the police restrict marchers to a specific area. In some conservative areas of the country, it is entirely impossible to organise a march.

‘I feel the government [and the police] have gotten used to the march. Now we do not see administrative resistance. They have security plans, they know our routes…but society gives us strong resistance. Some file petitions [against the march] every year,’ the Lahore Chapter organiser said. ‘In Islamabad, police give more resistance to marchers. They did not let them march beyond the Press Club [this year]. In Karachi and Lahore, the situation is a bit more lenient. Though we do [still] face some resistance from the police.’

2021 was the toughest year for Aurat organisers and marchers. They had to deal with several blasphemy cases against them. This was when they became more cautious of the media. Many of them would decline to comment or would request anonymity. They were already wary of the mainstream media due to incorrect reporting and its insensitivity towards gender issues and events. The blasphemy accusations increased this wariness. As the Lahore Chapter organiser said,

‘We recognize that more engagement with media will bring harm to the march because they do not have gender sensitivity and skills to cover [the] women’s movement. It is not our goal that the media should cover the march much due to bad experiences. We think it is good to stay [aside] from the media.’

Zakariya is of the opinion that the mainstream media has deliberately not been engaging with the movement. However, she thinks the march has become ‘dull’ because now the marchers are not as bold as they used to be. They are more engaged with the mainstream media critique. They bring with them placards that are more focused on answering media criticisms than on expressing their own views.

Dr Feroza Batool, who researched backlashes to the Aurat March for her doctoral thesis, believes that despite the popularity and impact of the march, it has experienced an intense decline in its momentum, mainly due to the backlash:

‘I feel that the momentum of the Aurat March has decreased. The march was giving space for people to come there and talk about their issues. It was perhaps a big thing for a group that wanted that space to let out their frustration and reflect on their lived experiences through their placards. But there were other people too who, when [they] received backlash, could not handle it and they decided to back off.’

Dr Batool also raised concerns about the movement’s inclusivity and connection to the grassroots. She found in her research that march organisers in several cities started to distance themselves from local organisations and unions working for women’s rights:

‘I feel the open idea of different perspectives on feminism and the environment that was there in the start for everyone started to reduce over time. The march is not very inclusive. The march [has tilted] to the elite circle of feminists in the past few years. It happens to other movements too. A movement starts, people join it, but then some hijack it. I feel those on the forefront of such movements get some rigidity in themselves and they expect that others [should] follow them with the same perspective.’

However, she also said that the march had shaken the patriarchy in the conservative society of Pakistan and that it would keep doing so due to the involvement of youth in the movement. Nonetheless, the march will have to do a lot more to turn into a movement that involves everyone from every segment of society, and it faces a long and difficult struggle to realise its aim of women’s emancipation in Pakistan.

Further reading

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

The power of outrage, by Tehreem Azeem

From religious orthodoxy to free thought, by Tehreem Azeem

Coerced faith: the battle against forced conversions in Pakistan’s Dalit community, by Shaukat Korai

South Asia’s silenced feminists, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The post From the streets to social change: examining the evolution of Pakistan’s Aurat March appeared first on The Freethinker.

In the Netherlands, House of Representatives elections were held on 22 November 2023. This turned out to be a great victory for Geert Wilders’ party (Party for Freedom; PVV), which gained 37 seats out of 150. Other parties with a significant vote share included the Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which won 24 seats, New Social Contract (NSC), which won 20 seats, and Farmers and Civilians (BBB), which won 7 seats. PVV is generally considered to be a populist party and VVD a traditional liberal party, while NSC is a Christian democratic party and BBB is for the protection of farmers’ interests.

On 28 November 2023, the Speaker of the House of Representatives assigned an informateur: Ronald Plasterk. An informateur investigates which parties can form a coalition in the wake of an election and presides over negotiations between the party leaders to draw up a program of policies. Here is a description of Plasterk’s rather broad assignment:

‘1. To investigate whether agreement is or can be reached between the parties PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB on a common baseline for safeguarding the Constitution, fundamental rights, and the democratic rule of law. 2. If, in the opinion of these four parties, agreement is reached on point 1, then subsequently investigate whether there is a real prospect of reaching an agreement on issues such as migration, security of existence (including care, purchasing power, permanent jobs and sufficient housing), good governance, security, and stable public finances, international policy and healthy business climate, climate, nitrogen agriculture and horticulture, and fisheries.’

The first task is rather striking since no Dutch political party has as its basic premise the view that the Constitution may be violated, or that fundamental rights or the democratic rule of law should be threatened. No party denies the value of fundamental rights or the model of the democratic rule of law. So, reaching a consensus on these principles ought to have been very easy. But was it?

In fact, reaching a consensus proved more difficult than expected. Indeed, it has recently become clear that one of the named parties wants to abandon negotiations: Pieter Omtzigt’s NSC, a relatively new party that emerged from a split with the Christian Democratic Appeal party last August.

Background to the informateur’s brief

We must understand the specific nature of Plasterk’s assignment against the background of a situation that the Netherlands shares with other countries in Western Europe, including Germany, the UK, and France. That background is that, for more than 20 years, Western Europe has been affected by violent terrorist attacks in which the terrorists have invoked their religion as a motivation. This religion is not Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or Jewish, but Islamic.

Of the four political parties that have recently been exploring whether they want joint government responsibility, one party is wholly focused on this particular issue. That party is Wilders’s PVV, which essentially won the election.

Islam as a problem and a breaking point

Wilders takes the motivation given by terrorists themselves very seriously and concludes that ‘Islam’ is thus a challenge to Europe.

He also proposes measures to stop the growth of Islam. Wilders and his party have proposed measures like banning the Qur’an, expelling ‘radical Muslims’ from the Netherlands, closing mosques, and denying Islam the status of a religion (and thus excluding it from the constitutional right to freedom of religion). The PVV even made a legislative proposal to settle these things. These measures are—to put it mildly—at odds with the Dutch constitution, fundamental human rights, and the democratic rule of law—and also with the European Convention on Human Rights. Nevertheless, PVV’s most extreme ideas have been ditched by Wilders in the recent negotiations.

Contrary to what he has been accused of, Wilders does not discriminate based on skin colour. He is only vehemently anti-Islam. He is very critical of Moroccan youth but not because of their ethnicity; rather, he is concerned about the overrepresentation of Moroccans in the criminal statistics.

In any case, the negotiations for the formation of a new government are in a critical phase now. Two weeks from now (4 May 2024), the four parties involved in negotiations will tell the public whether they will make the jump. Is there still hope?

Two clashing perspectives

I think there are still chances for a settlement. Let us first put the question: what should the conversation between the four parties mentioned at the beginning of this article be about? There are two opposing perspectives.

First, that of journalist Peter Oborne, as set out in his book The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam (2022). Oborne argues that throughout the Western world, people are needlessly worried about Islam. Islam is an ‘ordinary religion’, and all stories about Islam as inherently violent or impossible to integrate into democratic conditions are based on false assumptions.

Second, there is Anne Marie Waters’s perspective, as set out in her Beyond Terror: Islam’s Slow Erosion of Western Democracy (2018). The title speaks for itself.

Geert Wilders, in his book Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me (2012), took a stand supportive of Waters’s point of view and illustrates this with numerous examples. Not least the example of his own life: he has been on the hit list of jihadist terrorist organizations for decades.

In my view, Oborne is naïve. But Waters (and Wilders) are too pessimistic. What we should do is focus on Islamism, or political Islam, not on Islam as such.

The significance of this debate

This debate is also of great interest to freethinkers and atheists. If Waters and Wilders are right, then it is not only permissible but urgent that restrictive measures be taken to protect the democratic rule of law from the forces that undermine it. And if Oborne is right, anything Wilders proposes is out of order, discriminatory, and contrary to the Constitution, the democratic rule of law, and the fundamental rights of citizens.

France as a guiding country

The most interesting developments on the status of Islam and its practitioners in Europe are currently taking place in France. This is not surprising. France has the largest Muslim population compared to other Western European countries, and it has also been hit by the most horrific jihadist attacks. Think of Charlie Hebdo (2015), the Bataclan (2015), and the beheading of Samuel Paty (2020). These events, together with France’s century-long tradition of thoroughgoing laïcité, have unleashed an unprecedented intellectual energy in finding solutions to the related problems of Muslim integration and Islamic/Islamist terrorism.

The most recent development is the struggle against ‘Islamist separatism’. In 2020, President Emmanuel Macron vowed to tackle this phenomenon, which he described as the attempt of France’s Muslim community to supplant civil laws with its own laws and customs derived from religious practice. The Macron administration opposes this because it essentially creates two parallel societies.

In my view, the solution lies in recognizing that Islamism poses a challenge to Western European countries, but that, at the same time, one should try to respect the rights of all citizens, including Muslim citizens, as much as possible. One way to do this is to avoid creating privileges for religious minorities, e.g., granting Muslims the right to wear headscarves in situations where this is forbidden for all citizens (such as in the army or the judiciary).

One finds this line of argument defended, for example, by the French philosopher Sylviane Agacinski in her Face à une guerre sainte (2022) and by the French lawyer Richard Malka in Traité sur l’intolérance (2023). What these approaches have in common is targeting Islamism, rather than Islam itself.

So what Wilders will have to convince his interlocutors of is that Islamism is a real problem, not just in the Netherlands but in all of Europe—and the world.

Wilders is also a well-known Dutch politician in other parts of the world. Indeed, he is so well known that jihadist-motivated murderers have travelled from Pakistan to the Netherlands to kill him. In 2019, Pakistani Junaid I. was sentenced to 10 years in prison for an attempt to kill Wilders, while last year, the Pakistani ex-cricketer Khalid Latif was sentenced to 12 years for incitement to murder Wilders.

The Netherlands as a test case

The Netherlands could become a test case for developments in other parts of Europe. At present, in Germany and Belgium, parties similar to Wilders’s are on track for steep gains in 2024. These parties are critical of Islam and mass migration and in favour of national sovereignty. This is generally characterized as the ‘far-rightisation’ of Europe or the ‘normalisation of the far right’. It is a matter for debate whether this increasing drift to the right among the populations of these European countries ought to be of serious concern. Personally, I think the so-called right-wing parties have some good points to consider; above all their critical attitude towards the Islamist undermining of democratic institutions. Nevertheless, it is essential that Europe finds a liberal path forward. What happens in the Netherlands will be a sign of what is to come.

Further reading on religion in the Netherlands

Judging the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Derk Venema and Niko Alm

The Enlightenment and the making of modernity, by Piers Benn

The post Geert Wilders, Europe, and the threat of Islamism appeared first on The Freethinker.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which celebrates the first revelation from the angel Jibril (Gabriel) to Muhammad in 610 CE, ends in a few days, on 9 April. During Ramadan, every adult Muslim must fast from dawn to sunset. As one Muslim website explains, this means ‘avoid[ing] food and drink (including water), sexual activity, smoking, intoxication, and any impure thoughts.’ In Muslim-majority countries, Ramadan also means that Islam dominates everyone’s life even more than usual. In Pakistan, with its increasing religious intolerance and strict Islamic laws, it is very difficult for ex-Muslims like me to survive at the best of times—and Ramadan makes it even harder.

I have not publicly declared myself an ex-Muslim because doing so could easily cause my death. Living with my family in a small Pakistani city, I pretend I am a moderate Muslim. The commencement of the month of Ramadan means a complete change in lifestyle and daily routine. Working hours and conditions change. Most shops remain closed until the afternoon. All restaurants are closed until dusk. Most people, who are not very religious outside of the holy month, become more observant—Islamic garb becomes more visible and beards grow longer. Attitudes harden, too, and anyone who is seen as not religious is made to feel unwelcome in this atmosphere.

Though my family is relatively moderate and gives me some space to be free, it is still risky to tell them that I don’t participate in Ramadan. Therefore, in front of them, I pretend to fast while secretly eating and drinking whenever I get the chance. There are two important meals during Ramadan. One is Sehri or Suhoor; this is the meal that is eaten before dawn. You have to wake up very early to eat this meal—and if you miss it, you won’t have anything to eat or drink during the day until the second meal, Iftar, which is eaten at sunset to break the fast.

During Ramadan in Pakistan, it is very difficult to eat or drink during the daytime even if you are not fasting. Pakistan is a Muslim-majority country, and the majority of Muslims here are devoutly religious, at least during Ramadan, so most people are fasting. There are also laws forbidding public eating and drinking during the daytime during Ramadan. Perhaps most importantly, the Pakistani version of Islam is a very insecure one. You have to display your religiosity if you want social approval; by the same token, it is considered compulsory to criticise and humiliate those who are not acting religiously during this time. People who engage in activities forbidden by Pakistani Islamic laws—such as sex outside of marriage, drinking alcohol, selling drugs, etc.—tend to become very religious during this month, and they police the behaviour of others—all the better to protect themselves from scrutiny.

In 1981, the notorious Pakistani dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq issued the Ehtram-e-Ramazan Ordinance. The purpose of this ordinance was to protect the sanctity of the month of Ramadan. According to this ordinance, no person can eat or drink during Ramadan in any public place, including hotels and canteens. Anyone found eating or drinking can be sent to jail for three months. This law also forbids restaurant owners from selling or offering food to anyone during fasting hours. Cinemas and theatres are also bound by this law to be closed for the entire month. This law has caused much trouble for liberal/non-practising Muslims, non-Muslims and ex-Muslims. In 2013, a paan seller was jailed for five days for violating the ordinance but it took him six years to get out of jail.

I have a few other ex-Muslim friends in my city who face similar problems too. The only public place where edibles are available is the hospital canteen. So whenever possible, one of us gets (or, rather, smuggles) edibles from the canteen and we gather in a private space to secretly enjoy our tea, food, and water. This activity keeps us safe from prying eyes. But due to the nature of my work, I usually remain indoors. I live and work alone in the upper portion of my home. I rarely get any visitors so I have secretly kept some dates, a water bottle, and some other edibles which I can consume during fasting hours to maintain my body’s nutrients. I sometimes get bored of this fare but in this environment, I have little choice but to accept it. At least my family does not force me to recite the Quran or go to pray at the mosque. Overall, it’s a better deal for me than for many others.

Over the past few years, religious intolerance has grown in Pakistan. Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) is an Islamist extremist political party founded in 2015 that has become more and more prominent. This party openly calls for the murder of apostates and even for the execution of Muslims who commit acts deemed by the TLP as un-Islamic. Ex-Muslims and religious minorities like Ahmadi Muslims and Hindus are all living in a state of constant fear as the Islamists grow in numbers and influence. During Ramadan, even non-Muslims are forced to remain hungry and thirsty because they fear Muslim majoritarianism.

All of this impacts my life in multiple ways. Physically, my body needs a constant supply of food after short intervals to keep functioning, otherwise I feel giddy and drained. During Ramadan, therefore, it becomes very hard for me to function and I barely survive. This physical breakdown leads to mental health issues which impact my job, my relationships, and everything in between. During Ramadan, working hours also change, which affects me financially. For all these reasons and more, Ramadan is a nightmare month for me—and the thousands like me.

Pakistan is becoming increasingly mired in extremism, as the rise of the TLP shows. This marginalises even further the many people who disagree with the majority religious view. Such people are unable to declare their true opinions and are forced into participating in a religious observance they do not believe in. Instead of policing people’s religious beliefs (or lack thereof), the Pakistani state should use its resources to improve the welfare of the Pakistani people. Efforts are better expended on the development of the country than on interference in religious affairs, which should be private. Pakistanis need to create a country where people with diverse religious views can coexist without any fear of the majority. A good start would be repealing the 1981 ordinance and allowing Pakistanis to make their own choices as to which beliefs and practices they will subscribe to.  

More on freethought in Pakistan:

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

Coerced faith: the battle against forced conversions in Pakistan’s Dalit community, by Shaukat Korai

From religious orthodoxy to free thought, by Tehreem Azeem

The post Surviving Ramadan: An ex-Muslim’s journey in Pakistan’s religious landscape appeared first on The Freethinker.

While Ramadan is a sacred month for Muslims, let us not forget that it is also an excuse for religious fanatics and theocratic Islamic governments to force individuals to adhere to their intolerable ideologies. While Ramadan is said to be a month of compassion, generosity, introspection, and tranquillity, it is also a month of persecution and pain during which those who refuse to comply with fasting rules are bullied and oppressed.

Many closeted apostates and liberal Muslims around the world face harsh punishment for defying fasting rules. They endure severe penalties, isolation, and exclusion in the name of religion. It is therefore important that, during Ramadan, we scrutinise such appalling attitudes, which are contrary to the spirit of human dignity and freedom.

In Pakistan, according to the Ehtram-e-Ramazan Ordinance, anyone eating in public places during fasting hours can be fined and/or jailed for three months. These draconian Ramadan laws have been used to harass and persecute minorities across the country. In 2016, a Hindu man in his eighties was beaten up for eating rice before Iftar (the fast-breaking evening meal during Ramadan). Such a horrific incident set a dangerous precedent in a society that is already plagued with ever-growing religious intolerance.

In 2014 in Iran, where fasting rules are also enforced by law, two men were publicly flogged for eating during fasting hours. In Nigeria this year, eleven Muslims were arrested for eating during Ramadan. In Oman, Muslims who break the fasting rules can be fined or arrested. In Egypt, where there is technically no legal enforcement of Ramadan, cafes have been stormed by police for not following Ramadan edicts.

Even in the West, this bullying is not uncommon. Allegedly, a non-Muslim man in England was recently bullied by his Muslim colleagues for eating during fasting hours in their presence. The full context of the video is unclear, but the man filming it can be heard using the slur ‘kuffar’ against the man who was eating.

It is absurd that those who are convinced that fasting is a spiritual necessity are obsessively concerned with whether others are participating in their rituals. There is a plethora of reasons why someone could not be fasting, including old age, illness, medicine, pregnancy, impending travel, not being a Muslim, or simply not feeling like it. Coercing people into not eating or drinking for your sake is not respecting someone’s religious sensibilities. It is a blatant instance of religious bullying. If someone’s faith is so shaky that they feel disturbed by the sight of another person eating, then perhaps they need to set their own house in order rather than inflicting pain on others.

To defy such rigid and draconian fasting rules, last month the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) staged fast-defying picnics in London outside the embassies of Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco—countries that prosecute people for eating in public during the fasting hours of Ramadan. I was an attendee.

Fast-defying activists drinking a toast outside the embassies were approached by staff and security officers, who continuously questioned the activists’ motivation for eating and drinking in protest of compulsory Ramadan fasting. The security guards and the staff watched over the activists through windows. As CEMB put it, ‘they weren’t too pleased to see us there and shared some disgruntled looks, and kept an eye on us, peeking through the windows.’

Outside the Saudi embassy, two armed police officers approached the protestors and asked them pointed questions about eating and drinking outside the embassy. CEMB spokesperson Ali Malik explained to them that ‘We’re not Muslim. You’re free to be a Muslim the same way we are free to drink.’ The officers even called their colleagues and a police van showed up right away, but those officers soon left when they realised no crime was being committed. The two armed officers remained and could be seen looking up public drinking regulations, presumably looking for an excuse to take action. They failed, but this shows how willing even the British police are to intimidate and harass Ramadan dissidents.

Maryam Namazie, the spokesperson for CEMB, wrote to me:

‘People are expected not to eat out of respect for Muslims’ religious sensibilities. For us, defying fasting during Ramadan is very crucial because we remember all the pressure and intimidation, the flogging, and the arrests that have been inflicted on those who defy fasting edicts. Even in Britain, if you have a Muslim name or you look Muslim, they’ll say “why are you not fasting?”. The whole idea of identity politics is such that people feel entitled, as if they have a right to ask you that and put pressure on you.’ (Lightly edited for clarity.)

She further added, ‘The imposition of Ramadan rules by brute force is linked to the rise of Islamism. Therefore, these fast-defying picnics are an important form of dissent against intimidating Islamists who seek to subjugate people and in solidarity with those who are persecuted during this bleak month for merely drinking or eating to allay their thirst or hunger.’

Ramadan bullying is just one of the many ways in which extremist Muslims oppress the vulnerable. Inside some Muslim communities, women are treated as second-class citizens and human rights are completely disregarded. Closeted apostates and liberals in these communities are the greatest victims of this extremism, as they are forced to be silent and obey at the price of ostracization—or worse. Those who criticise such dogma and bullying, whether they are Muslim or not, are frequently accused of being an ‘Islamophobe’ or a bigot, but this only serves to validate and strengthen the Islamists, which, in the end, only leads to harm—of Muslims as well as non-Muslims.

Society must be free to scrutinise and criticise practices that are incompatible with human rights. The fringe elements who seek to dominate public discourse through fear and intimidation need to be called out unequivocally. Only then can we protect the most vulnerable of all: the dissident minorities within minorities.

Further reading on Islam, Ramadan, and dissent

Interview with Maryam Namazie: ‘The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech’

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The price of criticising Islam in northern Nigeria: imprisonment or death, by Emma Park

The need to rekindle irreverence for Islam in Muslim thought, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

From religious orthodoxy to free thought, by Tehreem Azeem

Faith Watch, March 2024, by Daniel James Sharp

The post Mind Your Ramadan! appeared first on The Freethinker.

It is hard to tell the story of my transformation from a practising Muslim to a freethinker. It did not happen in a day or two. It took almost a decade.

I was born and raised in a moderately religious family in Pakistan. I was taught religion even before I could understand words. I was Muslim. I knew the greatest of all was Allah. I was supposed to worship Allah and do good deeds to make Him happy. When I turned seven, my parents told me that I had to pray five times a day daily. To begin with, I carried out some of my prayers and missed others, but within a few years, I was doing them regularly. I wore loose clothing. I fasted during Ramadan, and refrained from acts which are considered sins in Islam.

While doing this, I was studying journalism at a university in Lahore. I would go there in an abaya. I never stepped into the radio section of the department at that time because I thought it was wrong for men to listen to the voice of a woman from outside their family.

I had no plans to become a journalist. I was just studying it after one of my uncles suggested to my father that he put me in that field. Before my graduation I had decided to apply for a doctorate at a foreign university. I started applying for scholarships quietly. I was preparing the required documents, filling out long forms, and waiting for the results. I knew there would be a lot of resistance: in my family, as in most families in Pakistan, unmarried girls do not take decisions about their lives, especially ones like going abroad to study. I thought that once I had got the scholarship and admission letter, I would then speak to my family.

Before I could speak to them, however, they spoke to me. They had received a marriage proposal from our extended family. The man was a mufti, an Islamic cleric. My parents thought it would be the best proposal for me since I was religious: I used to pray regularly and cover myself before going out, and was not very social. I, on the other hand, had bigger dreams: to get a PhD and to teach at a university.

When my father informed me that my family had accepted a marriage proposal on my behalf, my world was shaken. I thought of the implications of being tied to the household of an Islamic religious scholar. It would undoubtedly mean a strict, orthodox life with rigid expectations as to how I dressed, spoke, and conducted myself in public.

As a 23-year-old, I wavered between the excitement of finally getting married and anxiety over what I would have to sacrifice. My dreams of graduate study abroad and a writing career seemed uncertain. I asked my family to ask them if they would agree to my getting a PhD and having a career after the marriage. If they said yes, I decided I would be happy to marry the mufti, otherwise I would decline his proposal. The answer was a clear no: they would not let me pursue my career after getting married. But this was because my family thought I would give up on my dream of graduate study and that it did not mean much to me.

According to a report of the Asian Development Bank, although women in Pakistan are increasingly pursuing higher education, only 25 per cent of those who do complete higher education end up working outside the home. They are married off as soon as they get their degrees, or sometimes even before that, but with the groom’s family promising that the bride will complete her education after the marriage. Many times, however, these promises are not fulfilled.

Despite their having rejected my conditions for marriage, and although I was reluctant, both families agreed to move forward with the engagement. It lasted for two years. In those two years, I was at least allowed to go to China to do a Master’s in International Journalism and Communication at a university there.

My time in China expanded my perspectives in the ways I had not expected. I went there to get a Master’s degree, but it proved a vital step along a path that I had never even thought to follow. As an international student far from home, I gained experiences that I had never had before. I attended lectures in which we would discuss values that were different from those in my home country. I had classmates from all over the world. We would gather in our spare time and talk about different subjects. Those conversations helped to open my mind a little. Over time, I realised that, in China, I was living a life free from the oppressive cultural and religious expectations of my homeland. I felt both safe and free.

Meanwhile, I was also talking to my fiancé. Our phone calls, in which he would dictate strict rules on my conduct and the people with whom I could associate, left me deflated. I confided in fellow Muslim women students who faced similar restrictions and, as it were, remote control from their families back in their home countries. We would talk about the cultures in which we grew up and then compare them with the culture we were experiencing in China. It was totally different. None of us wanted to go back to our Muslim majority countries.

This forced me to think seriously about why I and my fellow Muslim women students did not want to go back home. The answer was simple, but it took me a decade to work it out. The reason we did not want to go back home was the religion that was forced on us. We wanted to practise it in our own ways as independent women. We did not want guardians. We wanted our own identity.

It was the first time that I had started to think about the contradictions between the progressive values I yearned for and the religious dictates that I had followed unquestioningly when younger. I started to write blogs chronicling my evolving thoughts about women and their rights. Although I was mostly criticising the oppression of the traditional Pakistani culture which I had been raised in, I realised that the culture I was questioning was founded on a religious basis. The more I became concerned about patriarchy and autocracy, the more I began to doubt what I had previously accepted as infallible religious truth.

I then started to engage with progressive thinkers and academics. I found several YouTube channels where freethinkers were answering the questions I had been turning over in my mind for years. I started listening to their videos. I bought their recommended books. These also helped to clarify my thoughts.

The fact that I was writing publicly about how I was questioning the cultural structure in which women in Pakistan were held became a serious problem for my fiancé. Both families decided to call off the engagement. I am grateful to that relationship for making me what I am today. It helped me to turn towards the liberation of reason and made me an individual who believes in progressive values, including those which support a liberal secular society and democratic government, and which allow free speech and other freedoms to everyone without any discrimination.

The change did not happen in a day, but gradually. Instead of focusing on praying and fasting, I started instead to think about helping people in whatever way I could. I was a journalist; I started drawing attention to social issues in Pakistan, particularly those related to women, ethics and religious minority groups. As I and other journalists brought these issues to the attention of institutions which could resolve them, I would feel a sense of happiness and achievement.

As Simon Cottee discusses in his book The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam, while men question the teachings of Islam after not finding answers to their questions about the universe, women question it when they start to become uncomfortably aware of how they are being controlled and deprived of their rights. I felt the same, though for most of my life I considered myself a Muslim, a liberal one.

As I went further into questions of who I was and why I existed, I became less convinced of the existence of absolute truths about Islam, though more confident in my own moral compass. My idea of God grew broader than the way He was depicted in the orthodox scriptures. I felt closer to universal moral truths rather than narrow commands. This questioning process led me to realise the significance of the humanity that we all share.

I started to report on religious extremism and human rights violations, specifically those happening to women. It brought me the label of ‘bad woman’ in Pakistan. However, I realised that there were some people in my audience that appreciated my work. This appreciation gave me the courage to move forward with my journalistic career. This sense of support is the only thing that pushes the small minority of progressives in Pakistan to keep doing their work.

Now, back in Lahore, the azaan still echoes around me five times a day from multiple mosques at the same time. I think about the misuse of loudspeakers by these mosques. The local law permits them to use their loudspeakers for Friday sermons and call for prayers only. However, there are seven mosques in my neighbourhood. Some mosques use their loudspeakers for daily sermons and recitation. I cannot question this practice as a citizen of the country. I cannot even write about it in the local media as a journalist. I would put myself in danger if I did so.

In April 2017, the Indian singer Sonu Nigam described in a series of tweets how he was constantly ‘woken up by Azaan’ and questioned when this ‘forced religiousness’ would end in India. His tweets caused him lot of trouble. According to the Times of India, he has been placed on the hit list of the terrorist organization Lashkar-E-Taiba.

My transformation was neither planned nor easy. It is very difficult for most women in Pakistan and much of the Muslim world to freely question or leave religion as I have. Those who dissent often face threats or exclusion. The small communities of progressives and freethinkers that exist remain low-profile to protect themselves.

While this ongoing exploration at times feels lonely, it has connected me to liberal, freethinking communities abroad and at home. I feel more confident in myself, liberated, and connected with progressive values that are welcomed by people around the world. It gives me peace – more than I have ever received from the religion in which I was enlisted a few minutes after my birth.

The post From religious orthodoxy to free thought appeared first on The Freethinker.

On 26 September 2023, the X handle of Pakistan’s Aurat March tweeted: ‘It’s important to keep in mind that menstruation is a biological process & biology is different from gender (which is socially constructed). Not all those who have a uterus are women & not all women have a uterus. Reducing a woman down to a uterus is misogynistic.’

Aurat March, or ‘Women’s March’, is an umbrella group led by feminist activists, which organises demonstrations across Pakistan’s major cities on International Women’s Day, and engages in other forms of rights activism across the rest of the year. Aurat March’s tweet sparked the customary backlash against the group in Pakistan, but also led to more constructive critiques from certain quarters, including a BBC Urdu article. The article cited concerns raised by certain women over Aurat March’s tweet on the grounds that it erased the biological reality of women, while also quoting the Aurat March organiser’s defence of their message.

Aurat March’s message echoed the claims of gender identity ideology, which are at present the subject of bitter disagreement in the West. The ideology claims that a person’s gender, unlike the biological sex they are born with, is down to that person’s own feelings and hence entirely subjective and a matter of self-identification: as Aurat March’s tweet puts it, that gender is ‘socially constructed’.

While evidence of gender dysphoria, and individuals identifying outside the male and female binary, can be found across human history, consolidated transgenderism emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century. Western gender identity ideology differs from clinically diagnosable variance, or the earmarking of a third gender used to categorise individuals who do not fit the binary across the world. Instead, it seeks to synonymise those born in a particular sex with those identifying as such from the opposite sex, while paradoxically allotting them separate ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ labels respectively. Perhaps its most contentious assertion remains that ‘trans women are women’, which is the essence of the above-cited tweet by Aurat March and of narratives upheld by many women’s rights organisations in the region, such as Feminism In India.

It should be self-explanatory why ‘trans men are men’ never became the transgender rallying cry: quite simply, biological men are less likely to be concerned about invasion of their spaces. As the philosopher Alex Byrne put it in an interview for the Freethinker, ‘Generally speaking, men could not give a fig about whether trans men are included in men-only sporting contests or use men’s changing rooms or are in the male prison estate.’

On the flipside, regardless of where one stands on the gender debate, modern-day transgenderism quite evidently clashes with hard-earned sex-based rights that women activists have toiled for over the past century. In the West, concerns over female physical and reproductive integrity, and the desire to retain women-only spaces, have transformed bathrooms, prisons, and sports competitions into gender ideology battlegrounds. But while the simmering debate over the clash between transgenderism and sex-based rights is founded over a largely egalitarian bedrock in the West, the thoughtless imitation of gender identity ideology has much more perilous repercussions in the Indian subcontinent, with its predominantly patriarchal culture.

Attitudes to women and the opportunities available to them differ between the South Asian states. However, as a regional bloc, these states are among the lowest ranked on global gender indices. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023, six of the seven SAARC states, namely India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, ranked lower than 100 in the 146-country rankings; India did so despite staking a credible claim to being a global power. Across South Asia, institutionalised gender disparity, upheld by state-backed radical religionism, as well as skewed cultural norms, and ethnic, racial, or casteist divides, has made it more critical than ever for local feminists to take up a united front against the patriarchal forces which are still very much alive. However, the influx of gender identity ideology has polarised subcontinental feminism to a point where, in a bitter irony, violent misogynists have a clearer understanding of who or what a woman is than organisations dedicated to safeguarding women.

I spoke with over 100 feminist activists across the Indian subcontinent to discuss the influence of gender identity ideology on South Asian women’s rights movements. The investigations have unveiled ominous patterns. Most activists in leadership positions tended to be proponents of gender identity ideology: this reflects the almost unanimous espousal of this ideology across major feminist organisations in the region. For instance, veteran Indian women’s rights activist Urvashi Butalia, co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house, insists ‘trans women are essential to Indian feminism’.

Many gender critical feminists whom I spoke to preferred to remain anonymous, fearing backlash within their organisations and movements. What was also evident was the urban-rural divide in the endorsement of narratives, with many from smaller towns critiquing the predominantly Western-educated feminist leaders for enforcing ‘foreign ideas’ that were detached from the ground realities of these countries.

In fact, it is simply not possible to initiate an egalitarian debate on gender identity in traditional rural communities like those scattered across southern Asia. In these communities, there is institutionalised gender inequality. Their religionist laws render women insignificant or unequal in familial matters, or half as worthy as men in legal matters. Indeed, the entire course of your life may be predetermined if you are born female. In such communities, women are second-class citizens. Given this codification of gender disparity, the idea of campaigning for the right of men to identify and be legally treated as women would simply be met with incredulity.

On the other hand, in the current legal landscape, there are good reasons why women might want to identify as men: so as to receive better treatment. Many gender critical feminists I spoke to insist that this is happening already. The Indian film maker Vaishnavi Sundar covered the topic in a 2021 documentary on the effect of gender identity on women and girls, especially in developing countries, entitled Dysphoric: Fleeing Womanhood Like a House on Fire. Some feminists I spoke to in Bangladesh also said that women are being encouraged by sexist Islamic inheritance laws to identify as men, given the sharia provisions tilted in men’s favour. Of course, there are then complications when trans people want to detransition – but that is another story.

This does not mean that an idea or ideology should be rejected in south Asian countries simply because it has its origins in the West. Doing so would simply pander to the hypernationalist or religionist rhetoric that labels all foreign ideologies that differ from a local community’s values as a conspiracy that aims to destroy their religious or cultural beliefs.

This consideration has led to a dilemma for gender critical feminists in South Asia, who want to challenge the sweeping enforcement of Western gender identity ideology, while at the same time being determined not to ally themselves with religionist bigots who advocate violence against marginalised communities at home. Making dissent even more complicated is the fact that even those South Asian feminists who have criticised the gender ideology pervading left-leaning Western media have used a religious or cultural relativist rationale to justify their position. For instance, they have deployed oxymoronic terms like ‘Islamic feminism’ to advocate for movements more palatable to the masses. Yet the idea that a religion that is explicitly misogynistic by modern standards could be inherently feminist is ludicrous.

Put simply, gender equality is widely considered an unpalatable foreign idea in South Asia. When faced with two unpalatable foreign ideas that conflict with each other – gender equality and gender identity ideology – feminists, in their efforts to resist hyperconservative backlash, are truly between a rock and a hard place.

My investigations have further exposed the role played by the plight of South Asia’s hijra or khawaja sara community in the acceptance of the prevalent transgender ideology in progressive circles. The hijra have been institutionalised as the ‘third gender’.

In South Asia, the ‘third gender’ has historically denoted intersex individuals and eunuchs, and has therefore been grounded in biological reality. However, both historically and today, many biological men and some women have also identified as the third gender, which also overlapped with homosexuality. In short, the ‘third gender’ has been used as a broader umbrella term to incorporate all identities that did not align with the heterosexual male or female. Critically, however, it has never clashed with sex-based rights or gender critical feminism, since it has not attempted to impinge on the categories of male and female gender. In contrast, Western transgender ideology negates this idea of a third gender, insisting on self-identification even for the determination of who a man or woman is. Yet having a third category actually helps to address many of the conflicts within genders and movements, not least because the hijra or khawaja sara community do not stake a claim to women’s spaces.

Surprisingly, numerous local feminists interviewed for the piece were unaware of western transgender ideology; instead, they equated the term ‘transgender’ with the indigenous hijra or khawaja sara. This tendency to identify the foreign concept with the local one also explains the passage of transgender rights legislations in some South Asian countries, even though homosexuality is still criminalised or violently punished in those countries, and many crimes of conscience are still punishable by death. In Pakistan, for instance, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 was passed as a codification of the fundamental rights of the hijra community as a third gender. However, its phrasing, which endorses the right for anyone to identify as a man or woman, regardless of their biological identity, led to it being struck down by the Federal Shariat Court as ‘un-Islamic’ on the grounds that it ‘promotes homosexuality’, which is criminalised in Pakistan.   

For many South Asian liberals, to question transgender ideology would simply be to endorse the brutalities and discrimination that LGBT people of all kinds continue to face in South Asia, ranging from taboos surrounding their existence to gruesome murders. In the light of the physical threats faced by the local transgender or khawaja sara community, even gender critical feminists have been forced to reconsider their critique of transgenderism.

In this turbulent context, it is easy to view Western transgender ideology as simply another cause that is trampled on by local prejudice, along with homophobia and misogyny. However, in reality, doing so can muddy the waters still further.  

Many activists, especially those outside South Asian urban centres, insist that the ideological polarisation imported from the Western culture wars needs to be countered by movements that are clear and cognisant of the differences that shape communities in the Indian subcontinent, and which channel their activism accordingly.

‘The gender debate has indeed polarised not only the West but [societies] all over the world. The conflation of the hijra community with the transgender identity [is a] complex issue. It is crucial for organisations to recognise and address the unique challenges faced by the hijra community [and] emphasise the importance of nuanced understanding,’ says Dr SN Sharma, the CEO of the Rajasthan Samgrah Kalyan Sansthan, a human rights organisation based in Ajmer, India, which is dedicated to supporting the marginalised.

In a 2017 BBC documentary, Inside Transgender Pakistan, members of the khawaja sara community expressed their condemnation of western transgenderism as a threat to their right to identify as the third gender. Today, that hard-won identity is being labelled ‘problematic’ in progressive circles in South Asia itself, from Nepal to Bangladesh. Prominent hijra activists in the Indian subcontinent now are echoing western transgender narratives. One explanation for this, which is perhaps pragmatic rather than idealistic, is the growing support for transgender rights as a whole among non-governmental organisations, which often rely on Western funds for their sustenance. The funding and its concomitant influence from the West are a critical factor for such organisations in the region, especially those geared towards fighting for human rights. This necessary influence inevitably aligns the activism compass of feminist movements to the West as well.

This alignment with human rights values in the Western tradition largely results in important work being done on the rights front. Yet at the same time, it inadvertently puts the urban Western-educated elite at the helm of local progressive movements. Many working class feminists and senior women’s rights figures whom I spoke to underlined the fact that, in the past, rights activism was often voluntarily undertaken by women in parallel with full-time jobs or family lives. Today, however, rights activism has become an entire profession and a livelihood for many individuals. This situation reaffirms the stranglehold of the elite over human rights in India, Pakistan and elsewhere. These urban, Western-educated leaders face little challenge from less Westernised subordinates, often from smaller towns, who are unwilling to challenge narratives dictated from the top, out of fear that it might jeopardise their own position – and employment.

‘Not only narratives, they also promote fellow feminists from their urban inner elite circle,’ journalist and activist Tehreem Azeem, who has worked for numerous rights organisations, told me. ‘They are Western-educated and follow woke ideas and this reflects in their narratives, especially on social media. We often don’t know who is making organisational decisions, you are not allowed to enter that circle.’

This takeover of the Westernised elite results in indigenous rights movements even echoes Western language, often quite literally. One prominent example is that many feminist organisations across the subcontinent ask participants at events and trainings to list their preferred pronouns in the English language. This, many feminists from smaller towns insist, is a regular practice even in rural areas where English is not as commonly understood.

‘In many workshops and conferences they would ask participants to introduce themselves and then share their pronouns, which I always felt was extremely bizarre, given the context of our setting,’ says Azeem. ‘Even if you are importing something from the West, you can try to bring it in the local context.’

More than the categorisation of preferred pronouns, the fact that this exercise is done almost exclusively in the English language is perhaps the biggest giveaway in identifying the disconnect between the values of the human rights elite and the masses. The most commonly spoken languages across the Indian subcontinent, including over a hundred regional languages and Hindi and Urdu (the most widely understood), are intrinsically gendered and devoid of gender neutral pronouns and phrases once conjugated with the subject. Those displaying English language pronouns, especially those who are not transgender themselves, seem less invested in founding ungendered language at home than they are in finding commonality and acceptance within elite Western circles.

Many feminist workers told me that the leaderships of their rights organisations feel a need to align themselves with foreign narratives, because a large proportion of the funds for such groups comes from Western countries. Some workers said that it is pressure from Western donors that compels local organisations to align their narratives accordingly. Others argued that even though the foreign funders never explicitly dictate the ideology of local groups, there remains competition among organisations within the same country to win Western grants: this pushes a need to find connectivity and validation among them, not least by speaking their language and swallowing their values whole. Furthermore, the South Asian political left is virtually camped in Western institutes: they are educated in the West, have lived there, and spend a considerable amount of time in Western leftist circles.

This inevitably results in an inflow of West-centred arguments. Ironically, many of the postcolonial narratives are churned out by universities based in former colonising countries such as the UK, and readopted by the university-educated elite in their former colonies. 

People in South Asia who condemn feminist organisations from the outside, such as influential  figures like Jagadish Vasudev or Zakir Naik, predominantly come from a position of opposing women’s rights movements as a whole, preferring to enforce patriarchal norms. A different type of challenge to feminist organisations is posed by dissenters within their own ranks.

In India and Pakistan, as in the UK and the US, gender critical feminists who advocate sex-based rights are targeted – and with the same weapons. ‘Terf’, or ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’, is now a slur being deployed to silence gender critical voices in South Asia.

These types of allegations were, for instance, also made against one of the Indian subcontinent’s most prominent feminist activists, Kamla Bhasin. Bahsin, an activist, author and social scientist who passed away in 2021, had decades of women’s rights work under her belt, the last 20 years of which saw her found Sangat, a network of South Asian feminists.

I spoke to thirteen members of Sangat about the allegations that Bhasin faced months before she passed away. Bhasin was accused by various feminist groups, including Feminism In India, of being a ‘transphobe’, because she was critical of the gender identity narrative and endorsed a biological definition of ‘woman’. For these members of Sangat, the treatment of Bhasin was a reminder that even half a century of women’s rights advocacy was not enough for one of its leading activists to be given the space to dissent against gender identity ideology. Most of the Sangat graduates whom I spoke to believed that while disagreements with some of Bhasin’s views have always existed among the network, the unified public backlash against her over her gender critical views came as a shock. This backlash further silenced many feminists into acquiescence over the general direction of the movement.

Even so, many South Asian feminist voices still decide to go public with their dissenting views on gender identity ideology, often at personal cost. Among these is Thulasi Muttulingam, the founder of Humans of Northern Sri Lanka. ‘The wider networks of feminists – it’s a small country and we know each other [and] have networked together on various issues – have cancelled me,’ she says. The backlash, she stresses, came three years ago when she first began questioning the animosity against JK Rowling over her gender critical views. Muttulingam, a member of women’s rights organisation Vallamai, says her women’s day speech was boycotted this year, because she chose the theme of transgenderism and sex-based rights. ‘It was the Social Scientists Study circle and their monthly meetings are usually well attended,’ she said. The poor attendance ‘told me how much the liberals were scared off by the topic. Then a network of diaspora and Tamil feminists held a Zoom meeting to misrepresent what I said and denounced me as a bigot [and] transphobe.’

Natasha Noreen, the founder of Feminism Pakistan, saw a similar backlash when she shared gender critical views on her Facebook page which endorsed Rowling’s position on womanhood and insisted that biological men cannot become women simply by identifying as such.

‘The cancellation campaign began. Activists from Islamabad and Lahore started bashing me,’ she said. ‘I was invited to an online session, where I was told it was going to be a neutral talk, while four other participants and the host all were on one side just humiliating me.’ Noreen, like others critical of transgenderism and its denial of sex-based spaces for women, has been removed from social, professional, and activist groups.  ‘Fellow [women’s rights] activists have stopped talking to me. Pakistani feminists were my tribe, my people.’

Vaishnavi Sundar, meanwhile, was not just cancelled in India but also in the US, where the scheduled New York screening of her documentary on workplace harassment, ‘But What Was She Wearing’ was stopped owing to her views on pre-operative trans women. ‘Why are you cancelling an Indian woman [in America] for something she tweeted on her private Twitter? I just wanted to preserve women-only spaces,’ she told me. Since then Sundar has been blocked out of many feminist initiatives and groups and has had to focus on working independently. ‘People just stopped responding, stopped talking, stopped doing a lot of things that they used to before,’ she said. ‘I used to be one of those go-to people on things concerning women. Because I’ve researched on this for so long. It’s as if I made this observation on the trans ideology and suddenly my expertise and my films don’t matter anymore, because I have committed the cardinal sin of saying trans women are not women.’

It is important to underline here that many of these South Asian feminist voices cancelled as ‘transphobes’ have been long advocates of gay rights and the rights of the traditional hijra community in South Asia. Much of the critique of modern transgenderism made by such gender critical feminists aims to distinguish biological sex, and to use that scientific reality to reaffirm the importance of women-only spaces. It is certainly not intended to support the persecution of individuals.  

Wherever one stands on the divide between Western transgender activists and gender critical feminists, there are two irrefutable and vital facts that need to be taken into consideration. First, that there is a clash between advocates of gender identity ideology on the one hand, and, on the other, advocates not just of sex-based, but also of gay rights, and those defining their sex or sexuality based on the human anatomy. The second fact, especially critical to the Indian subcontinent, is that modern transgender ideology is very novel to the region, where individuals not considered male or female have historically been assigned to a third, broader gender.

Faced with these realities, the silencing of gender critical feminists, especially among the urban women’s rights groups, is bound to be detrimental not just to women’s rights, but to the well-being of all groups that these organisations are claiming to protect.

This point cannot be stressed enough. The proponents of gender neutral language on issues that overwhelmingly concern the female sex insist that all historically considered ‘women’s issues’ are no longer in fact women’s issues. If their approach is adopted without question, then for all practical purposes there is no exclusive women’s rights movement, and in turn no feminism.

What exclusive women’s issue would Feminism In India be concerned with, if feminism is redefined to concern every type of person except the cisgendered heterosexual male? Why would ‘Aurat March’ continue to use the ‘Aurat’ prefix and not call itself Insaan, or ‘Human’, march? This type of attitude from Western transgender activists and ‘allies’ has made it all too easy for patriarchal, conservative and misogynistic detractors of feminism, especially in South Asia, to insist that there is no such thing as exclusively women’s rights. Feminist groups in the Indian subcontinent are practically making the same argument as their conservative opponents – ostensibly in the name of progress.  

Local movements that had begun to put forth the notion that a woman should not be limited by her anatomy are now upholding the idea that a woman is not defined by any particular anatomy at all. Similarly, where the purpose of challenging gender was to oppose gender roles and stereotypes, now those who purport to challenge gender stereotypes either use those very stereotypes as evidence of transgenderism, or try to eradicate or deny the idea of gender altogether.

Tasaffy Hossain, the founder of the Bangladesh-based organisation Bonhishikha, which uses the tagline ‘unlearn gender’, argues that much of the conversation in South Asia on transgender rights is still based on the realities of the West, and that it is critical to uphold the concerns of all groups and all identities in the region. ‘There is the issue of what feels safe for whom, what is triggering for whom, which is a deeper conversation. Cis women would have a different concept of what is safety to them. Trans women would have a different idea of what is safe to them. Even within the queer spaces we have seen, it’s not always safe just because everyone is queer,’ she told me.

Hossain echoes pretty much every South Asian women and gender rights organisation, those advocating gender identity ideology and its critics, when she says that ‘not enough conversation has been had’ over these concerns. However, many of those leading feminist organisations in the Indian subcontinent, who lament the lack of such conversations, have done little to allow an equal opportunity to share opposing ideas within feminist circles, and have in fact predetermined the conclusion of discussions that are yet to be openly had.

The failure to acknowledge the distinguishing characteristics of different identities, and in turn the exclusivity of their concerns, is creating rifts within minority movements that have only just begun to reverberate at the grassroots level. This is only emboldening the misogynistic forces within South Asia, such as religionist groups and ultra-conservative politicians, who are successfully exploiting the gaping hole between insufficiently dissected gender ideas and the depressingly patriarchal, religious-supremacist realities on the ground.

To counter the regressive forces that are targeting marginalised communities in the Indian subcontinent, it is important that South Asian rights movements embrace the dissenters within their communities, and appreciate the distinctions that they want to make. This is the only way that they will be able to address their different concerns, which are grounded in the unique realities of individuals, subgroups and the region as a whole. Similarly, it is time for Western advocates of gender identity ideology to acknowledge the negative impact which their ideology is having on the rights of violently marginalised people across the world, such as the women and hijra in the Indian subcontinent. For the problem with absolutist ideologies is that they are theoretical and totalitarian – and as such, they always risk becoming inhumane.  

The post South Asia’s silenced feminists appeared first on The Freethinker.

‘We are Hindus. Shoot to kill us, but don’t take our children away from us by force. We have no other demand; we simply beg for the safety and protection of our children.’

These heart-wrenching words were shared by Amree Maharaj as she recounted the alleged forced conversion of her daughter, Chanda Maharaj, aged 14. Amree, aged 50, lives with her two other daughters and elderly husband in a rented one-room house, situated on the outskirts of a dirty and unpleasant pond in the slums of Hyderabad, the second largest city in the southern province of Sindh, Pakistan.

[Extract from Korai’s interview with Amree here.]

In addition to Chanda, Amree is equally concerned about the well-being of her two other daughters, Sona, aged 17, and Bhagwati, aged 16. Their mother fears that they too might be forcefully converted to Islam: underage Hindu girls are always in danger. When I interviewed her in April for the Freethinker, Amree told me that she would prefer them to be married early to Hindu men rather than forcibly converted to Islam.  If the girls are taken, she says, ‘I cannot bring them back.  No one comes to our help.’

Amree, who looks older than her age due to malnutrition and stress, tearfully related how her daughter Chanda was forcibly converted to Islam by a Muslim man. She firmly believes that Chanda, who loves her family, would not have willingly left them. 

Chanda Maharaj appeared before a local court in Hyderabad in February 2023 after repeated protests against the police by her family and human rights activists. Since she was underage, and the provincial law prohibits marriage before 18, the court sent her to a safe house. But since then, Chanda’s family has lost track of her.  

Amree’s family is Dalit: the lowest caste in Hindu society, who often face discrimination in terms of education, employment opportunities, and access to basic necessities. For many Dalit families and others from religious minorities, the risk that their daughters will be forcibly converted to Islam is a serious and ongoing concern. In Pakistan, more than 96 per cent of the population are Muslim. The constitution guarantees freedom of religion. However, there is no legislation against religious conversion of any kind, so long as it is (supposedly) unbiased and voluntary.

Chanda and her two sisters were employed at the same textile mill near their home. They earnt only 1. 25 USD each per day, with which they supported their parents (their father is unable to work due to physical weakness, and their mother is a housewife). On 12^th December 2022, all three sisters went to work – but only two returned home in the evening.  

Despite their efforts, Chanda’s family were unable to locate her. This led them to believe that she had undergone a forced conversion, as similar incidents had occurred before involving young Hindu girls.  

Chanda’s sister Bhagwati, two years older than her, met the family and her sister in court and scolded them for not contacting Chanda sooner. She found her younger sister fearful and trembling when she appeared before the court. When Chanda’s lawyer suggested sending her to a safe house run by the provincial government, which is designed to offer refuge to women in need, Bhagwati was dismayed. She held her hands together, as if praying, and begged the state authorities to send her younger sister home.

* *

Forced conversion to Islam remains an ongoing issue in Pakistan. It particularly affects underage girls in religious minorities, including Hindus, Christians and others. Another victim of this practice was Rinkle Kumari, 19, from the town of Mirpur Mathelo, who was abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and married in 2012.

Kumari’s case was heard at all levels, from the local court to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. In an effort to ensure her safe return, and despite numerous threats from her kidnappers, Kumari’s maternal uncle, Raj Kumar Wanjara, fought for her cause.  

When I interviewed him, Wanjara claimed that Kumari consistently expressed her desire to be reunited with her mother throughout the legal proceedings. However, regrettably, she was unable to achieve success in her plea: instead, she was handed over to Naveed Shah, the Muslim man who claimed to be her husband after her conversion.

[Extract from Korai’s interview with Wanjara here.]

According to Wanjara, while Kumari’s statement was recorded in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, it was recorded not by the judge, as would usually be the case, but by the court registrar, because the judge refused to do it. This raises serious doubts as to the claim made by their opponents that her alleged free decision to stay with her new husband was in fact made without external pressure. When the highest authorities responsible for justice in Pakistan exhibit such behaviour, says Wanjara, it raises the question of whom families like his should turn to in order to obtain justice.

The quest for justice for their cherished niece took a devastating toll on Wanjara’s family, resulting in hardships and break-up. Some family members were compelled to seek refuge in India, while others were settled in Karachi. In addition, their once-thriving business in Mirpur Mathelo, their hometown, incurred substantial losses and was ultimately forced to close.

As a result of his attempts to rescue his niece, Wanjara himself says that he has encountered numerous challenges and threats. These include extortion attempts by the Taliban and threatening phone calls from Afghanistan while he was conducting his business in Karachi.

The forced migration from Pakistan, the persistent threats, the fear and the anguish, took a heavy toll on Wanjara’s father, Manohar Lal, who suffered a heart attack at the age of 70.

Wanjara vividly recalls the last words his niece spoke to the local media in 2012: that she would never receive justice after being forcibly married to a Muslim man against her wishes. He last saw her in the Supreme Court on the day, over a decade ago, that the court handed Kumari over to Shah. Since then, Kumari’s family have not seen her and do not know where she is. When her father passed away, she was not even able to attend the final funeral rites and ceremonies. Her last words have been echoing in her uncle’s mind, haunting him in his daily life.

Just a week after our interview, Wanjara unexpectedly passed away in Houston. 

* *

The province of Sindh in Pakistan is home to the majority of Hindus, who are recognised as an indigenous group. Two districts within the Thar desert, Umer Kot and Tharparkar, have a significant Hindu population, approximately 54 per cent and 43 per cent of the districts respectively.

Two Muslim clerics actively and vocally involved in the conversions are Mian Abdul Haq, known as Mian Mithu, of the Bharchundi shrine in the northern part of Sindh, who last year was banned from entering the UK for ‘violations and abuses of human rights’, and Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi, in the part on the border with India. Additionally, numerous lesser-known clerics have also been allowed to perform conversions without any intervention from state authorities.

Sarhandi, whom I interviewed for this article, emphasises his family’s commitment to promoting and upholding Islam. He strongly denies targeting Hindus and emphasises Islam’s teachings of harmony, coexistence and inclusivity. He believes that conversion serves the cause of Islam. He claims that those who convert are genuinely impressed by Islam. Muslim clerics maintain that the conversions are voluntary and based on the individual’s admiration for their religion.

* *

However, religious minorities in Pakistan, especially Hindus, have in recent years felt increasing fear about the risk of forced conversions to Islam. While this phenomenon has existed in Pakistan for many years, it experienced a significant surge during the Afghan war, with the emergence of Pakistan’s jihadi wave. Since then, the pace of conversions appears to have been escalating, perhaps in part due to social media. Mian Mithu was himself a member of the National Assembly from 2008-13 with the support of his political party, the Pakistan People’s Party; after the Kumari incident, the PPP expelled him from the party and cancelled his membership.

As a result of the risk of conversion, many Hindus have chosen to migrate to India to seek a safer environment. Mohan Lal, an activist from Lyari, one of Karachi’s oldest localities, told me in an interview last month that forced conversions have reached a shocking level: in the last 20-25 years, around 200 families from the area have left and settled in Gujrat India.

Lal himself was kidnapped twice after he encouraged the community, when two girls had been kidnapped and forcibly converted, to register their cases with the police. ‘Sadly, the state is not on our side, which is why all this is happening,’ he said.

Wanjara attributes the discriminatory mindset against Hindus to a deep-rooted hatred for Hindus among extremist Muslim groups, leading to the effective ‘silent genocide’ of Sindhi Hindus in Pakistan, who are in practice either eradicated or forced to migrate to India. And all this, he argues, is going on under state sponsorship.

Wanjara also makes the point that it seems implausible that Hindu girls, who have no knowledge of Islam, would be sufficiently ‘impressed’ by it, as Sarhandi claims, to run away from their families and convert. He emphasises that there is a significant degree of freedom available to girls within their own community, including the liberty to select their own life partners and to engage in activities like dance and music. He argues that it is improbable that these girls would choose to move to a Muslim environment that would place extreme restrictions on them.

For his part, Amar Lal Karnani Menghwar, the Hindu organiser of of Pakistan Darawer Ittehad, a minority rights organisation, would not rule out the claim that the conversions to Islam are often forced, but argues that, in some cases, girls convert willingly. The girls who are targeted with forced conversions and subsequent marriage to Muslim men are driven by deception, poverty and lack of security. Underage girls, Menghwar argues, are easily influenced by unscrupulous clerics who exploit their dreams of a better life.

* *

Numerous research papers have been published on the issue of conversion in Pakistan. Two notable ones are ‘Forced Conversion of Religious Minorities in Pakistan: A Socio-Cultural Perspective’, a position paper by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (whose name has since substituted ‘National’ for ‘Catholic’) in collaboration with the European Union, and ‘Forced Conversion of Minorities in Pakistan and Legal Challenges’ by academics Aisha Rasool and Kamran Abdullah. According to a 2010 estimate, approximately 20-25 Hindu girls were forcibly converted to Islam every month in Pakistan; as Rasool and Abdullah show, the practice has certainly not stopped since then. Motives behind these forced conversions include the confiscation of property, the aim of displacing religious minorities, retaliation or revenge targeting females, sexual desire, pressure from extremist groups, and self-glorification.

In interviews conducted for the CCJP-EU report, ten girls from different regions were selected as case studies. Nine of them shared their experiences of being abducted and coerced into converting, and later forced to marry their abductors, while only one claimed that her coercion was not forced. The research also highlights the case of two underage Dalit girls named Reena and Raveena, who were recorded reciting the Kalima (Islamic declaration of faith) while still having (Hindu) Holi colours on their cheeks.

* *

Currently, Pakistan does not have a specific law in place to regulate religious conversions. In December 2016, the Sindh provincial assembly in Pakistan passed the Criminal Law (Protection of Minorities) Act 2015. This prohibits forced religious conversions and restricts children from converting until they reach the age of majority (18).

Religious political parties of Pakistan opposed the legislation, especially section 4(1), arguing that it contradicts Islamic principles. The governor of Sindh has since regretted his assent and returned the Act to the assembly for reconsideration. It currently remains in this state of limbo; Muslim religious parties are demanding its repeal while the Hindu minority support it. The Muslim opposition to the law is despite the fact that under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), to which Pakistan is a signatory, the state is obliged to uphold commitments against forced conversions. The ICCPR, in Article 18(4), recognises the right of parents to determine their child’s religion until they reach adulthood; Pakistan is among the signatories to this convention.

In 2019, while Imran Khan was Prime Minister of Pakistan, he established a parliamentary committee to resolve the issue of forced conversion. However, no progress was made in drafting legislation. Senator Lal Malhee, a member of the committee, subsequently revealed that Muslim members of the committee were unwilling to act because of pressure on the ruling party Pakistan Tehreek Insaaf (PTI) from extremists. The committee was subsequently abandoned.

* *

In Pakistan, the absence of a law about conversions to Islam or official oversight of the process enables conversions to be made informally by any cleric, who can simply recite the Kalima and declare the person converted to be a Muslim; there is also no lower age limit, so even minors can be lawfully converted. Critics argue this process is being manipulated and exploited.

Clearly, the state is failing to protect religious minorities in Pakistan against forced conversion to Islam. As a result, Hindus have resorted to alternative measures, such as early marriages, to safeguard their children.

Wanjara emphasises the severity of the situation: Hindu communities may even resort to extreme measures, including killing their daughters, to avoid them being converted against their will and married to Muslims.

In Thar Gawaria and Karia, two Hindu communities in Sindh, early marriages are prevalent as a protective measure: daughters as young as ten may be married off to avoid the risk of forced conversion and marriage outside the community. Karnani Menghwar claims that there have been no reported cases of individuals converting to Islam for three decades: this appears to be because children are married within the community early.  

* *

Dr Shershah Syed, a renowned gynecologist specialising in fistula repair, spoke to me about the consequences of underage marriages, particularly the risks associated with early pregnancies. Underage marriage can be perilous, he explains, especially during childbirth, as it increases the likelihood of complications such as pelvic fractures and obstetric fistula. In Pakistan, thousands of women suffer from obstetric fistulas each year – a 2013 estimate put the figure at 4,500-5,000. Underage marriage can also have long-lasting and harmful psychological effects.

These risks, Syed argues, must be addressed in order to safeguard the health and wellbeing of young girls involved in underage marriages.

Dr Farhana Malik, a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Karachi, emphasises that child marriage is distressing and harmful, depriving young girls of their rights and personal development. These girls are forced into adult roles without the necessary understanding, emotional maturity, or physical readiness. This negatively impacts their physical and mental health, as well as their access to education and personal growth.

The practice of underage marriage has severe consequences on girls’ mental and emotional well-being, often resulting in fear, anxiety, depression and confusion. They also face a higher risk of domestic violence, says Malik, and may be at risk of suicidal thoughts.

Muslim clerics hold differing opinions on child marriage, with some advocating for its legitimacy based on their interpretation of Sharia law. The cleric Sarhandi, for instance, has criticised laws forbidding marriages below the age of 18 in Sindh, considering such laws a violation of Sharia principles.

He argues that nightfall (nocturnal emissions), or the onset of menstruation, are indicators of maturity and therefore marriageability according to Sharia, even if they occur well below the age of 18.

While compiling this story, I read about another incident involving a 14-year-old girl named Sohana Sharma Kumari that was brought to light earlier this month. She was allegedly abducted with the intention of forced conversion, and she is seen in a video clip crying out to be reunited with her parents.

The continuing practice of forced conversion and marriage in southern Pakistan is causing a significant divide and fostering animosity between the Muslim and Hindu communities. In Sindh, supposedly a province where the majority of Muslims and Hindus have love and respect for each other, extremist religious groups are responsible for this situation. Even Sindhi nationalist political parties in Sindh condemn such conversions.

To resolve this problem and stop the damaging practice of forced conversion and marriage of young girls, many people believe that the state should intervene and legislate about conversion practices. It is not only a question of young girls being converted and married to Muslims; the alternative, in which their frightened families marry them off underage to other Hindus to prevent them being married to Muslims, may well also cause them harm, and certainly takes away their autonomy. In addition, both Muslim and Hindu customs make it very difficult for women to pursue education after marriage: once they are bound to a man, they usually have little option but to raise children and look after the home.

Altogether, underage marriages pose harm to women from both Muslim and Hindu communities. It is high time something was done to stop them.

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The post Coerced faith: the battle against forced conversions in Pakistan’s Dalit community appeared first on The Freethinker.

In Pakistan, religion exerts a significant influence over society. This often results in restricted freedom of expression for those with different views. George*, when he was living in Pakistan, always had to keep his thoughts and questions to himself: he knew he could not talk about them with anyone. While talking to me in a private Twitter conversation, he said that he had kept his thoughts, ideas and questions to himself his whole life, as he never found a safe environment around him.

‘I turned 45, and until then, I found no space to talk about my thoughts, even in a small circle,’ he said. ‘If we were sitting and talking about something, and I said something about religion, they would start saying, “What are you saying? You should not be talking like that.”‘

Twitter Spaces was the first platform where George was able to share his thoughts, using an anonymous ID. He found Spaces on atheism, the evolution of religions, blasphemy allegations, human rights, social issues, and every topic that he had always wanted to talk about. He found people like him who also wanted to engage in live conversation and share their thoughts on these controversial subjects.

Twitter launched ‘Spaces’ in December 2020, initially as a beta test and then as freely accessible to everyone on the platform. Spaces allows anyone to host and participate in live audio conversations with other users on the platform. Since its emergence, ex-Muslims from Pakistan have been using this feature to talk about issues that were previously forbidden. They share their stories, voice their concerns, and connect with others who understand their experiences.

George’s story highlights the challenges faced by individuals in Pakistan who do not conform to religious norms. Although his family knows about his views on religion, he feels that he cannot share his opinions with them, even at home. For him, Twitter has become a valuable platform that has allowed him to finally express his views without fear.

Pakistan’s penalties for blasphemy, apostasy, or atheism are among the harshest in the world. According to a BBC report of 2017, ‘Although atheism is not technically illegal in Pakistan, apostasy is deemed to be punishable by death in some interpretations of Islam. As a result, speaking publicly can be life-threatening.’ Recently, as reported by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid in The Diplomat, Pakistan has reinforced its laws even further, adding to the already oppressive environment for Pakistani atheists and agnostics. Social media has become the only option for them to express their views, but the government has tightened its grip on these platforms too. It has become increasingly challenging for them to connect with like-minded individuals.

From Facebook to Twitter

Smith* and Syed Rahat Shah joined Twitter after feeling that it was not safe to share their thoughts on Facebook, where family and friends were present. During a Zoom meeting, Smith told me that he had filtered out everyone he knew in real life from his Twitter account. Initially, he used his real name, but later changed it to an alternative account, although he still uses his own picture. He was outspoken in real life, but noticed that people were not willing to listen to him. During a gathering, someone asked him to recite kalma (a declaration of Islamic belief in the oneness of God and the prophethood of Muhammad) to prove that he was a Muslim. Since then, he avoids talking about religion offline. On Twitter, his main focus is science and technology, but he occasionally discusses religion in Spaces and gives his opinion.

During a WhatsApp call, Syed Rahat Shah said that he identifies more as a cultural Muslim, despite not believing in any religion. He started criticising religion on his personal Facebook profile, specifically its laws relating to women. However, every time he did so, his brothers or someone from his family would shut him down: ‘It became extremely difficult to question religious practices. In Pakistan, I used to feel like I had a lot to say, but there was no space or acceptance for it.’

After Twitter released Spaces for everyone, Shah started to join some of them in his free time. There he found the freedom to say what he has been keeping within himself for years. ‘I joined Spaces initially, where people would talk about social issues and also discuss religion, like how it causes issues. I would join those Spaces and speak my heart out. Now, I feel like the frustration I had inside me that I couldn’t express has gone.’

Alice*, in a Zoom meeting, said that she identifies as agnostic. Talking further, she said that Generation Z are very lucky as they have many platforms and resources where they can easily access the information that she and people of her generation took years to find. ‘When we were growing up, we neither had that knowledge nor access to platforms where we could seek the information we wanted and network with like-minded people,’ she said. ‘It was especially hard for young girls who were curious. They had no ways to satisfy their curiosity as there were stricter societal and cultural rules in place for them.’

Finding like-minded people

Grace* had a similar experience. She told me, also via Zoom, that a couple of years ago, she had been going through some personal problems. In that phase, she tried to connect with God. She decided to read the Quran in translation. She read thirteen chapters; with each chapter, her confusion about her religion increased.

‘I started listening to Quran with translation on YouTube during my daily commute, which was a forty to forty-five-minute drive from my house to my office,’ she told me. ‘However, I quickly became confused because, in every second or third verse, there was a mention of hell and the punishment for sinners.’

Two of her friends introduced her to the YouTube channel of Harris Sultan, an ex-Muslim Atheist activist and the author of The Curse of God: why I left Islam. She started watching his videos, and this made her realise that she was not alone. There were other people like her who had the same confusion or concerns about religion.

Grace therefore decided to set up her own YouTube channel. Her channel focuses on social issues but religion comes in the discussion in one way or another. Last year, she joined Twitter, where she found that people were more responsive and open to discussion. ‘Twitter also provided the anonymity to express opinions freely, which made the response time much faster,’ she says. ‘I started visiting Twitter spaces and found other people like me there.’

Nuriyah Khan is a well-known ex-Muslim who runs her own YouTube channel. She observes that Twitter spaces can become toxic quickly. As a woman and a host, she feels empowered by the ability to mute or remove disruptive individuals. As she told me via Whatsapp, ‘Twitter Spaces and YouTube each have their unique benefits and drawbacks. Twitter Spaces are great for quick connections, whereas YouTube is better for a larger audience and more extended conversations.’

Are Twitter Spaces safe?

A Twitter user with the name A(nti)theist, whom I spoke to via WhatsApp, said that Twitter provides better security and privacy than other social networking platforms. However, he said that people should be careful not to offend others, especially when discussing religion. In his view, atheists should avoid attacking religious figures and instead focus on the religion’s ideology.

In the view of Harris Sultan (via WhatsApp), Twitter Spaces may not be the best platform for dissidents. He argues that the platform encourages users to create fake or anonymous accounts, which can be risky for those discussing sensitive topics.

Sultan also spoke about internet censorship in Pakistan. ‘The Pakistani government loves to censor anyone they find critical of religion or the army,’ he explained. ‘They don’t have access to Twitter users’ information. Still, they do regularly ask Twitter to ban accounts they don’t like, which puts the accounts of dissidents under the threat of a permanent ban in Pakistan. Eventually, they do get banned – like my ID @TheHarrisSultan.’

Most of the Twitter users who were interviewed for this article reside outside Pakistan. When asked about the digital security measures they take before going on the internet, most of them said they do not feel themselves in danger because they do not live in Pakistan.

Nuriyah Khan, however, takes her safety very seriously (for this reason, she did not tell me her location). She does not have a LinkedIn account as she does not want people to know where she works and track her down. Instead, she just uses Twitter and YouTube. She has deleted her accounts on every other social media platform, except her private Instagram account.

Blasphemy and the digital world in Pakistan

Yasser Latif Hamdani is a barrister who qualified at Lincoln’s Inn and is now based in Islamabad. When I contacted him via Whatsapp, he told me that the government heavily censors the internet through the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, which is empowered to block content that is deemed un-Islamic or immoral, including materials that may be considered blasphemous or critical of Islam. Hamdani stresses that the internet is heavily controlled through Section 37 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), which violates the fundamental right to freedom of expression in Pakistan. This section grants the Government unrestricted powers to block access or remove speech not only on the internet, but also as transmitted through any device.

As Hamdani explains: ‘Section 37 of the PECA is used to block content online which is deemed unIslamic or immoral. Online defamation is also a criminal offence under Section 20 of the Act. There are several attempts by successive governments to further restrict social media.’

He also points out that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are the strictest blasphemy laws in the world. ‘What these laws have done is to weaponise blasphemy allegations. Many of the blasphemy cases are just false but that should not be the point. Freedom of expression necessarily includes within its ambit the freedom to offend, but there is absolutely no appreciation of this right because the society is medieval and largely reactionary.’

Hamdani notes that while there is no law against apostasy in Pakistan, hardly anyone will identify as an ex-Muslim. Pakistan’s constitution guarantees freedom to profess, practise and propagate one’s religion to all citizens of Pakistan regardless of their faith, but at present, no distinct category exists for atheists, agnostics or freethinkers.

‘Any speech that is deemed criticism of the Prophet of Islam or Islam itself poses legal risks,’ writes Hamdani. ‘Section 295 ABC especially [the laws relating to blasphemy against religion, the Quran and the Prophet] might be used to target ex-Muslims. Criticism of the government of the day as such is not a crime, and indeed, sedition law was struck down recently. However, criticism of the army or the judiciary might land people in trouble both legally and extralegally.’

Twitter Spaces have given ex-Muslims in Pakistan a safe platform to express themselves and engage with the public on topics that are usually considered taboo in Muslim societies. One of the reasons that such free expression is possible, however, is that only about two per cent of the entire population of Pakistan is present on Twitter.

In real life, on the other hand, the situation for perceived critics of Islam is extremely dangerous. Recently, a Chinese engineer at the Dasu hydropower project in northwestern Pakistan was accused of blasphemy after he highlighted the slow pace of work during Ramadan. In December 2021, a Sri Lankan factory manager in Pakistan was beaten to death and set ablaze by a mob, in an incident reportedly linked to blasphemy.

It is also common in the country for mobs to attack Ahmadi mosques or murder Ahmadiyya Muslims due to their beliefs. In this environment, it is extremely dangerous to speak freely about religion as an ex-Muslim on the internet. In 2017, the government reportedly ‘asked Facebook and Twitter to remove content considered insulting to Islam or Muhammad’. Prior to that, as reported by Shahid, several Facebook pages and accounts of Pakistani ex-Muslims were removed by Facebook on the request of the Pakistani government. Twitter’s better community standards have provided Pakistani ex-Muslims with a platform for assembly and discourse. Time will tell, though, if Spaces will continue to be available to them, or if some may have to bear the consequences of the freedom that they have found there.

*The names of some individuals have been changed on their request.

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The post Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media appeared first on The Freethinker.