The Quran and Gendered Islam in The Holy Woman
In Pakistan, on the other hand, the degree of festivity exhibited during wedding celebrations symbolizes the social stature of the families involved. Likewise, during Zarri’s quasi-wedding, the veiling ceremony that transforms her into a Shahzadi Ibadat is celebrated with great zeal and excitement. Habib flaunts his wealth and offers his daughter the finest trousseau that any daughter of a feudal family in the region has ever owned. Her quasi-wedding unfolds with theatrical renderings, including for example a folk music performance, as the venue bustles with guests oblivious to the physical and psychological ramifications for Zarri, who must endure Habib’s constant reminders of the code of etiquette that her role demands. This, in turn, amplifies Zarri’s feeling of apprehension with her marriage to the Quran. She envisions her future, shrouded in despair like Sakina, a well-respected Shahzadi Ibadat in her area, who implausibly denies it. Zarri bemoans her own destiny and cannot withhold her sublime terror:
I have been stripped of my identity and a stranger is taking my place. I am, at this moment in time, wrestling with the death and mourning of one woman, while preparing in fear for the birth and rise of another. I don’t want Zarri Bano to die! But I cannot keep her alive.
(Shahraz 2013160)
Zarri’s conversion to a Shahzadi Ibadat is not only a communal rejection of her desire to experience married life with Sikander, but also a bitter reminder of the sordid pessimism embodied by Sakina. Zarri is bolted by the shackles of her Sindi culture that abhors women’s expressions of desires and their agency in making decisions. Reading the Quran as a secondary text can reveal how the ceremony of making Zarri a Shahzadi Ibadat is at odds with Islamic teachings. For example, a
Engendering Islet m 147 key verse ties marriage to procreation: “O people! Fear your Lord, who created you from a single soul, and created from it its mate, and propagated from them many men and women” (The Quran, Al-Nisa, verse 1, 27). Men and women bound by the marriage covenant are expected to offer happiness and contentment to each other. In line with the veneration associated with matrimony and progeny, the Quran presents an entreaty to believers: “Our Lord, grant us delight in our spouses and our children, and make us a good example for the righteous” (The Quran, AlFurqctn, verse 74, 136).
Moreover, Islam deems those men righteous whose behavior is exemplary toward their family members. Although a practicing Muslim, Habib Khan’s behavior is in stark contrast to this hadith. Indifferent to both Shahzada’s pleas and protestations and Zarri’s sentiments, he proves to be the archetype of patriarchal tyranny in his dual role as husband and father when he exercises undue authority over his wife and daughter. In contrast, Zarri has an empathic recognition for her mother’s vicarious trauma “as the dialectic of trauma operates not only in the victim, but also in her close relationships. It results in the formation of intense, unstable relationships that fluctuate between extremes” (Herman 1997, 56). Understanding the depth of her daughter’s despair, Shahzada harshly reprimands her husband and experiences empathic unsettlement that “involves a kind of virtual experience through which one puts oneself in the other person’s position while recognizing the difference of that position and hence not taking the other’s place” (LaCapra 2014, 78). Shahzada’s haplessness in seeing her daughter suffer not only triggers a response infused with maternal affection, but also forces Ruby to accept that she has lost her sister to her faith.
The trauma of Zarri Bano is linked to other women since both daughters and their mother share traumatic bonds. Laura S. Brown’s (1996) notion of “insidious trauma” is worth mentioning here as it concerns “the traumatogenic effects of oppression that are not necessarily overtly violent or threatening to bodily wellbeing at the given moment but that do violence to the soul and spirit” (107). Zarri recognizes her mother’s dilemma and resigns herself to her prescribed role. It is this empathic recognition that allows Zarri to acquit her mother and sister of culpability, telling them: “don’t look so sad, I absolve you of any guilt. I know you can’t help me” (Shahraz 2013, 88). She accepts their helplessness and understands their subdued egos as viscerally oppressed by patriarchal materialism. Yet, despite her subjugation, Shahzada devises strategies that resist the gendered power and control of men. She chastises her husband for being unjust to their daughter and unobservant of the Islamic precept that says a female child is a blessing. As Harris Zafar (2015) argues, “by commanding his followers to ‘be mindful of your duty and act equitably between your children,’ the Prophet Muhammad made it clear that preference cannot be given to one child over another or a son over a daughter” ( 26).
However, Shahzada is ultimately unable to help her daughter. Her attempts to mount an effective protest against her husband fail when he threatens to divorce her. Nevertheless, although Habib critically constrains Zarri as a Shahzadi Ibadat, he paradoxically holds liberal views on travel. Shahraz sensitively portrays the conflicting emotions of a loving father and an obstinate feudal lord. As a father, his behavior toward Zarri is open, allowing her to study in a different city and supporting her desire to open the publishing house. However, as a feudal lord, his obsession with keeping his property in the family blinds him to the injustice to which he subjects his daughter. Again, it is the liberal father in him that opens new significant avenues for Zarri to seek knowledge, despite her gendered circumstances. Thus, her intellectual quest reflects the Quran’s prescription for education and knowledge for all Muslims without discrimination: “Read in the name of your Lord who created, created man from a clinging form. Read! Your Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by means of the pen; taught man what he did not know” (The Quran, Surah Alaqy verse 1-5, 238).
These verses encourage humankind to seek knowledge and delve into critical thinking. The emphasis on acquiring knowledge goes beyond any statement or action denying girls “the right to education” (Onaid, 2014). Furthermore, the Prophet Mohammad repeatedly emphasizes the importance of acquiring knowledge to the extent that “One hadi'th (in al-Bukhari’s collection) reminds believers that seeking knowledge is obligatory' for every' Muslim man and woman” (Halstead 2004, 520-521). Shahraz’s novel explores a contradictory' situation in which Zarri, a young woman with a formal university' education, still surrenders to the traumatizing practice of Haq Bakhshish that victimizes Muslim women. If the educated and resourceful heroine of Shahraz’s novel fails to resist her coercion into the practice and cannot challenge it, then the conditions of less-educated holy' women will likely be far worse. Indeed, the continuance of the practice among some Muslim families in Sind is symptomatic of a collective inability to access proper education and Quranic knowledge in the community.
Our reading of the novel foregrounds the axiomatic ways in which Haq Bakhshish integrates patriarchy and demonstrates the clear violation of women’s economic, political, and socio-religious rights. Moreover, this collaboration functions as a shaft pinion for the political apparatus of patriarchy, which works in tandem with religion to curtail women’s agency' in Sindi society. A critical way' in which Zarri experiences the degradation of women’s agency' is through the practice and ideology' of sexual abstinence, which, it is important to note, Islam does not condone. In Islam, “the discouraging of celibacy' is not confined to men; even women have been discouraged from remaining single. Imam Jafar Sadiq said the prophet has forbidden the women to become ascetic and to prevent themselves from husbands” (Rizvi 2013, n.p). The hadith unequivocally' repudiates celibacy' due to its assumed deleterious effects on a person’s psychosexual well-being. As a philosophical text, the Quran clearly advocates the marriage of both sexes: “And of His signs are that He created for you mates from among yourselves, so that you may find tranquility' in them; and He planted love and compassion between you. In these are the signs for people who reflect” (The Quran, Ar-Rum, Verse 21, 153).
Through The Holy Woman, the hyper-fetishization of gender in religious practices contradictory to the Quran is an extreme form of commodity fetishism. While, deploying Aijaz Ahmad’s (1995) appraisal that those who subscribe to the theory of organizing “their [Muslim men’s] own lives around the fetishism of commodities bequeathed to them by advanced capital [...] are also the ones most vociferous in propagating a discourse of authenticity and cultural differ-entialism in the name of Islam” (12). Ahmad’s analysis highlights that Muslim patriarchs invest in Haq Bakhshish because they fetishize women as commodities, while claiming to uphold the tenets of the Quran. However, in Islam and other religions, doctrine attempts to make practices simple through rituals and to clarify obligations that are pertinent to most aspects of life. Yet, as our reading of The Holy Woman suggests, doctrine and the exposure of patriarchal interpretation of it, also offers criticism of the systemic violation of women’s rights and the exploitation of women through marriage and celebratory rituals. Shahraz’s narrative suggests that Zarri’s veiling ceremony and its concomitant ceremonies are antithetical to gender equality. Put plainly, rites do not equate to rights. Indeed, Shahraz critiques the exercise of undue biopower over disenfranchised sections of society and foregrounds the necessity to protect Muslim women from the patriarchal violence prevalent in socio-cultural discourses.
