Gender, Islam, and the Equity of Property Distribution

As a religious discourse, Islam arguably promotes gender equality in marriage and its materialistic rituals, namely dowry. In Islam, it is not obligatory for a bride’s parents to give a dowry. However, it is mandatory for a bride to receive a dower or mehr from her husband. Flavia Agnes (1996) claims that:

according to the Maliki School of Islamic law, a marriage without the stipulation of mehr is invalid. According to the Hanafi school, the marriage is valid but if no mehr is stipulated or if the amount stipulated is very' low, the woman is entitled to a proper mehr, mehr-el-mis.

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Based on the economic status of the groom and the bride, its amount is established through the mutual understanding of the respective families. The Quran suggests that mehr is a bride’s right and the amount of mehr should be fixed according to the bride’s wishes with the aim of providing financial security to her (The Quran, Al-Nisa, Verse 4, 27). The rules of inheritance in Islamic jurisprudence validate the rights of daughters: “men receive a share of what their parents and relatives leave, and women receive a share of what their parents and relatives leave; be it little or much - a legal share” (The Quran, Al-Nisa, Verse 7, p. 27). As this verse demonstrates, a Muslim woman’s share is guaranteed from the family estate. However, this property share varies under different family' circumstances: for example, depending on the status of a woman as daughter, wife, or widow, with offspring or childless.

Although we cannot hereon launch into a detailed analysis of these circumstances, we emphasize women’s claim to parental property under Islamic dictum. Depriving Muslim women their due share of ancestral property leads to lifetime discrimination and devaluation. Subsequently, in relation to The Holy Woman, it is worth discussing how women are subject to abuse in the name of religion, tradition, and culture, such that all of them are generalized as the same. In addition, based on Md. Mahmudul Hasan’s thesis (2005) on the orientalization of gender, Nausheen Ishaque (2017) critiques:

The tendency of characterizing the women from the East as backward, domesticized, tradition-bound, ignorant and poor. Such caricaturing was long ago initiated by the West and is now kept in continuum by both the Western and Eastern Writers. This homogenization and essentialization of the women of postcolonial nations are what one may regard as part of the orientalization of gender project.

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We would add that despite the tense clash of identity politics that surface when different ideologies interact, the spread of liberalism and socialism is generally interpreted as antithetical to Islam. At the same time, some Islamic thinkers perceive capitalism “as imposing an unjust economic and political order on the world” (Amin 1991, 82). Against orientalist stereotypes, this perspective mediates an irrational commodification of Muslim brides and the conjugal trauma and violence that they experience, as patriarchal manifestations of power which buttress inequalities in gender relations, especially in terms of property rights. Conversely, in consonance with feminism, Marxism emphatically argues that patriarchy virtually dominates capitalist society, and through the continued male domination of capitalist, economic, and social life, women’s roles, contributions, and rights never receive due recognition. In general, it is found that even within the household women assume numerous jobs. Their home to them is more a place to work than to take rest. Their duties comprise childbearing and domestic labor, as well as giving emotional support to their husbands, which ironically weakens their own positions but strengthens patriarchal power in the family and, by extension, to society.

Muslim women do suffer huge losses in property rights, as in the case of Zarri, where the Quran is brought as a substitute of a man or husband by male members of the family in order to withhold Zarri’s share of her father’s property. Moreover, this state of gender inequality is achieved not only through application of brute force and intimidation, but through processes of cultural ascendancy, persuasion, and expectations from women. This is conducted such that an entire existing social arrangement of marrying a woman to the Quran is framed as natural and inevitable and as following Islam and the Quran. A key dilemma is that Muslim women and their status in Islam are becoming contentious with time and this is difficult for us to deny. So, is it actually religion, or a system of values and

Engendering Islam 151 traditions, oppresses them or multiple social realities that appropriate Quranic teachings in contradistinction to lived realities of Muslim women. However, in Inside the Gender Jihad, Amina Wadud (2008), an American scholar of Islam known for her progressive exegesis of the Quran, explains the importance of the Quran in these words:

The text is silent. It needs interpretation and has always historically and currently been subjected to interpretation. We make it speak for us by asking of it. If we are narrow, we will get a narrow response or answer. If we are open, it will open us to even greater possibilities. Contexts make particular interpretations dominant and others inadequate.

(197-198)

Zarri’s initial indignation due to her education and her mother’s angry remonstrance and defiance of Shahzadi Ibadat show paradigmatic shifts in Muslim women’s attitudes. These shifts range from simply accepting the traditions thrust upon them to fighting against them. As Rukhsana Manzoor (2006) contends, “[t]hese women are challenging the male-dominated social and political system. But still, it is not easy for women to raise their voice. This battle against feudalism, tribalism, and fundamentalism is linked with the fight against the rotten system of capitalism” ( 7). The suppression of women in the name of culture, honor, and class consciousness is arguably why people have fossilized monolithic images of Pakistani women trapped in an atavistic cycle of despair and injustice in the rigid confines of a conservative dystopia. In Shahraz’s novel, Habib, motivated to maintain the status quo through feudal privileges, resurrects an ancient family tradition, uncompromisingly implying that Haq Bakhshish is rooted in economic gains over any other kinship determinants.

The novel satirizes feudal and aristocratic patrons for their customized ways of forcing women into subjugation. As Zarri strives to establish an identity as a scholar of Islamic studies, she works ardently for the solidarity of Muslim women. While traveling throughout Pakistan, she educates women on their rights and duties. She aspires to establish a college for girls, and the return on the invested capital will contribute to her ancestral property. However, Zarri’s contribution to the capital of her family would likely benefit others more. The death of her grandfather means that the property will automatically pass onto her nephew Haris as the heir. As such, the outcome of her act is questionable. As Gayle Rubin (1975) persuasively argues, “women are a reserve labor force for capitalism, that women’s generally lower wages provide an extra surplus to a capitalist employer, that women serve the ends of capitalist consumerism in their role as administrators of family consumption, and so forth” (160).

The gendered dynamics of materialism illustrated by Shahraz are in conflict with Muslim women’s rights to self-definition and autonomy. Zarri’s life is sacrificed upon the altar of honor by the men of her family. As their conservative political dispensation resists change, their culturally conditioned conservatism rests on a false premise of male ontological control. This subjects her to patriarchal authority and hegemony, as “kinship and marriage are always part of total social systems, and are always tied into economic and political arrangements” (Rubin 1975,207). In the guise of Shahzadi Ibadat, her identity, body, and sexuality are oppressed and used as commodities to barter for the family’s interest, which is the attainment of social eminence through the means of her singular religious prominence, devotion, and erudition in Islamic studies. Thus, whenever Zarri contemplates her condition, she experiences alienation: she surrenders to the feudal system in return for establishing an identity as a scholar of Islam and over time finds herself contributing to the patriarchal dividend that promises advantages to men. Whether done openly or not, this dividend favors males, masculine ideals, and their reasoning. While Muslim women do not have such advantages in their lives, they remain subjugated with reference to malefemale social relations, rights, and statuses.

According to Connell (2009), the “patriarchal dividend” implies a surplus of resources made available to men “as a group for maintaining an unequal gender order. Money income is not the only kind of benefit. Others are authority, respect, service, safety, housing, access to institutional power, emotional support, and control over one’s own life” (142). Zarri dwells in circumstances that invest in her a somber and reified image of the chaste and acquiescent woman who serves as the carrier of family honor at the cost of her repressed being. Fariha Chaudhri (2013) considers Zarri’s state of affairs with disgust that she expresses in trenchant words:

Zari Bano has to remain non-sexual in order to become the legitimate heiress of her family property. This association of the non-sexual and desexualized woman as the legitimate heiress of the family land seems to suggest that two sites capable of reproduction cannot co-exist. In other words, if Zari Bano decides to get married and produce children she would not be in a position to possess her father’s land that is also capable of reproduction. Therefore the only possibility lies in rendering one barren, so that the possession of the other may be legitimized.

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This arrangement is not only immoral, but also calls to attention how this particular feudal custom tortures Muslim women through an absurd and injudicious decision on female sexuality and the body. Thus, Zarri’s marriage loses its value when compared to her forefathers’ wealth. Also, as an idiom of the political language of patriarchal discourse with respect to Haq Bakhshish, Zarri’s sexuality becomes a commodity. When she clings to celibacy it deprives her of marriage with the man of her dreams, which torments and stresses her. Still, she contributes to the wealth of her father and grandfather, who at her expense remain privileged and stable in terms of money and status. Moreover, being Shahzadi Ibadat, Zarri greatly satisfies her father and grandfather’s masculine pride while modeling beauty in burqa, piety, honor in responsibility, self-control, social respect, and the overall ideal image of a Muslim woman in Sindi society.

Zarri’s sexuality, on the other hand, is a fetish given the disproportionate intrinsic value of respect and honor associated with her status as Shahzadi Ibadat in the community. She suffers physical, psychological, emotional, and financial losses that, once again, conflict with Islamic teachings. As Khan and Kumar note:

The Islamic economic system is not based on price as the method of distribution of goods, but rather, how to distribute benefits to all citizens. With the basic needs satisfied, everyone can live a happier life because people are allowed to search for the livelihood that suits them best and makes them the happiest.

(Khan and Kumar 2011,: 4)

Zarri’s sexuality is incessantly yoked to the directives of her elders. After spending five years as Shahzadi Ibadat, Zarri must bring her sexuality out of its latent state. With the passage of time, Habib is plagued by guilt as he witnesses Ruby happily married to Zarri’s beau Sikander; while Zarri still languishes in despair, he confides to Shahzada “I have to beg for Zarri Bano’s forgiveness and to free her from the oath never to many” (Shahraz 2013, 324). Therefore, in order to ease his compunction and make amends for the injustice done to Zarri, he seeks forgiveness from Zarri and requests her to release herself from her oath of celibacy and to marry any suitable man before going on a holy pilgrimage to Mecca. But, if Habib is apologetic, Zarri’s response is markedly indifferent. She admits,

“Marriage, however, has no relevance in my life now, Father. I am truly happy with things as they are. [...] There is no man I want to many.” She quashed the inner whisper: “ There was one a long time ago - but you prevented me from marrying him.”

(Shahraz 2013, 328)

When Habib travels to Mecca to perform Haj with the entire family, he and Ruby are caught in a throng of pilgrims circumambulating around the Kaaba, and amidst the chaos of stampede they are crushed to death. After Ruby’s untimely demise, her mother and grandfather insist that Zarri should marry Sikander and act as a surrogate mother to Haris. After much reluctance and recrimination, Zarri agrees to marry her former suitor and future lover to safeguard her nephew. Earlier forbidden by her father, this union is now legitimated as it promotes the interests of the patriarchal line. As a holy woman or as a heteronormative wife, Zarri is forced to accede to the pressures imposed upon her and surrender control of her sexual agency. However, having come to terms with her traumatic past, she now faces the new challenge of creating a future with Sikander. Both encounter issues but Zarri experiences barriers to emotional intimacy. Bob Schuchts’ (2020) emphasis on the importance of emotional connection between husband and wife very well reverberates in Zarri and Sikander’s marital arrangement:

Regrettably, many married couples struggle when it comes to sustaining high levels of emotional intimacy. Unhealed emotional wounds and resentments (from past and present hurts) create barriers that make it difficult to trust and be vulnerable with each other. Some couples endure years of marriage like this, with little or no emotional connection to nourish them. Others taste emotional connection occasionally but find it hard to sustain over time. After fruitless attempts, some settle for a comfortable distance and resign themselves to a mediocre existence.

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For Zarri, building sexual intimacy with Sikander requires her to go the extra mile of devoting immense psychic energy to their relationship by breaking her own psychological resistance to sex. Thus, for a long time after the wedding, Sikander is denied intimacy, but cognizant of her dilemma, he empathetically gives her time to develop erotic feelings for him as they rebuild their lives together without the previous emotional fervor and happiness.