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The shooting of the fifteen year old Pakistani girl last October,
Malala Yusufzai shocked and horrified many across the world – Muslim and
non-Muslim. The dominant narrative that has been promoted by the
mainstream media, human rights organisations, and Western governments
and politicians is that the attempted assassination of this young girl
by ‘Islamists’ in Pakistan was due to their opposition of her women’s
rights activism and advocacy of education for girls in the country.
Following the shooting, many institutions and personalities rallied to
her cause, praising her for bringing women’s education to global
attention, including former British Prime Minister and UN Special Envoy
for Global Education, Gordon Brown, UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon,
and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On the 12th
of July, Malala was invited to address a gathering of youth at the UN
headquarters in New York where she advocated the need for free
compulsory education for every child.
The cause of improving the educational rights of girls in Pakistan
and globally is a noble one. However, far from noble are the shameless
attempts by Western governments, institutions and politicians to exploit
this young girl, her struggle, and the horrific attack against her for
their own political goal of intensifying the propagation of Western
secular, liberal values to women and girls in the Muslim world through
education, and to weaken their Islamic identity and values.
The cynical
nature of their support of Malala and lack of true concern for the
educational rights of Muslim women is demonstrated by their hypocritical
stance and silence towards hijab and niqab bans in secular states such
as France, Belgium, Turkey, and Uzbekistan that have deprived Muslim
girls and women of a good schooling simply for abiding by their Islamic
dress. The question should surely be asked – where were the strong
voices of opposition of such secular states and politicians to the
European Court of Human Rights’ Judgements that ruled against the right
of Muslim women in France and Turkey to seek a good education while also
adhering to their Islamic beliefs?
Malala’s story has also been used to further fuel and re-enforce the
age-old myth that Islam and Islamic rule oppresses women and deprives
them of their rights and that they are in need of Western-style
liberation. It is a narrative that has been employed historically and
over decades, continuing into modern times to maintain Western secular
hegemony over the region by fighting the resurgence of Islam
internationally in order to prevent the establishment of an Islamic
system in the Muslim world that would threaten Western political and
economic interests.
However, it is not Islam but Western colonial
foreign policy that has stripped women and girls in Pakistan and many
other Muslim countries of a valuable education. The ‘War on Terror’ and
occupation of Afghanistan has created a constant climate of insecurity
and instability in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the region, marked with
frequent drone attacks and bombs that have killed thousands over the
years, including countless women, girls, and children.
A UN Committee on
the Rights of Children report stated that hundreds of children are
reported to have died, “as a result of attacks and air strikes by the US
military forces in Afghanistan” between 2008 and 2012, due to the use
of “indiscriminate force”. Where are the rights of these children?
Clearly their deaths are acceptable collateral damage to such colonial
governments for the sake of securing their interests in the region. Such
occupation, war and instability has also generated a lawless
environment riddled with crime, abductions, and rape. All this has lead
to many parents preventing their daughters from travelling far from
their homes, including to school.
Furthermore, how can states plagued
with instability, destruction, and insecurity ever provide a good
quality of education to their citizens? After more than 10 years of
occupation, almost 9 out of 10 women in Afghanistan remain illiterate.
Hence, it is the destructive Western colonial foreign policy that has
not only robbed girls of an education, but robbed them of their lives
and dignity, and stands as one of the main obstacles to their effective
schooling.
Coupled with this, secular Western-backed regimes in the Muslim lands
have allowed the influx of liberal culture into their states through
their entertainment and advertising industries as well as through
implementing a secular education system. This culture that sanctifies
sexual freedom; sexualizes, objectifies and degrades women; and
encourages men to treat women according to their desires has contributed
to the high levels of sexual harassment, bullying and rape in the
schools and streets of countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and
Egypt. This has caused many girls and women to feel reluctant to venture
outside of their homes to seek an education.
In addition, the flawed
Western capitalist system has destroyed the economy of countries in the
Muslim world, burdening them with huge debts due to heavy interest based
loans and failed economic policies, such that more is spent on
debt-repayments than education, healthcare, infrastructure and other
public services. The result is insufficient and crumbling schools, poor
numbers and training of teachers, and lack of necessary books and
equipment. Furthermore, the impoverishment of the people through
capitalist policies imposed upon the Muslim lands by Western states and
their institutions such as the IMF as well as the lack of free schooling
has caused many parents to reluctantly prioritise education for their
sons over their daughters. Not surprising therefore that more than 60%
of women in Pakistan and around 50% of women in Bangladesh and Egypt are
illiterate.
It is therefore Western foreign policy and the capitalist, secular
system that has been imposed upon our Muslim lands which has proven to
be the greatest obstacle to providing good quality education to women
and girls in the Muslim world.
Islam is clear about female education. It not only views the seeking
of knowledge regarding Islam and its solutions to life’s affairs as an
obligation upon women, as according to the hadith of the Prophet(saw), “Seeking Knowledge is obligatory upon ALL Muslims” but also directs
the Muslimah to study the world around her. Indeed, the wife of the
Prophet(saw), Aisha(ra) was not only a great scholar of Islam but a
great scholar of medicine, poetry, and general knowledge. Islam also
obliges the Muslim Ummah to be a leading nation in the world,
encouraging men and women to contribute to the betterment of society and
to excel in various spheres of life, including in academia, science,
medicine, technology, and industry.
However, all these educational
obligations and rights of women can only be secured by a system that
truly values the beliefs of Islam and its emphasis on the importance of
female learning. That system is the Khilafah state whose constitution is
based purely upon the Qur’an and Sunnah. Hence, in accordance to Islam,
the Khilafah is obliged to invest heavily in education and provide free
primary and secondary education to girls and boys alike and as far as
possible fund higher studies. It assures specialized female schools
abiding by the Islamic regulation of segregation of the genders, managed
by well-trained, well-paid and qualified female teachers. And it
encourages and facilitates women to specialize in various fields to
become for example scholars of Islam, doctors, scientists,
mathematicians, architects, judges, lecturers, engineers, or IT
specialists.
All this is funded by a sound Islamic economic system that
embodies the tools to generate a stable economy and economic prosperity,
implemented by the Islamic ruling system that prioritises education and
views it as a basic right of every citizen. It will strive through its
education, media, and judicial systems to eradicate any cultural
attitudes in its society that prevent women from having access to
education. Finally, the Islamic social system and other Shariah laws
will ensure that the high status of women is always maintained, that
they are never devalued, that men treat them with respect and not
according to their desires, and that harsh punishments are issued for
any violation of their dignity, ensuring a safe environment within which
girls can travel to school and pursue their studies. It is all this that will lead to the eradication of female illiteracy and to women’s educational aspirations being fulfilled.
It was under this system of the Khilafah that women’s education
flourished historically creating brilliant female inventors such as
Marium al-Istirlabi who pioneered the development of the astrolabe in
the 10th century for calculating the position of the sun and
stars; excellent female engineers such as Fatima Al-Fiqri who
constructed the first university in the world in Qarawayyin, Morrocco;
and thousands upon thousands of female scholars as detailed in the 40
volume book by the scholar Mohamed Akram an-Nadwi which provided
biographies of 8000 female scholars who existed during the time of the
Islamic civilization. Under this true Islamic system, the prestigious
Al-Azhar university in Cairo gave access to women as students and as
lecturers – a right that women in the West only acquired within their
universities centuries after. Indeed, the proportion of female lecturers
in many classical Islamic colleges was higher than in many Western
universities today. All this was a result of Muslims making Islam the
central and only motivating factor for their development. The Khilafah
was therefore a state that truly pioneered the world in female education
and Insha Allah will again produce a first-class education system for
women and girls again upon its establishment!
Dear brothers and sisters, the script of the Malala story is
being written by Western colonial governments, not to improve the rights
of women but to continue their colonial intervention and control of the
Muslim world. The education they offer for the region is not sincere
but aimed at further spreading their secular, liberal values that has
corrupted our youth; and it must be strongly rejected. It is through
returning to our Islamic roots and laws through establishing the
Khilafah that alone holds the key to fulfilling the educational
aspirations of women and ensuring that all their God-given rights are
secured. Allah(swt) says, “They wish to blow out the Light of Allah
(i.e.this deen of Islam, the Qur’an, and the Prophet(saw) with their
mouths). But Allah will bring His Light to perfection even though the
disbelievers hate it.” [TMQ As-Saff: 8] (Ends)
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