Muslim Women Must Reclaim Slowly-Slipping-Away Spaces in India

Muslim women have stepped out from faceless obscurity came together to protest for their rights, opined Farheen. An exclusive for Different Truths.

The Muslim women rose from the ashes to lead one of the historic revolutions, which began on December 16, 2019, against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC).

This protest wasn’t surprising for Indians but the entire world.

The entire world mostly didn’t believe that these courageous women, without having any prior experience, political affiliation, and support could lead a protest that would shake the world.

After having witnessed and tasted their own medicine, the anti-Muslim regime’s ego was bruised. This government stooped substantially low and decided that any issues relating to Muslims should be nipped in the bud.

Because the anti-Muslim regime felt threatened by these empowered women, tactics, laws, and hatred increased over time.

This mindset is a result of years of hatemongering, however, earlier it was only for Muslim men, but this time around the regime started hating women. These hatemongers resorted to targeting Muslim women and incidents, such as Bulli Bai and Sulli Deals, Clubhouse, and now Udupi hijab.

This was intended to silence Muslim women, on the contrary, women who were targeted chose to put up their concerns out loud on social media.

The selective thinking tactic of the regime is the tool that has been best used. The branches of the bench and bar reportedly aren’t ready to focus, pen down, and help fight issues. This is a clear indication that Muslim women have been discouraged to raise their voices.

Following their anti-Muslim hatred, the regime has laid down nets to restrict, scare and tarnish Muslims.

They’ve been constantly harassing Muslim men, but they’ve decided to run behind Muslim women this time. They’ve clearly understood how Muslim women can lead the world, and to prevent that from happening, they’re ensuring that any representation from the Muslim community shouldn’t be entertained.

The anti-hijab narrative is a way to break the spine of the Muslims because the prosperity and success of the community lie in education.

Lack of Muslim representation on the Education Policy Review Commission is one of the political arrangements in successfully pushing out Muslim students from the educational institutions. There won’t be any stakeholder in the Commission to represent Muslim students.

Another major tactic is not letting Muslims find rented houses in most localities in India. Brokers and house owners sometimes clearly and vehemently and at other times say, “We want a vegetarian tenant.”

Amusement parks, malls, markets, and other places prescribe clothing restrictions especially on wearing hijab. Some of the workplaces do not permit hijab-clad women to become part of the workforce.

The easiest way to discourage women is to prevent women from using social media platforms and that is being done by creating anonymous handles, profiles, and pages to harass, pushing Muslim women out of the online spaces, thereby trying to make them feel threatened.

The hijab warriors, students who wear hijab, despite having been asked to not fight considering their past experiences, they’re courageous as one can imagine, Muslim women have resolved to not look for help outside, rather they’ve pledged to fight their own battle.

As they resolve to reclaim their spaces, they’re fighting fiercely. There are many women who have started reclaiming spaces in mosques, educational institutions, workplaces, and Twitter Spaces merely on their merits, experiences, and knowledge.

Muslims have the right to education and to practice their religion, but this regime has been flouting these rights assigned to Muslims is a testimony of hatred of the ruling party. The recent political ruckus was created to disallow Muslim men to offer Friday prayers in Gurugram because of the space constraints.

Pushing Muslims out of the milieu is by preventing and boycotting Muslim-led business establishments, vegetable sellers, shops, educational institutes, workplaces, and a plethora of other spaces that one can think of.

Beginning December 2021, a group called, ‘The Muslim Women Masjid Project’ was initiated, which is an awareness project that aims at normalising women visiting masjids. It asks women to visit masjids near them, documents their experience and send pictures to this group. This group also wants masjids to become centres of community development.

Muslim women have been pushed out of all the spaces, be it public or private with the sole aim to let the other communities continue to live with the stereotype created by movies, books, and political parties in India.

As Muslim women, accessing spaces regardless of any reason is imperative because it’s their constitutional right.

The intention behind discouraging Muslim women from not representing their community anywhere is evident and that’s the fear harbouring in the majority community in India. If Muslim women keep fighting to reclaim their spaces, they will provide background knowledge about the Muslim community and Islam, bringing forth the truth about Islam and at least try to discredit accusations of being extremists, dispel stereotypes and myths and replace them with facts and information.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are that of the author. It does not in any way reflect the views of the editors and the eMagazine, Different Truths. ~ Editor

Picture design by Anumita Roy, Different Truths