AGENDA FOR MUSLIM WOMEN ON 21ST CENTURY ROLES

This week, Bayero University Kano’s Centre for Gender Studies (CGS) in collaboration with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIT) Nigeria Office and the Faculty of Law convened an international conference on “Changing Roles of Muslim Women in the 21st Century”. The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Fatima L. Adamu, National Programme Manager, Women for Health, Nigeria, and a sociologist with the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. Some of the international participants were Dr. Mariam Bibi Khan from Durban in South Africa and Sister Manel Essassi from Sousse in Tunisia.

More than forty papers were presented at the two-day event; many of them very eye-opening (if not eye-popping), and the discussions were as robust as the presentations.The other two presentations at the plenary were “Muslim Healthcare Practitioners: Re-reading Islamic Directives for Transformative Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights”by South Africa’s Dr. Mariam Khan and “Muslim Women and Empowerment, Entrepreneurship and Poverty Reduction” by ABU Zaria’s Prof. Ahmad Bello Dogarawa. (To get the papers, contact Convener Prof. Aisha Abdul-Isma’il, Director CGS on [email protected] or Centre Administrator Ka’ilu  Umar Sa’id on [email protected]).

In her presentation, keynote speaker Dr. Fatima argued that despite the glaring differences between the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’ Muslim woman, two things remain constant; religion (Islam) which gives identity, and gender (as females), which gives the universal roles of wife, daughter, mother and citizenship of a country and group. Every femalethat one meets will occupy a combination of these roles. It is the religion of Islam that guides Muslim women on how to execute these roles. Therefore, the question: ‘What are the changing roles of Muslim women as daughters, wives, mothers and citizens?’ is both apt and timely.

She went on to interrogate and appreciate the changes and transitions that had affected the Northern Nigerian Muslim woman from the time of the mothers (1960s and 1970s)through the epochal 1980s and 1990s, and now into the first two decades of the 21st Century – 2000s and 2010s. She averred that the Muslim girl of the 1960s had a world view restricted to her family and her village; her daily life growing up was about helping her mother with domestic work, going to the market to shop and/or sell, playing with her mates, getting married and giving birth, and repeating the circle.

For the Muslim woman of today, however, the story is radically different – she has access to the internet with its global audience andhas therefore acquired a global world view; she is under pressure to succeed as a professional with an income; she may be married or unmarried, and with children or not; she earns her income and is therefore not dependent economically on her father/husband/brothers. She also sometimes provides for the needs of her parents but may not ‘fully’ care for them because of the demand of her work.

Dr. Fatima continued to argue that the modern Muslim woman uses her financial muscles to strengthen family ties, and is a role model and a mentor; but sometimes if the realities are not handled well, she becomes very materialistic, even a drug addict, may lack modesty, and may have no husband to marry and thus no child bearing. Her global audience over the internet, in the meantime, have become her confidants in doing either good or evil. This, she said, is happening at a time when men are struggling to handle challenges around their masculinities, trying to answer questions about their ability to be capable husbands.

She recommended that, in order to address the challenges of the Muslim Woman in the 21st Century, there is need for the CGS to lead in producing a blueprint with a measurable agenda that will transform Northern Nigeria. To be known as“Muslim Women Transformation Agenda for Northern Nigeria,” the blueprint should have four core objectives: reduce unequal access to education and health; reclaim marriage and family as the bedrock of our society; protect our children from sexual abuse and violence; and break the cycle of poverty by producing the professionals needed to transform our society.

Apart from her recommendations, she left the audience with four messages: we must pay back and be role models to the younger ones and mentor and guide the young ones; we must take up the challenge of reducing inequalities in the family and society because it is the woman that suffers; we must address challenges associated with marital and family lives; and we must confront the problem of drug addiction and sexual abuse and violence.

As if in reply to the speaker’s recommendations and messages, Kano Emir Muhammad Sanusi II, who graced the occasion as Royal Father, was responsive, blunt and to the point, especially on a topic dear to his heart; emancipation of the suffering woman. He discussed at length the provisions of the Kano Social Policy document he recently championed – a document still waiting for the pleasure of the Kano State Government and House of Assembly to become law. It is the hope of the Emir and all Muslim women that this policy (a joint effort between the Kano Emirate, Bayero University and the State Government itself) shall transform for the better our social landscape as we know it.

Arising from these interventions by the various speakers, the Conference agreed to recommend, among other things, that: to save the family institution from further deterioration, thorough and effective guidance and counselling should be institutionalised BEFORE marriage and made a fundamental requirement for couples before contracting marriages; that elderly and educated Muslim women learned in the Islamic and western sciecs should mentor the younger ones in all aspects of life, and especially in the use of social media which have now become both a sine qua  non of social life as well as a destroyer of same; and that there is need for society to have a clear understanding of the Islamic stand on women’s work and participation in activities outside homes.