Govts told not to manipulate religion

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Women activists have criticized the state for intervening in people's personal affairs using religion as a justification, which they say has led to discrimination against woman in countries where the majority of people are Muslims.

Ending their three-day international meeting in Jakarta on Sunday, the activists urged Indonesia and other Muslim states to take all legal, social and political measures to stop human rights abuses against women, particularly in relation to their sexual rights.

"In Muslim societies, sexuality, especially a woman's body, is increasingly becoming an arena of intense political and social conflict," said a statement issued during the final day of the meeting.

The forum was attended by around 30 women activists from countries including Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Lebanon, India, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. The discussion focussed on sexuality and human rights in Muslim societies in South and Southeast Asia.

The meeting highlighted that conservative political forces were fiercely trying to reinforce the traditional mechanism of control over women's sexuality in Muslim nations.

"Widespread practices of sexual violence, forced marriages, female genital mutilation, marital rape, unsafe abortion and discrimination based on sexual orientation constitute blatant human rights violations," the statement said.

Citing an example, Indonesian activist Musdah Mulia said the world's largest Muslim country enforces many discriminative laws against women, using Islamic law as a reference.

"The most crucial problem in Indonesia is state intervention by making a compilation of Islamic law a positive law through a presidential decree in 1991," said Musdah, who is also the Ministry of Religious Affairs director of religious research and social affairs.

"Indonesia is not an Islamic state, but its interpretations of Islamic law are much more conservative than Islamic states such as Malaysia. We need to revise this compilation," she added.

The compilation of articles under Islamic law, discriminates against women's rights as it allows polygamy for husbands and forbids marriages of couples of different religions, as well as prohibits women from serving as a witness in marriage, Musdah said.

"Another example is the criminalization of adultery. It is a sin, but the state should leave such a (personal) matter to a person's conscience and should not intervene," Musdah added.

She said the conservative perception, wherein women are considered second class believers in Islam, prevails in many countries although it has been refuted by many.

Egyptian activist Amal Abd-el Hadi said that there was also a trend in her country where Islamic law was interpreted in accordance with the current political needs there.

"They use the hadits for political reasons. Some of it we never heard of before," she said during a press briefing held after the international meeting.

Hadits is the traditional collection of stories relating the sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad, which also serves as the explanation of the Koran.

Amal underlined that Islam teaches human dignity, although the interpretation of Islamic instruction could range from very progressive to strictly conservative.

"If we are willing to fight for human rights and gender equality, we can also find verses in the Koran on that," she said.

She and other participants of the meeting said every woman should be fully informed about their sexual rights and that strong advocacy for them from non-government organization was necessary.