Why Zaira Wasim Quitting her Career Cannot be A Matter of Choice

By Arshad Alam, New Age Islam

05 July 2019

How should we look at Zaira Wasim’s exit from Bollywood? Wasim’s a very talented actress hailing from the valley. For many she was an inspiration not just in Kashmir but throughout the South Asian Muslim world. Her sudden decision to quit the film industry has left many bewildered and searching for answers. Many have said that it might be a publicity stunt before the release of another of her film. If that is the case, then she cannot be faulted as most major artistes in Mumbai have done it. However, the reiteration of her decision the very next day does indicate that she is serious about quitting the industry.

It is quite possible that this might be the rambling of a young adult not knowing how to negotiate with a new world. But we must remember that she has been negotiating such structures since the age of thirteen and therefore the thesis that her Facebook post might be a sudden burst of immaturity should also be put to rest. One can only come to the conclusion that what she wrote was well thought out and that she must have taken some time to come to the decision which she eventually took.

Zaira Wasim

Probably the best way to understand the motive behind her decision is to look more carefully at what she has written in her long Facebook post. Zaira did find lot of ‘love and support’ from her fellow travellers but then she states that she was ‘ignorant’ during this phase of her life. It must be underlined that the word ‘ignorance’ has special meaning in Islam which tells us that true happiness and enlightenment is only possible by treading on the path decreed by Allah. She highlights that there are two types of ‘diseases’ which afflict the heart: doubt and desire. It almost seems that she had started doubting the path of Allah and that various doubts crept up during this phase of her life. Rather than understanding doubt as a creative force, she decides to snub it altogether by announcing that there is ‘nothing greater than faith’ and that we should ‘not forget what we were created for’. Of course, her Islam told her that we were created for the express purpose of worshipping Allah and that everything else was secondary to this fundamental act of subservience which every Muslim must pursue. No wonder then that she realised that being in the industry that she was, her relationship with her Islam was threatened.      

Many have argued that this is her personal choice and that it should be respected. Really? Since when has religion become a matter of personal choice? All religions make demands from their followers; they make claims about the world and its creations and they fundamentally re-order the world around us. Religion, including Islam, is deeply political. And yet, there are people celebrating Zaira conversion as a personal choice. One does not have to be a feminist to understand the age old slogan that personal is political. It is rather disturbing that the same set of feminists is no longer using their feminist lens to analyse this problem.

Zaira’s decision must also be debated particularly within the Muslim circles because ultimately she has called Islam into question. Is this the kind of Islam we want? Is Islam intrinsically anti-women? After all, there have been many Muslim men working in the film industry but they never thought that their ‘line of work’ interfered with their faith. Why is it that this special sense of confusion, anxiety and resignation only reserved for women? Zaira’s post has only confirmed what many have started believing to be the essence of Islam: a religion which is orthodox, regressive and patently anti-women. The congratulatory comments in their hundreds which have been posted on Zaira’s wall only testify to the fact that hundreds of Muslim men and women are extremely happy with her decision. They simultaneously prove that these Muslim men do not want Muslim women to have any agency of their own; rather all their masculinity is spent thinking about ways in which they could domesticate them. And of course, it seems very clear that Islam gives them all the help that they require.

It is quite possible that Zaira was pressured into thinking that Islam forbids women to work in certain industries. Worse still, there are interpretations which suggest that Muslim women should not move out of their homes at all. This then is a telling commentary on the state of affairs within Muslim society. The collective conscience of Muslim society exerts pressure on individuals and some of them cannot resist it. This is then the problem of so called Islamic morality by which Muslim society lives today. There is very little space for individual dissent and those who chart out a somewhat different path have to bear the burden of near ostracism from society. Zaira’s choice therefore cannot be understood as just a personal choice made out of her free will. Rather we have to take a complex view as to how this choice came to be executed and understand how a new Islamist religious self is interwoven in this so called choice.

The Urdu press has made matters worse by arguing that many Hindu actors have also quit for ‘religious’ reasons. In this kind of a skewed understanding, Zaira’s case is being blown out of proportion with the express intention of giving a bad name to Islam. Those opposing Zaira Wasim are all necessarily right wing Islamophobes. This kind of framing of the problem does not help the Muslim community. This is not the time to compare her decision with that of Vinod Khanna or some other Hindu women actor. We live in times where there can be no comparison between Hindus and Muslims. One Hindu actor deciding to quit does not affect the prospects of that community. Hindus are a developed community as compared to Muslims. The ideas of social and religious reform run deep into this community. Muslims entered the modern age by opposing modern education while Hindus embraced it. Muslims are not at par with Hindus in any of the developmental parameters. And that’s why one Muslim Zaira quitting a promising career calls for a deeper introspection from within the community.

Arshad Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com

URL: http://www.newageislam.com/islam,-women-and-feminism/arshad-alam,-new-age-islam/why-zaira-wasim-quitting-her-career-cannot-be-a-matter-of-choice/d/119091

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Some Questions to Muslims Who Believe Islam Promotes Pluralism

By Arshad Alam, New Age Islam

03 June 2019

India is a multi-religious and multi-cultural society. It is one of the greatest strengths of the country, that despite attempts to homogenise its religio-cultural standards, the country still remains diverse and plural. Attempts to homogenise have come from both sides: from the side of secularists who have historically tried to promote a single ‘rational and scientific’ standard by belittling the diverse religious traditions of the country; and from right wing religious organizations who have sought to argue that their reading of a particular religious tradition should be the only standard. India is a shining example that all such attempts have failed and the country continues to be plural.

This is the reason perhaps why followers of different religions in India have started arguing that their religions promote pluralism and diversity. Muslims are no exception to this rule. In almost all formal gatherings, Muslims point out that Islam promotes diversity and pluralism. However, when one starts interrogating such assertions, these Muslims either parry the question or start calling you an Islamophobe. Such a response only tells us that deep down, Muslims have clearly not done enough hard thinking on this issue and their articulation that Islam promotes pluralism is just a performance which they are enacting in front of a sympathetic audience. This not only does disservice to the cause of inter-religious harmony but also to Muslims themselves since they do not have the intellectual capacity to confront their own religious past.

Most Muslims, even the educated ones, paint a very dark picture of pre-Islamic era. Muslims unthinkingly argue that it was a period of Jahiliyya or ignorance, that the condition of women was miserable and that there was no law or regulation which governed that society. You just ask them how they know so much about the pre-Islamic period when there is a near absence of written historical records. More importantly, Islamic literature also tells us that the whole notion of Jahiliyya is a construct of latter day Muslim scholars, anxious at making a distinction with their own past.

Like many parts of the world, Arabia was largely an oral culture. Written texts were a rarity and thus what we know about the period comes largely through the works of Islamic writers. It must be remembered that Islam emerged victorious in this battle between ‘truth’ and ‘ignorance’ and victors all over the world have tended to write histories which have been disparaging about the vanquished. Also, we must remember that according to the tenets of modern historiography, volumes of Hadees literature, which tell us about this supposed pre-Islamic period, cannot even be considered as historical texts. But most Muslims rely on these obscure texts for their arguments and find no problem in citing these antediluvian texts. At the same time, they will argue with all passion that texts of other religious traditions cannot be relied upon because they are not grounded in history. It beats common sense how Muslims can belittle other religious and cultural traditions and yet vouch for the pluralistic ethos of Islam.

If pre-Islamic Arabia was such a regressive place, then how did it throw such valiant women of strong character like Khadija, who was the first to realise the prophetic mission of Muhammad? If women had such a low status in society, how did she become a first rate entrepreneur before Islam came to the picture? If there was nothing to be appreciated in that society, how it produced first rate poets and satirists remains an intriguing question. If there were no rules in that society, then how did the rule of not shedding blood at the Ka’aba got enforced?

The problem is that Muslims do not question the received wisdom which has come down to them through generations of religious scholars, all of whom have been united in their a historical opinion that pre-Islamic Arabia was a place of Jahiliyya when there is ample evidence that this might not be the case.

A genuine dialogue and search for pluralism within one’s own religious tradition cannot begin without a ceaseless search for the truth in the light of available evidence. Relying on texts of dubious historical authenticity is certainly not the right way to go about it. For example, the same texts also inform us that the Prophet ordered the execution of the poetess Asma bint Marwan, who used to compose poetry against Islam and the Prophet. Now, if we are arguing that Islam stands for pluralism, then we need to be able to answer such tough questions as why the Prophet was not tolerant enough to withstand criticism from a woman or why he couldn’t accept another point of view. And certainly there cannot be any idea of pluralism without the practice of tolerance.

There are other questions which Muslims advocating Islam’s supposed pluralistic ethos need to confront. They rightly point out that the covenant of Medina is a pluralist document, which talks of amicable living together between the Jews and Muslims. The problem is that such a covenant can be read as an agreement between two Semitic traditions, both claiming to worship the same God. But can this also be extended to polytheistic traditions? This question is certainly important in the Indian context where a large majority of population is certainly polytheistic. How does Islam in India want to deal with them if it wants to showcase itself as a religion devoted to pluralism? Muslims have unthinkingly advocated that the covenant of Medina serves as a guide for plural living together, even with the Hindus.

However, it is an open question as to how this can be extended to Hindus if Islamic ideas and practices have been antithetical to idol worship and polytheism? Islamic monotheism stands opposed to polytheism and no hermeneutic jugglery can resolve this problem. Islam fought against polytheism practiced in Arabia and wiped it out very rapidly. The very reasonable conclusion that one derives from Islamic history is that monotheism is far superior to polytheism. After all, how do the Muslim advocates of pluralism account for the fact that the Prophet himself removed idols from the Ka’aba signalling the final triumph of Islam over polytheism? How can someone, who was intrinsically antithetical to non-monotheistic ways of relating to God, be considered as an ambassador of religious pluralism as claimed by some well-meaning Muslims?

The whole point of arguing all this is not to belittle any religious tradition. But just to open up a debate amongst those Muslims who sincerely believe in a reading of Islam which is pluralist and tolerant.

Arshad Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com

URL: http://www.newageislam.com/islam-and-pluralism/arshad-alam,-new-age-islam/some-questions-to-muslims-who-believe-islam-promotes-pluralism/d/118785

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