Distinction needs to be made – between fatwa (as in opinion) and fatwa: people still connect the issue of fatwa with religion/faith. That no one but the state has the power to “punish” needs to be “messaged”.
Fatwa Press Conference
report by Shabnam Nadiya
The press conference was organized by BRAC in collaboration with ASK and BNWLA. Faustina Pereira and Shipa Hafiza spoke on behalf of BRAC, Sultana Kamal and Sara Hossain represented ASK and Fawsia Karim Firoze from BNWLA. The parents of a fatwa/flogging incident (in Daudkandi) were present and spoke on their ordeal.
Six cases of fatwa had been reported in the media over the brief span of the past two months. Locations: Daudkandi, Hobiganj, Srimangal, Companyganj, Sirajganj, Maulvibazar.
In the case of the Companyganj fatwa, where victim and her elderly mother were both flogged 101 and 50 times, the police accepted a rape case. No case regarding the issuing or the administration of the fatwa has been accepted. The OC in charge of the case had been transferred. Faustina noted that the OC had told a BRAC officer that the police themselves couldn’t lodge a case on behalf of the victim (as is usual in these cases) due to “political pressure”.
The Daudkandi case: the young girl in question was flogged 39 times. The parents of the girl were present and spoke with a simple dignity on the ordeal. The father himself had also been assaulted. The PM’s office intervened in this case, and the girl was brought to DMCH for medical care. BRAC, Nijera Kori and BLAST are providing legal assistance to the family.
Many issues were raised by the speakers – the need to identify which are the groups that benefit from a failure of democracy and human rights; the multi-layered nature of the fatwa issue – where patriarchy, local power dynamics, corruption, political power and leverage and other forces come into play; the lack of pre-emptive measures by either the law enforcement agencies or the local administration; the status of the appeal against the anti-Fatwa law.
What can DP do?
The most obvious thing in my view: awareness raising. At various levels. About various aspects of this issue.
Distinction needs to be made – between fatwa (as in opinion) and fatwa: people still connect the issue of fatwa with religion/faith. That no one but the state has the power to “punish” needs to be “messaged”.
The status of the law related to Fatwa is still unclear. Even during the event, there was some discussion/confusion between what Faustina said and what Sara said. They didn’t go into a detailed discussion because of course that wasn’t the proper forum to delve into the complexities of all this, but it did leave a lot of confused faces in the audience. Is the law a law or not? The appeal – what status does it have after so many years and no followup from the alleged muftis who lodged the appeal? Is/will the state do anything about it?
The media does a (much better) job of reporting these cases compared to the past, but often there’s not a lot of follow-up. What happened to the most “famous” fatwa cases? Not the victims/families, but the perpetrators. Where are they now? Have any of them actually received any punishment?
Another point that interested me immensely, though that wasn’t the place or time to follow up on this: of the six cases noted in the handout, five had to do with “sexual misconduct” (which can be non-marital consensual sex, rape, even talking to a man unrelated by blood). The outcomes were floggings/dorra. The woman involved was flogged, of course, and in some cases both male and female members of her family. The outlier was the Moulvibazar case – this had to do with land rights/encroachment (?). The penalty determined had been financial, when one side failed to pay off, that family was made ekghore – e.g. the children weren’t allowed to go to school, no social intercourse with any other people. I’d be interested in knowing what percentage of the fatwa cases do not have physical penalty/floggings, what percentage do not punish women for “sexual misconduct”, etc.
This new blog interface is terrible…bring back the old one
[Reply]
But Diya apu, the media alone cannot be our only source of information. The BBS, other think tanks and research orgs need to be involved if you want the kind of disaggregated data that you’re talking about.
You’re right. We need a source that collates and share information on the implementation of fatwa and also a mechanism that follows it up in reported cases of fatwa abuse.
[Reply]
Is this the same Shabnam Nadiya in “Quotable Atheists” book?
Yes. Now we know that this quaint little Arabic word means ‘opinion’. How does that help those who are at the receiving end of sadistic punishment?
[Reply]
@Fariha: Darn right. I’ve been asking around, and that kind of data simply isn’t available. The few organizations that are doing any work in this area have limited resources, all of which are strained in providing hands-on assistance to the victims/families. BBS definitely has the necessary mechanism in place to obtain data on a regular basis – but they won’t. The government will be treading very warily on this particular path. Especially since in most of these cases, it’s not simply a religious practice/edict that comes into play, but intersections of local power dynamics on too many levels. The pvt sector think-tanks? I don’t know.
[Reply]
@Muhammad: The distinction needs to be made for a very practical reason. The concept/practice of fatwa is not something that has suddenly sprouted up out of nowhere. To the vast majority of people, fatwa has a definite religious and at the same time legal connotation. And because of that, there will always be the feeling, that if the Molla-Munshis are doing this, this is somehow sanctioned by religious authority and therefore, should be ground not to be meddled in. That distinction, therefore, becomes very important – that fatwa is merely opinion. Which can be given by any specialist. But the implementation/penalization for any “transgression” can ONLY be meted by a state mechanism/authority.
The law enforcement agencies are not above or endogenous to the same socio-cultural beliefs/practices. Thus – even apart from the (usually present) power play that goes on in these cases – once that distinction is embedded in the minds of people, it might help in freeing them to prosecute/accept cases with more alacrity.
Legislation is necessary – no doubt about that. But it’s also true that in a lot of these cases, what will matter is how people perceive these cases. And those perceptions can never be changed by legislation alone.
[Reply]
I too had conflated the fatwa with some religious legalism. Awareness of this simple fact is the first step.
[Reply]
classic example of “fool me once shame on you and fool me twice shame on me”
these people hold blind faith, islam doesnt tell you to have blind faith all the time. One of most beautiful things about islam is that tells you to seek knowledge.
In Bangladesh we only pick and choose the customs of Islam and when something goes wrong we always blame the religion.
These people dont even act in the proper interest of islam, yet they get all the attention.
sigh!
[Reply]
From New Age today
Woman whipped 200 times on fatwa
Our Correspondent . Comilla
Peyara Begum, 45, mother of five children and widow of the late Abdu Miah of Khaiyer at Rasulpur of Debidwar in Comilla, was whipped 200 times by a fatwa (religious decree) committee for an alleged relation with one Mamun Miah, who was whipped 100 times Saturday night.
Village leaders had met twice before Saturday since May 19 when the incident came to light. The leaders who formed a fatwa committee met for the third time at 11:00pm Saturday and decided 200 whippings for the woman and 100 whippings for the man. Mamun was also fined Tk 30,000 by the fatwa committee.
The committee, which had 14 members, was presided over by one Dudu Miah.
Witness said the woman was whipped 100 times with two bamboo sticks together and Mamun 50 times.
The police, who came to know of the incident, raided the area and arrested six people out of the eight the police found was involved in the incident. The two are in hiding.
The arrested are Gongor Dakhil Madrassah superintendent Maulana Monirul Islam, 45, Mamun, 24, Khaleq, 45, Dud Miah, 60, Abdul Wahed, 45 and Abdul Jalil, 30.
Peyara Begum on Sunday filed a case with the Debidwar police under the Repression on Women and Children (Prevention) Act.
Another fatwa committee at Daudkandi in the district on May 22 decreed that a woman, Rahima Akhter, 26, should be whipped 100 times after she had said one Ramzan was father of her child.
She fell unconscious after she had been whipped 39 times and on filing a case against six people, the police arrested thee of them.
[Reply]