Zina Transnational Feminism And The Moral Regulation Of Pakistani Women

The Zina Ordinance is part of the Hadood Ordinances that were promulgated in 1979 by the military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq a self-proclaimed president of Pakistan. Since then, tens of thousands of Pakistani women have been charged and incarcerated under the Zina Ordinance, which governs illicit sex - both adultery and fornication in general. Although most of these women are subsequently released for lack of evidence, they spend months or years in jail before trial. Despite international calls for its repeal, these laws still remain in effect. From 1998 to 2002, Shahnaz Khan interviewed women who had been incarcerated under the zina laws in Pakistan. She argues that the zina laws help situate morality within the individual, thus de-emphasizing the prevalence of societal immorality such as injustice, corruption, and continued impoverishment of the greater segment of the Pakistani population. Khan concludes that transnational feminist solidarity can help women identify the linkages between the local and global and challenge oppressive practices internationally. This analysis will appeal to scholars and students of gender, law, human rights, and Islamic/Middle Eastern studies.

The Zina Ordinance is part of the Hadood Ordinances that were promulgated in 1979 by the military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, a self-proclaimed president of Pakistan. Since then, tens of thousands of Pakistani women have been charged and incarcerated under the ordinance, which governs illicit sex. Although most of these women are subsequently released for lack of evidence, they spend months or years in jail before trial. To date, these laws still remain in effect, despite international calls for their repeal. Over a five-year-period, Shahnaz Khan interviewed women incarcerated under the zina laws in Pakistan. She argues that the zina laws help situate morality within the individual, thus de-emphasizing the prevalence of societal injustice. She also examines the production and reception of knowledge in the west about women in the third world, identifying a productive tension between living in the west and doing research in the third world. She concludes that transnational feminist solidarity can help women identify the linkages between the local and global and challenge oppressive practices internationally. This analysis will appeal to scholars and students of gender, law, human rights, and Islamic/Middle Eastern studies.

Following a long historical legacy, Muslim women’s lives continue to be represented and circulate widely as a vehicle of intercultural understanding within a context of the "war on terror." Following Edward Said’s thesis that these cultural forms reflect and participate in the power plays of empire, this volume examines the popular and widespread production and reception of Muslim women’s lives and narratives in literature, poetry, cinema, television and popular culture within the politics of a post-9/11 world. This edited collection provides a timely exploration into the pedagogical and ethical possibilities opened up by transnational, feminist, and anti-colonial readings that can work against sensationalized and stereotypical representations of Muslim women. It addresses the gap in contemporary theoretical discourse amongst educators teaching literary and cultural texts by and about Muslim Women, and brings scholars from the fields of education, literary and cultural studies, and Muslim women’s studies to examine the politics and ethics of transnational anti-colonial reading practices and pedagogy. The book features interviews with Muslim women artists and cultural producers who provide engaging reflections on the transformative role of the arts as a form of critical public pedagogy.

Women's Movements in Asia is a comprehensive study of women’s activism across Asia. With chapters written by leading international experts, it provides a full overview of the history of feminism, as well as the current context of the women’s movement in 12 countries: the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Japan, Burma, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Korea, India and Pakistan. For each of these countries the manner in which feminism changes according to cultural, political, economic and religious factors is explored. The contributors investigate how national feminisms are influenced by transnational factors, such as the women’s movements in other countries, colonialism and international agencies. Each chapter also considers what Asian feminists have contributed to global theoretical debates on the woman question, the key successes and failures of the movements and what needs to be addressed in the future. This breadth of coverage, together with suggestions for further reading and watching, and an integrated cross-national timeline makes Women's Movements in Asia ideal for use on courses looking at women and feminism in Asia. It will appeal both to students and specialists in the fields of gender, women’s and Asian studies.

This new edition of the Routledge Handbook of Gender in South Asia provides a comprehensive overview of the study of gender in South Asia. The Handbook covers the central contributions that have defi ned this area and captures innovative and emerging paradigms that are shaping the future of the field. It offers a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives spanning both the humanities and social sciences, focusing on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. This revised edition has been thoroughly updated and includes new chapters, thus adding new areas of scholarship. The Handbook is organized thematically into five major parts: • Historical formations and theoretical framings • Law, citizenship and the nation • Representations of culture, place, identity • Labor and the economy • Inequality, activism and the state The Handbook illustrates the ways in which scholarship on gender has contributed to a rethink of theoretical concepts and empirical understandings of contemporary South Asia. Finally, it focuses on new areas of inquiry that have been opened up through a focus on gender and the intersections between gender and categories, such as caste, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion. This timely study is essential reading for scholars who research and teach on South Asia as well as for scholars in related interdisciplinary fields that focus on women and gender from comparative and transnational perspectives.

This series of absorbing case studies focuses on the portrayal of Pakistani women in the global media. Analyzing Hollywood films, British documentaries, newspapers and mainstream U.S. magazines, the book traces sensational female figures of Pakistan--all of whom have been subject to patriarchal violence--highlighting the imagery of exploitation and eroticism. The author addresses questions of spectatorship and fetishism in the age of globalization and the racial and imperial politics of liberal feminism.

This book critically examines the feminization of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a major movement for Islamic renewal and reform in South Asia. Through an ethnographic and textual study of Jamaat women elected to local, provincial, and national bodies in Pakistan from 2002 to 2008, Jamal draws attention to the cultural-political forces that enabled these women to become influential within the party and in Pakistan’s major urban centers of Karachi and Lahore. Jamal situates Jamaat women within Islamic modernism without reifying them as either pious agents reacting to state-imposed modernization or gendered citizens who use Islam for class-based instrumental ends. Jamaat women are represented as subjects who move in many directions by acting against and through the discourses of Islamic tradition, cultural modernity, and modernization.