Females Respected but Often Given Inferior Role in Islamic Society : Bhutto’s Rise--Paradox of Women in Pakistan

Until just a few weeks ago, Islamic scholar Mohammed Amin Minhas was preaching fiery Friday sermons, warning his overwhelmingly Muslim countrymen that a woman leading Pakistan would bring them to the gates of hell.

“A nation that elects to be governed by a woman will not prosper,” Minhas exclaimed, quoting from the Islamic prophet Mohammed week after week in Islamabad’s popular Motamar-e-Alami Islam Mosque.

But 35-year-old Benazir Bhutto was formally named Thursday to be the first woman ever to lead a modern Islamic nation, and millions of devout Pakistani Muslims danced in the streets, filled the night sky with fireworks and thanked Allah for sending them their new democratic leader.

A Gift From Allah

So Minhas returned to his holy book, the Koran, and pored over its passages again, until he found a way to accept his nation’s unprecedented decision. And Friday, the day Bhutto took the oath of office, the gray-bearded scholar stood before his faithful and declared that, yes, he had been wrong.

“Allah has given us this woman as our leader, and Miss Benazir has acknowledged that this new power she possesses is, indeed, Allah’s gift,” Minhas said. “I must acknowledge this victory, and I must agree to her right to rule this country.”

The conversion of old scholar Minhas is just one illustration of the soul-searching that has been going on in Pakistan since Bhutto and her Pakistan People’s Party were swept to victory in the Nov. 16 legislative elections.

The nation is attempting to explain to itself how it broke new ground, choosing a female leader for an Islamic land where women are rarely seen, let alone heard or revered.

On the surface, Pakistan hardly seems the stage for so radical a drama. The overwhelming majority of women still live in purdah , confined to home or clothed in the anonymity of a head-to-toe burkha when they do venture out.

Literacy among women here is only 13%, half the national rate. Less than 3% of the female work force is gainfully employed. Men may take as many as four wives and can divorce any one of them anytime, without compensation, simply by saying, “I divorce you,” three times.

Subject to Abuse

When women do venture out with just their heads uncovered, they often become the object of taunts, abuse or worse. Rape is common. The government recently had to pass a law making the forcible undressing of a woman in public a major offense. And, last year, fundamentalist students at a Karachi university patrolled the campus with squirt guns, shooting battery acid into the faces of women caught in Western garb.

But there is another face to the Pakistani woman. In a nation colonized and first educated by the British, women are accepted in Pakistan’s academic world. There are thousands of female doctors, lawyers and professors here. And, even in backward villages, the Koran has taught men to have a near-reverence for female relatives, a concept they use to justify keeping them hidden from view.

“There is a paradox here, which is what makes Benazir Bhutto possible and, to a much lesser extent, me possible,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a graduate of the London School of Economics and editor of the prestigious English-language newspaper, The Muslim.

“There is a respect for women here. It’s gone in the West. If you know how to make that tradition of respect work for you, it’s very hard to keep successful women down.”

Sarwar Sukhera, a Lahore businessman and Bhutto supporter, cited Pakistan’s movie industry to help explain the decision at the polls last month.

“Look at Babra Sharif, our top movie actress,” he said a few hours before Bhutto was named prime minister. “Babra is always cast as a heroine in action movies. She goes around defeating men in all of her pictures, and every one of them is a runaway hit.

“Benazir is in the same mold. She is respected for her defiance of authority. She is no ordinary woman. In fact, she is seen as more a man than a woman--more a man even than a man, because she has defied the authority of army generals and a dictator, and she has won.

“For us, she is like an Islamic ‘Rambo.’ ”

However, Sukhera conceded that Bhutto’s power lies principally in the role history has given her. Her personal power and appeal is not likely to affect the millions of still-oppressed women, he said.

In the subcontinent’s tradition of dynastic politics, Bhutto clearly is heir to her father’s leadership mantle--and his mystique.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a strong, charismatic but controversial prime minister, was overthrown in a 1977 coup by Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who later refused to stay Bhutto’s hanging on a conviction of conspiracy to murder. Zia then ran the nation with an iron hand for 11 years, until he was killed last Aug. 17 in a still unexplained plane crash. During his military-dominated regime, there were frequent attempts to purge the Bhutto legacy and family.

First Prison, Then Exile

Zia’s rule forced the young Bhutto into a succession of prison cells, including solitary confinement, sessions of house arrest and, finally, political exile in London. In 1985, a younger brother, Shahnawaz, 26, was found dead--poisoned--in his apartment in France. The Bhutto family has let it be known that it believes he was killed at the behest of political enemies.

Benazir Bhutto withstood these ordeals and returned to Pakistan in 1986, promptly launching a popular movement to unseat the dictatorship, a lengthy campaign that culminated in her ascension to power.

“It is very much like the script of one of our adventure movies,” Sukhera said. “But I doubt the story line will carry over much for the other women in our country.”

Farida Shaheed agreed. Co-author of a book entitled, “Women in Pakistan: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back,” Shaheed is a founding member of the Women’s Action Forum, a group that monitors women’s progress in Pakistan.

“I don’t think Benazir is seen at all as the heroine of the women’s movement here,” Shaheed said before Bhutto’s victory. “We had to wait for about eight months after her return for her even to take a stand on women’s rights issues.

“Benazir Bhutto has inherited her position from her father, it’s as simple as that. There are others--two of the country’s eight largest labor unions, for example, are headed by women, and their memberships are 100% male.

“The main point is, you don’t get political power in this country by representing women. You get power by representing men.”

The scene on election day last month was a clear example. Although the women who did turn out to the polls voted overwhelmingly for Bhutto’s People’s Party candidates, millions of rural women voters were disfranchised because the government required them to produce a government identification card that few of their husbands had allowed them to collect.

“Oh, don’t pay attention to her,” one male opposition party poll watcher told a reporter who asked why a woman was screaming at election officials barring her from the voting booth. “She’s just a woman, and, of course, you know these country women, they are illiterate. They know nothing.”

In interviews that punctuated her campaign for office, Bhutto herself stressed time and again that she is hardly a women’s liberationist. Not even the four years she spent at Harvard University during the ferment of the American women’s movement in the late 1960s altered her views on the subject, she said.

“I am not a feminist,” she told The Times during an informal chat a week before the election. “Even when I was in the West, when everyone was talking about feminism, I thought men and women were different.”

Still, her role as the leader of the political opposition and her outspokenness in a nation where such behavior by women is still the exception led many to assume that she is a feminist. Her willingness to enter into an arranged marriage last year with a Pakistani businessman, Asif Ali Zardari, surprised many.

But Bhutto has stressed that improving the lot of Pakistani women ranks among the priorities of her new government.

“A dictatorial society is one based on oppression and discrimination, and women, because they are physically weak, are discriminated against the most,” Bhutto added. “So naturally we must make the task of improving the situation of our women a top priority, because they have suffered most under this (Zia’s) regime.”

In her first nationally televised address as prime minister, she pledged that “we will now abolish all laws that infringe on women’s rights . . . . They will be free to choose their profession, and they will be given equal wages.”

No one, however, expects overnight changes.

Potential Volatility

The viciousness of the recent political campaign has made Bhutto and her personal advisers well aware of the potential volatility of the women’s rights issue, which is viewed in Pakistan in a larger context of Westernization and moral degeneration.

The Islamic scholars and mullahs who formed a major core of support in the Islamic Democratic Alliance that opposed Bhutto and her party warned on election eve that a vote for the People’s Party would “damn the nation forever to the hell of Western corruption.” And opposition campaign workers handed out posters of Bhutto’s face pasted on the bikini-clad body of a pinup girl.

“Despite the outcome of the elections, this religious conservatism is a very clear and powerful reality in Pakistan today,” one Western diplomat in Islamabad observed. “And I think Benazir is keenly aware of how explosive it can be, if only from studying what happened to her father.”

Father Encouraged Women

During his term as prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was well known for his rural tours to remote villages, where he encouraged women to throw off their veils and become productive members of Pakistani society.

It also was widely known that he drank alcohol, and his affairs were the subject of gossip and rumor. Just before he was overthrown in 1977, a violent movement backed by fundamentalist mullahs and scholars forced Bhutto to close down all bars and discotheques and ban alcohol. And experts here say his daughter would face a similar backlash if she tried to open up Pakistani society again.

“She cannot go backward, that much is clear,” said editor Lodhi. “The question is, just how much will she be able to do for the nation’s women without incurring the same wrath that met her father?”

And scholars like Minhas, despite their partial conversion, remain deeply wary of what the future holds for an Islamic nation led by a woman.

With a look of deep contemplation, he recalled the Battle of Badar--”It is in the holy book, the Koran,” he said flatly--which was fought not long after the Prophet Mohammed fled his enemies in Mecca in 622.

On the one side was an army from Mecca of 1,000 with superior firepower and 600 sets of personal armor. But this superior force had women in its ranks. On the other side, from Medina, was Mohammed with 313 men, 70 camels, eight swords and only six sets of armor.

Mohammed won, of course.

“Allah teaches that success is through Allah and not through the amount of men and firepower,” Minhas concluded.

But then Minhas was reminded that Bhutto’s campaign was a peaceful one, a deliberately nonviolent crusade for her people’s liberation from a harsh and far more powerful military dictatorship, and the old scholar slowly smiled.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “And Allah teaches us to accept what he has given as the only truth. To be honest and truthful are the basic teachings of Islam.”