Lessons from a pilgrimage,

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:45:39 +0000

By Farah Mihlar

As an adult I have only once in my life been hit by a man. It happened when I was on pilgrimage in the Muslim holy city of Mecca. I had completed the very trying pilgrimage soon after arriving in Mecca following a more than 10 hour journey. It was 2 a.m. in the morning and I crumpled on to the floor in the mosque in absolute exhaustion only to be awakened by a shot on my leg with a baton from a towering man, in long robes, screaming something in Arabic. Apparently in my state of fatigue I had fallen asleep in an area that was not for women - even though at this time in this part of the mosque there were barely three other people and I was accompanied by a 'male guardian'.

I find it a great solace and a wonderful spiritual experience to go to Mecca, which is considered the holiest city for Muslims. It houses the Kaaba that is the central point to which Muslims turn to in prayer, and in pilgrimage millions rotate around this bare brick box which Muslim's believe is God's house built by Abraham and later Muhammad, both prophets of Islam. But as a woman, going to Mecca, in particular to the mosque, is also an extremely humiliating experience. It starts from the point where I can not enter the city without being accompanied by a male guardian - a father, brother, uncle, husband or son. The mosque is segregated during most of the year and the sections for women seem considerably smaller to that allocated to men. Just in front of the Kaaba there is no segregation but the prayer areas are specified and I have been physically moved, while in prayer, because I did not strictly follow the rules. I have also been dragged out of crowds and forcibly had the few strands of hair that had slipped out of my head scarf pushed back.

Mecca symbolizes patriarchal power in every sense and violence is a common manifestation of this. Women too are part of the project as there are female religious police officers who implement this supposed 'Islamic law'. The Shariah, particularly the Saudi version of it, in many aspects does not represent Islam and can be extremely repressive to women in some cases advocating violence.

I don't believe violence against women is cultural, religious or class specific. Sri Lanka, my country of origin, has been war-torn for over two decades. Women have been hugely affected by the conflict, killed, injured, raped, tortured, sexually assaulted. In a highly militarized society they are not only under threat of violence from the military and militant forces but in such societies violence becomes the norm in communities and at home.

But now in Sri Lanka there is new and worrying trend rising amongst the country's 8 percent minority Muslim population - the emergence of religious 'fundamentalism' aimed at modelling society like it is in Saudi Arabia. And women are the first targets. Many Sri Lankan Muslim women have now abandoned their traditional attire of sari for the Saudi Arabian styled black robe, head scarf and now more commonly the face veil. In Muslim only villages there are armed groups that act as religious police affirming the dress code and quite often restricting women's social mobility. Women are not encouraged to work in foreign organizations for fear that they will be corrupt and there have been threats of attacks on women who defy this.

These are the very early stages of this trend and it is yet unclear how it will develop and to what extent it will affect women in a non-Muslim state. But having experienced the aspired eventuality on my pilgrimage - this emerging trend certainly poses a worrying challenge for Sri Lankan Muslim women.

Photo by *Muhammad*, shared under a Creative Commons license

open Democracy News Analysis - Lessons from a pilgrimage, - Comments

Lessons from a pilgrimage,