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Jamaat-i-Islami in Bangladesh: Women, Democracy and the Transformation of Islamist Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

ELORA SHEHABUDDIN
ELORA SHEHABUDDIN*
Affiliation:
Rice University
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Abstract

This article argues that leaders of the Jamaat-i-Islami in Bangladesh regularly invoke women's privileged status as mothers to counter the claims of the largely secularist non-governmental organizations operating in the country today that Islam has been harmful to women and that the only route to progress is to discard the shackles of religion and tradition. The current Jamaat rhetoric marks a significant change from the original Jamaat position—elaborated by the party's founder Abul Ala Maududi—that women's divinely ordained place is in the home. Now, several decades later, Jamaat leaders in Bangladesh still enjoin women to fulfil domestic obligations; however, they also go to great lengths to highlight Islam's recognition of women as ‘individuals’ with ‘individual’ responsibilities to God and Islam as well as Islam's support for women's right to study, work and vote. I contend that the Jamaat in Bangladesh has been prompted to undertake these recent modifications by specific developments in local social and political contexts, specifically the twin pressures on the Jamaat of operating in a functioning, if often imperfect, democratic polity; and of competing with more secular organizations for the hearts, minds and votes of impoverished women.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2-3: Islam in South Asia , March 2008 , pp. 577 - 603
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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