Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective (34 page)

Read Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective Online

Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

Tags: #Religion, #General, #Fundamentalism, #Comparative Religion, #Philosophy, #test

BOOK: Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective
4.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 131
istan, Pakistan, and north India suggest ''a culture against women," in which women are socialized to sacrifice their health, survival chances, and options (Papanek 1989).
The French ethnologist Germaine Tillion (1983) has pointed out that Mediterranean peoples (including Muslims) favor endogamy, and endogamy increases the tendency to control women in tightly interrelated lineages. Nikki Keddie (1989) writes that nomadic tribal groups have special reasons to want to control women and to favor cousin marriage. Pastoral nomadic tribes, the most common type in the Middle East, trade animal products for agricultural and urban ones. The cohesion of tribes and subtribes is necessary to their economy, which requires frequent group decisions about migration. To make decisions amicably, groups closely tied by kin are desirable. The practical benefits of close kinship, Keddie argues, are surely one reason cousin marriage has long been preferred among Middle Eastern people: it encourages family integration and cooperation. Keddie feels that controls on women are connected to the pervasiveness of tribal structures in the Middle East, and notes that even though most nomadic women are not veiled and secluded, they are controlled (Keddie 1989: 7). It is likely that as rural areas are commercialized and social relations are monetized, first-cousin marriages will wane and girls will be married to distant relatives or exchanged for goods or money exogenously. When families seek higher status, girls assume a heavy responsibility.
Afghan patriarchy is tied to the prevalence of such forms of subsistence as nomadic pastoralism, herding and farming, and settled agriculture, all organized along patrilineal lines. Historically, Afghan gender roles and women's status have been tied to property relations. Property includes livestock, land, and houses or tents. Women and children tend to be assimilated into the concept of property and to belong to a male (Anwar 1988; Griffiths 1967; Male 1982; Nyrop and Seekins 1986; Tapper 1984). Gender segregation and female seclusion exist, though they vary by ethnic group, region, mode of subsistence, social class, and family. Few accounts exist of how and to what degree women veil. Among Ghilzai, women veil or are secluded from men to whom they could be married. Men also avoid women who stand in the relationship of potential mate to them (Nyrop and
 
Page 132
Seekins 1986: 127). Among the Pushtuns studied by one anthropologist, a bride who does not exhibit signs of virginity on the wedding night may be murdered by her father and/or brothers. This is not the case, however, within the Paghmanis and Absarinas, smaller ethnic groups studied by the same anthropologist (Nyrop and Seekins 1986: 127).
Writing in the mid-1960s, Griffiths (1967) maintained that "the most strikingly obvious divisions in Afghanistan are between the sexes." Inequality is enshrined in the system of purdah, not merely the meaning of the all-encompassing
chadhuri,
but the segregation of women from men, their isolation and seclusion (Lajoinie 1980). Griffiths (1967:78) also describes a conversation with the governor of a district in Kunduz,
who explained with some pride the way in which the region's beautiful hand-woven carpets were made; how five or six women might work together for four or five months to make a patterned carpet . . . and how a man would pay a very good bride-price for a girl who was an accomplished carpet weaver. When I asked him replied: "Why the man of course; the woman belongs to the man." This is the attitude which is the chief obstacle facing the champions of women's emancipation in Afghanistan.
A small number of female scholars have examined Afghan women's lives. Boesen (1983) reports that women resent male control of their sexuality and rebel, pursuing extramarital affairs and covering up each other's activities. Such forms of resistance, however, do not challenge gender status ranking. Men and women's objectives and lifestyles are in sharp contrast. Nancy Tapper distills Pashtun nomad women's aim in life to a simple wish, which is probably shared by a majority of the country's women: "The principal goal in life is a successful marriage with many sons." (Shalinsky, however, contends that Uzbek women may also wish for many daughters because of greater mother-daughter love and rapport.) In contrast, men are expected to be sexually incontinent. They gain prestige by having illicit sex with women in other men's charge and lost prestige when men have illicit sex with women in their charge (Nyrop and Seekins 1986: 128).
The threat to entrenched patriarchal gender relations posed by
 
Page 133
various state initiatives during this century has invariably resulted in tribal rebellion against government authority. Gregorian (1969) describes opposition to the modernizing effortsincluding education for girlsof Habibullah Khan (190119) and Amanullah Khan (191929). Other authors have noted persistent government difficulty in extending education to girls (Griffiths 1967, 1981; Hammond 1984; Bradsher 1985; Urban 1988). The existence of a weak modern state in a predominantly patriarchal and tribal society has adverse implications for reform and development, as well as for the advancement of women. Throughout the twentieth century, the statesmall and weak as it waswas incapable of effectively implementing its program. Faced with what Gregorian, writing in the late 1960s, frequently referred to as the "staggering socioeconomic problems" of the country, and to the religious-traditionalist forces who have prevented their full transformation, the reformers of 1978 impatiently wished for change and betterment, assisted by their Soviet neighbors. All social and economic indicators announced the need for change, especially in the areas of literacy, education, health, food production and distribution, and infrastractural development. Afghanistan is (and was before 1978) among the poorest countries of the world, with low life expectancy, high child mortality, widespread illiteracy, malnutrition, and an unproductive agricultural system.
Characteristics of Afghan Patriarchy
The exchange of women in precapitalist agrarian societies organized around kinship structures has been extensively discussed in anthropological and feminist literature (Levi-Strauss 1969; Rubin 1976; Lerner 1986). The concept of "honor" in patriarchal societies has similarly been elaborated (Abu-Lughod 1985; Bourdieu 1965; Knauss 1987; Minces 1982; Utas 1983). Both are important elements in Pushtunwali, the dominant Afghan tribal culture. Its elements are highly masculinist. Tapper (1984) reports that the Durrani Pashtuns of north-central Afghanistan "discuss control of all resourcesespecially labor, land, and womenin terms of honor" (see also Boesen 1983; Nyrop and Seekins 1986: 12628). Note that "community" is the community of men.
 
Page 134
It should also be noted that on certain areas Pushtunwali and Islam disagree (Boesen 1983; Anwar 1988). In the Afghan patriarchal context, brideprice (called
vulver
in Pushtu) was the payment to the bride's father as compensation for the loss of his daughter's labor in the household unit. It is important to distinguish
vulver
from
mahr
. The latter, a payment due from groom to bride, is an essential part of the formal Islamic marriage contract. In the Qoran it is a nominal fee, but in many Muslim countries its purpose is to provide a kind of social insurance for the wife in the event of divorce or widowhood. Thus, Iranian
mahr
differs in meaning and content from the Pushtun
vulver
. In a combination of pre-Islamic and Islamic customs, men exercise control over women in two crucial ways: their control of marriage and of propertyas illustrated by the institution of brideprice, the Pushtun prohibition of divorce (and this despite the Quranic allowances, primarily to the men), and the taboo of land ownership for women (again contrary to Islamic law and the actual practice in many other Muslim countries).
In Afghanistan, marriage, enforced or otherwise, was a way to end feuds, cement a political alliance between families, or increase the family's prestige. Women are also regarded as men's property. In the language of functionalist anthropology, women are given for brideprice or in compensation for blood, and this "maintains a status hierarchy" among the households. In the exchange system, men are ranked in the first and highest sphere. Direct exchanges between them include the most honorable and manly of all activities, which are prime expressions of status equality: vengeance and feud, political support and hospitality, and the practice of sanctuary. Women belong to the second sphere; they are often treated exclusively as reproducers and pawns in economic and political exchanges. There is only one proper conversion between the first two spheres: two or more women can be given in compensation for the killing or injury of one man. Mobility and migration patterns also revolve around the brideprice. For example, men from one region will travel to another to find inexpensive brides, while other men will travel elsewhere because they can obtain a higher price for their daughters (Tapper 1984: 304).
Interethnic hostility among Afghans has been widely discussed in
 
Page 135
the literature (Canfield 1989; Nyrop and Seekins 1986: 11213; Magnus 1988). Tapper (1984) describes ethnic identity in terms of claims to religiously privileged descent and superiority to all other ethnic groups. Interethnic competition extends to the absolute prohibition on the marriage of Durrani women to men who are of a "lower" ethnic status.
Studies on Pushtunwali note that the code of Afghan behavior among the Pushtuns, who comprise over 50 percent of the population, possesses three core elements: hospitality, refuge, and revenge. Other key values are equality, respect, pride, bravery, purdah (seclusion of women), pursuit of romantic encounters, worship of God, and devoted love for a friend (Griffiths 1981: 11112; Howard-Merriam 1987; Nyrop and Seekins 1986; Boesen 1983). These are, once again, male values. Purdah is a key element in protecting the family's pride and honor, and Boesen has noted a Pushtun saying that "a woman is best either in the house or in the grave" (Boesen 1983). This seclusion from the world outside the family walls is customarily justified by invoking Quranic prescription and by the notion that women are basically licentious and tempt men. Howard-Merriam (1987) explains that women are regarded as subordinates who depend on their husbands, as further exemplified by the fact that women never ask men their whereabouts or expect marital fidelity. Women also are expected to give all the meat, choicest food, and best clothing to their husbands, as well as their personal wealth if so demanded. Census and surveys undertaken in 1967, 197274, and 1979 have revealed an unusually high ratio of males to females, which exceeds even the expected underreporting of females in a conservative Islamic society. This is in part explained by a high rate of maternal mortality (Nyrop and Seekins 1986: 86; Howard-Merriam 1987: 114).
Since a woman's standing is maintained primarily through bearing sons to continue the family, she of course must marry, for in the context of classic patriarchy, only through marriage can one's basic needs be legitimately fulfilled. The choice of husband is made by her family with its own concerns for lineage maintenance or gain and property. The best she can hope for is a handsome and kind cousin or close relative she has known and with whom she has grown up. The worst is an old man from another village whom she has never seen

Other books

Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos
Lady Windermere's Fan by Wilde, Oscar
Point of Origin by Rebecca Yarros
Orthokostá by Thanassis Valtinos
Wild Ones: Prowl by Zoey Daniels
Days Like Today by Rachel Ingalls
Still Hot For You by Diane Escalera