The first time Noor visited the Board of Imams Victoria, in Melbourne's Coburg North, to apply for an Islamic divorce, she took with her an audio recording she had secretly made during one of her husband's violent outbursts.
"It was of one night when he was screaming and yelling at me in front of the children," said Noor, a Muslim who wore a niqab during her decades-long marriage.
"He was verbally abusing me, smashing doors, ripping up sheets, putting down me and my family ... I taped it thinking no one would believe me."
Once inside the building, a glass-fronted office space wedged between an electrical store and a denture clinic on a sleepy stretch of Sydney Road, Noor sat down nervously before a panel of five male imams and carefully recounted the years of physical, emotional and financial abuse she had suffered at the hands of her husband, who had recently breached the intervention order she had taken out against him.
He often criticised and yelled at her in front of the kids, she told ABC News, for petty reasons — for example, if she didn't prepare food to his liking.
And he beat her, she said, when she confronted him about his escalating financial abuse.
This was Noor's experience. Having presented the Board of Imams with
what she believed was sufficient evidence, she was hopeful they'd
acknowledge her husband's violence and swiftly grant a divorce.
Instead
they dismissed the tape, she said, and told her to give the
relationship another chance. "I honestly thought they weren't listening
to me," she said. "They wanted me to go back and try again for the sake
of the kids."
When she insisted she had tried, that she had made
up her mind, they told her they needed to hear her husband's "side of
the story" and that they'd be in touch after that.
It took six
months for the Board of Imams to get back to her, Noor said, at which
point they claimed to have forgotten the details of her case and asked
her to come back in to retell her story.
Eventually, after a year
of waiting, calling, praying, Noor — who had moved in with her parents —
withdrew her divorce application, defeated and depleted.
"It
killed me," she said. At that stage she wasn't interested in starting a
new relationship; she simply longed to be free of a man who for years
had controlled every aspect of her life.
For a long time, she
believed his violence was her fault. "I would think it was reasonable",
she said, "because I thought I'd done something wrong, and I deserved
it."
He also repeatedly threatened to take another wife, which
hurt and distressed Noor, not only because they were already struggling
financially.
"I'm allowed to marry four women," he told her. "You have to change your Western mentality."
Now he was refusing to grant her a religious divorce.
Muslims
in Australia may have a civil divorce, but if they do not also obtain a
religious divorce, they are considered still married in Islamic law —
and in the eyes of their community.
Getting an Islamic divorce,
however, can be a difficult and protracted process, especially for
women, who face stricter requirements for initiating divorce than men,
depending on the laws of their cultural community.
While a
husband is allowed to divorce his wife at any time, without cause, often
imams will not grant a woman divorce without her husband's consent, or
proof she has legitimate grounds for an annulment (which, depending on
the legal school, can include infidelity, physical, financial or
emotional harm, and sexual dysfunction).
In theory, domestic
violence is one such reason: if a woman can prove her husband has been
abusive — for example, by producing an intervention order, or
photographs of her physical injuries — imams in Australia say they'll
dissolve the marriage and hand over the paperwork, no problem.
But
in practice, advocates and survivors say many imams are denying women
the right to divorce, in too many cases detaining them in abusive
marriages for years.
At the crack of dawn on Dec. 5, 1992 , my mother found a poster on the door of our apartment in Mumbai (then Bombay). The poster had an image of the Babri Mosque, painted in black with men holding swords standing in a circle around the monument. It read “Chalo Ayodhya 6 December” (let’s march to Ayodhya on Dec. 6). The Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque built by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya, a town 960 miles from Mumbai, had been a disputed structure for years; some Hindu leaders alleged that it was built over the birthplace of Lord Ram. In the 1990s, right-wing Hindu leaders and members of the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party started a polarizing movement, and ultimately called on Hindus all over the country to converge in Ayodhya on Dec. 6 to demolish the mosque.
Hindu nationalists responded to that call and climbed on top of the mosque brandishing swords. The grand mosque, a symbol of faith for India’s largest minority, was razed to the ground. Overnight the patriarch of our family, who was feted as a progressive writer and a government school teacher, was reduced to being merely a “Muslim.” Provocative speeches by leaders of the BJP and other right-wing groups fueled a whirlwind of carnage: More than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed around country; Mumbai alone witnessed 500 murders. By Rana Ayyub December 6 at 9:45 AM Rana Ayyub is an Indian journalist and author of “Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Coverup.”
At the crack of dawn on Dec. 5, 1992 , my mother found a poster on the door of our apartment in Mumbai (then Bombay). The poster had an image of the Babri Mosque, painted in black with men holding swords standing in a circle around the monument. It read “Chalo Ayodhya 6 December” (let’s march to Ayodhya on Dec. 6). The Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque built by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya, a town 960 miles from Mumbai, had been a disputed structure for years; some Hindu leaders alleged that it was built over the birthplace of Lord Ram. In the 1990s, right-wing Hindu leaders and members of the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party started a polarizing movement, and ultimately called on Hindus all over the country to converge in Ayodhya on Dec. 6 to demolish the mosque.
Hindu nationalists responded to that call and climbed on top of the mosque brandishing swords. The grand mosque, a symbol of faith for India’s largest minority, was razed to the ground. Overnight the patriarch of our family, who was feted as a progressive writer and a government school teacher, was reduced to being merely a “Muslim.” Provocative speeches by leaders of the BJP and other right-wing groups fueled a whirlwind of carnage: More than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed around country; Mumbai alone witnessed 500 murders.
It was then that we, the sole Muslim occupants of a Hindu residential colony, began to feel that we didn’t belong. We moved to a Muslim-dominated pocket of Mumbai -- India’s most cosmopolitan city.
BJP and its leaders who led the campaign for the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya were voted to power in the general election that followed.
Twenty-six years later, as India marks the anniversary of the demolition of the mosque, Indian Muslims continue to live their worst nightmare as they wake up each morning to humiliating and threatening discourse by legislators and members of the ruling party.
Anti-Muslim hate crimes are not just encouraged but also rewarded by those in power. According to a report on hate crimes released by Fact Checker, 76 percent of victims of hate crimes in India over the past 10 years have been Muslims. Ninety percent of these attacks have occurred since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was voted into power in 2014.
By labeling Muslims as “beef eaters” and expanding bans on the consumption of beef by putting in place new rules to curtail cow slaughter that disadvantage Muslim and lower-caste Hindus, the Hindu nationalist BJP is encouraging young Hindu men to become so-called cow vigilantes, who brandish their patriotism and faith by physically attacking Muslims. Even a rumor that a Muslim family ate beef for dinner, or a Muslim man ferried a cow to a slaughterhouse, can prove fatal in the hinterlands today.
When Muslims are not being lynched for bovine-related reasons, they are attacked for marrying Hindu girls, for sporting a beard, or for wearing a skullcap or other symbols of religious identity. They are berated on popular, state-favored news channels for being ungrateful betrayers and traitors who have no love for the national flag.
Attacks on Indian Muslims are also a part of a wider campaign to undermine the community and its rich history. The Taj Mahal is an iconic 17th-century mausoleum, built by another Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, but it is frequently disparaged in remarks by Modi’s deputies. Yogi Adityanath, Modi’s choice as chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, has stated that the Taj Mahal isn’t sufficiently Indian — code for belonging to India’s Islamic past. “Foreign dignitaries visiting the country used to be gifted replicas of the Taj Mahal and other minarets, which did not reflect Indian culture,” he said at a rally in the state of Bihar last year. “Now, [Hindu] holy books such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana are offered as gifts.” In the past six months, names of iconic cities and railway stations such as Allahabad and Mughal Sarai named after Muslim figures have been changed to reflect Hindu culture.
The obliteration of India’s Islamic history and culture is also reflected in the rewriting of school textbooks in provinces ruled by the BJP. Mughal rulers such as Akbar and Shah Jahan who embellished India’s cultural legacy are being reintroduced in academia as debauched, villainous invaders who robbed India of its Hindu heritage.
Communal fault-lines are not new in the country. When India was partitioned in 1947 — leading to the creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan — tens of millions of Muslims chose a secular India as their homeland; they were betting on a more promising future in a country that enshrined religious equality into its constitution. But Hindu nationalists have long claimed a greater moral right over the nation and have questioned the patriotism of Indian Muslims. And the prejudice is no longer just rhetorical. It has turned into violent hatred that has spilled onto the streets of the country.
The shift in India’s attitude toward minorities is being met with resistance and response by writers, artists and activists. Even Bollywood, which usually keeps its distance from politics, is responding in small ways. A film released in August titled “Mulk” (Nation) tells the story of a Muslim family that is forced to prove its patriotism in the face of a prejudiced police force and society. The film is a work of fiction but reflects the agony of the 180 million Muslims in India.
Ever since 1947, Muslims have consciously chosen to place their destiny in the hands of a secular India, believing in the guiding principles of democracy. That faith is now being tested every day. In 2014, when Modi was elected prime minister, Muslims knew they now had a leader who carried the stigma of ruling the state of Gujarat in 2002, when nearly 800 Muslims were massacred in a planned attack by Hindu mobs. In its verdict on those riots, the Supreme Court of India described Modi’s government at the time as “modern-day Neros” who looked elsewhere when “innocent children and helpless women were burning.”
In Modi’s India today, as acts of communal violence increase, the worst fears of Indian Muslims are coming true.
Today, in a world where nations as close as Myanmar and as distant as France are weaponising Islamophobia to drive racist, populist visions, China is not only joining in, but violently upping the ante, capitalising on this global moment to use Islamophobia to push forward its own populist vision: Wiping out an indigenous people seeking self-determination and standing against the state-sponsored mandate of Han supremacy.
With Islam serving as the spiritual lifeline connecting the Uighur people to their land, their history and to one another, the state has zeroed in on it. If it can destroy Islam, Beijing believes, it can destroy the Uighurs. And this is precisely what it has been doing behind a curtain of global ignorance for years and, even after the UN lifted that curtain for the whole world to see in August, it has carried forward without pause.
For Abdulla, that feared knock on the door is yet to come. It may never come, or it may come tomorrow, or the day after. Yet, the fear of the unknown and the stark reality that every moment with his children, his wife, and his elderly parents, could be his last, follows his every step like a shadow. Beyond the walls of the concentration camps, Xinjiang has become an open-air prison for Uighur Muslims like Abdulla, whose every word is monitored and religious expression closely policed.
He only finds solace in prayer. Prostrating himself before Allah, beginning in the early morning and one final time after sitting with his children at dinner, he prays that the state does not take him away and destroy his family.
Yet, the paradox of prayer symbolises the imminent perils of being Muslim in Xinjiang today, whereby the more people are unwilling to relinquish their spiritual identity and disavow Islam, the more likely they are to be taken way and kept far from everybody they love and everything they know, locked away in a living hell devised to purge them of their faith, disintegrate their families, and wash away their nation.
"We begin with the story of Nana Asma’u, the daughter of Uthman don Fodio, who was not only a renowned scholar of her time, but a poet, a political and social activist, and a creative intellectual. She is considered to be one of the greatest women of 19th century Islamic communities. She was born in 1793 in modern-day Nigeria. A princess with an impressive lineage, she was named after a hero in Islamic heritage—Asma, the daughter of Abu Bakr, who was a strong woman in her support of Islam. She was raised in a supportive Islamic household, having not only memorized the Qur’an, but extensively learned the Islamic sciences and four languages as well.
Asma’u believed in women having a role in society and she led the women of her time by example throughout her life. One of her greatest achievements was compiling the extensive collection of writings of her father after he passed away when she was 27. The degree of respect the scholarly community had for Asma’u is seen here because they chose her to complete such a monumental task. Not only did this job require someone trustworthy, but also someone who was familiar with his writings and was well-versed in the Islamic sciences.
When she was a mother of two and pregnant with her third child, Asma’u completed the translation of the Qur’an in her native tongue and also translated her father’s work into the various dialects of the community. This shows her concern for her community and her desire to bring the knowledge of the Qur’an and Islam to her people.
Asma’u saw a dire need for the teachings of Islam to reach the women in her community and beyond the Sokoto region. She saw that women were absent from the circles of knowledge and stayed in their homes as they tended to their familial duties. Asma’u came up with a brilliant idea to not only teach these women but to teach them in the comfort of their homes. It was then that she gathered knowledgeable women in her community and trained them as teachers. This group, known as jajis, traveled to neighboring communities to bring Islamic knowledge to secluded women. This movement was called the Yan-taru movement, which means “those who congregate together” and “sisterhood”. Asma’u taught the jajis to use lesson plans, poetry, and creative mnemonic devices in their teachings.
Nana Asma’u, by the grace and guidance of Allah (swt), revolutionized the way her community learned Islam. She brought the knowledge of the religion to the people in an easy to remember fashion and wrote in their language. Her legacy is a legacy of scholarship and activism, and her name is still used today in West Africa."
