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A habit of violence grown ordinary : constraints on Muslim women's participation in war - 1

Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, Spring, 2002 by Maria Holt

On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded its neighbor Kuwait. For the next seven months, until Kuwait was liberated by an American-led coalition in February 1991, the Kuwaiti population was subjected to a brutal and terrifying occupation. Many Kuwaitis were killed or imprisoned; homes, schools and hospitals were expropriated, damaged or destroyed; goods were looted; and Iraqi soldiers raped an untold number of women. One witness described the rape and murder of a young girl: "There were four of them (soldiers). They each took their turn while the others looked on, waiting impatiently. I could see her bleeding. When they all finished, I saw them inserting a hot iron rod into her. Then she started bleeding profusely. I heard her screaming insufferably, and I watched her dying". (2)

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Despite the threat of death or sexual violation and the fact that many men fled the country, a significant proportion of Kuwaiti women chose to remain during the Iraqi occupation. According to one woman, she realized that merely "staying in the country is a nationalist action for anyone who feels any sense of responsibility". (3) In the same way that Algerian, Palestinian and Lebanese women have remained in their countries during periods of conflict and occupation, the Kuwaiti women "constructed a `humanist nationalism' that interprets staying during a war as a form of combat." (4) Their response may be regarded either as a continuation of the tradition of involvement by Muslim women in conflict or as an inappropriate model of female behaviour.

As the 20th century drew to a close, women all over the world looked back at what they had achieved. One significant advance has been the increasing unacceptability of violence against women, whether in private or during situations of conflict. The issue is being addressed both in international human rights conventions and in national policies. Having said that, however, one is forced to acknowledge that there is still a very long way to go. Women everywhere continue to be physically abused by their partners; they are victims of sexual and other violence in war, and of violent crime in their own streets.

The threat and reality of violence is likely to create a permanent feeling of fear in women. (5) The insecurity in their lives caused by the ever-present danger of violence--from strangers and intimates--is bound to place constraints on their ability to participate in wars and national liberation struggles. Insecurity of this sort, one could argue, will be even more intense if women find themselves the victims of violence that appears to be condoned by religion. According to the Qur'an, Islam permits moderate physical punishment by men of their wives in certain circumstances. This "permission", although its precise meaning is open to interpretation, has been used by some Muslim men to justify cruel treatment of women. Against this scenario, however, one must set the example of the "heroic" Kuwaiti women who chose to resist the brutality of occupation in spite of the threat of shame and exclusion.

In this article, I will explore Muslim women's experiences of war, in terms of Islamic traditions and history which have provided models of appropriate female behaviour during times of conflict, and to enquire whether violence--physical, psychological or institutional--might inhibit women's participation in the conflicts in which their societies are sometimes involved. In order to address this question, I will begin with a general discussion of violence. I will then look more closely at violence against women in Islamic societies, and explore the possibility that such violence might impair their ability to participate in national liberation and other struggles. I will conclude with a consideration of some of the ways in which religion works as empowerment or constraint, with particular reference to modern Islamist movements and the development of universal human rights codes. By looking at how Muslim women have participated in two contemporary conflict situations, in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, I hope to show, firstly, that women are not simply victims; and, secondly, some of the ways in which they are using their agency to tackle the issue of male violence. The situation is, of course, by no means unique to Islam. Violence circumscribes the lives of women in every culture and part of the world.

Men, women and violence

In general, one can argue that male violence against women "is an expression of male power and is used by men to reproduce and maintain their relative status and authority over women", (6) and this is likely to be the case even when a society is involved in conflict. The first step is to define "violence" in the context of this article. According to the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, violence against women is "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life". (7) Such violence, then, is "a gendered phenomenon within the context of patriarchal social relations". (8) It has also been described as "sexual terrorism", whereby "the perpetuation of fear of violence forms the basis of patriarchal power". Violence against women, as Pettman notes, "appears to be a universal characteristic of patriarchy", and this is no less true in the Islamic world.

A habit of violence grown ordinary : constraints on Muslim women's participation in war - 1

Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, Spring, 2002 by Maria Holt

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