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In 1974, as the lone expert on Islamic studies at the
University of Oklahoma at Stillwater, Pakistan-born Dr
Riffat Hassan was appointed faculty advisor to the local
chapter of the Muslim Students' Association - a fiercely
male bastion where women were excluded even from the
audience at seminars.
University protocol engendered a deliciously ironic
situation, when she was required to deliver a speech at
the association's annual conference, where she was conde-
scendingly assigned the topic "Women in Islam".
"The prospect of addressing a group of men who considered
it haraam to even listen to a woman's voice was decidedly
enticing," she says, reminiscing her tryst with the
feminist perspective of Islam - a subject in which she
has pioneered pathbreaking research over the past two
decades.
The renowned Islamic scholar and activist has authored
various books on the Quran and has conducted vigorous
inter-religious studies during her stint as an academic
attached to a string of leading American universities.
As an authority on the Quran with an acclaimed mastery
over Arabic, Hassan provided the intellectual underpin-
nings to the nascent Pakistani women's movement during
the height of General Zia-ul-Haq's regime in the early
eighties.
"Bombay is a great city with a distinct diversity of
heritage," says the 53-year old scholar, who was in the
city on the invitation of Communalism Combat and Women's
Research and Action Group, amidst a hectic schedule
requiring her to shuttle from one discussion venue to
another, despite a bout of illness.
This mother of four seems adept at juggling the persons
of scholar, teacher, activist and homemaker, often living
out of a suitcase as she travels to remote corners of the
world, expounding a liberal interpretation of the Quran
from an unprecedented feminist viewpoint.
"Today, the central conflict in all Muslim communities
revolves around the role of God - either as the creator
of human beings in the highest mould, destined to evolve
and be self-actualised, or as a punitive supercop. It is
the latter view which is sought to be reinforced by
patriarchal setups which wish to shut out women from
public space in the name of the Quran.
Islamisation, evident everywhere - Pakistan, Sudan,
Malaysia, Iran - is concerned with little besides putting
women in their place and meeting out punishment. Hanging
in balance are the lives of 500 million women, poor
illiterate and living in villages," she elaborates with
singular oratorial elan accentuated by the whiff of an
American accent.
"Enlightment led to anger," she says, diagnosing her
interest in theology as "very practical" and aimed at
"correcting the subversion of an essentially egalitarian
religious text."
Ruling out political action as a means of uprooting
discriminatory laws enforced in the name of Islam, she
deems "an alternate interpretation of the Quran based on
a true reading," as the only viable strategy "to demolish
the superstructure of the idea of male superiority."
"My friends, who got lathicharged on the streets of
Karachi, would often ask me to 'get real' and set aside
theology for street-level action. I, however, was deter-
mined to unravel the root of this fundamental bias,
around which all legislation revolves," Hassan points
out. This led her to inter-religious discourse and the
myth of creation in the Genesis. "The concept of Eve as
secondary, derivative and subordinate, but primary in
guilt, has been freely adapted by the six Hadiths or
injunctions, but finds no mention at all in the 30 crea-
tion stories in the Quran," she trenchantly observes.
"While the Quran provides equal status to men and women,
the Hadiths are wilfully used to supersede the Quran for
legislative purposes. Arabic, like other Semitic lan-
guages, is also susceptible to wilful misrepresentation,"
she observes.
"Islam and human rights are not incompatible. One cannot
deny, however, that Islam, in its true form is not being
practised. Human rights are never given, they have to be
taken," she says, laying her finger on the fundamental
hypocrisy underlying all traditional set-ups. In a
trenchant illustration of this, she points to the tenden-
cy to consider a boy returning with a Western education
as 'modern' but a girl with a similar background as
'Western' in a pejorative sense.
Looking for new avenues to employ her intellectual stami-
na, Hassan looks forward to the day when she will author
probably the first ever treatise on "The Role of Man in
Islam!!" "That's long overdue," she wryly observes.
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