Mahisa Amini of Iran vs Muskan Khan of India

 

Sitting here in Pakistan, it’s very difficult to explain how it feels to be sandwiched between two extremes. On one side its Iran from where the news has been circulating of Mahisa Amini arrested over dressing and avoiding hijab and on the other side in recent past we have seen Muskan khan defending her right to wear hijab.

Mahisa was arrested while travelling with her family within Iran for violating the dress code as prescribed by Iranian authorities. She died in the police custody and a huge series of protests erupted in all of Iran, it became a trend on twitter and almost every newspaper in Iran, started talking about the unfortunate death of poor Mahisa. Whereas western media got another chance to malign and degrade Iran for her practices, which are oppressive in the eye of western world.

Those people in Iran who are not in the favor of government imposing dress code got a chance to protest against the government as well. A number of videos could be seen where women were dancing and burning their head scarfs as a reaction. 

Now let’s move towards India, where Hijab related protests were seen. This all started in January when students in government girls PU College Karnataka were barred from attending the classes over the dress code issues. Further digging into the matter revealed that education institutions had allowed only the prescribed uniform and scarf was not a part of it whatsoever. This led to the rise of mixed protests in India, some in the favor of hijab and some in the negation of hijab. That was when Muskan becomes relevant, who put an outstanding show of bravery and courage in front of a crowd chanting Jay Shari Ram.

Our question is not how the incidents took place and how Muskan and Mahisa reacted towards it. Was it correct what Muskan did or was that correct what now anti hijab groups are doing in Iran. And if the women in Iran who are against the hijab are right then it automatically makes Muskan of India wrong because both of them are standing at 180 degrees when it comes to hijab and these two events are mutually exclusive i.e., only one of them can be right at a time.

 
We will keep ourselves out of this debate therefore and will not talk about who was wrong and who was right, rather we will focus on how is it possible to see two extreme attitudes of women not far away from us: Pakistan?

Disease determines the cure i.e.; you can’t treat headache by Panadol without reaching the cause of headache every time. Therefore, let’s find out the problem in both countries first.

Iran follows a theocratic model of government and has adopted every religious sin as crimes without taking into considerations of the inspirations of the public. If every religious sin is taken as a crime by the state, then it will become very problematic for the state to adopt social control i.e., to lie is a sin but how will government make policy about it, will the government assign every policeman for every citizen to monitor if he lies or not? Obviously, it’s a matter taken into account by the angels assigned by Allah for every human being as it’s a matter between man and God. Many people claim that that the governments should focus on law and order and fulfilment of fundamental rights only and it should leave the rest to the public as a matter between them and their God.

 Here comes the diagnosis of problem with Iran. In Iran government is not ready to let go its theocratic model of government and wants to dictate religious life in the form of laws of the land which is the authority of the Rasool (S.A.W.) only and no other man can force people to follow religion by fear of force, there are many scholars who are of this opinion for example Javed Ahmed Ghamdi sahib says so.

Now that the problem has been diagnosed it’s time to talk about solution. The solution is simple and clear: the government should only focus on the welfare of people and should leave the rest of the religious matters to the public as a personal matter to be between God and Man and the fate of which is to be decided by Allah himself on the day of judgement.

 

Now when we talk about India it comes to our notice that India follows a secular form of government where everybody is free to deal with his personal matters and religion and state does not interfere in the personal matters of the people. It feels very good in the start that everybody will mind his own business and the society will live in eternal harmony and peace, then why we saw Muslims minorities protesting in one of the most successful secular states like France and why we saw this peace being perturbed in India as well?

The diagnosis is that the problem again lies with the inclination of government. The government in India through its legislation is trying to make itself as much neutral as possible in the matter of religion by removing all the signs of religion hence trying to set rules about outfits, buildings, roads, names and things which may be a case of observation for people of other religion. The secular states like France and India in their approach to look as neutral as possible are on the mission to even restrict every religious thing so that no person from other religion may see it. These states have moved to the point of extremist secularism (if this term exists), where the state starts destroying every sign of every religion to prove its neutrality. What the state does not know is that the government or state may be neutral but people, living human beings cannot be and will never be neutral in terms of religion.

The solution therefore lies in front of us that the state should respect the personal matters and leave religion to the people and should avoid legislation regarding religious affairs in the wake of its neutral approach towards religion.

Way forward is simple; the debate never was about the hijab or of Mahisa to be right and Muskan to be wrong and vice versa.  the problem lies with the treatment of government regarding individual freedom and legislation about it. The government, therefore, should take into considerations the aspirations of the people without legislating anything that will affect the emotional sentiments of people as the world is moving more and more towards individualism and it will be very difficult for the governments to deal with angry and unsatisfied masses all around the world if they tried to check the mantle of people.