Becoming an Educated Woman in a Rural Village of Pakistan: (Un)Making of Indigenous/Modernist Muslim Identity

• In Event: 31.019 - Intersectionality and Transnational Education Research for a New World Order?

Abstract

In the age of contemporary globalization, there is an intense focus on educating Muslim women in order to modernize Muslim societies. This preoccupation has translated into unprecedented monetary, political, and even military investments in educating women in Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan. These educational discourses present women’s education as a tool to transform the patriarchal structures of these societies. It is in this context that the image and stories of activists such as Malala Yousufzai have been mobilized to validate Islam and West as oppositional entities.

This paper employs longitudinal ethnographic data collected with Muslim women teachers from a rural Pakistani community to examine what it means to be educated in this particular context. These participants were the first and among the very few women in their community to have received education and to have a paid jobs outside of home. They proudly asserted their identities as empowered and educated Muslim women. They felt that education had empowered them to practice certain rights, such as access to male-dominated public spaces and decision-making processes, that were not available to other women in their village.

My ethnographic analysis provides insights into how these lived experiences embodied an active dialogue as well as contestations between different discourses of Islam. Instead of mobilizing the West/Islam binary, these identity formation processes highlighted the conflicts between the “modern” and the “traditional” Islam. For example, the educated participants of this study had embraced a modernist version of Islam that had been adopted by the military regime as the official discourse in the 1980’s. This discourse became the guiding principle for the educational policies and curriculum for all levels of schooling in Pakistan. Although inspired by the cultural and historical traditions of the Arab Gulf region, this discourse presents Islam as a global religion with a universal set of teachings. The rural community that these young women belonged to, however, practiced a version of Islam that was a departure from this official discourse. This indigenous version reflected not only Sufism but also a cultural heritage shared with non-Muslim communities such as Hindus and Sikhs. The contestation between these two versions of Islam was highlighted in the manner the women participants distanced themselves from a number of religious practices of their families and communities as they asserted themselves as “educated” Muslim women. They believed that education had enabled to learn about the “true” meaning of Islam.

This ethnographic analysis problematizes the global discourses that present women’s education and empowerment as universal values. The context-specific lived experiences of the participants also mirror the national struggles over the Muslim identity in the postcolonial society of Pakistan. These contestations, however, embody the on-going dialogues and conflicts between different versions of Islam instead of reflecting the West/Islam binary. Finally, this paper brings to light the need for international educational policymakers to critically engage with the diversity of Muslim societies instead of approaching them as homogenous entities.

Author

• Ayesha Khurshid, Florida State University