Rights as Ethical Duty: The Quran, Constitution, and the Fragile Family

• In Event: Itineraries of Liberalism in the Global South

Abstract

What are the ethical and political implications of the Constitution being invoked in relation to regulation of the family and religious community? Liberal theorists of multiculturalism have mostly conceived of this problem as one of constructing a normative justification for group rights in relation to individual autonomy, freedom, and equality. Anthropologists of religion, on the other hand, conceive of rights claims as hegemonic disciplinary apparatuses. This paper proposes a conceptual move away from questions of normative justification to interpret notions of personhood that constitute group claims and the ways in which they imbricate ideas of constitutionalism. I build up on participant observation in the workshops and training sessions of a movement for gender justice for Muslim women in India. I argue that rights articulate notions of ethical self-improvement to achieve collective aspirations as a just community. Using theories of popular constitutionalism and agonistic humanism, this paper argues that the Constitution is reclaimed by pious women in sites of failure of the family and in tension with unjust notions of community. An ethic of justice as compassion in the Quran and an idea of harmonious existence with all of God’s creations in Islamic feminism in a relationship of reciprocity, non-domination, and respect imbricates an ideal of constitutionalism. A sense of duty towards this ethical ideal creates a language of aspirations for women as communal and constitutional entities. This duty enfolds aspirations wider than equality within the family. As pious Muslim women reclaim the Constitution, they re-authorise community within the fictive domain of ‘we the people’. Democratic contestation thus becomes a vehicle for reclaiming the constitution to articulate a collective notion of justice by pious Muslim women. This politics of democratic contestation prevents community and community definitions from being forever consigned to a static identity by a constitutive moment.

Author

• Sagnik Dutta, University of Cambridge