More on Misbah Rana
Further to Wednesday’s post on Misbah Rana, there is a well-balanced article on the Guardian comment site today, acknowledging that the recent custody decision on Misbah Rana is “the best, or the least bad, for all concerned”. The few comments which have already been posted are worth reading as well. Insha Allah when I’m in front of my computer, and not doubled over an Apple Store laptop, I intend to post a few comments of my own.
Having listened to the Radio 4 programme From Molly to Misbah, it seems that Ms Rana is a very articulate person who knows exactly what she wants and why. She certainly did not show any signs of “brainwashing”, which is how people routinely rubbish other people’s choices that they don’t understand or approve of: by insisting that the other does not understand them either. We see the same in attitudes to women who wear hijab, let alone niqab: the choice not to wear them is seen as a valid choice in the direction of “freedom”, but the decision to wear them is dismissed as the product of intimidation or “brainwashing”.
Dave Hill makes some observations on the attitudes of Sajad Rana, Misbah’s father, which need answering:
No real explanation is included [in the Radio 4 programme] for why Louise Campbell changed, only a bland acknowledgement that she had rejected Islam alongside denials of claims that Mr Rana beat her, whose completeness you may judge for yourself. Certainly, Mr Rana’s patriarchal slip shows now and again, such as when he praises his ex for the way she brought up “my children” rather than “our children”, strengthening any suspicion that he regards Ms Campbell more as a failed retainer than as an erstwhile equal partner - grist to the mill of those who see in Misbah’s loyalty to him the seeds of approaching disaster, as is Misbah turning up in an Islamabad madrassa well-known for Taliban-friendly policies.
As for “why Louise Campbell changed”, it’s quite possible that she simply changed her mind about her conversion to Islam. People do leave Islam, converts and born Muslims. It does not mean that accusations she made about Sajad Rana beating her, particularly when they are denied by all of the children, including their son who lives independently in England and is still a Muslim, have any basis. People do make false accusations about partners they came to dislike for lesser (but perhaps still valid) reasons. As for Sajad Rana referring to his children as his rather than theirs, this could just as much be a product of their estrangement and his contempt for her (because of both her recent behaviour and her rejection of Islam) as of a patriarchal mentality.
Other observations have been made about Misbah “turning up” at a madrassa run by supposed “Taliban-friendly” religious figures, in a “black burqa”. The fact is: burqas, when the term is applied to the garment worn in Afghanistan and the highlands of Pakistan, can be any colour but I’ve never seen it in black. What Misbah was wearing was probably a chador or jilbab, which does not cover the eyes. This may seem just as stark and oppressive to some western readers but it makes a huge difference to the wearer (look at the number of women covering their faces in some parts of London and how few of them cover their eyes as well). As for its Taliban or al-Qa’ida connections, it probably means nothing other than that it is a Deobandi institution, the Deobandis accounting for a substantial proportion of the Pakistani Sunni population, and the Deobandis in general were pro-Taliban when the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan (I observed this in the UK as well). This does not mean they enforce their more extreme positions on their followers in Pakistan. They do not refuse their women medical treatment, for example, or force them to wear the Afghan-type burqa.
Dave Hill ends with a side-swipe about Misbah’s ambition “to be … a beautician”. Well, not everyone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer; some people really do just want to be able to earn a living rather than spend several more years studying in order to make much more money or be in a professional job. I’m not saying you don’t have to learn to be a beautician, but it’s a perfectly respectable job for a woman. A lot of jobs women do, even in the west, involve being in mostly female company, seeing to the needs of women or children. What’s wrong with that?
Some of the commenters to Dave Hill’s article made the point that there was bias against Louise Campbell based on her being poor and working-class in contrast to Sajad Rana being well-off and middle-class. The likelihood is that they were also well-off here, even if not quite so much as Sajad Rana now is in Pakistan, and one might consider how the drop in living standards impacted on Misbah, particularly when she was separated from her siblings when they left for Pakistan. Overwhelmingly, however, the sympathy was for Misbah’s mother; the assumption was that any woman had to be better off here than in Pakistan, and there was speculation that she would be forced into marriage. Nobody denies that there are aspects of Pakistan’s culture which disadvantage women, or that awful things don’t happen to women, but the fact that most of her family live there, that they don’t have a record of burning their wives at the stove when they don’t stump up the dowry money, that they are well-off and able to provide opportunities that perhaps don’t exist in Stornoway and that she would be one Muslim girl among many, rather than one of a tiny minority living in a household hostile to Islam in a remote town, no doubt outweighs such concerns in Misbah’s own mind.
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