Tag Archives: Nazia Erum

Book Review: Mothering A Muslim By Nazia Erum

Books (incl.Biographies - w.e.f.01 jan 2018 ), Community Involvement / Social Issues, ,

Noida, UTTAR PRADESH / NEW DELHI :

Islamophobia resides in your living room.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, a nationwide lockdown was imposed. During this time, we were exposed to a lot more information and news (both reliably and fake), than usual. 

Almost all news channels and WhatsApp groups were filled with hate and communal bullying towards Muslims. In every way possible, this pandemic was driven towards giving the situation a communal angle. It’s not something new. We all have experienced the deteriorating quality of reporting of Indian mainstream media. Recent events like the Delhi riots, Shaheen Bagh protest , and now a Pandemic, were all politically propagandised to make them communal events. 

It became overwhelming for me to watch such hateful news channels. As an educator, this made me think, how do these news affect the children? Following the guidelines for this pandemic, to change this crisis into opportunity, I ended up reading ‘Mothering A Muslim’ by Nazia Erum in this lockdown. Nazia Erum in her book decodes Islamophobia in schools.

Image Source: WordPress

Author: Nazia Erum / Publisher: Juggernaut / Genre: Non-Fiction

Nazia very eloquently writes about Islamophobia residing in our living rooms which then find its way in our children’s classrooms and playgrounds:

“This book only mirrors the world we have created for our children. In truth, it is not the words of the kids that hurt. It’s the imagined words in the speech of the parents and other adults around the kid that hurt more. What are we saying in our drawing rooms and over dinner tables which our kids translate into hatred for each other in classrooms and playgrounds? If we truly look into our hearts, and listen to our politicians and journalists with open minds, we will find the source.“

The language we use has a major impact on our children. How we talk about people who are different from us reflects our thoughts, beliefs, values, biases, and stereotypes. The way we talk has the power to include or exclude the people around us. 

She wanted to bring together the experiences of motherhood and challenges of Muslim mothers, and highlight how their worries are different from mothers from other religious backgrounds. The book is an experiential journey of how a part of someone’s identity (here, the Muslim identity), became the utmost crucial factor to be marked and held accountable for. 

The book was released in 2017, and it was a result of research conducted by the author about the experiences and anxieties of Muslim mothers. The book starts with Nazia’s dilemma to name her daughter. She shares her fear when she held her daughter for the first time; she was worried about even giving her a ‘Muslim’ name. 

“Should I choose a name that signalled her religion, like Fatima, or pick a modern and neutral-sounding name, like Myra, to avoid too much spotlight on her being Muslim? I settled for the latter.“

Holding that fear in her heart, Nazia went on a journey with some questions in her mind. Many mothers shared this common fear with her. She wanted to bring together the experiences of motherhood and challenges of Muslim mothers, and highlight how their worries are different from mothers from other religious backgrounds. The book is an experiential journey of how a part of someone’s identity (here, the Muslim identity), became the utmost crucial factor to be marked and held accountable for. 

This makes it an essential feminist book too as it is a powerful piece of writing that brings together the voices of mothers, which usually is lost in our patriarchal society. 

Nazia writes, “Hate affects not just the tormented by also the tormentor.” The difference lies in how hate affects the tormentor and the tormented. When hate becomes a free commodity, we need to teach our children love and empathy. We often talk about communal hate that is increasing every day in our social surroundings. What we forget to address is how this communal bullying has reached our children’s classrooms and playgrounds. How schools, which are considered safe spaces for learning and making friends, have become institutions of communal bullying?

Mothering A Muslim will make you understand how deep and how early the communal hate gets in the discourse of children’s lives. Children as young as those attending kindergarten to the ones attending higher education do face communal bullying. Bullying is repeated and instances of misuse of power with intent to cause harm is common. It can be verbal, physical, and online to cause humiliation and exclusion. 

Mothering A Muslim will make you understand how deep and how early the communal hate gets in the discourse of children’s lives. Children as young as those attending kindergarten to the ones attending higher education do face communal bullying. Bullying is repeated and instances of misuse of power with intent to cause harm is common. It can be verbal, physical, and online to cause humiliation and exclusion. 

‘Paki’, ‘Terrorists’, and ‘Go to Pakistan’ have become the classroom and playground discourses. What we need here to pause and think, where is it coming from?

A mother shared:

“When a Muslim student is bullied it is on pronounced religious lines. Now he is called Baghdadi, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, or simply a terrorist. Everyone’s speech is borrowed from the language used in the news [channels].”

This book provides us a mirror to reflect on what is wrong in our society and forces you to question what lessons and values you teach your children. I recommend this book to present and future, teachers and parents, and to all those who want to get an insight into what it means to be a Muslim in this country.  

Also, watch Nazia Erum interview by The Wire.

 Swati is a postgraduate in Education with a specialization in Early Childhood Care and Education, from the School of Education Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi. Her research interest lies in understanding gender issues in education. She can be reached at shukla011swati@gmail.com, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Featured Image Source: The Wire

source: http://www.feminisminindia.com / Feminism In India / Home> Culture> Books / by Guest Writer / posted by Swati Shukla / September 11th, 2020

Book Negates Stereotype Image of Muslim Women

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Books (incl.Biographies - w.e.f.01 jan 2018 ), Community Involvement / Social Issues, , , , , , , ,

Nizamuddin Basti, NEW DELHI :

The book “Resilience: Stories of Muslim Women” was released by noted journalist and author Sagarika Ghose at a function at the India International Center, New Delhi on Wednesday. — Photo: Caravan Daily
The book “Resilience: Stories of Muslim Women” was released by noted journalist and author Sagarika Ghose at a function at the India International Center, New Delhi on Wednesday. — Photo: Caravan Daily

‘Resilience: Stories of Muslim women’ released in New Delhi

New Delhi :

At a time when her stereotypes as meek and submissive entity are used by a political class to further its agenda, a new book catches Muslim woman in her multidimensional persona and in the process blasts many a myth surrounding her. In each of the varied fields of human endeavour, these Muslim women have come out in flying colours.

The book “Resilience: Stories of Muslim Women” was released by noted journalist and author Sagarika Ghose at a function at the India International Center here on Wednesday in the presence of many woman activists.

Speaking on the occasion, Ghose said the book negated the stereotype image of Muslim women as it illustrates that no matter what the economic impediments or social taboo, given the means and empathy Muslim women could also scale the height of success.

The book explores the lives of 11 resilient Muslim women who fought against all odds and got the opportunity to study in a tiny adult education centre. She congratulated these women and lamented in the scientific age woman have to face many odds and discrimination in every community.

The book release ceremony was followed by a discussion on the condition of women moderated by Nazia Erum, author and media advocacy head of Amnesty International India.

Social activist Shabnam Hashmi, the spirit behind the success of these women, said the book is like fresh air in the present political environment of the country in an oblique reference to the Modi Government’s push for enacting controversial Triple Talaq law which seeks to criminalise a civil matter like marriage.

She claimed stereotypical images of Muslim women are being used to further marginalise the minority community.

In early 1980, we started teaching the Nizamuddin Basti girls but it was a bumpy journey as girls had to struggle against severe hostility from the Basti residents whom Muslim girls going to study was “ anti-Islam or anti-Deen”, she added.

Shubha Menon, author, who documented the life of girls and women of Nizamuddin Basti, Delhi, said these were mostly dropouts or had not studied at all. She said she was touched by their stories and decided to bring the brighter side of the Muslim women.

On the occasion, many of these women narrated their stories of struggles.

Farida, who is a daughter of a Maulvi attached to Tablighi Jamaat, said she fought patriarchy, gender bias, poverty, and triple talaq to become a graduate.  She said there was no discrimination on the basis of gender at home as her father loved her much but did not in favour of sending her to school.  She told she was made to wear a burqa at 9, married off at 13 abandoned with two children at 16.

Farida, who now runs an NGO, has a sister Syeda whose story is also the same. “Both the sisters married to two brothers, unpaid labour in their matrimonial home, sloggers, beaten at the whims of a cruel matriarch, bearing children and hardship in one go. Their father, a Maulvi of Tablighi Jamaat, caught between the demands of his fellow Jamaatis and love for his daughters. The two sisters return home with meager belongings plus four pairs of mouths to feed. Then from rock bottom poverty, they extricate themselves. Their horizon widens and they rise and thanks to Seher Study Centre”.

Ayesha said she not only fought for her education but brought up her son to be an MBA and her daughter a Master in Science.  Mussarrat, who now works for an international NGO, told that her grandmother kept her locked at home.

Other women Asma, Ishrat, Parveen, Shahjahan, Farhat, Parveen,  and Najma’s stories are similar but not identical.

Shabnam said the mentors of Seher Study Centre in the Basti; teaching, counselling, chatting, encouraging the oppressed girls to break out of their fetters and manacles and ultimately from their cloisters.

From verbal threats to lathis, they not only bore them but spun them around to give great leverage to the girls they were grooming, she said.

The book, which chronicles the stories of successful women, also highlights the Markaz versus the Dargah which is another contradiction of the Basti. Stories of the Dargah dot the entire book. For example, Nizamuddin’s disdain for power is a poignant anecdote. Rulers of the Sultanate, Tughlaqs and Khiljis were not permitted to enter the Pir’s Khanqah. The Saint’s priority was not to pay obeisance to the ruler but to feed the poor and indigent no matter of what faith or of what caste while the Markaz propagates orthodox Islam. The author does not deride one practice at the cost of the other. Their parallel existence may occasionally clash but seldom becomes a major eruption.

She makes the reader a partner in her adventure as a reader is taken through the winding gulleys, narrow stairs, tottering houses, all the time surrounded by a mass of humanity; namely Muslims who live and breathe Nizamuddin. There is a constellation of girls who were transformed by the Seher Adult Education Centre. The stories unfold one by one.

The author Menon concludes that Seher comes out as a unique experiment, which not only transformed all those women who studied there but their future generations as well.

source: http://www.caravandaily.com / Caravan Daily / Home> Books / by Abdul Bari Masoud, Caravan Daily / August 29th, 2019