Qiwamah and Wilayah & Women's Lived Realities

AT ONE GLANCE

 
 
Population 35,900,000
(World Bank, 2015)

Total fertility rate 1.7
children born per woman
(WEF, 2015)

Child marriage data not available
(UNICEF, 2016)

Maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births)
11 (WEF, 2015)

Life expectancy at birth
84 years for females,
80 years for males
(World Bank, 2014)

Religions (2010) The majority of the population is Christian (69.0%), alongside a large number not affiliated with a religion (23.7%) and Muslim (2.1%), Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Jewish minorities (Pew, 2012)

Literacy rate 99% for
women and 99% for men
(WEF, 2015)

Labour force participation (female, male)
75%, 82% (WEF, 2015)

The Canadian Life Stories Project was undertaken by the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW). Founded in 1982, CCMW is a national non-profit organization that advocates for the equality, equity and empowerment of Canadian Muslim women. The research team consisted of four activists/researchers: Eman Ahmed, Nabeela Sheikh, Alia Hogben and Sahar Zaidi.

CCMW has developed booklets on various aspects of Canadian and Muslim family laws in several languages. These have been used to provide workshops across the country. CCMW’s other focus has been on the creation of a marriage contract to address the contemporary problems of male guardianship and to raise the awareness of Canadian women on how to negotiate egalitarian Islamic marriage contracts based on Islamic principles of equality.CCMW documented seven life stories of Canadian Muslim women from varied ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds who have espoused and/or questioned patriarchal religious interpretations of gender roles and rights in Muslim marriages.

 

Resource Persons*

 
Naeema (59 years old)
is a well-educated, single mother of one daughter. She comes from Pakistan and has been living in Canada for 48 years. After graduating in Library and Information Sciences, she has been working ever since. She paid for her husband’s studies and was the sole breadwinner for most of her marriage. Once her husband started earning, he expected her to become an obedient housewife. Naeema eventually filed for a divorce when she realized that her husband married a second wife while still legally married to her under the Canadian law. She is currently working in a senior managerial position within the civil service.

Samina (48 years old)
is a well-educated single mother of an adopted child. She comes from a small town in India. She married her first husband, an American citizen from the same religious community, at the age of 19. After suffering from her family-in-law’s continuous humiliations and her husband’s extra-marital affairs, she filed for divorce. When she married her second husband, she did not know that he was already married and that she would be his second wife. After violence and threats by her husband, she escaped to Canada to save her life.

Safia (50 years old)
is a well-educated single mother of four boys. Raised in a family in Somalia with strong feminist models, she left Somalia in 1989 to study in the United States. After graduating in geology, she married an Ethiopian man at the age of 22. In 1993, after Somalia’s civil war, she applied for and received refugee status in Canada and stayed there with her husband and sons. Safia’s marital relationship with her husband was generally egalitarian and respectful, with finances and decision-making split 50-50, but gradually changed when her husband became the primary breadwinner and he and his mother wanted to make decisions for the family. She eventually filed for divorce when her husband decided to marry a second wife while still legally married to her under the Canadian law.

Amina (50 years old)
is a well-educated single mother of four children. She is a Muslim convert who was born and raised in Ontario. She was married to a Muslim Arab man for 25 years, during which he was domineering and abusive. After being informed that her husband had married a second wife while still legally married to her under the Canadian law, she initiated the Islamic khul‘ divorce, and therefore gave up her mahr. She currently teaches full-time.

Lila (45 years old)
is a well-educated divorced woman. She was born and raised in a non-religious and lenient family in the United States. She eventually converted to Islam with her husband after a trip in Spain. Her husband had obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which exacerbated his use of patriarchal Islamic interpretations to physically and emotionally control Lila. After many years of hardship, and despite her husband’s refusal to give her a divorce (talaq), she decided to leave him. She is now in a marriage that she feels is equal and just. She currently teaches part-time and is involved in community work.

Kulsum (45 years old)
is a well-educated married mother of three children. She was born and raised in Canada in a healthy and egalitarian environment. When she met her husband, an Arab Muslim man, she was not interested in marriage or religion. Yet, she converted to Islam and has been married for almost 20 years. Despite her initial feminist mind-set, she believes in the traditional roles of marriage. Her story is characterized by contentment within a traditional structure, which she views as liberating. She is currently teaching part-time and is involved in community work.

Noreen (50 years old)
is a well-educated married mother of three children. She was born and raised in Canada in a healthy and egalitarian environment. When she met her husband, an Arab Muslim man, she was not interested in marriage or religion. Yet, she converted to Islam and has been married for almost 20 years. Despite her initial feminist mind-set, she believes in the traditional roles of marriage. Her story is characterized by contentment within a traditional structure, which she views as liberating. She is currently teaching part-time and is involved in community work.
 
*Note that all of the resource persons’ names have been changed to protect their identities and that most of the quotations and stories have been translated, edited and condensed for clarity.
 

Identity Politics

 
As a historical immigrant country, Canada’s demographics and socio-cultural landscape have been shaped over time by different waves of immigration. The Muslim population comes from diverse ethno-cultural backgrounds. During the 1970s, the country adopted a formal multicultural policy that has been affirmed by a diverse citizenry. But the policies aiming to recognize and promote multiple cultural, ethnic and religious traditions within a single jurisdiction have long been the subject of debate between supporters and critics. The former invoke the freedom to build multiple identities nourished with a variety of traditions while the latter are concerned about fostering communal segregation and marginalization of minority communities. Muslim youth are intensely focused on defining their identities and CCMW has done projects regarding their multiple identities—ethnic, cultural and religious—within their Canadian-ness.

The Canadian research team selected seven Muslim women of various ethnicities and races, including converts, demonstrating the pluralism of Canada. Their life stories show their experiences with intersectionality—being part of a minority community and facing gender-based discrimination. These women have fallen prey to multiple forms of oppression because of their gender, race, ethnicity and/or religion, and face the double challenge of being minorities within a minority.

In the case of Naeema, patriarchy intersected with ethnicity to justify her Arab husband’s decision to leave her and to engage in a polygamous marriage. As a South Asian educated independent working woman, she did not fit with the traditional gender roles expected by her family-in-law and was thus never fully accepted. Despite knowing that Naeema’s husband was still legally married, his sisters helped introduce him to a new wife from his own ethnic background. They felt that his polygamy should be acceptable to Naeema. Yet a few years later, when one of the sisters-in-law was confronted with the polygamous marriage of her husband, the entire family felt offended.

Conflicting identities also feature in the story of Amina, a Muslim convert who struggled with the challenges that came with marrying into an Arab family and the communal form of surveillance that characterized her marriage. While attempting to gain acceptance into a non-inclusive Arab Muslim community, she forfeited her Canadian identity and in the process lost the ability to express her own cultural rights. Later, Amina realized that her husband would never have treated a woman from his own ethnic background in the same way. The double standards became more apparent when her husband took a second wife from the same cultural background. While Amina was expected to comply with a dress code and traditional gendered roles, the second wife had a freer hand. Finally, when both of these marriages ended, her husband gave his Arab wife her full payment of mahr, whereas he declined to pay the entire (much smaller) sum to Amina.

Both Amina and Naeema’s situations point to the vulnerability and discrimination potentially faced by women, especially as converts in Amina’s case, when they marry into communities with very different gender norms from their own.
 

Legal Pluralism

 
Although most Canadian laws are gender-sensitive, the resource persons were not always able to make use of these laws to their advantage. Indeed, the legal loopholes left by multicultural policies sometimes give way to uncodified rules—based on traditional interpretations of Muslim family laws—that are unjust to women. The life experiences documented are indicative of the dominant role that religious discourses can play in valuing particular understandings of Islam that allow a husband’s dominance and claims to authority over his wife. The stories also demonstrate the power of community leaders (such as imams) to determine uncodified rules that regulate marriage and divorce. For many Canadian Muslim women, the overlap of legal frameworks places them in vulnerable situations.

For instance, Canadian law guarantees equal marriage and divorce rights to both spouses and prohibits polygamy. Yet all of the resource persons experienced men’s selective use of religious norms and/or state laws to safeguard their own interests. Indeed, Naeema, Samina and Safia’s husbands made divorce pronouncements to end their marriage, claiming a unilateral right to do so in Islam. However, when it came to the division of property, the very same men relied upon secular Canadian divorce laws that allow them to claim 50% of the marriage’s assets, even though in Islamic jurisprudence wives are entitled to keep what they earned.

This selective use of one or another normative system impacted on the resource persons in tangible ways, diminishing the benefits the women could gain from state codes. For instance, Lila’s husband believed he had total rights of divorce and refused to release her. She felt that having an Islamic divorce was important alongside her civil divorce, especially because the civil divorce took several years to finalize. Every imam she initially approached claimed that there was no legitimate basis for the divorce, as Lila had been aware of her husband’s mental illness when she married him. She eventually was able to find a religious scholar who told her that she had a right to leave her husband and sever their spiritual connection.

While polygamy is illegal in Canada, several husbands had no problem taking a second wife, considering it their God-given right. Neither they nor their wives showed any concern that the men could be charged, the families could be penalized (such as taking away state benefits such as housing) and the subsequent wives had no protection under Canadian family law. Because a significant percentage of Canadian Muslim women, both first and second wives, do not register their marriages with civil authorities, they further deprive themselves of the legal rights guaranteed to women under Canadian laws.

In fact, some of the resource persons themselves believed that polygamy was a right sanctioned by the Qur’an and linked to the man’s qiwamah. For instance, Amina felt forced to accept her husband’s polygamous marriage. She did not challenge this practice because she had learned that it was mentioned in the Qur’an and felt that objecting would make her a disbeliever in the eyes of the community.

In theory, a man is allowed to marry more than one wife only if he can provide for both women equally—financially and emotionally. However, in several life stories, both wives ended up being treated unfairly.

Some of the women were able to resist the pressure of uncodified rules and make use of their rights. Safia illustrates this individual resistance. Raised with a feminist grandmother and father, she learned how to challenge religious patriarchy and to be a strong assertive woman. Her marriage was initially based on partnership and equal sharing of responsibilities, but her husband and mother-in-law started making decisions without consulting her, then her husband decided to take a second wife. Safia made sure her divorce was handled in a civil, diplomatic manner, both within the context of the Canadian legal framework and the Muslim family law framework. Her husband initially gave her everything in terms of property, then later attempted to use Canadian law to gain access to half of the marriage’s assets. But Safia held firm and told him he had signed away his rights at the time of the divorce. Safia followed the laws of the land and her understanding of Muslim marriage and divorce laws, and in doing so she reconciled her two identities of being Muslim and Canadian.
 

Spousal Roles & Sexual Relations within Marriage

 
In Canada, marriage contracts and separation agreements are considered to be ‘domestic contracts’ and are governed by provincial authorities. For instance, in Ontario, a marriage contract is an agreement in which the couple is left to negotiate and state their respective rights and obligations during the marriage, upon separation, and after its dissolution. Sometimes, this allows for unequal relationships based on patriarchal understandings of Muslim family laws, often to the disadvantage of women.

The Canadian research team documented stories of families in which women were often the main breadwinners. Yet, the men selectively referred to traditional gender roles when it served their particular interests, expecting female compliance while neglecting duties prescribed by the same religious framework. The life stories reveal the disconnect between the realities of spousal roles and the static rights and obligations created by the qiwamah-wilayah model that result in tensions and injustices against women and children.

For instance, Lila was the primary income earner for her household but also took care of all domestic chores. Not only did her husband do nothing to help her, he also acted as the head of the household, demanding control over the use of her earnings. Similarly, Naeema was for a long time the sole breadwinner and paid for her husband’s education and their joint property. During that time, there was no head of household and decisions were mutual. Once her husband started earning, he expected her to leave her job and asked for obedience. After they separated, both Naeema and Amina’s husbands neglected to provide financial support for their children even while attempting to regulate their lives.

While the majority of dominant religious discourses consider sexual relations to be the right of both partners in marriage, the idea that sexual access is the husband’s right and the wife’s duty in exchange for support and maintenance persists. In fact, many people believe that a husband has an unfettered right to sexual access. For instance, Samina, Amina and Lila’s husbands expected their wives to fulfil their sexual needs even though they failed in their duty of maintenance. Samina’s second husband asked her to waive her rights to property, withheld information about his polygamous marriage and never provided for her economically. Yet, he claimed his right to satisfy his sexual needs. His marriage to Samina was essentially conducted for sex purposes.

One of the devastating results of these patriarchal understandings was the inability for some women to exercise agency over their own sexuality within the context of marriage. Due to the pressure of trying to be ‘good Muslim wives’, some resource persons conveyed their feelings of guilt for not obeying their husbands. They invoked the hadith that “those women who deny their husbands’ sexual right are despised by God’s angels”. Lila, for instance, believed that men had the right to have sex with their wives whenever they wanted. Throughout her marriage, she was subjected to marital rape even though this was legally recognized as a sexual offence by the Canadian criminal code and was not endorsed by the Qur’an. Even though her second marriage was characterized  by equality, it took her a long time to believe that she had a say in their sexual relationship. She narrates: “He was very sensitive to consent in sex when we first met, and if I said, ‘We have to stop’, he would stop immediately and just hold me. It took six months or so for me to realize that I could just completely relax, that I didn’t have to worry about being raped with him, that sex with him would always be consensual.”

For the majority of the resource persons, sex was characterized as a wifely chore rather than a pleasant experience. Women’s sexual pleasure and satisfaction were of no importance to the husbands, even though the Qur’an encourages the mutuality of sexual desire. Kulsum’s story is an exception. Unlike other resource persons, she conveyed a strong sense of awareness of her sexual rights within marriage, establishing that it is the husband’s duty to fulfil his wife’s sexual needs. Yet, she still adopts a patriarchal perspective when she states that because men have a higher sex drive, they must be given sex or will commit adultery.
 
 

Women Speak : Naeema’s Life Story

Joyful childhood

During my childhood, before coming to Canada from Pakistan, there were many people living in our home and it was not apparent to us—as children— who was in charge. My paternal grandfather was highly respected and people used to go to him for advice. Since my mother and my aunt were still studying, my grandmother and a caregiver took care of us. Within the household our grandmother was in charge, whereas for the outside world it was our grandfather.

My father is a very open-minded person and is not religiously observant. He never imposed his views on my mother, who enjoyed the freedom to study and work. He wanted all his children to get an education and have professional careers—boys and girls. The only thing he was peculiar about was when we were late coming home at night. He was much stricter with me than with my younger brother. He did not want me to hang out with boys. This was not an issue with my brother. He never asked him about girls but was more concerned about him doing well at school.

Although decision-making was made jointly and my mother’s insight was valued, my father still took the lead. For instance, if buying and selling property was jointly decided, buying cars was his sole decision. As for us, we made our own decisions. Our parents knew our friends and never imposed restrictions on us. I was very lucky to have such amazing parents. They were not overprotective, but gave us enough security for us to know that someone cared.

Marriage, obedience and economic roles

I got married when I was 26. I met my husband the previous year while studying for my MA in Canada. He was in the third year of his undergraduate degree and was teaching Arabic. Initially I was the sole breadwinner. We shared responsibilities. I earned the money and he kept track of the expenses simply because he was better at it. Once we had a child, he did not take part in childcare. Although he was loving and playful with our daughter, he did not share the household chores. I did all of it, taking care of the child, cooking, cleaning, etc. Later, I had live-in help, so then neither of us had to do it. During the first seven years while my husband was a student and I the breadwinner, neither of us was the head of household. I do not know what he thought but I did not feel it. It was not until my husband finished his education and had the ability to earn a living that he started to take more responsibility.

He had been working for eight months or so when I got a promotion at work. He did not react much when I told him. A week later he told me that he did not like living in Toronto and would like to move to London. I had just received a promotion and I could not just leave. My husband asked me to come with him and also to promise that I’d never work outside the house again. I told him that I have been working outside the home pretty well all my life. But he insisted and said, “As your husband you must obey me.” He never talked about obeying or anything like this before. So, when he gave me this ultimatum, I responded that I do not have to obey anyone. And then he retorted that in Islam the wife had to obey her husband.

The next day my husband went to my father and related what happened. My parents felt completely betrayed by him: how could he have such expectations when I was financially supporting him and paid for his studies? I did not see it coming either, as he had never behaved like this before. I think his family had a lot to do with it. His mother had coddled him. He expected the same from his wife and I never did that. I think he probably wasn’t happy in our marriage and he used to complain to his family. I was definitely an anomaly in his family—none of the other women worked.

I think he needed to be affirmed as the head of the household now that he was earning. When I was the primary breadwinner, he could not ask me not to work since I was supporting him. He must have been very unhappy to be in a subordinate type of a role. I was earning and because of that we could afford a comfortable life. He did not even work in the summers and never offered to repay me. Even after he started working, I still carried most of the financial burden. I still paid the mortgage on the new house we had bought and had paid for the two houses we owned before that. My husband was still paying his student loans even though I had contributed a lot to his tuition fees.

Divorce and polygamy

His demands were very unreasonable so I left him. I had never lived in a household where the men said, “Don’t work”. All the female role-models in my family were educated, worked and enjoyed freedom of action. After that conversation, my husband left to live with his sister over the Christmas break and I went to visit a friend in the United States. A day after both of us came back, my husband told me that he had something to say and pronounced three times, “I divorce you”. I asked him, “What’s that?” and he said, “That is how you divorce Islamically, so now we are divorced”. I replied, “No, we are not; my understanding of divorce is that there is a period of reconciliation, and that when it does happen, there are witnesses”. He said, “No, we are now divorced”, and he moved into another room of the house. We then put the house up for sale, and he left after that.

The next day we had a discussion about our daughter and custody. He said, “Well, you are the mother, and the child should stay with the mother”. Although we had been Islamically divorced, I wanted a legal divorce. So I went to see a lawyer to draft a separation agreement, including custody and child support. He then reversed himself and asked for joint custody while at the same time negotiating child support. A few months later, my daughter went to visit her father and came back very upset because her cousins told her that he had another wife.

After that event, my husband called me twice, saying that he missed me and that he would like to work something out for the sake of our daughter. I confronted him with the existence of a second wife and he admitted it. I asked him how he could marry another wife while we were still legally married. He said that they were Islamically married. This was crazy. I asked him to not try to befriend me anymore; from now on we will only concern ourselves with our child. Interestingly, one of his sisters, much later in life, was in a situation where the husband married a second wife while still married to her. Her family was very upset, up in arms, that their daughter was treated in such a way. With me, the issue was not only that I was from a different ethnic background but also that I was not a ‘devoted wife’. Our families’ ways of thinking were very different.

Post-divorce and the loopholes of legal pluralism

The legal divorce came through a year later; his second wife also wanted us to formalize things. While we were negotiating a settlement (custody and child support) we kept going back and forth over the amount of money. In Islam, if the woman earns money, she gets to keep it. But under Canadian law, it is 50-50. So suddenly he became Canadian and wanted his share. We had to put the house up for sale though he had not invested any of his money in it. The down-payment and the mortgage were all mine. Once the house was sold, he said that he would give his share in lieu of support payments for our daughter, until the money runs out, based on a certain amount every month. We never signed the separation agreement because my husband convinced me that we could work this out ourselves. This was a mistake. A year later the child support money ran out and he never made regular support payments after that.

If I exercised my rights fully, I could have gotten a huge financial settlement. I put him through school; I could have sued for his practice and for child support. I did not do any of those things because, thank God, I had the wherewithal to support my child and myself. But for my daughter’s sake, I should have. He did not meet his obligations vis-à-vis our daughter. He has not met his commitments in terms of visiting rights. My daughter would be waiting for him, looking out the window, and he would call to say that he could not make it. When she got older, she used to take the bus to visit him. He barely gave her anything when she got married. When she was studying in England, I paid all the tuition, and he paid a little bit of her living expenses. Yet he still thinks that he has the right to exert control over her life.

I think I did not have a deep affection and love for him, but marriage was something I was supposed to do. I think that is wrong; but I have a wonderful child out of it. I also regret not following through on the legal aspect, since I feel I deprived my daughter of what was due to her from her father—and not just in terms of finances. I feel that he does not value her because she is my daughter. She has a lot of me in her, ethnically and culturally. She is also very strong and is also a feminist. He always tries to assert his authority and she pushes back.

I feel really good and am thankful to God for my life. God has given me the strength to raise my child and be happy. I think that the spouses should decide how they are going to share the responsibilities. There should be no real definition of roles. I just believe that each person has his or her strengths and they are not defined by gender. Responsibilities should be shared depending on what the strengths of each person are. If some people love cooking, then they should take on that responsibility. If they both love it, they can share it. I do not believe that you could ever achieve complete equality between partners in a marriage. That is just not how human beings are. You end up with a couple where one just may give way to the other.

 

Gender Equality

 
Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits gender-based discrimination. However, Canadian women remain poorer than men, more vulnerable to all forms of violence and are underrepresented in leadership positions. Although violence against women, which encompasses physical, emotional, psychological and financial abuse, is treated as a serious crime in Canada, it remains a pervasive issue with devastating social and economic implications. According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, every six days a Canadian woman is killed by her intimate partner, and nearly 50% of women have experienced at least one incident of physical/sexual violence since the age of 16; a mere 10% of all sexual assaults are reported to the police. In recent years, Canada did not do as well in terms of women’s participation in politics, ranking 45th out of 190 countries in the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s world classification (2014). However, in November 2015, for the first time in Canada’s history, the new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, named an ethnically diverse and gender-balanced cabinet with the appointment of 15 women and 15 men.

 
 

Political & Legal System

 

Canada is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy based on the accountability of the executive to the duly elected assemblies. The Canadian legal system derives from English Law and the French civil code brought to the continent in the 17th and 18th centuries by colonists. In 1982, the Constitution was patriated together with the Charter of Rights and Freedom. The latter guarantees basic human rights and is now entrenched as part of the supreme law of Canada. The Charter of Rights and Freedom guarantees equal rights, opportunities and conditions for women and men in all areas of life. Canada acceded to CEDAW in 1981 and ratified the Optional Protocol to CEDAW in 2003. However, formal protection under the law does not always lead to its implementation. Some communities insist that religious freedoms should supersede women’s equality rights.

Canada also has a Multiculturalism Act (1985) that articulates the rights of cultural and religious groups within the framework of the Charter. It provides minority groups with protection and permission to negotiate and develop an identity that reconciles their religious identity, including Islamic traditions and beliefs, with that of their country. For some Canadians, there is tension between the Charter and the Multiculturalism Act. Some feel that the Multiculturalism Act is creating divisions between different groups, and the province of Quebec prefers to use the term ‘inter-culturalism’ rather than ‘multiculturalism’.

In late 2003, an organization called the Ontario Islamic Institute of Civil Justice planned to establish a ‘Shari‘ah Court’ that would offer legally binding arbitration using Muslim family laws. This was legally possible because the Arbitration Act (1991) was open to the use of other laws in the domestic sphere. After research into Muslim family laws, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women held meetings with several sister organizations which resulted in a coalition of over 50 NGOs, supported by labour groups, fighting against the application of any religious laws—whether derived from Muslim, Jewish, Christian or other religions—in the secular system. The coalition, which was called ‘No Religious Arbitration’, stated that based on guarantees of equality in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, women should not be treated differently under the country’s laws. In September 2005, the Premier of Ontario Province announced that no religious laws would be used in family matters. Some laws had to be revised to achieve this.