Religious Affairs Minister Noorul Haq Qacri has written to Prime Minister Imran Khan asking him to redesignate March 8, designated International Women’s Day by the United Nations, Hijab Day. This has caused concern amongst women’s organizations and activists, because he also said that Women’s Day Women Marches raised objectionable and unIslamic slogans. Women serve a certain amount of latitude because a number of issues facing women have ot ben solved in Pakistan. These do not involve solely reproductive health, or even honour killings and acid atacks, but economic ones like equal pay for equal work. Women in Pakistan, like women all over the world, may have come a long way, but there is still much to be done. It may also be true, as Mr Qadri would like to say, that Islam has given many righjts to women, but even by that standard, Pakistani women have a distance to travel, and Women’s Day sems to be thetime that distance is to be covered.
Setting up a separate Hijab Day to clash with International Women’s Day seems to be about as successful as earlier attempts to stop Valentine’s Day commemorations and replace them with a Hijab Day. The Hijab Day proposal seems a sort of obedience to the same sort of impulse that it critiques: it celebrates another Day, one which is only marked in Pakistan. As Mr Qadri said, it refers to the ban on Hijab in some Indian schools.
It also creates an image of Pakistani womanhood that is in contrast with reality as well as where the majority of Pakistani women want to go. Women’s Day is about aspirations, and Pakistani women’s aspirations are in line with the rest of the world. True, it should not be used by some activists merely to get a rise out of the more conservative, but still, the Aurat Marches which are organized to mark the occasion must not become an opportunity for anyone to breach the peace. The state must ensure adequate security to make the occasion one where there is a clash of ideas, not of persons.
