I felt the first premonition on the night of “July 36.” In a post-rebellion Dhaka, festive streets, no certainty of what lay beyond that night—but hope permeated the air that perhaps we could finally recalibrate and aim for a dignified future. My partner and I were on a celebratory rickshaw ride when another rickshaw puller beside us, still elated and reeling from the uprising, announced loudly, “Finally, the country has gotten rid of the two prostitutes. Now a man will come to power and show how things are run.” Not willing to dampen my spirits, I ignored it. I was well-versed in such run-of-the-mill rhetoric in Bangladesh. A woman accused of wrongdoing has her body and character put on trial before her competence and motives are questioned. Before calling her corrupt or inept, you attack her character, you say something anatomical, something sexually profane. In a passing moment of naivete, I told myself all that was about to change.

But here we are, less than a week from an election, watching that same logic harden into political doctrine. Let’s cut to the chase here. The ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami, in a recent interview with Al Jazeera, admitted that no woman can lead his party, justifying it with religion and her childbearing capacity. Talk about the ultimate political paradox: the capacity to create life makes one unfit to govern. Let’s unpack the ridiculousness a little. Women can support the party and campaign for it, but leadership is to remain within a men-only lounge. Instead, Jamaat is poised to knight women as Rotnogorva, jewel-bearing citizens, for their ability to conceive and raise children. Motherhood is to be declared sacred and a national service, while simultaneously being used as evidence of political incompetence. A woman is celebrated for her biology only until she somehow threatens male authority. 

Let’s not forget that this is a country that has spent most of its political life under the authority of women prime ministers. Jamaat’s sudden discovery that Islam forbids female leadership sounds more than just an oversight on their part. Jamaat formed strategic alliances with Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in 1996 and, again, formally joined the BNP-led coalition government under Khaleda Zia in 2001. In both cases, Jamaat functioned within a political system headed by a woman, without any divine wrath befalling the country. It seems that religious objections are being raised only now, when female leadership no longer needs to be accommodated or, rather, exploited.

In the context of the Muslim world, this argument sounds increasingly parochial. Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has previously elected a woman president and continues to place women in senior political and administrative roles. In Malaysia, even Islamist parties operating within a conservative framework have accommodated women’s participation in parliament, cabinet, and public life, rather than declaring it divinely impermissible. And Pakistan—riven by religious politics and contradiction—has produced women prime ministers, parliamentarians, judges, and activists without imposing a blanket theological ban on women’s authority. Islam, in these societies, has not collapsed under the presence of female leadership. Religion is not the factor here; the point of contention is the political will to loosen control over women’s lives.

Instead, it was proposed to truncate eight hours of work to five (and promises were made to pay for the three hours they would lose), as if that was ever the problem, not the unpaid eternal shift waiting at home. The household does not close at noon, nor do children clock out. Let’s not forget their claim that a woman is safest inside her home—the place where not only labour remains disproportionate and unpaid, but also where, statistically, women are susceptible to extreme domestic violence. Isn’t it even more ironic that women are having to be protected from the very species that have assigned themselves as protectors? 

Jamaat’s solution to women’s insecurity is simply confinement. Over time, this produces something resembling “political Stockholm syndrome.” A woman is taught to identify with the very doctrine that suppresses her. This is the logic now being echoed by the party’s women members. When they say they have made peace with men being “managers” of women, they mean they are okay with men supervising, evaluating and disciplining women and their way of life. A manager is necessary only if the one being “managed” cannot be trusted with self-rule. 

Jamaat-e-Islami has been trying to push its women empowerment policies, but so far, the well-marketed package has simply been a lazy copout. This handbook has men becoming managers, women becoming wards, and toilets pink. This is straight out of the patriarchal playbook, where one woman is lauded for her passive acceptance of suffering through her loyalty to male authority figures, while another who seeks to better her lot through self-assertion and the pursuit of ambitions is vilified as a nefarious agitator, or simply a prostitute. 

In a now-deleted post on the X handle of the Jamaat ameer, all working women were compared to prostitutes, prompting widespread criticism and outrage before he claimed the social media account had been hacked. The controversy took a striking turn when the Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police detained an assistant programmer from the ICT section of Bangabhaban in connection with the incident, saying they were investigating. However, without getting into much technicalities about how the account was retrieved so quickly or why they had to wait for the public backlash before announcing that the account had been compromised, the whole debacle was a stark reminder their official rhetoric remains pretty much the same. A woman who leaves home to work is hovering around moral bankruptcy.Except that the whole country’s economy is propped up against the backs of women who bleed, give birth, and then return to factories that run on 14-hour shifts. What an arresting notion that their vulnerable bodies do not disqualify them from endless labour, just power!

I am always either a mother or a sister, but never an individual with equal opportunities and rights. My worth is derived from the sum of all my relational values or my capacity to procreate. This reminds me of last year’s moral panic and mayhem when the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission submitted its reform proposals. Demanding equal rights was equated to an “attack on Islam” and “family values” by the Islamist parties, followed by vitriolic attacks and threats of nationwide protests. 

There is, in fact, a running joke among historians that masculinity is always in crisis; it looks like it is under threat once more, but this time with religious gravity. If going out to work to earn my bread, ensure my financial security, and practise my own agency challenges a male chauvinistic worldview, then so be it. I will get ready for work every morning and venture out. I will make sure to do my bit to be worthy of the great terror my autonomous existence inspires and wear these insults as a badge of honour.

Iqra L Qamari is a writer and a policy and partnership consultant.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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