Interpreting Islam and Women's Rights

The engendering of Muslim civil society is raising profound questions regarding women's social roles and rights, resulting in conflicting images particularly concerning what constitutes women's rights, who is to define what these rights are, where responsibility lies for ensuring these rights, and the role states are playing in articulating and clarifying what is acceptable and unacceptable within a Muslim context. This article investigates Pakistan's response to having become a State Party to the United Nations' Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). It focuses on the debate now underway to define what constitutes discrimination against women, how the state might act to eliminate discrimination against women not only in the legal sense but also in the social sense, the roles being played by various groups within the women's movement to facilitate the process of adherence to CEDAW, as well as other challenges being faced as the Pakistan state attempts to eliminate discrimination against women. This underscores the challenge of transforming prevailing Islamic interpretations of women's legal rights into ones acceptable to local mores and values while adhering to the requirements of CEDAW.