guardianship, and inheritance – and have thus largely
ignored the social, economic, and political entitle-
ments of women cutting across class and commu-
nity, with grave implications for women’s rights as
equal citizens of the state.
Women in Pakistan are now debating the ter-
rain on which their struggle for equal citizenship
rights can be most effectively waged. A first step in
that direction is a forceful rejection of the false
dichotomy between the colonial public and com-
munitarian private, which has provided the foun-
dation for a military-bureaucratic public and a
male-defined private sphere in Pakistan. Such
a system affords protection of a sort to domesti-
cated middle- to upper-class women while leaving
women facing both class and gender oppression
outside the purview of the discourse on rights.
Violence against women has become a defining fea-
ture of an imploding authoritarian state and an
exploding anarchic society. Tinkering with minor
improvements in personal law leaves the entire
field of political, economic, and social rights open
to manipulation by the self-appointed guardians of
an Islamic moral order.Bibliography
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——, Hysterics, harems and houris. Cultural and psycho-
logical reflections on women, sexuality and Islam, in
D. S. Ahmad, Women and religion, iv, Lahore 2000,
167-207.
R. Ahmad (trans.), Beyond belief.Contemporary feminist
Urdu poetry, Lahore n.d.
S. S. Ikramullah, From purdah to parliament, New York
1998.
——,Behind the veil. Ceremonies, customs and colour,
New York 1992.
A. Jalal, Convenience of subservience. Women and the
State of Pakistan, in Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.), Women,
Islam and the state, London 1991.
——, Self and sovereignty. Individual and community in
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B. Metcalf, Reading and writing about Muslim women in
British India, in Z. Hasan (ed.), Forging identities.
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G. Minault, Secluded scholars. Women’s education and
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H. Papanek and G. Minault (eds.), Separate worlds.
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seclusion to politics, New York 1998.
F. Shaheed and K. Mumtaz (eds.), Women of Pakistan.
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women in the Old City of Lahore, Boulder, Colo. 1992.Ayesha Jalal730 secularism
TurkeySecularism in Turkey has been closely intertwined
with discourses and practices of Westernization,
modernity, and nationalism. Secularization efforts
date back to the nineteenth century, when the
Ottoman state granted complete equality before the
law to all subjects regardless of their religious creed.
The subsequent modernization reforms gradually
contributed to the emergence of Turkish proto-
nationalisms at the end of the century. Although the
nationalists had different stands on the degree and
the role of religion in public life (Hanio(lu 1995),
they generally agreed on the urgent need to mod-
ernize the state as well as the society for the sake of
imperial survival. Eventually, the collapse of the
empire in the First World War (1914–18) and the
consequent victory in the War of Independence
(1919–22) led to the crystallization and hegemony
of Kemalist nationalism.
Kemalist nationalism constituted the radicaliza-
tion of previous secularization attempts, primarily
because it aimed at eradicating the legacy of the
Ottoman practices that were partly legitimized by
the Islamic Caliphate. Shortly after the proclama-
tion of the Turkish Republic (1923), the Kemalists
abolished the Caliphate (1924), closed down the
Islamic brotherhoods (1925), adopted a modified
version of the Swiss Civil Code (1926), and
changed the script from Arabic to Latin (1928). It is
apparent from the scope of the reforms that they
aimed not only to transform the political structure,
but also to rearrange social relations. The reforms
did not, however, intend to directly challenge peo-
ple’s identification with Islam but to secularize
everyday conduct with minimum popular resist-
ance from the predominantly Muslim citizenry.
More specifically, the Kemalists, like the late nine-
teenth-century modernizers, aimed at making reli-
gion subservient to the state’s interests (Turhan
1991, Deringil 1998). They redefined the proper
forms of religious practices in relation to their sec-
ularist ideals, frequently appealing to these novel
concepts in consolidating their nationalist agenda,
and strictly prohibited other groups from auto-
nomously employing religious signs at state institu-
tions. Islam was therefore confined to the private
sphere and its entry to the public realm was deter-
mined by the secular nationalist standards (Tar-
hanlı 1993, Yavuz 2000, Keskin-Kozat 2003).
The nationalist co-optation of religion is best
illustrated in the case of women’s rights and the
regulations concerning veiling. Women actively
participated in the nationalist struggle by raising