SINFUL BY CONSTITUTION: NAHEED'S HUM GUNAHGAR AURTEIN AS A LEGAL-FEMINIST READING OF THE 1973 CONSTITUTION OF PAKISTAN
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/4bb44844Keywords:
1973 Constitution of Pakistan, Feminist Legal Theory, Hudood Ordinances, Hum Gunahgar Aurtein, Islamisation, Kishwar Naheed, Legal Feminism, Muslim Feminism, Urdu Poetry, Women's RightsAbstract
Kishwar Naheed's Hum Gunahgar Aurtein which was translated into English by Rukhsana Ahmad (1991), and dubbed as We Sinful Women, is hardly read as a legal document. In this article I am going to suggest that it is exactly that. The poem speaks out against the Islamisation campaign by General Zia ul Haq, which by 1979 had turned the category of female sinfulness into law. The study draws upon feminist jurisprudence, a feminist theory of law (Catharine MacKinnon), wounded attachments (Wendy Brown) and Muslim legal feminism (Ziba Mir-Hosseini), to read Naheed's poem as what the study labels a 'constitutional autopsy' or a literary ascription of the internal contradictions of the Constitution of Pakistan of 1973. The simultaneous claims of gender equality in context of Article 25 and 34 of the Constitution and the subordination of all law to Islamic injunctions in the context of Article 227, created a foundational paradox in the Constitution: Women were promised citizenship with their bodies, testimony and freedom at the mercy of the state all the time. This ambivalence in the constitution was rendered into reality through the promulgation of the Hudood Ordinances (1979) and the Qanun-e-Shahadat (1984). Naheed's poem denies that degradation: not to the state for redemption but by revealing the human hand behind the state's "divine decrees. This refusal, the article suggests, is a feminist counter-jurisprudence: an alternative law discourse from outside the document which created the 'sinful woman' as a legal category. The study is a genuine contribution to the field of feminist literary studies in Pakistan as it introduces for the first time the Urdu women's poetry in an analytical frame with constitutional law.
Downloads
References
Ahmad, R. (Ed.). (1991). We sinful women: Contemporary Urdu feminist poetry. The Women's Press.
Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge.
Akhtar, S. (2018). Women and the state in Pakistan: Legal frameworks and feminist responses. Oxford University Press Pakistan.
Ali, S. S. (2000). Gender and human rights in Islam and international law: Equal before Allah, unequal before man? Kluwer Law International.
Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In Lenin and philosophy and other essays (pp. 127 186). Monthly Review Press.
An-Na'im, A. A. (1990). Toward an Islamic reformation: Civil liberties, human rights, and international law. Syracuse University Press.
Baines, B., & Rubio-Marín, R. (Eds.). (2005). The gender of constitutional jurisprudence. Cambridge University Press.
Brown, W. (1995). States of injury: Power and freedom in late modernity. Princeton University Press.
Cheema, M. H. (2016). The politics of the common man: The Federal Shariat Court and the criminalisation of blasphemy in Pakistan.
International Journal of Law and Society, 39(1), 21 49.
Chiba, M. (Ed.). (1986). Asian indigenous law in interaction with received law. KPI.
Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and power. Stanford University Press.
Dworkin, A. (1981). Pornography: Men possessing women. Perigee Books.
Engineer, A. A. (1992). The rights of women in Islam. St. Martin's Press.
Farrukhi, A. (2005). Urdu fiction and the Pakistani state. Annual of Urdu Studies, 20, 45 67.
Gardezi, F., & Sadiq, J. (1992). Women in Pakistan: Economic and social conditions. Vanguard Books.
Haeri, S. (1989). Law of desire: Temporary marriage in Shi'i Iran. Syracuse University Press.
Haeri, S. (2002). No shame for the sun: Lives of professional Pakistani women. Syracuse University Press.
Iqtidar, H. (2011). Secularizing Islamists? Jama'at-e-Islami and Jama'at-ud-Da'wa in urban Pakistan. University of Chicago Press.
Jahangir, A., & Jilani, H. (1990). The Hudood Ordinances: A divine sanction? Rhotas Books.
Jalal, A. (1991). The convenience of subservience: Women and the state of Pakistan. In D. Kandiyoti (Ed.), Women, Islam and the state (pp. 77 114). Macmillan.
Kandiyoti, D. (Ed.). (1991). Women, Islam and the state. Macmillan.
Khan, S. (2006). Zina, transnational feminism, and the moral regulation of Pakistani women. University of British Columbia Press.
MacKinnon, C. A. (1987). Feminism unmodified: Discourses on life and law. Harvard University Press.
MacKinnon, C. A. (1989). Toward a feminist theory of the state. Harvard University Press.
Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton University Press.
Masood, E. (2009). Science and Islam: A history. Icon Books.
Metcalf, B. D. (Ed.). (1996). Making Muslim space in North America and Europe. University of California Press.
Mir-Hosseini, Z. (1999). Islam and gender: The religious debate in contemporary Iran. Princeton University Press.
Mir-Hosseini, Z. (2003). The construction of gender in Islamic legal thought and strategies for reform. Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, 1(1), 1 28.
Moghadam, V. M. (Ed.). (1994). Gender and national identity: Women and politics in Muslim societies. Zed Books.
Mohanty, C. T. (1988). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30, 61 88.
Mufti, M. (1990). Angan terha. Sang-e-Meel Publications.
Naheed, K. (1994). Hum gunahgar aurtein [We sinful women]. In Kulliyat: Dasht-e-qais mein Laila (p. 972). Sang-e-Meel Publications.
Patel, R. (1991). Socio-economic political status and women and law in Pakistan. Faiza Publishers.
Rashid, A. (2008). Descent into chaos: The United States and the failure of nation building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. Viking.
Rehman, N. (2010). Kishwar Naheed: A biography. Oxford University Press Pakistan.
Rouse, S. (2004). Shifting body politics: Gender, nation, state in Pakistan. Women Unlimited.
Shamsie, M. (Ed.). (1997). A dragonfly in the sun: An anthology of Pakistani writing in English. Oxford University Press.
Siddiqui, D. M. (1996). Taslima Nasreen and others: The contest over gender in Bangladesh. In H. Bodman & N. Tohidi (Eds.), Women in Muslim societies (pp. 205 228). Lynne Rienner.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271 313). University of Illinois Press.
Wadud, A. (1999). Qur'an and woman: Rereading the sacred text from a woman's perspective. Oxford University Press.
Women's Action Forum. (1984). Statement on the Qanun-e-Shahadat. Women's Action Forum.
Yasmeen, S. (2008). Understanding Muslim identities: From perceived relative exclusion to inclusion. Centre for Muslim States and Societies.
Zaman, M. Q. (2002). The ulama in contemporary Islam: Custodians of change. Princeton University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Misha Ali, Sanniya Sara Batool (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
