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Reviewed by:
  • Zina, Transnational Feminism, and the Moral Regulation of Pakistani Women
  • Shahnaz Rouse
Zina, Transnational Feminism, and the Moral Regulation of Pakistani Women Shahnaz Khan. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006. Pp. viii, 152. ISBN 978-0-7748-1286-3.

Shahnaz Khan's book tackles the vexed subject of representation, in this case addressing questions of the patriarchal law of zina (which defines and censures "illicit sex") in Pakistan, a law that was promulgated in 1979 under the rubric of the Hadood Ordinances. She argues that because of the ongoing dominant stereotypical renderings of the "Muslim" world in the "West" in general, there is a tendency to necessarily relate women's oppression "over there" to Islam and to construe women's subordination as universal. This tendency, Khan argues, applies even to critical works by "native" informants such as Taslima Nasreen and, as she puts it quite explicitly, writers like herself who live in the "first" world (this, in Khan's case, being Canada). Khan's primary concern centers around issues of representation, at multiple levels. In effect, she echoes Spivak's now decades-old question, "Can the subaltern speak?" Khan's treatment of this question suggests, rightly in my estimation, that any discussion of women's oppression, including women incarcerated in Pakistan, is invariably read to reposition the superiority of the West and its interlocutors over the women who are the subject of concern. This, of course, places a tremendous burden and responsibility on those of us concerned and writing about the inequities of women in diverse parts of the world.

Khan argues that when speaking about women's oppression in a country such as Pakistan, we have to be alert to this dilemma. At the same time, however, she clearly feels that we cannot be rendered inert because of this tendency to reappropriate women's voices in a self-serving fashion. Nor does such a possibility mean there is no way out. And this is the second main point Khan makes in her work: she argues that context is absolutely essential. We need to provide the political and historical context in which this oppression—including that pertaining to zina laws in Pakistan—functions. Furthermore, we need to provide the reader with an understanding that her life and those of women such as [End Page 195] the ones who are the subject of this book, are interconnected and not separated from each other. In other words, what happens here is relevant there, and vice versa. This ability to see the context and the interconnections is what will enable the possibility of a transnational feminism instead of an us/them separation in which we speak for and about other women, and will produce a feminism that positions us alongside the women with whom we express solidarity, and not above them.

Having laid out the grounds for her argument, Khan then moves on to discuss zina itself. In her Introduction she clarifies the meaning of zina and its very particular interpretation in the Pakistani context. When she returns to the topic in a later chapter, she begins by tracing the historical context in which the Hadood Ordinances, of which the Zina Ordinance is a constitutive element, emerged in Pakistan, relating it to the military regime of Zia-ul-Haq (1977–88) and its attendant suppression of women in the name of "Islam." Khan's own position here is clear: she sees the institutionalization of the Zina Ordinance in 1979 as the product of an oppressive regime trying to garner moral authority for itself, and doing so by preying on the most oppressed group in society, that is women. In this section of her work, Khan tries to evolve a theory of the (Pakistani) state in which she argues that it is the very corruption of the state that necessitates its reliance on morality as a political prop and means of power. Furthermore, she suggests that given the relative impotence of the state to control and regulate daily life, it does so by regulating the moral behavior of its "most vulnerable citizens," that is illiterate and impoverished women.

Having conceded a certain vulnerability to women now residing in prisons or shelters, when Khan moves...

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