In this occasion we interviewed Antelak al-Mutawakeel, an academic and a civil society activist, whose focus of research and work are on youth in Yemen, education and gender.
Antelak al-Mutawakeel, professor at the University of Sana’a and head of the Girls World Communication Center.
She graduated from the literature program in the English Department of the University of Sana’a, where she currently teaches. Al-Mutawakeel completed her doctoral program in Holland thanks to the ‘gender scholarship’ through the Dutch embassy that was aimed at helping women to study and have a family at the same time. In 1998 while she was still studying, she started to develop the idea of what later on would become the Girls World Communication Center (GWCC), a non-governmental organization that works towards increasing youth participation in social, political and economic aspects of society.
Yemen Observer (YO)- What can you tell us about the Vice and Virtue Committee?
Antelak al-Mutawakeel (AAM): -It is certainly a very recent issue which shocked us all. I first heard about the VVC through the news and then I started to connect what people had been saying about groups acting in defense of virtue in cities like Hodeidah. The VVC is really not a clear organization or a clear issue at all. What exactly are their principles? I believe what they are doing is not clear.
Are they going to fight corruption at the political level? If they would do so, they would actually do something good. Personally, I am not against “virtue,” this is something we all agree with, but what we all need to understand better is what is this Virtue Authority? Who are they? What do they really stand for? Are they official or not? None of this is clear. Even the government’s approach to the VVC has been ambiguous: at the beginning the VVC had the blessing from the government but lately we started to read in many newspapers that the government and the president attacked them.
I just read a couple of days ago that al-Eryani declared that the government is not with the VVC while not too long ago the President was allowing them to celebrate their first conference. We, citizens, do not know what VVC is and what their plans are for the future. We all are against vice and with virtue, but we need to understand what this VVC is and who and what are they going to fight, otherwise it can be very misleading.
YO: - Why do you think the VVC emerges now, at this precise political moment?
AAM: - Because they are clearly a political organization, although who is really behind it is not clear. This can be explained by the simple fact that they emerged all of a sudden. They are not a civil society organization built with time and out of social work. At the same time this organization seems to follow the Saudi model (The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which is financed and supported by the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and commonly referred to as the “religious police” of that country).
Saudi Arabia is now realizing that it needs to get rid of this model, so why would we copy a model that proved to be a failure? If we are to fight vice we should start with poverty and corruption. We should look at those problems that affect the entire society and not each person at the individual and private level. In any case, what is true is that every time we have upcoming elections this kind of thing happens so as to deviate the attention from the real problems. For instance, in the 1999 presidential elections the Women’s Studies Center (University of Sana’a) was attacked and “gender” became a big issue.
They created a big discussion about whether or not “gender” was an appropriate term. Now gender is accepted everywhere and the Center included the term in its name, becoming a Gender Studies Center. Women or gender and religion are hot issues; especially religion is a sensitive issue that affects everyone, educated and non-educated people alike. It is very easy to use religion or the ideas of virtue and vice to divert the attention from other issues, because anyone can connect with them and doing so before the elections is a clear political movement. There are political reasons behind the VVC and for example, when they focus on prostitution, we should first look at the reasons behind it because prostitution is an outcome of poverty, and poverty and corruption are more important problems. In addition to this, we already have laws against prostitution or alcohol; we just need the laws to work and not a Virtue Authority going after individuals.
YO: -What is your opinion about the fatwa they issued against a quota system to allocate seats to women in electoral bodies?
AAM: - The only thing I can do is laugh at it. Really, to say that the quota is haram (forbidden in Islam) just makes me laugh. When I heard about it I thought to myself ‘this cannot be said by scholars!’ The dangerous thing is that they play with the fact that everyone will engage with this because the scholars signed it. But even this issue is again not clear, some people say the fatwa is valid, some others say is not. The whole issue is vague and made to be vague in purpose. Making things vague, making people engage in conflict with each other, making the newspapers talk about it, is all aimed at diverting the attention from the real problems. That is why I think we should not focus on the VVC.
I will not fight against them, is not worth it, and I will just continue doing my work. A political agreement created the VVC, but once everything is calmed nothing will happen, it will be like with the word “gender” which now is no longer a problem and everyone uses it, even in small villages. Now they are using religion for political purposes and that is not Islam. They are limiting Islam to what it is not, limiting us, whereas Islam is about understanding and doing intellectual work to understand things around us.
YO: - Many women’s organizations have reacted against this authority and against the fatwa, do you agree with their actions?
AAM: - I have not really discussed this with other women from these organizations so I cannot really say much about it. In any case, I think women should not busy themselves with this issue and we should not make it bigger than what it actually is. This is just a game, a political game that the President supports one day and attacks the afterwards.
YO:- The government first gave the green light to the VVC and now it critiques it, it first enabled them to exist but then the VVC issued a fatwa against the quota that is part of the government’s program, what is your interpretation of these events?
AAM: - Maybe the government does not want this quota system to pass as a law. The government has been promising women so many things, it promised the quota but this promise never became real, neither with the government nor with the opposition. Now with the VVC issuing this fatwa against the quota system, the government can say that is not because of them and thus put the responsibility on someone else’s shoulders. They always use women for political purposes and I just wish they would use something different because playing with women or religion is very dangerous. Look at what happened in Sa’adah, with a war that lasted some five years. I hope politicians start choosing carefully what they use in their campaigns from now on, because using women can provoke violence against women as well.
YO: - What is your point of view regarding the quota system?
AAM: -I think it can be useful but only for a short or limited period of time. Also it needs to be accompanied by other empowerment tools. Women can already compete with men, but what is necessary is an authority will for this to become real. Our society is ready for this and for a lot more, no one says ‘no’ when a woman gets elected, the problem is not the society. Yemen has a society that praises its queens more than any king (in reference to the queens Arwa and Bilquis).
We are proud of having a history of powerful women and there are no problems with the society accepting women in power. When you look at who says ‘no’ to women in power the answer is the authority, the government. If they change, everything could change. So many civil society organizations are led by women and there has never been any social or cultural opposition to this, why then these women are not in the government? The government until now has not done any serious work to let women occupy higher positions. A quota could be good for this, but it can not be a system that lasts forever. I would never want to have a post of power because I am a woman; I want to have it because I am a person that deserves it, that is qualified for it. Usually the society is blamed for this but in the end, society or culture is just used as scapegoats, the real problem lies within the people in power.
- Yemen Observer
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