Suppression of Women OR Qutbi Prejudice?

Dear Mr. Qutbuddin cc. Dr. Tahera Qutbuddin (Professor University of Chicago),

You have continuously tried to smear the reputation of Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin for his continuation to ensure the preservation and strength of the family unit within Dawoodi Bohra culture. Instead of looking at things from a Dawoodi Bohra socially centric viewpoint – you, your family members, and even you daughter Dr. Tahera Qutbuddin who should be the last person to do so, all catered to Islamophobic, right-winged, and bigoted attacks on Syedna by pairing Dawoodi Bohra culture and treatment of women with Islamic extremism. First of all – let me tell you – your chosen tactics and their cruel and demoralizing intentions are very clear to anyone with a brain. Secondly, Dawoodi Bohra women are not suppressed, oppressed, or made to sit in the house and just know how to make roti and sew as you and your family have so deliberately tried to paint a false picture on the community. Making roti, building a home, and raising a family are just treasured and cherished values we hold as a community and culture. We surely don’t need you or your family to try and tell us what should be valued when it comes to family since your daughters have broken more homes than they have built as have your actions of trying to tear the community believers apart and take advantage of devotion. This is why I want to show you simply these two cases below of successful women,

Durriya Badani is a Dawoodi Bohra woman and proud follower of Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin and Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin TUS.

I have heard many things about this woman and none of them echo any hint of suppression. She worked for the US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, where she had constant contact with the secretary. She has worked in the U.S. State Department all over the world. She has done all types of consulting work regarding Islamic culture and women. She currently works in several organizations improving US relations with the Islamic world. You can see and hear her here on this you tube video –

She did all of the above wearing a rida. It seems impossible – but I feel that she does it and her personality and principles, coupled with her success and education is how she comes off to people. She doesn’t look suppressed to me, does she? She doesn’t seem to lack an education. However, she does seem to adhere to the principles set out by Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin and Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin. She regularly attends Ashara and is a great example of the spectrum of Dawoodi Bohra women. You openly choose to disregard people like her and her success. Women in the Dawoodi Bohra community are diverse – but you paint them with a blanketed bigoted picture. You know better than that.

On the flip side, we have your Qutbi Bohra example, your eminent daughter, the Princess Dr. Tahera Qutbuddin.

She is a renowned scholar. Received her PhD from Harvard. She taught at the University of Utah before receiving tenure at U Chicago. She regularly publishes and gives amazing talks and teaches as well on Islam, Islamic history and culture, and Arabic literature.

However, she chooses not to always do so in a rida which has been made clear by many who have seen her. Her dress appears more mainstream Muslim which probably helps her fit in perhaps. It is her choice and I personally can’t divulge her personal thoughts regarding her choice not to regularly wear rida as was Moula Burhanuddin’s khushi, however, I will say this – the actions of your daughter, the Princess, is something that you have condoned when you held the position of Mazoon during Burhanuddin Moula’s era and currently also do so as well. What you and your family does is your business and I don’t really care.

What I do care about, however, is your comments, your viewpoints, and your Islamophobic attacks and judgements on Dawoodi Bohras and our cultural and social ideologies and practices. Your comments are insensitive and unfair. You have painted our community as repressive against women. You have made it look like women don’t get educated and just cook and clean and worse – you have tried to say that this is the teaching and policy of Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin. You have really moved backwards in feminist thought. What you have done is set the premise – that if women follow tradition and learn how to make a home, make roti, and take care of their families and households that they are somehow backwards and unsophisticated. You have mocked our traditions and values all over the internet. You have taken a western – post-modern- feminist stance which was created in a completely separate cultural and historical setting in the west and used that paradigm on the Dawoodi Bohra way of life ; you did so not to compare but rather to condemn.

Also, your learned children, including Dr. Tahera Qutbuddin were complicit in this attack, even being academics. Yes- many academics use to do this once upon a time. We now call them Orientalists. In your country, in political power circles, they were called British colonialists. Anyhow, amongst this breed of scholars and colonists were those who looked at other cultures and their practices and values as somehow less valuable and primitive because they did not meet their elite western standards sprouting from Euro-Christian beliefs and practices. That type of thinking has been revealed for what it is in educated circles- a bitter fallacy and horrid racist ideology. We surely don’t believe that external colonialist powers have the right to judge us. You on the other hand, have taken our private religious and community affairs to judicial court as if we were still ruled by colonial powers and that the ‘powerful white man’ is more suited to judge than the actual practitioner themselves.

But unfortunately you and your learned children (who with PhD’s from great universities shouldn’t be doing this or thinking this way if they really valued their pursuit of universal knowledge with their doctorates) have still resolved to using prejudice, orientalist, and bigoted measures to try and prove your legitimacy and that you are somehow a more just and righteous leader. You and your children tried to attack the women in our community because you thought we were an easy target. It simply doesn’t work and people can see right through your ploy. We, Dawoodi Bohra women, never asked you to be our savior. We don’t need saving and we surely wouldn’t ask you or your family to fill that role – because your values are obviously different. We succeed in this world and reach to where we are because we follow Mufaddal Moula’s teachings. You – for whatever reasons I feel, can’t reconcile your own beliefs and cultural values with the modern world. You have chosen to adapt your identity and alter your principles regarding most things which we, the Dawoodi Bohras, cherish. You have a different view of the world which echos elitist, top-down, and superior rules inferior mentalities of a power structure. This is not what is prevailing in my experience within Dawoodi Bohra culture. It seems that you and your children find your own culture and its practices and values primitive while elevating other colonialist and prejudice ideologies and points of views above your own. Good for you. If it works for you then it works. I am glad that is how you get through life. But I equally find it irresponsible and reprehensible for you to think that we Dawoodi Bohra women are just stupid mindless disempowered people and that you somehow have to force your bigoted ideologies on us. You have painted us in the mainstream media in that way with interviews etc. in order to seek justification for what you’re doing. Mr. Qutbuddin, we are not your pawns. Don’t taint our impression in the world for something that we are not. You have distorted the message of Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin TUS for your own ploys and mischief. But its not going to work. We, the Dawoodi Bohras, have real women, with real lives, and real success stories which will prove you otherwise. And many of us have done so from humble roots and done it in a rida. Your daughters, with all their privileges and financial support that they have received  from the community as having been part of your family, still couldn’t reconciliate their Bohra identity with their professional worlds. But they, and especially Tahera Qutbuddin shouldn’t judge those that value their own traditions and practices. So please try to use another tactic rather than your debased, amoral, and demeaning Islamophobic attacks on Dawoodi Bohra women and our cultural beliefs and practices. Just leave us alone and go about your own business!

Yours truly,

Zainab H.

A Strong Mumina Woman And Follower of Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin TUS

UK