

'DAUGHTERS ARE DIAMONDS:

## Honour, Shame & Seclusion-
## A South African Perspective'

## Shafinaaz Hassim

Copyright© 2007 Shafinaaz Hassim

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

ISBN 978 1920084 67 7

This edition published by WordFire Press SA

Declaration

I hereby declare that the information contained in this report is of my own work. Relevant references are made available for quoted material. Small quotes may be extracted for the purpose of discussion, critique or as a contribution to future research and literature, provided full reference is made with regards to the author and the university for which this report has been compiled.

Ms Shafinaaz Hassim

Signed this 21st day of March 2003 in Johannesburg, SouthAfrica.
PREFACE

When I first presented the research questions that inspired this work to a panel of the research committee at the University, I distinctly remember that one of the questions posed to me was regarding the relevance of such a work to the general readership. My reply at the time carried a passionate momentum to produce both the manuscript for my Master of Arts as well as to culminate in this book. I believe that in the multi-cultural threads that constitute South Africa's social fabric, there exist numerous themes that are yet to be uncovered and documented. Individual and community biographies need to be unraveled for their immense sociological value and their most delicate fibres need to be carefully observed in order to truly understand the diverse and complex fabric that enfolds us as South Africans. In this way, we will be able to adequately present this colourful social amalgamation, a masterpiece, to the international gallery, the world at large.

Daughters are Diamonds is not a feminist work, nor is it a pro- or anti-cultural text. It hopes to ascribe to no such labels except to present itself as a framework for many more such observations in the diverse fabric of social life to be revealed. It is a comment on the many contradictions that operate in everyday social life as we know it. And it is a treatise on the challenges we face to lay bare the threads of misinterpretation of well-meant scriptures for the
sake of 'comfortable' traditionalist conceptualizations of life.

Considering the multi-faceted and dynamic social landscape of South African society, the hypothesis of traditionally patriarchal modes of thinking vs. progressive, inclusive streams of thought is one that could be extrapolated to various groups of people.

It has been three years since the manuscript for Daughters are Diamonds was completed, and in that time my fingers have traced numerous patterns through its worded grains of sand. Articles have been written on its themes, and debates sparked on its most controversial points. I believe that the time has come for the winds of change to move these sands onward, to seek out vast shores, and for the tidal thoughts of readers thus engaged to bring forth newer contemplations.

Shafinaaz Hassim January 2007
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.

Throughout the course of this study, I often had to search my soul for the strength to do justice to the portrayal of the lives and dreams of the women who formed the core of this research. The wealth of their biographies illuminated the purpose of this research beyond expectation, and my first appreciation is owed to them. In addition, my soul searching has been illuminated by a number of people to whom I am deeply grateful.

My thanks are due to 'Indianness' from whence most of my colourful childhood derives, and to the oft misrepresented Muslim 'Ummah' of whom I am an inextricable member. Thank you to my maternal grandmother, for teaching me strength of spirit, and without whom, my journey would never be complete.

To Dad for raising me upon your shoulders and encouraging me to reach the stars. To Mum for teaching me that delicate balance of patience and diplomacy in standing up for what I believe in; and to Dilshaad and Sarfaraaz for your unflinching support, love and encouragement, especially when I do not seem to make any sense.

To my friends and loved ones for reminding me that a world exists beyond my work-station and for often rescuing me from beneath my mountain of books.

To Belinda Bozzoli for being an inspiring supervisor and for
camouflaging my more cryptic ramblings, and enabling their acceptance into the realm of academia.

To Rumi, for eternal inspiration.

Most of all, I owe boundless gratitude to the Almighty Allah for Lighting my path of Life, Love and Discovery.

As I write this, the world is witness to an illegitimate war raging on Iraqi soil. Anti-war sentiment takes on a life of it's own around the world, as protestors insist that the blood of the Iraqi people should not be used as a market commodity in exchange for oil. Whatever the concerns that seem to have justified the attack on Iraq, though, it is the minority groups that suffer the consequences. My heart bleeds for the children of Iraq, the human shields who have compelled themselves to face the brunt of the onslaught, and the helpless world looking on: we may as well be mute for the superpower takes no heed to the urgent pleas for peace. This study raises questions about the failures of democracy and finds spaces within its structure, where limits are imposed upon individual (and minority) freedoms. My request to the reader is to spare a thought especially for the children in Iraq, for whom the present condition of death and destruction is going to be a difficult reality; and for those who survive, the legacy of war will be an even heavier burden to bear.

Shafinaaz Hassim March 2003
THE JOURNEY

'The journey of my life

begins from home,

ends at the graveyard.

My life is spent

like a corpse,

carried on the shoulders

of my father and brother,

husband and son.

Bathed in religion,

attired in customs,

and buried in a grave

of ignorance.'

Atiya Dawood, Sindhi Poet, Pakistan. Cited in Goodwin (1995).
CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE:

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER TWO:

METHODOLOGY & DATA COLLECTION

Research Design:

Subject sampling:

Testing the Instrument:

Undertaking the Interviews:

Auxiliary Data Collection:
CHAPTER THREE:

THE GEMS OF DISCOURSE

HONOUR, SHAME AND SECLUSION - AN OVERVIEW Honour Killings: The ultimate loss of reflexivity in

an honour-bound society

The Loss of Reflexivity

On Liberty and Consent

Containing the Disorder of Women
Tracing the Origins of Seclusion: the Concept of

Purdah

Socialisation through Culture, Ideology and Power

Levels of Consciousness: Self vs. Society

The Ideology of Honour and Autonomy :

Understanding the social constructs of modesty and

shame

CHAPTER FOUR:

DISCOVERING THE DIAMONDS

SIX SOUTH AFRICAN CASES: AN INTRODUCTION

The Six Profiles

(*Pseudonyms Used)

Mira*, 27, Going Places

Fiona*, 35, Autonomy Limited by her Mother-in-

Law

Sima*, 44, The Modern Mother-in-Law

Fiza*, 42, From Businesswoman to Subordinate

Daughter-in-Law and Wife

Salma*, 46, The Cheated-On Wife

Zara*, 59, Unmarried

CHAPTER FIVE:

MINES OF INFORMATION

GENDERING SOCIAL CONTROL FOR THE

SAKE OF HONOUR

Analysing the Findings:

The Elements of Cultural Diffusion

Family Honour: The concept of 'Izzat'

On Growing up Female

Women's Education and its Implications for

Family Honour

Happily Ever After, and then what?

Prescribing Regulation: The Role of the Mother-in-Law

Superstition: A Prototype for Social Control

Cultural Stereotypes and Honour

'Sabr' or Patience: tools of social control

Degree of religiosity

Decisions? Decisions!

Resolution

CHAPTER SIX:

CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS

Scholars Revisit The Qur'anic Scripture

The Learned Affinity to 'Self-Conscious' Emotions

and its Implications for Autonomy and Self-Reflexivity

CHAPTER SEVEN:

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

TRIBUTE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX

Wassiyat: (From a Mother to her Daughter on her Wedding Day)
ABSTRACT

This research explores the ways in which "reflexivity of the self" is inhibited in cultures where "honour" is valued, using a small sample of South African Indian Muslim women. The framework for the study asserts that the individual capacity for self reflexivity is a basic and natural right, as well as the precondition for modern social life. The internalisation of values of honour leads many women to expect that deviance from acceptable norms will bring social sanction and stigma. This form of "conditioning" has debilitating outcomes for closing the gap between opportunities and actual achievements. The aim of this research then, is to explore the perpetuation of gender stereotypes and notions of honour in South African Indian Muslim society, and the degree to which they impact on the mindsets of people from traditionalist cultures. The statement that "women are diamonds" is often used by Indian Muslim traditionalists to justify the abject seclusion of women. In this view, that which is valuable should be hidden in safekeeping. The metaphor of the diamond is used to illustrate the objectification of daughters borne of honour-bound societies, and the limits put to the administration of their lives, in keeping with the code of honour. This study is a comment on the notion that, in keeping with this honour code, there is a fine line between maintaining the dignity of a people and infringing on the rights of the individual. It also asks whether women are able to carve out a space for themselves within which a fully reflexive life may be lived in spite of the restrictions placed on them.
CHAPTER

### Introduction

It is the aim of this research to explore the ways in which reflexivity of the self is inhibited in cultures where "honour" is valued, using a sample of South African Muslim women, of Indian ancestry. The study is set against a background of honour killings in Pakistan; this is not to imply a direct comparison between the extreme case study of honour killings and the experiences of South African Indian Muslim women. It is rather to illuminate the patriarchal mindset that is able to infringe on the rights and liberties of women, in a number of ways, based on the assumption that Muslims of Indian origin whether in South Africa or Pakistan share a common ideological heritage. In the extreme case of Pakistan, women who deviate are murdered or physically disfigured. In the South African case, the women can expect that deviance from acceptable norms will bring social sanction and stigma - with debilitating outcomes for closing the gap between opportunities and actual achievements. With the use of the extreme case, we are more easily able to discern the motivations, rationalisations and even resistance to the attack on individual liberties, and also to illuminate the multicultural social fabric of contemporary South Africa, and the residual effects that various cultures have on both the network of people and on their constructions of individual and national biography.

The individual capacity for self reflexivity is a basic and natural right, as

well as the precondition for modern social life. Post-Enlightenment thinking permits the realisation of this capacity and so do some pre-modern conceptions of the development of the soul. Today, a resurgence of hermeneutic understandings of the world around us in the effort to re-assert the primordial tradition is evidence of the need for a reawakening of the reflexive potential. However, there are a range of ideologies within traditional cultures which serve to subjugate the reflexive self, and hence the actualisation potential of the self.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

How are the opportunities, challenges and obstacles facing South African Indian Muslim women within the family, perceived and experienced by the individual?

To what extent, if at all, does traditionalist culture create/influence a gap between opportunity and achievement for South African Indian Muslim women?

These questions are asked in the context of the notion of "honour", present in most/many Muslim societies. The concept of 'honour' refers to a particular way in which patriarchal structures are conceptualised in some settings. 'Family honour', for example, is one constituent of this. The upholding of family honour is seen as a means to maintain the political order which rests on the broader system of patriarchy. One is made to question the kind of practices considered legitimate in dealing with violations of cultural and familial codes of honour. Current case studies show that, in extreme situations the actual, physical removal of those who go against the grain of desired behaviours, through 'honour killings', is socially legitimated by deeply held cultural beliefs, as is the case in contemporary Pakistan. In an "honour" killing the honour entailed in the status quo requires protection from any form of subversion. Its' defendants seek to eradicate any (perceived) threats to its existence. Hence, when we say that women are killed for the sake of honour we also need to understand what underpins the idea that there is a duty to uphold patriarchal structures. In addition, the
killings act as the mechanism of terror which is meant to inspire fear in potential transgressors. It is the very nature of this fear which denies the individual capacity for self reflexivity.

While extreme examples such as those in Pakistan draw attention to the kind of cultural memory and prevalent thought processes in situations concerning 'honour', the South African cases that I refer to are far less tangible and extreme. Nevertheless these ideas of duty and fear may be prevalent even in less 'extreme' situations, where murder does not occur, but ideas of honour are still fiercely protected. They seem to occur at a psychological level, in the form of stigma and social sanction; the individual may be singled out for daring to deviate from the status quo; so is their immediate family upon whom they may rely, and from whence comes a qualitative form of support. If at any point, the immediate family condones the act(s), this is bound to affect the internal equilibrium of the family unit. The setting of limits and the exertion of pressures may come into play; the sanctioning of particular behaviours can act as an extremely harsh and effective form of social control.

This research suggests that social behaviour among the Indian Muslim's in South Africa locates itself in the preservation of patriarchal custom and tradition, so deeply embedded in everyday life that its undertaking is almost always mistaken for religious obligation. South African Indian Muslim society draws on a social amalgam of ancestral Indian cultural belief and morally defined religious norms. The basis of the Islamic polity and way of life is antithetical to the classical conception of the separation of Church and State in western political ideology. Christendom renders "unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and to God the things which are God's" (Lewis, 1988, p2). Islam as a religion presents itself as a complete way of life. This compels Muslims to practice all features of life seen to correspond within it. Cultural belief, traditionalist values and religion are transposed and inform thoughts and actions. Hence, entrenched cultural acts gleam social endorsement from being viewed as a duty or obligation to divine command. In actual fact Islam denounces the exploitation and control of people of either sex.
Furthermore, something as isolated as a single incident of murder occurring elsewhere, also has the ability to generate the kind of social memory that is capable of instilling fear in the population (even what happens in distant Pakistan, may have an effect on South African Indian Muslim women). Would-be strayers from expected norms and behaviours are deterred. The pain of these restrictions is often felt particularly when they occur in societies that on a broader level guarantee individual liberties and equality. A democracy such as the South African one provides constitutional guarantees to equality and progression in all spheres of social life. But there remain deeply entrenched cultural niches in society that are impenetrable by the fledgling democratic legal system - which itself is yet to be tested in terms of durability over time. It is precisely these sub-surface niches which I hope to penetrate, in an effort to understand the detail of the social fabric and to uncover the dynamism of oppressive structures and the kinds of residue that filter down the social strata. The clash between notions of democracy in the political sphere and notions of democratic and autocratic forms of control at the level of family and culture form a relevant arena of questioning. The concept of arranged marriage, for example is far less popular, as compared to the idea of a love marriage which suggests freedom of choice, and individual satisfaction as opposed to a familial or social contract. Academics in the fields of legal jurisprudence and human rights continue to debate the apparent contradictions between notions of gender equality and respect for culture and tradition, especially since the formulation of the new constitution in South Africa. Here the loss of self reflexivity is about the loss of newfound freedoms - it rests in oppressive structures, within the scope of democratic promise. The research seeks to highlight what exists within the frame of a liberal political order.

The aim of this study then, is to explore the perpetuation of gender and family stereotypes in South African Indian Muslim society, and to assess the degree to which this affects people from traditionalist backgrounds. It asks whether and how women are able to carve out a space for themselves within which a fully reflexive life may be lived.
CHAPTER

## TWO

### METHODOLOGY & DATA

### COLLECTION
"Representation of the world, like the world itself is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth"

(Simone de Beauvoir, 1952, 'The Second Sex', p133)

RESEARCH DESIGN:

This research has been conducted on South African Indian Muslims, with a small sample of women producing its core. In an effort to answer the main questions raised at the beginning of this research, i.e. how the opportunities, challenges and obstacles facing South African Indian Muslim women within the family, are perceived and experienced by the individual; and to what extent, if at all, traditionalist culture is able to create/influence a gap between opportunity and achievement for South African Indian Muslim women, this research was conducted in a qualitative manner, aiming to arrive at meaningful understandings and interpretations of how some South African Indian Muslim women created and maintain their social worlds (Neuman, 2000).

Qualitative research has a number of advantages. According to Morse (1994), qualitative research presupposes an understanding of research in general. Neuman (2000) contends that qualitative research allows the

formation of concepts that are grounded in the data. For example, issues about power struggles and class conflict may be interrogated both within and beyond the variables of age and gender. In addition qualitative research comprises a specific understanding of the relation between issue and method. Morse (1994) also suggested that qualitative research allows the participants to expand more appropriately on certain topics. "In qualitative research, ideas and evidence are mutually interdependent. This applies particularly to case study analysis" (Neuman, 2000, p420). Ultimately, the aim is for subjects to be actively engaged into constructions of their life experiences in the effort towards developing a frame of reference which can be subsequently used to measure issues of rights against the traditions which paradoxically deny them in the context of a newly transitional democratic South Africa. This is essential to the formation of theory and for the purposes of contributing to the paucity of the available literature.

Qualitative research will then become a continuous process of constructing the subject's various versions of reality within the scope of this enquiry, i.e. exploring the question of whether social sanctioning and stigma await women in South African Indian Muslim society should they attempt to challenge traditional structures.

Empirical collection of data consists of loosely structured conversational interviews with a sample of six women from the Indian Muslim community in Johannesburg; five of them middle class and one from an upper class family. Each of these women, regardless of their ages or levels of education, proved to be a philosopher in her own right. Mira* (27) is a progressive, career-oriented woman who faces the task of reconciling her parents wishes of marrying someone of their choice with her own more liberal conception of life; one which has, until now, been fully supported by her parents. Fiona* (35), Fiza* (42), Sima* (44) and Salma* (46) are all married with children. Zara* (59) has never been married, but has faced a number of trials, has been at the helm of rearing both her siblings and their children.

Wengraf (2001) recommends the use of a single interview question in order to initiate the full narrative. The only acceptable interruptions, as was
deemed necessary, occur in the form of reassurances and prompts for more stories. In this research atypical interview session explored the nature of the interviewee's relationship with different family members, in terms of perceived impacts of each on the other's (potential) role in society."... (T)he interpersonal context revealed in women's personal narratives suggests how women's lives are shaped through and evolve within relationships with others. Feminists have long noted the special reliance of women upon the resources of networks of family and kin, and the important role women play in nurturing and maintaining such networks. Indeed, this reliance may well be a function of women's relative powerlessness" (Personal Narratives Group, 1989, p20). How the individual perceives and conceptualises everyday life is essential in attempting to quantify the impact of social expectations. Questions were also focused on everyday life, career aspirations, job situations and the generally perceived or expressed views from within the family as well as from the immediate vicinity of the socio-cultural community. Wengraf (2001) recognises the difficulty in directly accessing many of the assumptions, purposes, feelings and knowledge that constitutes personal and social life. On the one hand, the less controversial the issues, "the less an interviewee will be aware of them and able to talk about them. Conversely, to ask for a person's explicit knowledge and approach is to access only material that they themselves experience as consciously controversial" and they then decide to articulate this information. In this way, respondents have conscious control of how they choose to present perceived knowledge and norms. Narrative interviews have their advantage of being less subject to this form of conscious control: "precisely by what it assumes and therefore does not focus upon, narrative conveys tacit and unconscious assumptions and norms of the individual or of a cultural group" (Wengraf, 2001, p115).

SUBJECT SAMPLING:

Black (1976) stated that in non-probability sampling the researcher is interested only in a sufficient number of elements to satisfy limited research objectives. A judgmental sample is one that has been handpicked

by the investigator to fully ensure that specific elements are included (May, 1997). Purposive samples are frequently called judgmental samples because the researcher exercises his or her judgment to include elements that are presumed to be typical of a given population about which information is sought. According to Black (1976), purposive samples do not involve any random selection process. Consequently, they are somewhat less costly and are more readily accessible to the researcher. Convenience is an additional incentive to employ purposive samples. According to Black (1976), purposive sampling guarantees that certain elements will be included that are relevant to the research design. In addition, with the use of theoretical sampling, according to Neuman (2000), subjects are selected according to their (expected) level of new insights (or consciousness, in the case of the interviewees in this study) for developing theory, in relation to the state of theory elaboration so far. Theoretical sampling is a purposive and systematic selection and integration of persons and/or groups of persons, and temporal and local settings (Neuman, 2000).

The variables of age and class also require careful consideration in terms of sample choices. This study sets out to unpack notions of stigma, social sanction and fear of retribution as well as the perceived duty of obedience to patriarchal structures which may indeed be seen as religious obligation. In order to identify and extract the general experience of this objective, attention needs to be paid to the kinds of interview sessions which will best facilitate this process. At the outset I would like to add that future research that hopes to build on a study of this nature should consider that the research mechanism needs to take into account additional details such as the experience of different genders in terms of expectation and accountability as well as views of liberties and allowances within the realm of social intercourse. This will require one-on-one interview sessions with men and women separately. While this study has acknowledged this need, due to the restrictions of time and the nature of this enquiry, the primary focus is on the realm of women. The generational gap has been accounted for, taking into consideration its potential for differing opinion based on the oft-made
assumption that older women would be more conventional and traditionalist as compared to possibly more liberal and progressive-minded younger women in contemporary South Africa. Further, the women interviewed can be categorized into either the middle or upper class brackets. While my attempts at obtaining an interview with a woman from a structurally poorer/lower class family were unsuccessful, the analysis of each of the core interviews provides a variety of backgrounds from which the relationship of class to female autonomy can be assessed. For example, Sima (44, Modern Mother-in-law) and Zara (59, Unmarried) both speak of their respective childhoods in lower class settings, while their current status places them in the upper-middle class bracket. We are able to ascertain whether or not marriage and/or husband's career success affects these class changes. Also, these class shifts along their lives allow for a comparison to be made on the differing ways in which notions of honour and degrees of freedom are both interpreted and operationalised. Mira (27), Fiona (35), Fiza (42) and Salma (46) all maintain an equal class status throughout their respective lives.

TESTING THE INSTRUMENT:

I initially carried out a small number of informal interviews. These took the form of casual conversations and discussions with friends and family members, most of which were women. Here the questions centred on their conceptions of their lives; past, present and future. Invariably, the structure of such conversational interviews tends to include elements of the past by relying on the recount of experience. The focus on everyday life and the individual's account of shared relationships at home and/or at work, as well as in the broader community bring the interview to the present. Interviewees were asked about particular relations such as those with each of their parents, male and female siblings and ventured to add other comparisons that they deemed to fit into the scope of the conversation. I found that talk about aspirations and goals gives insight into the way interviewees view their roles in making decisions regarding their own lives and, of course, the level of
Daughters are Diamonds

these decisions. Career aspiration and satisfaction is often coloured by perceived expectation from the family and the community. If the predominant expectation is on women to prioritise family life above that of a career, then this may inhibit the actualisation of career aspirations. Also, the impact of people's opinions on the individual's choices points to the kind of impact that perceived expectation has on the person's behaviour and allowances. Of special interest, were the results obtained from asking the question of: What does family honour mean to you? Leaving this question for the end was deliberate, so as not to plant the seed of the notion of 'family honour' in the interviewee's mind. This is something I hoped to extract, if at all, as the underlying concept of more reserved answers. The actual accounts of interview sessions proved far more rewarding in the biographical nature of the data extracted; the raw authenticity and unquestionable philosophical content made for a satisfying analysis of socio-cultural factors that affect the decisions and shape the life paths of the women. Biographical narrative often opened up avenues for discussion around the various kinds of social features as perceived and experienced by the women themselves, and removed the need for leading questions which the original design of the interview schedule had assumed necessary.

UNDERTAKING THE INTERVIEWS:

The ever growing interest in women and previously ignored groups has found expression in autobiography, biography and the corresponding research on life writing, thus opening the curtain a little wider on that stage where men and women script new destinies and enact their changing roles by accepting, rejecting, and often transforming traditional gender expectations" (Bell & Yalom, 1990, p11).

Lillian Robinson suggests that "the way we understand the text of a biography is directly related to the way we understand a life. It also intersects with our apprehension of society itself and social movements, and hence with the way we imagine the possibilities for change in our common life story" (Robinson, 1990, p ix). Initiating the biographical narrative interview
requires that the request be made in a way that allows the interviewee open-ended choice on how to proceed with the presentation of the relevant aspects of her life. Wengraf (2001) outlines a number of SQUIN's or Single Questions aimed at Inducing Narrative. The following sequence proved to be particularly useful in undertaking my interviews:

"I want you to tell me your life story, all the events and the experiences

that were important to you, up to now.

Start wherever you like.

Please take the time you need.

I will listen first, I will not interrupt,

I will just take some notes for after you've finished telling me about your

experiences"

(Wengraf, 2001, p121).

Further explorative issues were covered and they focused on the construction of everyday life perceptions as interviewee's located specific landmarks in life, such as childhood, schooling, marriage and career. Each woman is able to situate her life within a network of issues that may or may not impact on her decisions - whether or not these are made by the woman herself forms part of the analytical dimension of these social features and she in turn is able to find her way through the maze of experiences and relates these from her individual paradigmatic stance. The following issues, in theory, were raised in this study through the use of biographical narrative:

How do women perceive their lives?

What are their relationships and/or roles within the family?

How do they view their community, and where does the individual (and

the family) fit into this view?

How important is a career?

What is the perceived gap, if at all, between aspirations and achievement?

What kind of goals does the individual set?

How does the family view her success/aspirations?

To what extent does outside opinion affect her decisions regarding
significant life events such as education, a career and marriage?

(By 'outside' I mean immediate family, extended family, friends, community: especially to ascertain the perceived expectations of the social units within which the individual sees themselves, and the impact this has on their choices)

To what extent and in what ways does she think woman should be able to participate in society?

What does family honour mean to the interviewee?

From each of the interviews it can be ascertained that the notion of honour or 'izzat' is an entrenched notion that not only affects the woman who are considered the objects of the honour, but also confers the status of custodian upon the male members of her family. These family members are then required to make the kind of decisions regarding her life, through which there is little space for any 'subversion' whereby her life and the family honour may be tainted within the limits set by the social unit. This is presented in the chapter of analysis, regarding decision-making, which interrogates how age of marriage, class status of family and each woman's present role within her family affects the nature and range of decision-making allowed to her.

AUXILIARY DATA COLLECTION:

Aside from the six core interviews of this study, a number of conversations were undertaken especially with much older women from the Indian Muslim community. This was done for two reasons. Firstly, as a relatively younger member of this community, I have been exposed to a degree of the socialisation material or heard of superstitions such as the 'maanta', and hoped to both verify and situate the oral material. Also, as I proceeded along the path of empirical data collection, I felt that there existed a considerable hole in the contextual material that needed to be filled. Concepts such as 'khandaan' (family, inclusive of generations) and 'kutum-qabila' (family-clan) were also clarified and obtained from these purposeful interviews. While historical information provided a broad understanding of
the context, additional data from these interviews provided the material for a better situational analysis.

The secondary material of data collection is found in various documentation, in the form of religious and cultural texts which inform social expectation. The primary religious text referred to is the Qur'an, while the cultural texts refer to a range of material which has been published in the Indian and Pakistani subcontinent (Indo-Pak region). This latter form of literature is readily made available to South Africans in madressas (Islamic religious schools) as well as in community bookshops. Religious and cultural texts often serve as socialisation material toward forming a guide for expected and accepted behaviours. While religious texts tend to justify the upholding of morality, cultural texts tend to be responsible for the contradictions and misgivings operating in everyday modern social life as we know it. This is so, because the interpretation of authentic religious text from a cultural standpoint tends to lend a patriarchal bias which is contradictory and hence problematic. The line of difference between the two is blurred and often people tend to confuse the obligation of religion with the sentiment of tradition. Culture, or rather the social law that it informs, is reinforced by a variety of media in the form of print, songs and film. These kinds of material, with their explicit cultural rhetoric are then agents of the socialisation process of the individual. I provide the assessment of a 'paper' called 'The Advice of a Mother to her Daughter on her Wedding Day' or 'Wassiyat', which, as the title suggests, points to a range of expected behaviours outlined to the bride, as well as illuminating the carry-down effect of social control from mother to daughter. While I have been unable to establish exactly where this paper originates from, it is distributed among the women guests at weddings here in South Africa, validating the new set of expectations which are incumbent upon the bride from that day forward.

Various books and publications can be found wherein similar forms of acceptable behaviours are outlined, and distributed, taught and sold to people. It is said that as a traditional gift on her wedding day, in addition to receiving a copy of the Holy Qur'an, many brides receive a copy of the
'BahishtiZewar' or Heavenly Ornaments (Thanvi, 1978), which outlines a number of prescriptions for conducting her life. This is reminiscent of material compiled in the Indo-Pak subcontinent and imported into South Africa, and other countries that constitute the Indian-Muslim Diaspora. A more contemporary version of this kind of text is one that I refer to in the analyses, i.e. A Gift For Muslim Women, a translation of the Urdu manuscript 'Tohfa-e-Khwateen' (Madani, 1999). Among other similar texts, this is available in a number of South African 'community' bookshops. Such material is often viewed as expressive of authoritative opinion, and often is assimilated into everyday life without being questioned. Religious and community leaders often form the source of this 'informed' opinion and speeches are disseminated over community radio stations as well as during religious congregations. The opinion of authority is often adhered to in the strictest sense, and forms an important area of analysis as an agent of public opinion as well as a socialisation agent. Similarly, the opinion of family elders is treated with the same regard. The oral tradition of superstition plays an important role in the socialisation of norms. Superstition seems to endorse and refuse a number of behaviours by way of often non-rational narrative that is rarely contested. The analysis of this kind of material proves to be rather fascinating in the implications it has for social control. For example, I look at the institution of the 'maanta', a pact made by women in need of divine intervention with regards to being granted a fervent wish. This is a rather controversial practice (and hence relegated to the realm of 'irrational superstition') in terms of Islamic belief, and compels a woman to give to all sorts of charities, and further compels her to ensure that this tradition continues down the generations through the wives of sons born in future generations. In other words, the superstition begun by the mother-in-lawbecomes a burden for generations of daughters-in-law to continue.

Ethical Concerns and Limitations: Of the possible limitations and biases that I could identify at the outset, I see the inability to remain value free as the most obvious. Being a progressive-minded South African Indian Muslim woman, setting out with the goal of some semblance of objectivity,
the concern raised is about the extent to which my own personality, views and values may impact on and influence the shaping of the study and its interpretation. "Scholars... generally concede... that a biographer's choice of subject matter and his or her attitude toward the material chosen reveals as much about the biographer as s/he seeks to reveal about the subject" (Kuhn, in Bell and Yalom (eds) 1990, p13). Having attained the confidence of the interviewees by guaranteeing the confidentiality of my research and having guaranteed anonymity, I had to think carefully about whether or not some of the more sensitive material should be included in this paper. Knowing that these conversations were to be included in a research study, subjects understandably would feel inhibited in the amount of material they might choose to disclose. The particular concerns they might have had about speaking up against certain acts, could include feelings of betrayal to the perceived codes of 'honour'. Making mention of the use of pseudonyms to accompany direct quotes put to rest any substantial threat to the natural flow of the responses.

Andrea Rugh reminds us that "exaggeration is not foreign to these narratives", and that the stories are "presented as the women see themselves, woven through with their corrections, additions and omissions of time past and cast in the mould of their developed themes..." (Atiya, 1993, p ix). So then, what we seek is not 'the truth', as "this is but one of the many truths that reside in the drama of human events. Each woman is aware of how critical it is to present oneself to the world effectively. Not only she herself gains from this kind of glorified presentation, but so do all the others parents, husbands, children, relatives that make up the extended self and suffer the consequences or reap the rewards of one another's accomplishments" (Atiya, 1993, p ix). In a social setting comprised of customs which make a woman the custodian of a communal honour, no doubt the pressure to glorify this presentation is deeply ingrained.

In addition, due to ethical concerns, professional case material from social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists was difficult to access, but the opinions generated from such interviews mayhave no doubt proved to be
helpful. Within the scope of the research' design, focus has been awarded to female interviewees. As two sides of the coin of social order, male domination and female subordination both impact on individuals regardless of gender. It would be interesting to formulate an interview for men, in an effort to ascertain their perceptions on traditionalist social control as well as notions of gender segregation. Indeed, research of this nature would compliment the study that this paper undertakes, within the limits of time and feasibility. There is a general paucity of literature on the diversity of life in post-apartheid South African society, and specifically on emerging Indian Muslim cultural conceptualisations of life in the new era. While this may have proven a limit to the frame of reference for this study, it also points to the need for research of this nature, with regard to the various traditionalist settings in South Africa.
CHAPTER

THREE

### The Gems Of Discourse

### Honour, Shame And Seclusion

- An Overview
HONOUR KILLINGS: THE ULTIMATE LOSS OF REFLEXIVITY IN AN HONOUR-BOUND SOCIETY.

"The government of Pakistan vigorously condemns the practice of so-called honour killings. Such acts do not find a place in our religion or law. Killing in the name of honour is murder and will be treated as such."

General Pervez Musharraf, April 2000

Jn April 2002, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) found that in the year 2000, a woman was raped every two hours, and that hundreds were victims of "honour" killings, domestic violence, acid throwing, fire burnings and murder. According to the report, so-called "honour killings are carried out by men who assume that their wives, daughters or sisters have in some way contravened norms relating to the behaviour of women which reflect on and damage a man's 'honour'. Often the grounds for such assumptions can be very flimsy and amount to nothing more than a suspicion about a woman's fidelity. Men are also known to have felt shamed if 'their' women seek divorce or become the victims of rape." The report further states that very poor women, women from religious minorities and women bonded labourers are particularly vulnerable to violence in the community and home. (www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/asa330062002).
The case of a woman named Shukria is one of the vivid images that the report portrays: "On October 22, 2001, Sharif in the village of Goharpur, in the Sheikhupura district, Punjab province, tied his wife Shukria's wrists and ankles with rope, poured kerosene over her and with the help of his mother and sister set her on fire. The couple had been married for ten years. As they remained childless, Sharif wanted to marry another woman but Shukria did not agree to this. Neighbours tried to rescue Shukria but she died shortly afterwards in hospital." (Amnesty International News, www.web. amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/asa330062002).

More horrendous then these so-called 'stove-burning' incidents are the increasing reports of acid throwing. Here, victims face not death but lifelong disfiguration. Acid is easily available and is probably the cheapest and most violent form of abuse. The report recognises that not only does the government not restrict the sale of acid, being aware of its usage, but the perpetrators of violence against women who specifically employ its use are rarely punished, if at all (www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/ asa330062002).

Women opposed to forced marriages are also increasingly the victims of murders perpetrated by their own brothers, having been saddled as guardians of family honour. After the crimes have been committed, they are pardoned by their fathers and remain unpunished by the law. Amnesty reports state that women who marry men of their own choice are often seen to damage their family's "honour". As a result they are frequently detained by their parents, forcibly married to someone else, threatened, humiliated, assaulted or killed (http://amnesty.ca/library/1999/7asa3318.htm; www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/asa330062002).

These harsh and extreme cases raise important questions for us about the cultural and traditionalist features that may underlie the failures of democracy in various settings. Indeed, we are made to question how societies are able to pay homage to communal honour at the expense of human dignity. This applies to both physical methods as well as psychological ways of stunting the autonomy of the individual.
THE LOSS OF REFLEXIVITY

The payment of honour in daily life is accorded through the offering of precedence (so often expressed through an analogy with the head), and through the demonstrations of respect which are commonly associated with the head whether it is bowed, touched, uncovered or covered... Decapitation recognized that there was something worth chopping off. Even where polite society has outlawed physical violence it retains the ritual slap on the face as a challenge to settle an affair of honour, and it was commonly admitted that offences to honour could only be redeemed through blood" (Pitt-Rivers, 1966, p25).

What is meant by the 'loss of reflexivity'? For the purpose of this research we can identify three main mechanisms through which it operates. These are terror, stigma and the internalisation of values.

1). Terror.

A wealth of literature exists on the notion of state and insurgent terror (al-Khalil, 1989; Arendt, 1958; Brooker, 2000; Friedrich & Brzezinski, 1965; Gregor, 1982; Makiya, 1993; Walter, 1972; Wardlaw, 1989). In the former case states inspire fear in the target population in order to induce submission. The latter concept often refers to the potential for revolutionary terror and is seen as a direct threat to state power. Lefort claims that "the strength of the discourse of terror lies precisely in its ability to abolish any articulation that might lend itself to contradiction and to simulate a conclusion which leaves the audience with no choice" (Lefort, 1988, p63). Lefort suggests that terror plays a significant role in the consolidation of power, especially where a 'perceived' obstacle occurs along that path of reconciling the image of the body and the image of the machine (Lefort, 1988).

A comparison of predominant state power and other modes of dominant ideology or culture, becomes a valuable template for unpacking the means undertaken towards consolidating and sustaining the locus of
power. By this, I mean to identify the occupation of power by whatever dominant mode of thought, be it political or apolitical. So-called honour killings become the deterrent for behaviour that is unacceptable to the current status quo, and furthermore, such acts are justified in the service they provide of protecting the honour of draconian patriarchal systems entrenched within the family and society. The use of terror is relevant to this study in that it denies self-reflexive capacity. The violation of the human and moral rights of the individual becomes second nature in the efforts toward maintaining the dominant culture. While a contradiction exists between the notion of universal human rights and the arguments of cultural relativists, there is no uncertainty that acts of instilling terror run deeply against the grain of human liberties in an absolute sense. Walter (1975, p5-6) suggests that terror "may mean, on the one hand, the psychic state - extreme fear - and, on the other hand, the thing that terrifies - the violent event that produces the psychic state". With this in mind, he acknowledges the importance of unpacking the "process of terror, the act and the fear together in reaction to each other". The systematic proliferation of terror creates instability, anxiety and fear in its victim target population, and the only condition under which such a situation can be avoided is with the removals of injustice from the political sphere, and the insidious acts of horror from the psyche of the people. The underlying message of the campaign of terror is that rebellion invites its perpetration upon the individual, and abiding by the unspoken laws allows a space within which the individual may carve out some semblance of a 'life'. The institutionalisation of fear allows for the continuation, then, of a system of psychological manipulation, and subsequently disallows the self-reflexive capacity of the citizenship. It is rather significant to keep in mind that within the collectivity there can be found individuals who are unable to resist indulging in those acts which may bring 'intrusion' from the mechanism of terror. Perhaps the disorder that women supposedly bring is not entirely containable. Critics of classical liberal democracy argue that democracy is the preserve of men.
The path to a genuinely democratic polity, "if women are to be citizens as women, autonomous, equal, yet sexually different beings from men, (then) democratic theory and practice has to undergo a radical transformation" (Pateman, 1989, p14).

2). Stigma.

Notions of stigmatisation or deviance-labelling (Schur, 1984) have similar implications for denying autonomy to the victims. For Schur, "being female" already carries a degree of stigma because of the devaluation of women in the socio-political arena. "Such categorical devaluation is reflected in and reinforced by numerous applications to women of substantively specific deviance labels... we might even say that women serve(d) as 'all-purpose' deviants within our society... These presumed offences emerge when women are perceived as having violated specific gender system norms - by behaving or even presenting themselves in ways deemed inappropriate for females" (Schur, 1984, p7). Schur suggests that, women's social subordination makes them more vulnerable to stigmatisation, and 'spoiled identity' (Goffman, 1963) in turn reinforces that they be socially subordinated and subsequently makes the achievement of goals far more difficult.

3). Internalisation of Values.

At the basis of these practices which endorse particular kinds of stigma, are the entrenched notions of power and authority within the family. Power is the "possibility of imposing one's will upon the behaviour of other persons" without actually having to exercise this power (Bendix, 1960, in Cherlin, 1996, p289). The internalisation of deeply held cultural beliefs often allows for the domination of some over others. This relationship of authority over subordinates obviously reduces individual liberty and equality. However, having acknowledged and accepted the authority of their husbands, wives in many traditional societies went further; they themselves legitimated the social system of patriarchy.
Subsequently, they endorsed their own limited authority in almost every sphere of life. For Weber, the patriarch thus rules through "traditional authority", constituted of "widely held norms and values that both men and women accept" (Cherlin, 1996, p289). It should be acknowledged, though, that the occurrence of such relations does not remain in the pre-industrial past. Many people continue to hold onto the culturally based belief of male domination "as part of the natural order of family life" (Cherlin, 1996, p290). Indeed, research shows that, as seen from the viewpoint of many traditionalist settings, these relations of inequality "are relations not of domination and subordination but of protection and dependency" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p85).

Power may be objectively latent, yet subjectively real for those directly experiencing it. "For instance, if you have power over me, I may refrain from doing something I know you don't like - which means that you will obtain the results you want without having to flex a muscle or withhold a penny. If a wife knows her husband adamantly opposes her working outside the home and if she fears his anger, she may not even raise the issue of taking a job. An observer might not notice the wife's latent desire to work outside the home and the husband's power over her" (Cherlin, 1996, p290). While the contemporary family lifestyle projects a degree of domestic authority on the wife, most husbands can be still seen to retain a rather substantial power and authority based on their income and on the social perceptions of appropriate behaviours of men and women (Cherlin, 1996).

ON LIBERTY AND CONSENT

The notion of consent is a precondition for the liberal democratic state (Pateman, 1989). Consent implies the complete acceptance of the individual into the political order and hence provides the guarantee of citizenship. The inherent ambiguity in consent theory is that there exists a debate around the actual allowances of particular groups or individuals in the ability to consent. Let us begin by saying that, at the basis of consent theory is the recognition of the 'individual'. Also, the idea that the individual is born 'naturally' free and equal forms the basis of both early social contract and consent theory. In Pateman's view, this raises a fundamental question about the nature of power relations and about "how and why a free and equal individual can ever legitimately be governed by anyone else" (Pateman, 1989, p72). In reply, the only acceptable justification that liberal democratic theorists are able to cite is that such power relationships require the voluntary commitment of individuals in order to preserve notions of liberty and equality (Pateman, 1989) and hence gain legitimacy in the political arena. Hence the dominant mode or ideology is legitimated. In this sense, consent theory is not easily separated from the notions of "habitual acquiescence, assent, silent dissent, submission or even enforced submission" (Pateman, 1989, p72) unless there exists the option to withdraw that commitment.

For Hobbes, all relationships of authority are based on consent, even that of parent and child. The child's consent to parental rule "can be assumed" due to the "overwhelming power" of the parent. "With this in mind, it makes no difference whether submission is voluntary or obtained through threats, even the threat of death. Because Hobbes argues that fear and liberty are compatible, 'consent' has the same meaning whether it arises from submission in fear of a conqueror's sword or in fear of exposure by a parent, or whether it is a consequence of the (hypothetical) social contract" (Pateman, 1989, p73).

What can be seen as explicitly problematic in consent theory, then, is that while consent and contract theories are said to have developed as an attack on patriarchal ideology, this is limited. For example, an arena of consent theory which tends to get ignored is that with regard to everyday life. The practical importance of consent in everyday life concerns women particularly, and the failure to account for this aspect allows issues regarding women to be easily sidelined. "The most intimate relations of women with men are held to be governed by consent; women consent to marriage, and sexual intercourse without a women's consent constitutes the criminal
offence of rape. To begin to examine the unwritten history of women and consent brings the suppressed problems of consent theory to the surface. Women exemplify the individuals whom consent theorists have declared to be incapable of consenting" (Pateman, 1989, p72).

For Locke, there is a 'Foundation in Nature' of a woman's subjection to her husband. In this case, Pateman observes that "she cannot also be seen as a 'naturally' free and equal individual" (p74). This invalidates her consent, or rather; natural subordination implies incapacity to consent. Critics argue that marriage law requires the consent of both man and woman. This may show women to be capable of consent in everyday life. Once again, Pateman extracts the fundamental question of: "Why should a free and equal female individual enter a contract that always places her in subjection and subordination to a male individual?" (p74). The problem lies in the content of the marriage contract, which fails to take into practical account the notion of female liberty and equality. "Women are not 'individuals' who own the property they have in their persons and capacities, so the question of their 'consent' to the authority of men never actually arises. Rather, their apparent 'consent' to the authority of their husbands is only a formal recognition of their 'natural' subordination. Having been under the authority of their father, they do not, like sons, enter a new status on maturity, but are 'given away' by their father to another man to continue in their 'natural' state of dependence and subjection" (Pateman, 1989, p74).

The marriage contract can be open to further contradiction in the extent that it legally endorses the women's 'consent' to her husband's conjugal rights. For example, rape law has until recently, had difficulty taking into account the possibility that rape might occur within a marriage. Most problematic is the reluctance of social practice to accept the principles outlined in contemporary legal statutes. Rape is an emphatic study of the paradox of women and consent in everyday life. That social belief denies that women are free and equal, points to the contradictions between constitutional guarantees and the practice of everyday social life. The debate as to whether the act of rape may have been committed in a state of careless

interpretation of a woman's consent or as a deliberate attack tends to debase the enormity of the violation of an individual. For Pateman, essentially the identification of enforced submission points to a failure in liberal democratic theory and practice to adequately distinguish between the voluntary commitment of equals and the domination and subordination of subjects. This applies to the (non-) consent of women as well as to the nature of the class structure of the modern state (Pateman, 1989).

CONTAINING THE DISORDER OF WOMEN

Were our state a pure democracy, there would still be excluded from our deliberations women who, to prevent deprivation of morals and ambiguity of issues, should not mix promiscuously in gatherings of men" -Thomas Jefferson (cited in Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p29).

According to Pateman (1989), standard interpretations of classical texts prevent political theory from acknowledging the exclusion of women from the public realm. Political orders are constructed in the image of everything that is antithetical to the female form. If we argue that the exclusion of women from the public sphere is not complete, then we have to at least agree that what little incorporation there might be, is essentially different from the inclusion of men. Pateman observes particularly that "the contract theorists constructed sexual difference as a political difference, the difference between men's natural freedom and women's natural subjection" (Pateman, 1989, p5). Rousseau's emphatic declaration that political order relies on the exclusion of women from the body politic makes his version of self-governance an exclusively male domain. He takes as his justification the premise that women are "a permanently subversive force within the political order" (Pateman, 1989, p15). He argues that "the influence of women, even good women, always corrupts men, because women are 'naturally' incapable of attaining the status of free and equal individuals, or citizens, and incapable of developing the capacities required to give consent" (Pateman, 1989, p76). An immediate question is put to the notion of participatory democracy, since consent becomes the sole prerogative of one sex (Pateman, 1989, p13).
Also, Pateman notes that "motherhood is seen as the antithesis of the duties of men and citizens" (p11). The gendering of public and private domains; of the economy or state on the one hand and domestic life on the other is both reminiscent of this, as well as widely critiqued by feminists. Moreover, Pateman suggests that the idea of a "common bond uniting individuals participating in the economy and the practice of contract" (p7) is in fact a myth. The bond that does exist is a social contract which allows that they be "united by the interests that they share as men in their jurisdiction over women, interests that are protected by the laws and policies of the state" (Pateman, 1989, p7) or by the culture or society that endorses them.

Hourani (1992) contends that by the late 20th century legal and ethical frameworks in the Arab countries, which largely upheld the primacy of the male, were challenged. Islamic laws of personal status were interpreted anew. Tunisia abolished polygamy, and elsewhere in the Arab world it became a rarer custom. In countries like Tunisia and Iraq, it had become easier for women to request a divorce, while in other Arab countries men retained both the 'right' to dissolve a marriage without legal procedure or reason, and the right to custody of the children. In some cases, laws of inheritance were reinterpreted and the minimum age of marriage was raised. A particularly strong observation made is that "even when laws changed, social customs did not necessarily change with them. New laws could not always be enforced, particularly when they came up against deeply rooted social customs which asserted and preserved the domination of the male. That girls should marry early, that their marriages should be arranged by the family, and that wives could easily be repudiated were firm rooted ideas, preserved by women themselves; the mother and the mother-in-law were often pillars of the system" (Hourani, 1992, p441).

Goodwin (1995) explores through narrative how socially endorsed power relations affect women, in terms of the expectations and regulations that have been culturally entrenched over decades. The violations referred to in this overview such as rape, disfiguration and murder - are explicit in their physical form, and have the ability to leave enduring psychological scars. On
the other hand, this paper looks at the stigma and ostracizing of people (women) who do not conform to particular socially-defined expectations, and the kind of limitations that this has for their development as individuals. Also, this relates to the concept that family honour is a direct product of social conformity, and I proceed, then, to question the (loss of) rationale in upholding that status of'honour' at any expense.

'Honour killings' suggest that the female is a symbol of her family honour, and that any marring of this symbolism requires that she (the symbol) should be 'removed'. So then, the idea that women are linked with honour is not a matter of esteem; rather it is a gross project of objectification and the institutionalisation of control and exploitation of the human and moral rights of women. The social and cultural endorsements of such acts, by the very people who form the moral fabric of that society, serve only to veil the immorality of such acts, be they in the form of physical violence or entrenched attitudes. More significantly, they heighten the dangerous implications of relations of power and control that seek legitimacy in the name of democracy or worse yet, in the form of divine sanction.

This brings into question the nature of repressive regimes and the systems of subjugation that they perpetuate. This in turn impacts on the reflexive potential of the citizenship. History shows us ample example of acquiescence of, for example, the populace in Nazi Germany and in Russia under Stalin. The totalitarian and terror-filled ideologies that feed into these systems need to be analysed in terms of the kind of oppressive relations that ripple down the scale of the social hierarchy, into the family, and that have carried through the generations. In this way we can uncover the kinds of social control and the inequalities that arise. Themes of reference centre on the notion of patriarchy as a basis of society. Patriarchy is focused not on the behaviour of women, but on the expected and acceptable models of behaviour. These expectations, then, set limits and exert pressures towards maintaining the socio-political order.

"The (Muslim) Moroccan Fatima Mernissi, in 'Beyond the Veil', argues that sexual inequality (in Morocco) was based upon, or at least justified by, a
view of women as having a dangerous power which must be contained; this, she suggested, was a view which was incompatible with the needs of an independent nation in the modern world" (Hourani, 1992, p442). The impact upon contemporary mindsets is of particular importance then, when we consider the paradox of a society that continues to endorse a pre-modern form of social control, while at the same time trying to parallel the rest of the world in its technological advancements (e.g. Jordan, where democratic principles seem to be accessible only to the elite; at grassroots level, cultural imposition and honour killings continue unabated). The case of Pakistan is somewhat different, in the extent that culture and religion play in endorsing particular social intercourse. This case study provides a platform from which to debate notions of individual liberty and the right to dignity. The following section interrogates the notion of seclusion of the realms of men and women. This invariably translates into a distinct gendering of the domains of the public and the private, and the autonomy associated with the economic realm as opposed to that of the domestic.

TRACING THE ORIGINS OF SECLUSION: THE CONCEPT OF PURDAH

In order to unpack the notion of purdah, we need to understand that at the outset, "reference is being made to the concealment of women and the separation of the worlds of men and women" (Jeffery, 1979, p3). The word 'purdah', sometimes spelt 'parda' derives from Persian culture and "generally indicates a woman in a veil, from head to toe, the face being covered" (Kays, 1997). The Arabic language, which is the language of the Qur'an, has no 'p' in its alphabet. This in itself attests to there being no basis for the existence of this rather laden word in the Arabic language. Urdu, the predominant language of the Indo-Pak subcontinent, derives a number of its words from the Persian language. The Urdu words 'niqaab' and 'burqa' are additions to the Urdu concept of 'purdah-nasheen' which means "a veiled woman or one who stays behind a curtain or does not come out of the house". None of these words exist in the Qur'an (Kays, 1997). Wadud proposes that in
terms of Qur'anic injuncture, "there is no essential difference in the value attributed to women and men... The Qur'an encourages all believers, male and female, to follow their belief with actions, and for this it promises them a great reward" (Wadud, 1999, p15). "Muslim progressives have long argued that it is not the religion, but patriarchal explication and implementation of the Qur'an that have kept women oppressed... The Qur'an does not prescribe one timeless and unchanging social structure for men and women" (Wadud, 1999).

Purdah exists at a number of levels, most significantly as an ideology of seclusion of the sexes, and is translated into physical form according to predominantly patriarchal interpretation. In other words, the way in which this concept is implemented depends on the theoretical underpinnings and cultural backing of peoples who either choose or are subjected to living within the expectation of the purported lifestyles. Cora Vreede-de Steurs finds that for some of the North Indian women whom she interviewed, the 'burqa' is "the expression of her social rank and confirmation of her religious ideals" (Vreede-de Steurs, 1968, p46). For Jeffery, the complaints about 'purdah' registered by many of the North Indian women in her study, made it increasingly difficult to assume that it is the women who are at the fore of its perpetuation. This is adequately illustrated in "their self-designation as kue ka meyndak -a frog in a well- as people with intellectual and physical horizons limited to the tiny patch of sky directly above their heads" (Jeffery, 1979, p11).

Purdah, itself refers to an extreme form of seclusion. But as is the case with honour, there is a continuum. Many traditional Islamic countries prescribe the strict separation of the realms of men and women, and hence the separation of the economic and domestic spheres. 'Purdah', in its physical form, is not a predominant code of dress among the Indian Muslim women in South Africa. This places the core research category of South African Indian Muslim women at the other end of the 'purdah' continuum. This study is more specifically concerned with the ideological and cultural issues underlying the concept of 'purdah', i.e. the study hopes to derive an understanding of the relative needs of the people who advocate the various
forms of its existence in order to understand how the ideological 'purdah' or the expectations to conform, are internalised by, for example, South African Indian Muslim women in various forms of everyday life. Ideas of shame and the relation of self to society contribute to the pressure to conform. Also, the seclusion of women from the political can be seen to filter into a number of apolitical settings in this way. Cultural defence provides a kind of "prestige" accorded to women who are considered "protected" and that this concept exists with inherent ambiguities, makes for the questioning of its basic origins and its applicability to present day South Africa. Cora Vreede-de Steurs observes the rather symbolic subtleties of expressing seclusion: "by seclusion, by the bowing of the head, by the complete silence a woman observes in the presence of a man..... (it) may (also) be observed with the use of dark glasses... (and in so doing) they protect their state of mind, so easily given away by the eyes, from an unknown and almost exclusively masculine world" (Vreede-de Steurs, 1968, p62). Purdah "does not always have to be materially present in order... to dominate a given society". Indeed, it should be kept in mind that the very basic principle of the purdah system is "the segregation of the sexes and the subordinate position of women" (Vreede-de Steurs, 1968, p62). This has adverse implications, especially for the kinds of autonomy that may be available to Indian Muslim women in the South African context.

Jeffery's study is focused on the lives of the custodians (pirzade) of the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi, India. Jeffery indicates the great significance of purdah to the pirzade men, especially with relation to the status of having their women in complete seclusion from the outside world, as well as the picture of perfectly-pure living that it portrays to devotee's and visitors to the shrine. "The seclusion of women is a function of a family's worth, in an economic sense, but it also becomes indicative of their social worth, or their honour" (Jeffery, 1979, p25).

It should be noted, at the outset, that Jeffery's study was conducted in India during the late 1970's. Almost a quarter of a century later, and taking note of the fact that the current study is set in modern day South Africa, it is
not surprising that the nature of the lifestyle of Muslims is considerably different. However it is possible that the concepts of shame (sharm) and honour (izzat) do indeed survive here. This project seeks to ascertain the extent and prevalence of these ideas.

For Jeffery (1979), the notions of shame and honour "are more widely applicable than Islamic ideals. Women are the locus of family 'honour', and their vulnerability to assault by outside men necessitates constant vigilance over their virtue" (Jeffery, 1979, p23). Family honour, then, is seen in relation to how the outside world views the family (members). The notion of honour seems to be attached to the importance of communal living and the need to belong (and be accepted) by the immediate social environment. So then, social cohesion is dependent on every member of that social unit being equally able to follow the prescribed set of rules for behaviour. This is ensured by family elders and predominantly male heads-of-families that enforce these prescriptions. Women are socialized this way: i.e. they internalise the idea of conducting themselves according to and within the limits of 'decency', as set out by expected norms. Often, it is mothers and mothers-in-law who perpetuate these ideals. Mothers bear the responsibility of educating their daughters by passing down beliefs and expectations. Where they leave off, the mothers-in-law step in and add to the repertoire new expectations of the bride in the new family setting.

Illustrating the limited nature of using Islamic ideals to explain the seclusion of women, "there is also evidence from the Indian subcontinent that some women were secluded before the Muslim invasions which took place from the tenth century onwards. Thus, the source of any cultural diffusion which might explain the seclusion of women is by no means unambiguously Islamic" (Jeffery, 1979, p23).

Further, Jeffery observes that purdah in the Indian subcontinent exists and is observed by both Muslim as well as Hindu women. This points to the cultural derivative of the practice of purdah, as opposed to being backed by religious obligation. A number of differences in either instance can be attested to. In particular, Muslim purdah is observed after puberty, in
relation to all men except the woman's immediate family, while Hindu purdah is observed after marriage. Also, in terms of dress, the burqa, which offers a complete bodily and facial veiling, is reminiscent of Muslim purdah, while the use of a duppatta (large scarf) or the edge of the sari is sufficient to veil a woman in need of observing the Hindu purdah. "Young Hindu women are often given no more freedom to move around outside their homes after puberty than are Muslims; and the general stress on bodily concealment and the separation between the sexes while differing in detail can be found in Hindu and Muslim purdah alike" (Jeffery, 1979, p3).

Jeffery goes on to identify that "even among Muslims, there are variations in purdah practices. The general feature of separation between the sexes remains, but differences in wealth as well as differences in context affect the precise character of that separation" (Jeffery, 1979, p3). In the more affluent homes, the seclusion of women is reflected in the construction of the houses while altered living arrangements and the use of curtains and screens feature in poorer houses. In each case, the movement and articulation of women is restricted to the private.

"But purdah entails much more than the physical separation of men and women. There are multitudes of complex social arrangements which maintain social and not just physical distance between the sexes" (Jeffery, 1979, p4). Jeffery goes on to recount her own experience of this social separation, as a British researcher, and hence a visiting outsider: "I had to avoid incurring any suspicion that I had chatted with shopkeepers or encouraged the attentions of men in the bazaar. Men who received me warmly in the privacy of their homes, or chatted to me in the shrine as they did to women pilgrims would doggedly ignore me in the street, lest their greeting reflected badly on my modesty and their respectability. I was treated and expected to behave as if I was the invisible creature I would have been in a burqa" (Jeffery, 1979, p5).

Researcher Cora Vreede-de Steurs associates her slightly differing view with the freedom she was allowed to go where she pleased, during the course of conducting her studies in situ. To her, it was a matter of men's exclusion and not women's seclusion in the female quarters:

"I associated the compulsory parda with a general phenomenon that resembles it in certain respects: for the women of any country there is a world of their own that remains terra incognita to the men because they do not and can never know its rules. Yet every girl automatically learns these rules as she grows up, and the adult woman perfects them and evolves a network of specifically feminine relationships from which men are excluded. The women of any race, class, or community create an aura of parda about themselves, determined by the preoccupations and incommunicable secrets of their sex. This 'parda' is only a more specific form of a much wider social phenomenon: each generation and each group with its own interests and concerns creates its own exclusive code"

(Vreede-de Steurs, 1968, p43).

This view is re-evaluated in Vreede-de Steurs terms when she realises "that the wider phenomenon of a feminine life naturally 'veiled' from the other sex has nothing in common with the restriction of (the) women behind the parda, the curtain imposed by a rigorous segregation of the sexes in a society dominated by men, who, too often, rationalize this seclusion as a means for the protection of the weaker sex" (Vreede-de Steurs, 1968, p43).

Understood in the interests of maintaining respect, in one interview, a woman praised her husband's conduct: "He gives proper attention to preserving honour. He meets many women who come to the shrine. I am sure you have noticed the way he talks to you. He just glances briefly, and then looks away. This is very noble behaviour. Men should not stare at women, the way a lot of young men are doing these days. It is shameless, the way they look at women" (Jeffery, 1979, p104).

I took particular inspiration from a point that Jeffery makes regarding women and genealogy. It seems that both the men and the women whom she interviewed were perplexed at the idea of the need to enquire about female forebears in addition to male ones, owing to their belief that" 'blood' comes through the male line" (Jeffery, 1979, p10). Yet, Jeffery (1979) observes that
these same people "perceived no irony in being able to trace their connection through the male line right back to the Prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Women are continually lost from genealogical memory, they are structurally irrelevant. No line continues unless there are sons, and yet the production of sons relies on the presence of wives" (Jeffery, 1979, p10-11).

The reliance on cultural ideology continues to exist and often the distinction between whether these notions arise from pre-Islamic thought or from Islamic precedent is rather difficult to establish. In Pre-Islamic society, "the concept of individual rights did not exist" and nothing protected women from being exploited by careless or malicious males in their families" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p33). Callaway and Creevey confirm that "the subordination of women was very explicit... women (were) expected to find their fulfilment through submission to men. What Islam did, in this situation, was to provide a bill of rights. In so doing it developed a sense of individualism in a way not previously known and undermined the absolutism of the community/family unitary system" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p33). The scholar Ameer Ali suggests that the Prophet Muhammad "recommended to the women-folk the observance of privacy. But to suppose that he ever intended his recommendation should assume its present inelastic form, or that he ever allowed or enjoined the seclusion of women, is wholly opposed to the spirit of his reforms. The Koran itself affords no warrant for holding that the seclusion of women is a part of the new gospel" (Ali, 1922, p249 cited in Jeffery, 1979, p19).

SOCIALISATION THROUGH CULTURE, IDEOLOGY AND POWER

The assumption of human consciousness, experience and reflexivity emphasises the centrality of human 'subjectivity'" (Billington et al, 1998, p30).

In Marx's view, values and perceptions are reflections of the power and interests of the economic system and are manifested in social relationships. This cultural consciousness can be described as ideology. More explicitly,
ideology is the link between consciousness and those conflicting interests that arise from the individual's real 'material' status in society as a member of a particular social group, e.g. class, gender, race or age. Marx identified in ideology the power to maintain social order by concealing conflicting interests. The set of beliefs and values that constitute the discourse of an ideology often favour some groups and exploit others. For example, the "cultural embeddedness of the developing child involves continued implicit encounters with a moral environment of others, both past and present, who provide guidance for the procedures of everyday life" (Emde and Oppenheim, 1995, p431). Barlas (2001) suggests that "a society's constructions of 'ideal' women also shape its treatment of 'real' ones. That is precisely why our understanding of the problems of 'real' women cannot lie outside the 'imagined' constructs in and through which 'women' emerge as subjects" (Rajan, 1993, p10, cited in Barlas, 2001). For example, the ideology of gender role stereotypes "constructs women as carers and nurturers, which is to the advantage of men, who receive this care and who are not expected to provide it for others. For women, it may mean exclusion from paid work and independent leisure. Both men and women perceive this as a 'natural' difference rather than a social construction; that is, they 'naturalise' it. This makes it difficult to challenge and contributes to the maintenance of stable, though oppressive, social relations" (Billington et al, 1998, p31). Gender can be understood as a normative system, expressed by Schur (1984) as "a pervasive network of interrelated norms and sanctions through which female (and male) behaviour is evaluated and controlled" (p11).

"Moral standards are acquired from the interaction between the individual and significant others (especially interactions in infancy and early childhood), but once such standards become the person's own (i.e. the superego), guilt will result from their violation even if no-one else becomes aware of the violation" (Jones, Kugler & Adams, 1995, p309). The self-evaluative nature of the self-conscious emotions (e.g. guilt, shame and embarrassment) contributes to the realisation of relevant social procedure. In addition socialisation provided by significant others (caregivers) are
"primary contributors to the development of these emotions as both states and dispositions" (Ferguson and Stegge, 1995, p182; Tangney and Fischer, 1995). Zahn-Waxler and Robinson (1995, p160) confirm that values and expectations conveyed to (female) children enhance their sense of responsibility, and hence their moral and pro-social behaviour. Further, "there appear to be deeply engrained cultural expectations for mature interpersonal behaviour in young girls. Girls seem to internalise earlier and more completely the message that... it matters how people feel" (Zahn-Waxler and Robinson, 1995,p162).

"Given that these moral emotions are also 'social' emotions, making their appearance in the context of interaction or the self-in-relationship, variations in socialisation experiences may assume special salience. It will be difficult (to differentiate) the precise effects of nature and nurture" Zahn-Waxler and Robinson go on to cite an example of what they mean: "... the anxious mother who provides many negative, guilt-inducing socialisation messages, and also models a particular affective style, may be influencing her child through socialisation. But the child may also have inherited a body chemistry that predisposes him or her toward high affective arousal" (Zahn-Waxler and Robinson, 1995, p167). Chodorow (1978) finds that the childbearing and child-rearing roles of women point out biological links for gender differences in empathy, guilt and anger. It is often that more subtle forms of socialisation found within parent-child interaction may be responsible for preparing young girls for these roles (Chodorow, 1978).

Lindsay-Hartz, et al (1995, p291) predict that experiences of guilt (and shame) as well as the socialisation agents and upbringing tendencies that induce these emotions serve to reinforce and strengthen the development of an internal locus of control, and enhance a person's feeling of responsibility to the occurrence of negative events or even their possibility. The correlation of features such as early responsibility among female children, their subsequent tendency to experience guilt and shame and the motivation to set things right by way of conforming or keeping up with expectation, all contribute to the observation that self reflection is limited by the cultivation
of self-conscious emotions. While on the one hand it should be noted that the absence of the tendency to feel guilt points to the features of the sociopath who is unable to feel remorse and shows no commitment to others in society, the excessive experience of guilt or shame is also extremely dysfunctional (Lindsay-Hartz et al, 1995, p292/3).

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS: SELF VS. SOCIETY

The previous section illustrates how cultural consciousness or socially constructed ideology has consequences for social and personal identity. The role one plays in society is integral to our construction of personal identity, and is accompanied by a prescribed set of socially acceptable behaviours. Jamieson (1987) constructs an analysis of the balance of loyalties between the self and the unit of the family. "The issue here is whether the 'family' or the 'individual' was regarded as the ultimate unit: where did the emphasis lie \- with serving oneself... with personal aims... or with serving the family and family aims? How do we get at this through accounts of growing up? I scrutinised certain life decisions for indicators of the balance between individual and family. I tried to unravel and weigh up in a small number of key life-course decisions, the elements of personal, self-assertive choice and the elements of serving family needs and goals" (Jamieson, 1987, cited in Drake, 1995 ed, p120).

Goffman (1971) suggests that individuals suppress their own desires to maintain a form of working consensus. The particulars around the construction of identity can be seen to perpetuate notions of domination in society. The capacity to reflect is embodied in the reference to an T. According to Billington, et al. (1998) the development of a 'self' can become a conscious project of conferring responsibility upon the fundamentally social, reflexive T. "Self-consciousness is a cognitive capacity; it reflects the ability of the child to refer to itself. The self becomes an object to itself" (Lewis, 1995, p213). Along with self-consciousness is the advent of negative and positive forms of self-evaluation, which then gives rise to the functional components of consciousness, i.e. the emergence of embarrassment, guilt, shame and

modesty. Lewis (1995) identifies "the functional significance of embarrassment as the inhibiting effect it has on self-reflection". This is explained as follows:

"This emerging capacity allows the child to reflect on the self, to use the self to make comparisons to others, and ultimately to develop evaluative behaviours and processes that guide his or her actions and lead to moral behaviour... the dangers reside in an entrapment in circular reactions. It is possible to think about the self thinking about the self thinking about the self. Such circularity would lead the child into a hopeless cycle of thought, preventing him or her from acting" (Lewis, 1995, p213).

Increasing awareness "of how our personal and social histories shape our lives" has the inherent ability to activate the potential to restructure roles and relations in society, "and to struggle against the socially structured relationships of power that constrain and oppress us. For while we are fundamentally social beings... we are also cast in roles in which we live out existing structures of oppression" (Billington et al, 1998, p56).

The challenge facing contemporary women is the ability to reconcile a complete realisation of the social self while retaining the independence and autonomy of the 'I'.

THE IDEOLOGYOF HONOUR AND AUTONOMY: UNDERSTANDING THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS OF MODESTY ANDSHAME

Lila Abu-Lughod contends that the ideology of honour "serves to rationalise social inequality and the control some have over the lives of others in a system that idealises the equality of agnates and the autonomy of individuals" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p33).

"Individuals must achieve social status by living up to the cultural ideals entailed by the code of honor, in which the supreme value is autonomy. The weak and dependent, who cannot realise many of the ideals of the honor code, can still achieve respect and honor through an alternative code, the modesty code" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p78-9). This is what constitutes a society

governed by high ideals of morality and personhood. It suggests that the individual immersed in it is virtuous and autonomous. If honour derives from the values of autonomy, "then there are many, most notably women, who because of their physical, social and economic dependency are handicapped in their efforts to realise these ideals". She says further, that even though there are relative displays of "some of the virtues of autonomy under certain conditions, their path to honour in this system is different" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p33). She finds that there exists a significant relationship between honour and modesty. Women, in particular are expected to admonish a great degree of modesty in their conduct towards those who are able to have a greater sense of the perfect ideal, i.e. their social superiors, who are mostly men and then some older women. "To have moral worth, (women) must show modesty" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p33). Abu-Lughod identifies that within this social unit, the soundness in the interpretation of sexual modesty is illustrated in its capacity to rationalise honour killings and women's veiling.

The conceptualisation and experience of the modesty code as 'shame' involves the illustration of a society which affords great value to honour, mainly in the form of social esteem and respectability. More than the available understandings of guilt and shame from the individual point of view be they from biological factors or socialisation agents or perhaps from both, the notion of self-evaluative and self-conscious emotion has implications for the development of the individual as a unit of that moral society. In analysing the effects of culture, ideology and power, I refer to the impact on autonomy and self reflexivity that can be noted, due to the socialisation tendencies of other 'self-conscious emotions' such as shame, guilt and embarrassment. When shame is given a community consciousness or public emphasis, it translates the bounds of violating self conceptions of standards and limits, and takes on a wholly different status. The kind of 'shame' that is culturally expected of the individual self, immersed within a social unit that derives its discourse from that particular culture, is a preemptive one. It is not a reactive state borne of an experience, but a pre-
emptive understanding of adverse implications to the honour or 'izzat' of the self, the family and the community/clan, i.e. 'kutum-qabila'. Guilt and shame motivate moral behaviour by acting and by engaging in avoidance behaviour "the tendency to act morally in order to avoid the feelings of guilt that one knows would result if one had failed to act as such". This confirms a "complex interplay between the experience of guilt and the motivation of moral and prosocial behaviour" (Lindsay-Hartz, et al, 1995, p290). Subsequently, this then translates into the honouring of perceived moral commitments and invariably validates the upholding of unequal ideals of the status quo.

The ambiguous sentiments of the people involved in the Abu-Lughod study are an important part of the way she construes the image of the society. On the one hand, normal discourse is in line with the ideals of honour and modesty. Beneath this intricate network, Abu-Lughod uncovers artistic expression in the form of poetry that explicitly defies the moral system. It opens the self to being an emotionally vulnerable entity filled with "deep feelings of love and longing. These are not at first glance the sentiments of proud and autonomous individuals, nor are they the sentiments of chaste individuals" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p34-5). She goes on to question the "discrepancy between two modes of discourse" and especially what this tells us about the kind of power vested in the ideologies of honour and modesty to shape experience (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p35).

The research by Abu-Lughod is helpful in understanding the imperative of modesty as a socially constructed reply to the question of the interplay between the realms of men and women, a relationship construed as unequal to some and as that of protector-dependent to others. "Autonomy or freedom is the standard by which status is measured and social hierarchy determined" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p79). The social construct of levels of dependency and the arbitrary control of resources and properties allows that a distinction be made between the hierarchies of varying positions of autonomy. This differentiation is then used to validate the social statuses" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p85).
CHAPTER

FOUR

### Discovering The Diamonds

Six South African Cases -

### An Introduction
This study entails the construction of life histories of the interviewees through the use of biographical narrative. The data from specific interviews with women, chosen for the sake of analysis, were deliberately isolated in terms of particular profiles that stood apart as representing something significant and/or different, but relevant to the greater population of Indian Muslim women. In an effort to guarantee and protect the anonymity of the interviewee, and the families involved, certain particulars such as their birthplaces, their exact geographical locations and even the nature of businesses conducted by relevant parties have been either mentioned broadly or left out at the discretion of the researcher.

So far, we have looked at the conceptual, historical and comparative literature which explores the range of Indian and Muslim societies, their attitudes to honour, shame and seclusion and the particular importance of treating women as a special case when examining democracy and freedom. We now turn to our case study, South Africa, and the particular set of women who form the core of this project.

South African Muslims of Indian origin have a range of historical, political, religious and cultural links to both the Muslim diasporas as well as to those of the so-called NRI's or Non-Resident Indians. As this title suggests, generations of families living in countries other than India,
continue to hold onto the link with the subcontinent. Most of the South African Indians are the latter generations of the indentured labourers and the so-called passenger Indians - traders, as opposed to being labourers -who arrived in South Africa during the mid to late 1800's. According to Brijlal's 'Demographic Profile', Ebr.-Vally (2001) finds that by 1960, the percentage of the 'Indian' population that had been born in South Africa was a significant 94.5%. By 1995, South African Indians under the age of thirty were already members of at least the fifth generation born locally. In South Africa, Indian language users can be identified as Gujerati, Memon, Urdu and Kokni among the Muslims, and Hindi, Tamil and Telegu among the Hindu's. Ebr.-Vally points out that even though the relationship of the younger generations with India is "quasi-mythical", this young generation is "aware of family, language and religious identity markers and often still has to comply with them" (Ebr.-Vally, 2001, p171).

This chapter proceeds with a very brief overview of the lives of the women interviewed, simply to situate them. Afuller analysis follows.

THE SIX PROFILES

(*Note: Names have been altered in the interests of maintaining anonymity)

The five women interviewed form a diverse group. All resident in Johannesburg, and all either middle or upper class, they adopt a variety of different attitudes towards Islam, family conformity and personal freedom. The choice of names has been deliberate: Mira is young and spirited, and her name is new-age and suggestive of her progressive outlook. Fiona is a name found among the upper class strata of both English and Indian Muslim society. Fiza is an uncommon name, but refers to the atmosphere and the potential for the subject/namesake to ascend into the atmosphere. Sima and Salma are names more common in traditionalist families, especially in Pakistani society. Zara is an older name that continues to be used.

In order to evaluate the family context, consideration was given to the size
of the family and its potential to influence the decisions regarding each of its members. With this in mind, I have established a measure whereby families consisting of a maximum of four members are considered small/nuclear i.e. two adults and a maximum of two children and in the case of more than two children or more than four members of the family, the family size is considered 'moderate', unless otherwise stated. If the study encountered a case of six or more children within the family, then that family would be a 'large' family. In addition, the interviewee's age at the time of her marriage and the age gap between the interviewee and her husband are relevant to the profiles. Four of the women in this study are married. The early age of marriage has been categorized as under 21, while those married at the minimum age of 21 are considered in the 'moderate' category. I separate the age-difference scale into two components: those less than and/or equal to five years, and those greater than five years (and less than ten years).

Mira*, age 27, unmarried Going Places

Mira is an only child, born and raised in Johannesburg. Her father is a cardiologist and her mother has a matriculation level formal education. Also, Mira's mother is a 53 year old businesswoman, importing a range of traditional clothes and shoes from India and Dubai for the local market. Even though she is financially independent, Mira continues to live with her parents. She says that this is her choice, since she has never felt the need to live on her own. Growing up, she seems to have an open, communicative relationship with each of her parents. This small family seems to be fairly liberal and show no signs of autocratic parenting, patriarchy or seclusion along the path of Mira's childhood.

Mira is the kind of free-spirited young person whose life revolves around the typical realities of someone her age living in modern day South Africa, with a professional career taking off and a life of socializing and sport filling her calendar. As an architect, Mira has travelled abroad in the interests of furthering her career, something that earned her parents the disapproval of

many family elders such as grandparents and grand-aunts and grand-uncles. Her broadminded parents have encouraged and supported her in furthering her studies and the development of her career, taking great pride in her advancement and hard-earned independence. But their liberalism is limited in one important respect; the decision as to who she is to marry, they believe, should rest with them. And they already have the ideal person in mind: the son of a family-friend in the United Kingdom. This is the cause of many an argument between parents and daughter, especially because of the contrast that it poses with their encouragement of her thinking and living life as progressively as possible. Mira speaks of attending lavish social functions and says that her parents have socialising down to a fine art. Mira's encounter of traditionalism lies in the accounts of her parents insisting on maintaining their ties by conforming to social obligations in the community by attending weddings and social functions. This puts them in close connection to the rest of the Indian Muslim community and continually reasserts their relatively high social status. In addition, this is relevant to the seeming narrow-minded way in which they deal with Mira's potential marriage. So, then, Mira's question is simply whether or not her parents have indeed given in to social pressure? "Have they finally succumbed to the typical chains of a cultural viewpoint from which they once seemed to be so free?"

Fiona*, age 35, married at 18. Autonomy Limited by her Mother-in-Law

This interviewee grew up amidst a mixture of conservatism and affluence. Fiona was one of three children living in a 'joint' or extended family situation in a small town outside Johannesburg. By the time that she was born, her family had already established substantial land and property portfolio's, and were pioneers in large scale manufacturing. Their home and the family business were the core of life situated around a culturally and religiously staunch grandparent couple. She remembers growing up on a large family plot, in a family mansion that was big enough to house their extended family,
which consisted of her father and his brother and each of their moderate sized families. In many ways, she attributes her introverted childhood to this extended lifestyle of not being able to directly relate to her own parents, especially her father. Her father is responsible for the family business, and her mother falls into the expected role of dutiful daughter-in-law concerning herself with the needs of the household. Fiona finds a high level of traditionalism in her upbringing, and often seeks out these themes in her narration. Rules and decisions were hierarchical, mostly affected by her grandparents, and any decisions regarding relevant life events such as education and marriage had to be approved. She feels that her grandparents took their understanding of religious obligation to the extreme level of autocratic interpretation; decisions made by her paternal grandparents were often justified within their framework of religion and honour. These had to be adhered to by each member of the extended family.

Fiona matriculated at an all-girl's high school along with her female cousins. Male children in the family completed their education in an all-boy's school and went on to join the family business, while female children got married almost immediately after high school. At the age of nineteen, she married the eldest son of a wealthy businessman and moved to her in-laws' home. This was a nuclear family unit of moderate size. Almost immediately, responsibility replaced the lavish gifts and engagement romance. Along with marriage came instant adulthood and the accompanying expectations of her role as wife and daughter-in-law. She describes her first year of marriage as "isolating" and a situation in which she felt "disorientated", mostly because she missed the support of her large family. While she does not continue to live under the same roof as her in-laws, a range of expectations still accompany her, as is the case of the other interviewees. Her husband is a businessman, and the age gap between them is small (maximum five year gap). Fiona finds that a great degree of communication exists between them, and while her husband is not necessarily a patriarch, even though he is responsible for the financial subsistence of their moderate family, they exercise a joint control on the general upbringing of their children.
Fiona is a well-dressed, non-traditional woman with a strong sense of the influence certain people have had on her and the way in which her life has turned out. Unlike any of the other married women in this study, Fiona's marriage is not an arranged marriage. However, in consolidating their marriage, she and her partner have had to follow the protocol of the traditional involvement of family elders in undertaking the proposal. The interview with Fiona proved interesting in the way she related her experiences and then provided an explanation, almost as though she was being introspective and sometimes, justified certain events in her life which showed that she had perhaps made sense of them in her own way. Making sense of events that are not entirely in one's control can be accompanied by the danger of taking typical cultural codes as explanation. Already internalised, and naturalised in a sense, their logic is often taken unquestionably or perhaps resignedly. On the other hand, questioning regrettable events can also lead to a healthy journey of making peace with the past and especially with the people who claimed the authority to affect outcomes along that path. Fiona particularly remembered the poor communication in her own as well as other families during her childhood, attributing it to the typical "old school of thought" of distancing oneself from elders out of some form of respect. The communication barrier, she believes, is still a common feature in "our community" and needs to be overcome.

Sima*, age 44, married at 16. The Modern Mother-In-Law

While Fiona grew up on their family estate with a number of homes let out to people who worked the land, on a vast stretch of land behind the family mansion, Sima grew up on a housing development not very unlike those of the tenants Fiona described. The socio-economic reality of Sima's upbringing in a lower middle class household as compared to Fiona's upbringing in an upper class household means the experiences along each of their lives' paths were often radically different, yet both were imposed upon by the same expectations and rules of acceptable norm. The ways in which
culture and tradition dictated decisions regarding their female lives often went beyond their respective socio-economic statuses. The similarities inherent in their lives are reflected in their roles as daughters and daughters-in-law in each of their respective settings.

Sima was born on a smallholding on the outskirts of Johannesburg, to a working father and a housewife mother, in a moderate sized family. Her accounts of her childhood bring a range of delightful memories of the ways in which the creative minds of children are able to transcend the economic limits placed upon them in a lower middle class setting. For instance, she recalled the theatrical games and live performances that they, as children, would initiate and present to the rest of their neighbourhood. She described in vivid detail, how the design and production of costumes, stage props and scripts would bring out the enthusiasm in everyone, young and old. Her education level stops short of being given the opportunity to realise her dream of becoming a nurse. A marriage was arranged at the age of sixteen, to a man just over five years her senior. The possibility of marriage is seen as a priority in a woman's life, above that of education and a career. Sima proceeded from her own traditional, religious moderate sized family into another very similar one, of her in-laws. Married life brings the challenges of establishing new relationships and the requirement to prove herself to her mother-in-law. As compared to a relatively carefree childhood, this encounter can be perceived as her first direct brush with traditionalism, family honour and the expectations that compel her to make behavioural adjustments. This is especially relevant to her relationship with her mother-in-law, the family matriarch. Her involvement in general business alongside her husband, over the years seems to have allowed her a degree of freedom in the conduct of her life and in the decisions regarding her children's lives. Sima's husband is the family patriarch insofar as financial control allows. Her active involvement in the lives of her children has earned her a significant autonomy. Today, she lives separately from her mother-in-law, has a moderate sized family of her own, and listening to her speak gives one a sense that she has made the most of her life in all its trials and joys.
Sima, conducts the telling of her story around a comparison of her life as a young daughter-in-law with the life of her own new daughter-in-law. The marriage of her son has brought with it a re-evaluation of the traditional settings of relations between 'new' relatives, and this self-made rethinking is something that Sima puts a great deal of effort into implementing. She seems to make an effort to be broadminded, and she is positive about building an understanding, caring relationship with her 'new daughter'. The role of friend that she has cultivated over the years towards her children, is one she openly extends towards their spouses, and in so doing succeeds in her efforts to allay the traditional mindset of 'the way things should be'. Casting aside the comments of elders, she has established a comfortable zone within which communication and love can flourish while still maintaining the respect that she continues to achieve as parent and friend.

Fiza*, age 42, married at 23.

From Businesswoman to Subservient Daughter-in-law and Wife

Fiza is an only child born and raised in Johannesburg. Her father was a businessman and her mother, a housewife. She attended a co-educational school, but left school at the age of 16 in order to involve herself in the family retail business. The death of her father before she got to high school shifted the family reliance to her paternal and maternal uncles. Also, the pressure on her mother to ensure her 'correct' upbringing and eventual marriage became an obstacle on her career path. Unlike the other married interviewees who all marry before the age of 21, she married at the age of 23. (This research has categorized under-21 as an early age of marriage). By then, she had already had the opportunity to develop a business career, which had to be given up upon her marriage. A marriage partner was arranged. The age gap between her and her spouse is small (under five years). They were engaged and married within three months. During the first two years of marriage, she lived with her mother-in-law. She encountered a range of limitations during this time, and was unable to establish a healthy communication with her husband or even with her mother-in-law. The dictates of her life often lay in
the hands of her mother-in-law as is the case in some of the other interviews such as Fiona (35), Sima (44) and Salma (46).

The expected changes and challenges she was faced with in her new life, are taken on in a resigned way at first, and then contested in retrospect, especially after she is able to compare with the life of independence she once had. Hers is a story of free-spirited upbringing replaced by a series of unexpected trials brought on with marriage. Fiza is no longer the financially independent person she was before her marriage. However, her independence lies in the conduct of her day-to-day affairs. Hers is a moderate sized family, but she finds that her relationship with her teenage daughter is being challenged. In the past, maintaining her culture of silence had worked in favour of avoiding fights in her home, and thus guaranteed relationship safety. With Fiza as role model, her daughter has learnt to 'tiptoe' around 'daddy's bad moods'. However, her daughter's emerging personality challenges the comfortable patterns that she has set thus far. And while witnessing these changes threatens the comfortable order that Fiza has been able to maintain, she admitted that it made her think seriously about the wrongs of her own silence; a trait that the independent, youthful Fiza would not have possessed. Her growing daughter is allowing her to revisit the days of her fully reflexive youth.

Salma*, age 46, married at 19. The Cheated-On Wife

"Ifind that I have this tendency to push myself to make everyone happy. I never used to talk at home (as a child). I was totally introverted. I just did what people wanted me to (do). And that's the story of my life"

(Salma, 46, Cheated-On).

Salma was born and raised in a moderate sized traditional, religious family in Johannesburg. She recalls that she had a good relationship with her father, but constantly felt the need to prove herself to her domineering, matriarch mother. As a female, she was not allowed to leave the house

without the escort of her brother. Salma related to me a sequence of accounts that, to her, are proof of her own strength of character and resolve. At the age of 18, as a top achiever at high school, the goal of furthering her career was a dream that was soon put to rest, having been brought up by strict parents who considered the proposal for marriage far more suited to her future. Also, she constantly mentioned the undeniably matriarchal nature of her family setting. The effect of her mother dominating her life decisions continues to be felt in her life. She got married at the age of nineteen and moved into the home of her in-laws. This new home consisted of a larger family, with added responsibilities on her as the daughter-in-law to manage the household tasks of cooking and caring for her husband's younger siblings. This early, arranged marriage and motherhood soon thereafter characterised her life, and her own maturation. On the other hand, she feels that maturation on the part of her husband has never been forthcoming. Nor did they grow alongside each other. The age gap between her and her spouse is negligible (less than five years). They have a moderate sized family.

Dotted along this interviewees path, is the story of keeping up with expectations, and acting in the interests of families' honour, i.e. as a daughter of one household, and as the daughter-in-law of another. For Salma, keeping up with expectations and having to worry about 'izzat' makes her feel isolated from the outside world. This means, never upsetting the proverbial applecart no matter what may befall the individual. Salma dealt with a number of occasions of having been cheated on by her husband. The talk of re-marriage has often risen, and earned him the support of his own mother, but has not been undertaken as yet. These incidences are the object of huge strain on her well-being. In the past, she has run the family business alongside her husband. However, any attempts to advance her involvement have been stunted by him. Financial dependence is a minor part of why this interviewee chooses to remain in her marriage. The choice is more of an obligation to the respectable status that her children can maintain within society. Also, she cares for the future marriageability of each of them, as the stigma of a "broken home" lends adverse connotations for their acceptance into another
household. This feeling holds water in the case of both male and female children.

Salma is the only interviewee who openly expressed her gross unhappiness and commented on it as a natural state of her life. However, she also showed the greatest amount of trust and faith in the Will of the Almighty God. She stated this constantly, transposing complaint with faith and resolve.

Zara*, age 59, Unmarried.

A sticker inside Zara's home says quite emphatically:

"They've found something that does the work of 5 men....

...One woman."

Zara is the eldest of three sisters who were raised alongside their maternal uncle's children in Johannesburg, after her parents' divorce. Their mother was a businesswoman, and had the support of her brother along her path of survival and in raising her children. This family shows a high degree of traditionalism and is presided over by a patriarch (the uncle). This is demonstrated in the decisions taken regarding the option for Zara to proceed to high school as well as the treatment of potential marriage in her life. She has had no contact with her own father and cannot remember much about him since her parents divorced when she was a toddler. She left school in 1956, at the age of thirteen. Being female, she was not allowed to proceed to high school even though she had above average results that guaranteed her a place. At first, her uncle considered the option of allowing her to attend high school and presented conditions to her. For example, he asked her to guarantee that she would not speak to any males and that she would get first class passes in all her subjects. Faced with the pressure of this situation, she was unable to guarantee these conditions and feels these strict conditions were placed upon her in order to deter her from opting to continue her education. Her uncle's final decision rested on his principle that a daughter of his family would not be allowed to damage the family honour by studying alongside males not related to her. In addition, potential marriage suitors
were not considered by her uncle, in an effort to protect her from the suffering that her mother endured in her marriage. One of her sisters (B) was present at the interview for a little while and provided a rather interesting comparison in a sense where she also lives in a similar position of being unmarried as well as being only three years younger than Zara. While the marriage of daughters is considered a necessary practice that the family should undertake, Zara and her sister B, both remain unmarried, because of the stigma and fear that their father's abuse and their mother's subsequent divorce has placed upon them. Zara maintains the traditional thought patterns that have been part of her growing up. She justifies the decisions made for her by her uncle, as an essential and natural part of family 'izzat' or honour. In this way, she is unable or perhaps unwilling to question the possibility of her life having turned out differently had she realised her dream of being a doctor.

Most of all, her sister showed herself to be used to more decision-making capacity in the family and proved to be a deterrent, while she was around, to the respondent's more carefree engagement in the interview session. Their interaction proves to be interesting material for analysis by providing a further look into the nature of relations and decision-making within this household. They live with (and conduct businesses alongside) male cousin A. Sister B offers her explanation of the situation that they find themselves in: "You see, with us you going to get a little bit of a different story compared to the other women, because the other women have the men to make a final decision.... We had no men older than us. Our mother..... our father wasn't there to take care of us, so our mother had to be a mother and a father. Eventually, she had to do what she had to do (in order to survive), and we followed suit".

DISCUSSION:

These six very different women show interesting narratives in response to the exponential approach to structures surrounding them. Also, there exist certain purposeful themes cutting across each individual's experience. These will be fully evaluated in the next chapter.
CHAPTER

FIVE

### Mines Of Information

### Gendering Social Control For The

### Sake Of Honour
ANALYSING THE FINDINGS

"A gender analysis may take the form of a close reading designed to illuminate not only the written word but also the loaded associations and unspoken thoughts and feelings contained within the text. Alternatively, moving from text to context, it may investigate the society surrounding the subject itself on the one hand, close relationships with family members, friends, teachers, employers, or subordinates; on the other, the wider political, religious, and economic circumstances occurring in a specific time and place. Special attention to the prevailing ideological infrastructure and its system of signification often provides a fruitful method with which to isolate the sexual and sexist threads of the culturalfabric enveloping these scripted lives"

(Bell & Yalom, 1990, p7).

The six women who form the core of the project were interviewed about more than their life circumstances. They revealed a great deal about the experiences and concepts which frame their thinking and decisions. These fall on a continuum. At the one end of the continuum can be found those who felt extreme pressures upon them to conform, and did conform, and at the other those who felt these pressures in a milder form and were able to negotiate a better range of choice for themselves.

THE ELEMENTS OF CULTURAL DIFFUSION

Keeping in mind the questions raised as the basis of this study, i.e. the perceptions and experiences of the individual, regarding the opportunities, challenges and obstacles facing South African Indian Muslim women within the family and the extent to which traditionalist culture is able to create/influence a gap between opportunity and achievement, research by Ebr.-Vally (2001) asks a linking question regarding the social identity of South African's of Indian origin. "Associating around identity is a normal human tendency, but in South Africa, it was institutionalised by the Apartheid state, making all South Africans label-carrying individuals always able to define themselves inside and outside various designated identity strata" (Ebr.-Vally, 2001, p79). Ebr.Vally observes that "the view of ethnicity and identity as 'false consciousness' went hand-in-hand with the type of social sciences that privileged the analysis of the group over the focus on the individual" (Ebr.Vally, 2001, p85). This relegated the notion of individual human rights to a sub-priority and added to the ambiguity of its attainment. Acknowledging the distinct physical features that makes the typical South African Indian neither inherently 'black' nor 'white' Ebr. -Vally asks how they see themselves, and how they are perceived by other South Africans. She goes on to explore the specifics of representation of the cultural and political motivations around the classification of South Africans as 'Indians'. Understanding the origins of these South African Indians requires an analysis of the caste system to the extent that it is able to guarantee a particular social structure that is inherently Indian, as well as an unpacking of a revisited Indian worldview situated in the context of South Africa (Ebr.Vally, 2001, p27-8). Ebr.-Vally achieves this by analysing "the articulation between the social and spiritual axes of the caste system as re-created in South Africa and explor(ing) its influence on religious rites and social practices in the two largest Indian religious communities in South Africa, the Hindus and the Muslims" (Ebr.-Vally, 2001, p28). She identifies "the ability to redefine the past in the present that has made the 'Indian' community so
distinctly South African", and asserts that "without the reality of the past, the malleability of the now cannot be explained" (Ebr.-Vally, 2001, p29).

While the concept of caste runs contrary to the egalitarian teachings of Islam, Ebr.-Vally suggests that the fact that Indian Muslims are indeed the product of Hindu ancestry makes it "possible to propose the hypothesis that there is a Hindu collective memory subtly operating among 'Indian' Muslims that is enacted through the situating of people in a social and spiritual hierarchy" (Ebr.-Vally, 2001, p158). Ebr.Vally identifies a range of acts which pertain to this hypothesis. One example is the maintenance of endogamy or the strict adherence to marriage within the same language group, acknowledging the exact village of ancestral origin. This makes the notion of arranged marriage a preference in many traditionalist homes, since this guarantees endogamy. Marriage is given both religious and social significance, and it is considered highly socially obligatory to invite as many known members of the 'Indian' community as possible, and even more so to both honour the invitation, and reciprocate at one's own functions, by inviting people. Weddings are lavish affairs that often include week-long celebrations, with days set aside for the exchange of elaborate gifts of gold, textiles and money. "Marriage seals the union of two families and consolidates fraternities" (Ebr.-Vally, 2001, p159). The exchange of gifts is an important ritual in the consolidation of families and hence essential to the social repertoire of Indians. "Gifts are a measure of mutual appreciation and of a willingness to forge ties..... and the prestige that arises from the quality of the gifts is reflected on the entire fraternity" (Ebr.-Vally, 2001, p161).

The adherence to protocols and behaviours that pertain to caste-like structures not dissimilar to those of the Hindu caste system often contradict the purports of the Muslim faith. However, the range of practices has been assimilated into a way of life that is inherently 'Indian' in the South African context, and illustrates the high status awarded to social obligation and fraternal honour. The articulation of values taken on from a number of socio-culturally prescribed behaviour within the public sphere is what makes for a distinct kind of 'Indianness' that is represented in form, and recognised by

the non-Indian. It can be seen how the individual situated within the new context, "would immediately attempt to reproduce acquired and familiar social representations", regardless of the limits s/he may face regarding reproduction of the entire system they may originally have been accustomed to (Ebr.-Vally, 2001, p120). Quoting G.H. Calpin's Indians in South Africa (1949), Ebr.-Vally's identification thesis is emphasized thus:

"The Indian sees himself not merely as the father of a family, but as the founder and head of succeeding generations bearing his name in honour and wealth. He will establish a family trust, make his pilgrimage to Mecca if he is a Moslem, and put his name in large letters on the properties he has built. He becomes a pillar of society during his lifetime and a benefactor of his family at his death" (Calpin, 1949, p105 cited in Ebr.Vally, 2001, p89).

FAMILY HONOUR: THE CONCEPT OF 'IZZAT'

Family name and honour is internalised and deeply entrenched in the families of the women interviewed, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees. Even though the women may show considerable mobility and some features of relatively high reflexivity, there is a strong concern with the preservation of honour. This is so because of the way in which connotations of social standing and ways of identifying one's position within society are given social priority and internalised by people, both male and female. This is seen as the natural state of the family in the perceptions generated by the women in the interviews. In one particular interview, this theme comes through especially strongly when the interviewee descriptively relates how strict the household she grew up in was. She refers specifically to her uncle, by whom she and her two sisters were brought up:

"(He) was very strict. (He) was a person who wanted a lot of respect. Women must have their scarves on. They mustn't walk in the streets. As small as I was, seven or eight years old even, I had to wear a scarf when I went even to the phone. That's why today you see I still need one. (He) used to say: 'Gharjo tariko nay. Gaaj vinaji dhi keh nu (bara) viné; minji ekhli
ijjat nay (family name)ji (family name of in-laws) ijjat beri ai!'

[It's not the way of the household: that a daughter or a daughter-in-law goes (out) without a scarf; it's not just my honour at stake \- the (family name) honour it's also the (family name of in-laws) honour!]"

(Zara, 59, Unmarried).

The above quote is interesting in the way that it relates, firstly, the view of the interviewee about her life, and how it has turned out, and can be analysed in the way that decisions made by the primary male caregiver in her life in this case, her uncle - may have affected both its events and the way that she identifies herself. Also, these decisions reflect the seclusions and limitations which apply to both daughters and daughters-in-law. Many times, during the course of the interview, she mentioned how strict her uncle was, and illustrated her point with a recollection of an incident such as this one. Also, this interviewee seems to make direct quotes in terms of referring to exactly what the quoted person might have said, as the above shows, going to the extent of using the original dialect that he would have used. This particular dialect is called 'Memon' and originates from the North Indian state of Kathiawar. In my opinion, this direct first-person way of quoting is a common way of transferring social and cultural laws and rules, and seems to lend authority and status to the transfer of knowledge. With regards to the above quote, it is made evident that adhering to custom and tradition is passed down the generations, orally, and even though it may be questionable in terms of its practicality with regards to the present day, it continues to be done so in many ways. The 'Non-Resident Indian' or NRI diaspora in general, and the 'Memon' diaspora in particular because of having cited this case, is a contributor in this regard; it could be argued that tradition is even more staunchly adhered to especially because of the people having been uprooted, in a sense, from the traditional country of origin, and many elders fear that cherished customs will be lost to the new generations. When probed for an explanation on the concept of family or household honour, or what the interviewee directly referred to as 'gharjo izzat', she offered the following explanation:
"It means respect. (He) didn 't want anyone to say anything against the family and especially against him, so he was strict. He used to say (about regulating the behaviour of the daughter-in-law in the family): '(Their*) ijjatpachhi; pehla (my/our*) ijjat. (Because) maru chuna keh nu (my/our) aipachhi chuna keh di (their) ai. I don't want that.'

[First (my/our) honour, then (their) honour. (Because) people will say that first she's (my/our) daughter-in-law, then they will say that she's (their) daughter.]"

(Zara, 59, Unmarried).

*Family names have been removed for the sake of anonymity.

(Note that "ijjat" is the common dialectic usage of the word "izzat", and hence refers to the same thing, i.e. honour).

Family honour is given a sense of priority and repetitions of incidences illustrating its significance carry with them a kind of authority. Even though many of the women acknowledge these occurrences in the name of honour may have undermined their own ambitions in life, by prioritising the duty to protect a degree of communal reputation, they are able to justify the acts. Recollections from the women illustrate this clearly in the way that they use the justification to clarify the reasoning behind certain decisions. For example, Zara (59, Unmarried) punctuates her recollection of not being allowed to proceed to high school with an explanation of the importance of 'izzat' and the strict way in which her patriarch uncle brings them up. Salma (46, Cheated-On) talks about her matriarch mother's perception that family 'izzat' is more important than having her daughter waste her time on education. During Salma's narration when she registered a complaint against her mother's domineering nature, she immediately offered us an explanation: "It was because of her upbringing", suggesting that her mother was also the product of a patriarchal and honour-bound family setting. Similarly, the justifications may have served as both explanations at the time of the acts, as well as pacification for disappointments at the time, and for regrets in later life. The study now goes on to elaborate on the concept of
'izzat' and its link to patriarchy and seclusion in a variety of areas of life. ON GROWING UP FEMALE

Understanding the structure of the honour code brings with it the realisation that the female is considered an object of that honour. This means that it becomes incumbent upon her male guardians to ensure that her actions and behaviour are monitored and curtailed if they threaten to alter the family/community honour status. Hence, she is socialised according to this notion of maintaining a clean slate image which then reflects upon the purity of the community honour.

"Expectations were never really verbalised; they were just expected"

(Fiona, 35, Limited).

"As she grows up, a girl is assigned child-care (and household) responsibilities and is made aware that her sex is a potential source of shame and dishonor. She is constantly told that she is inferior to her brothers and that 'you are a woman and you are going to someone else's house where you had better know how to behave' (Zainab Kabir, 1981/5)" (Callaway and Creevey,1994,p34).

The Qur'an criticises the pre-Islamic Arabs by saying: "When one of them receives the good news of [the birth of] a female, his face remains darkened, and he is angry within. He hides himself from the people because of the evil of that which he has been given good news: Shall he keep her in contempt, or bury her beneath the earth? Evil indeed is their judgment" (Qur'an 16:58, cited in Maqsood, 1997, p 116).

"Gender, as we understand and use it, is that deep imprinting of cultural beliefs, values, and expectations on one's biological sex, forming a fundamental component in a person's sense of identity. When viewed collectively, it is a system of difference between men and women, and a system of relations between the two groups, with males almost universally in a position of dominance" (Bell & Yalom, 1990, p5). Most of all, women are socialised toward the appropriation of their roles in subordinate positions
and thus maintain the status quo and the cohesion of the social group and its' identity.

The limits on autonomy experienced by women have their starting point at the processes of socialisation. Each of the women interviewed, have a clear perception of the gendered differences experienced in growing up. Fiona, age 35, who comes from an upper class family and whose autonomy is most limited by her mother-in-law, declares quite unequivocally: "I think that being a female; there were a lot more expectations than if I had been a boy and from a young age, household errands were expected of us". Similarly, Salma, The Cheated-On Wife (46) remembers her mother's anger at her doing schoolwork at home, since she placed great emphasis on household chores instead. In addition, Fiona (35) makes note of the fact that there existed a degree of competition among her female cousins in keeping with expected norms; in many respects, this competitive behaviour continues today.

"We were made to really dress up so as to attract proposals from prospective marriage partners, or rather their families"

(Fiona, 35, Limited).

In the past, life fixated around developing themselves into perfect 'proposal' material. And, in keeping with social protocol, proposals meant marriage.

"Suddenly from childhood you were catapulted into this premature adulthood you were expected to bake and cook and to be this perfect socialite hostess; and on the other hand, there was this pressure on me to do wellatschool"

(Fiona, 35, Limited).

She says further, "every time that a daughter got a proposal, it was like a feather in the cap for the parents" (Fiona, 35, Limited). In other words, the number of suitors one could line up would attest to a girl's success as eligible marriage material. And, "although they all got along and there was this
surface camaraderie, there was this underlying envy and it was passed onto the kids (us)" (Fiona, 35, Limited). Today, competitive streaks focus on the comparison of each others lifestyles.

In Fiona's terms, the "superwoman" image was a "difficult package to live up to". She says that ideally, you had to be attractive, intelligent, and basically "the type of girl that any guy would propose for, and yet you had to have all these academic aspirations" (Fiona, 35, Limited). Even though it seemed that expectation and guidelines for protocol came from her grandmother, her mother often perpetuated these expectations, perhaps unknowingly. On the other hand, she still feels that her mother had a "fantastic way of putting all her unfulfilled ambitions onto (her)" (Fiona, 35, Limited). In this regard, her mother provided what she refers to as "loopholes" in the typical expectations that existed of her as a female child in the family.

"They wanted me to marry one of my cousins; my aunt said I would never come across a better prospect; and my mother said that she was definite that this was not the one for me. My mother had this big dream of the type of guy that I would marry. She always thought that I would fall in love and get married. But, my future husband had to meet all these criteria like: he had to be (of the same language group), he had to come from a good home, he had to be respectable, (and) he had to be on the same financial level as we were. And she had this wonderful idea that I would meet this Prince Charming and that he wouldpossibly be a doctor and that I would be doing something and we would live this wonderful life. But she never seems to have thought at all about the things that would go into making this pretty picture possible"

(Fiona, 35, Limited).

The last thing both mother and daughter wanted was a "boring existence, exactly like my mother's" and to this end, her mother encouraged and lobbied for Fiona's studies. Fiona's mother had entered into the family and fallen in line with the expectations incumbent on a daughter-in-law. But for
her daughter, she wanted education, a love marriage and a career: the package came with conditions of social conformity in the respects of social standing and profession of the prospective partner for her daughter. The main concern for the rest of the family was embedded in the idea that "to fall in love and get married was a taboo, and was linked with going to varsity" (Fiona, 35, Limited). This threatened the respectability (and hence the 'izzat') of the family, and lobbying for further education actually put pressure on Fiona to get engaged. In other words, she would have to engage in a kind of compromise or conditional pact if she was to get permission to pursue higher education and her dreams of a career.

Salma (46, Cheated-On) also faced marriage as the only option allowed to her. She ruefully reminisces: "For us to go from the house to the shop around the corner was a major thing. We weren't allowed out. We had to be with my father or my brother... The only freedom we were allowed was school. So school meant a lot to me".

WOMEN'S EDUCATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR FAMILY HONOUR

According to Callaway and Creevey, in traditional societies "education at a higher level may... be seen as a threat to a woman's acceptance of her proper role. Western education, in particular, tends to stress individual rights, individual responsibilities, and individual worth, which may be seen as inconsistent with the view of a woman as subservient to her husband and obligated to meet his, and her children's, needs before anything else" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p56). The following recollection is a case in point and touches on the much contested topic of the education of women:

"He had that in him! He was always very strict. You know we were only four girls in standardfive that had a transfer card to go to high school..... Now imagine we four getting, so it must be really good. I still got that card; transfer card; and (He) said straight: 'Minje ghar ki ijjat neh minjo ghar nati allow kare keh dijijaathigh school meh vinéjida chokri-chokra banna wun'.
[The honour of my house and my household doesn't allow that the likes of a daughter should go to high school, where girls and boys study together.]"

(Zara, 59, Unmarried).

Of all the women in our core sample, Zara has the most clearly articulated memories of izzat or honour. Once again, it is interesting to note how Zara makes first mention of her uncle's strictness before she goes on to recount the incident that illustrates this feature in both his demeanour as well as in the way that it affects her life. The interviewee goes on to explain that at the time, her male cousin was in high school and was of the same orthodox line of thinking as their uncle. He refused to have her join him in a co-educational school, as he perceived that it would impact on his esteem and cultural status. The disregard for male and female co-education points to the kind of seclusion perpetuated in South African Indian Muslim society at the time, as well as to the nature of patriarchy that allowed her male cousin a deciding influence on her not being able to attend high school.

"He said, 'if (she) wants to go to school, then I'll leave school. I'll do private.' (Uncle) says the boy must study and the girl must sit in the kitchen. SoIwentfull time in the kitchen. Itwasn 'ta choice. So I left school"

(Zara, 59, Unmarried).

Supporting this is Callaway and Creevey's suggestion that "if the morally approved role of a woman is to be occupied with domestic chores, then education may be seen as unnecessary beyond the elementary level or some fraction thereof" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p56). As part of her account of this incident regarding what she perceived as well-deserved education, she related that conditions were set out whereby she was meant to agree to not ever slipping below first class passes and refusing to speak with male classmates. These would have been impossible to guarantee, and her complaints could only be registered with her mother, who claimed to have no say in the matter. The final decision was made: she was not allowed to go on to high school. "At
best, women, as matriarchs, can come to control some property and have influence over those men, usually sons, on whom they must depend to negotiate business and deal with the world of non-kin" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p110). In this case, it seems that her mother may have felt bound by obligation to her own brother, who had taken on the responsibility of custodian and guardian of these additional females under his wing; having come from a 'broken home' his guardianship ensured that their status and honour was not devalued (as in the case of Salma, 46, Cheated-On who fears leaving her husband for the sake of her children's status in society) and hence they were all meant to feel obligated to him for his protection. Further, this is what makes her otherwise strong mother, obligated to remain silent for the sake of respect towards her brother and so as not to undermine his authority regarding the upbringing of her daughters. The debate over 'mixed schools' is intricately linked to the notions of honour and seclusion. Zara is unable to attend a high school for this reason, and for example Fiona (35, Limited) is only allowed to complete her high school education at an all-girls school. In Fiona's case, her family's wealth status makes this privilege of the separate schooling available to her (and other children in her family). However, this same wealth status seems to warrant the fiercest protection of family honour status by ensuring that its females conform to expected behaviours and limitations. Other interviewees only have the option of the cheaper co-education government schools at their disposal. Zara articulates her disappointment in retrospect:

"And today, he's married to a white woman and he's got (black) son-in-laws. I always tell him: 'through you my life spoilt. I would 've been a doctor, but you didn 't become a doctor and you didn 't let me (either)'"

(Zara, 59, Unmarried).

There is obvious prejudice in the way that she makes sense of the changes that have affected her cousin's life. She is yet bound by stereotypes that make it difficult to understand how someone who affected a significant life decision for her, could remove his own conservative influence in his own life. The resultant confusion leads her to lash out and in a way she finds herself
stuck in an explanation which no longer makes sense, since the secondary person who affected it, has changed his outlook on life, that may even extend beyond her own relatively naturalised conservatism.

Fiona, being full aware of her academic capabilities and her aspirations to continue studying, also shows signs of 'understanding' the reasons behind certain regulations of behaviour; hence the problem of having internalised the tendency emerges. Unfortunately for her, and without her realising it, this makes her leave certain questions unasked:

"I could have gone into a mixed school, but you know how we were brought up, and they would say that in Islam it's not right; so in any case, the girls' high (school) was the option, and my male cousins went to the boys'high (school)...""

(Fiona, 35, Limited).

Fiona's (35, Limited) dream to study faced a number of obstacles; most were circumstantial depending on her husband's career, while some were borne from cultural expectations of her as a daughter-in-law and wife. For Sima (44, Modern Mother-in-Law), the option to study beyond matriculation did not exist. With the choices of teaching and nursing presented to a woman of her age and race group, the ardent dream to become a nurse had been nurtured throughout her schooling career, only to culminate in having to contend with the situations that life had presented, i.e. marriage. Salma (46, Cheated-On) also has to ride the wave of the expected path for a young girl straight out of matric, with very little option other than marriage. She remembers her mother becoming angry on occasion if she spent time at home doing school assignments.

"As far as she was concerned, housework was more important for females... to her studying wasn't important; to her, 'izzat' was more important, you know. She made it very difficult for me to study for my matricfinals"

(Salma, 46, Cheated-On).
The 'izzat' that Salma refers to here is set in the notion that in keeping with tradition and expectation, females should be married off instead of 'sitting at home and studying' as this is seen as an affront to the honour of that household. She describes her mother to be a domineering person, but suggests that her mother's similarly patriarchal upbringing is the reason.

"More than my father, my mother was very strict. I suppose it was because of her upbringing"

(Salma, 46, Cheated-On).

This point illustrates the observation I make earlier in this review, of the fact that mothers are the primary agents of socialization of female children, and pass on a number of customs that they have been also made to believe are relevant to their daughter's lives. And, of course, where they leave off, mothers-in-law continue the socialisation process of adding in the new family's repertoire of expected behaviours. Fiza (42) chose not to further her studies but involved herself in the family business, until the age of 23 when (an arranged) marriage brought with it a new set of challenges. The comparison of each of these cases with the case of Zara (59) is interesting because of the fact that Zara's suitors were never given consideration (Zara remains unmarried), which means that marriage was not made a priority, and yet she was not allowed to pursue her goals of secondary and tertiary studies. She remembers how a number of conditions were outlined which would have been near impossible to accomplish:

"Because they didn 't want me to go to school, they were being very difficult"

(Zara, 59, Unmarried).

Callaway and Creevey assert that "(e)ducation is viewed as essential in order that women know how to fulfil their duties as wife and mother. Girls are to study female role models and religious injunctions to learn how best to support male family members. They should learn to please their husbands and to obey them. Their modesty and obedience is praised. Their
productivity is measured in the health and well-being of their children and in the satisfaction and success of their husbands and fathers" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p55). While the Callaway and Creevey study has been conducted using a core of West African Muslims, and may refer to a different setting in terms of class and ethnicity, the relevance for the present case study is that the traditional mindset along with a myriad of literature available from the Indo-Pak regions forms the basic socialisation material for women in our core study and the representation of South African Indian Muslim women. Many of the Callaway and Creevey quotes are reminiscent of the mindset being studied and often compliment and support the data collected in this study. In this way, they provide an essential illustration of the issues underpinning traditional Muslim thought, just as the Vreede-de Steurs (1968), Jeffery (1979) and Minturn (1993) studies are able to highlight the North Indian realm of traditional thought.

Mira's notion of education, as a graduate and established in an architectural career with rising success potential brings out her judgment of the gendered socio-cultural system which more often than not, she perceives as being negatively judgmental of women in the category of aspiring to higher education. Yet she feels that this is not a major deterrent in the new generation as a number of young women go on to pursue professional careers and obtain degrees, fully acknowledging the stereotypes presented to them. For some, like herself, the support and encouragement of her immediate family, and especially her parents, is enough to allay the adverse pressures that may be felt to be discouraging by others. However, the support can often come to a standstill when post-marriage expectations override it.

"It's taken as a given that women who are educated or who have full-time jobs can'tpossibly know how to cook. At least not the way the perfect Indian woman should; and so there goes the whole idea of 'the way to a man's heart', right? In their terms, she's bound to be a failure! (The) thing is I can cook. I live on pasta, chicken and fish, and enjoy a range of takeouts
too. But I can cook up a storm just as good as any Karachi born or Mumbai chef (laughs)"

(Mira, 27, Going Places).

"None of the world's major religions directly proscribes education for girls in their principal texts, but various Islamic clerics have interpreted these texts in just this fashion, warning against sending women to school lest they be corrupted by the general decadence of the ideas of Western industrialised societies" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p56). In 'A Gift For Muslim Women', a cleric asserts that "(w)omen need not indulge in academic pursuits. Islam has made man responsible for the subsistence of his wife. When a girl attains puberty, she should marry. There is no need for her to wander in colleges and universities" [emphasis added] (Madani, 1999, p451). This sort of literature is widely disseminated in the local context. The limits placed on women's education are informed by culture and the expectations derived thus. Unfortunately, the implications that these expectations have for 'family honour' lead to the perpetuation of codes of behaviour that affect the autonomy of the women who internalise these expectations. They derive from culture and are justified as religious obligation, only because of the conviction with which many culturally entrenched notions are followed. Once again, this is a misconception, since the Qur'an encourages the education and progression of both women and men:

"The acquisition of knowledge is incumbent upon all Muslims. It was emphasized at the very onset of revelation" [The Holy Qur'an 96:1-19] (Stork, 2000).

While all consideration has been given to the extent of each of the women's secular education, and the implications and concerns that this has for the family 'izzat', it is interesting to note that every one of the interviewees, ranging in age from Mira (27) to Zara (59), have only had access to an informal Islamic education. Each of them had access to the informal madressa (Islamic religious school) setting with a female teacher
who followed a prescribed syllabus formulated by texts and material such as the 'Bahishti Zewar' ('Heavenly Ornaments') and 'A Gift for Muslim Women', compiled and imported from the Indo-Pak region (Thanvi, 1978; Madani, 1999). This attests to the limited nature of socialisation material in the formative years of the individual female life coming from the realm of the madressa, and having derived from the cultural understanding of the Indo-Pak subcontinent. Also, each of them continued going to the madressa only until the end of primary school. And the only difference with Mira's madressa is the fact that it was a co-educational school. The end of the madressa career seems to coincide with the beginning of high school and/or the onset of puberty.

As part of prescribed traditionalist structures that ensure that the female is kept within a limited sphere of reference so that there is no space for harm to befall the honour of the family/community, the kind of education and socialisation material that she has access to, are themselves deliberately limited in nature.

HAPPILY EVER AFTER, AND THEN WHAT?

Marriage, among Indians of Hindu or Muslim origin, is both socially and religiously relevant. A tradition of the Prophet Muhammad states that the Muslim who marries, completes half of his/her religious obligation. In addition, marriages unite two families or even clans (Ebr.-Vally, 2001), and extend relations and social leverage. So then, it is not difficult to understand the great importance placed upon the marriage ceremony and the events preceding it, while immersed in the theory of honour and social statuses. Arranged marriages point to the importance placed on community relation-building above that of the bond between two individuals who will share their lives from then on. The arranged marriage has always been a favoured option because of the degree of endogamy and homogeneity that it allows clans to maintain. Three of the four married women interviewed in this study, has been married according to the arranged marriage system, with the exception of Fiona (35, Limited).
However, she faces little or no opposition from her family elders because of two relevant conditions: a) her husband derives from the same class and language background that she does; and b) they follow the protocol of proposing via the family elders, in order to maintain the respect of the honour code. Marriage options were a feature of social control in that they discouraged further education; they were a manifestation of 'izzat' (or perhaps just a justification), and sometimes they were a platform for negotiating other needs, for the women such as the very education that they may have been denied outside of marriage.

"I got engaged in November and married in January. It was the end of my young days. I only agreed (because) my grandfather gave my mother hell about keeping a daughter in the house and maybe entertaining my ideas of study ing"

(Salma, 46, Cheated-On).

Fiona (35, Limited) suggested that her grandparents took their interpretation of Islam to the extreme. She had to negotiate her wish to study with the announcement of an engagement, just to placate her grandparents:

"The difference was that my parents encouraged us to study, but they had to fulfill the expectations that the community had of them, like when my (marriage)proposal came"

(Fiona, 35, Limited).

It appears that the condition for being allowed to study beyond high school was that she had to be engaged so that people would not have the chance to slander her name if she were seen speaking to a male. However, Fiona feels that although she had spoken about marriage with her future husband, "there was a certain protocol to follow..... my father-in-law had to go through the process; we couldn't exactly do it on our own" (Fiona, 35, Limited).

"When I got married, everything changed. I had to be 'super wife' and
'super cook'. With marriage there were all these responsibilities on the both of us. I think in a way we were pretending to be adults"

(Fiona, 35, Limited).

Salma's account of post-marriage life reflects that she could not have been prepared for what awaited her:

"I had to get up and do the washing early in the morning on my honeymoon. It was very unusual for me, but I was told that this was what was expected of a daughter-in-law in this household"

(Salma, 46, Cheated-On).

The onset of marriage seems to bring with it a number of unpredictable events in a woman's life. Salma, Sima and Fiza, "lack control over most of the important choices in their lives. Their parents select their husbands and that choice determines women's place of residence throughout their adult lives" (Minturn, 1993, p303). They then enter into a household of (relative) strangers, with a range of expectations, moods and roles within the family. In the typical Indian Muslim household, even today, the emphasis seems to be on communal living, even if the new couple is afforded a living space of their own, far removed from the extended unit. Expectation and hence obligation ties them, and especially the new bride, to the extended family, and this impacts on the choices she is allowed to make regarding her life and that of her children. In effect, marriage is not a bond between two individuals, but is made to be an affiliation between a woman and a new family with a range of new rules to learn and protocol to adapt to, often accompanied by implicit rituals of initiation in order to fit in into the new setting. However, despite these more obvious obstacles, it can be also seen in the lives of Fiona (35, Limited), Fiza (42, Ex-Businesswoman) and Sima (44, Modern Mother-in-Law) that marriage is also about a complimentary relationship rather than opposition; it is about unity and bestows an essential identity upon the individual. Each of them is able to negotiate a space within which certain freedoms are encountered; these are extracted from their relatively limited lifestyles. So we

can see how, within a patriarchal ideological context with the limited scope of reference allowed to women in particular, the human individual is able to assert a small sphere of choice and action. The continuum of reflexivity is manifest in a range of degrees and social situations including marriage.

PRESCRIBING REGULATION:

THE ROLE OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

While marriage has social relevance for the clans being united and religious relevance for the two individuals who undertake it, it also marks the beginning of new relations for each individual into their in-laws' family separately. This is especially so for the new bride in the new home in which she is meant to live out the rest of her days. Her husband's home usually consists of his parents and other siblings. To this can be added the potential spouses and children of his siblings. In many cases, earlier married life is characterized by living within the home of the in-laws. Some couples continue to live with the husband's parents, particularly in the case of a single/widowed mother. And in the event where they move out into a home of their own, it is expected that they maintain family social obligations and inherently, the honour code. At the top of the list of the brides new relation-building is the relationship that she is meant to establish with her new mother-in-law, who has the potential to be a necessary ally or may adversely affect her life and the relationship she has with her husband. The Qur'an contains a number of verses which attest to the grateful love of a child to the mother. On the other hand, "psychoanalytic theory has established the relationship with the mother as a determining factor in the (male) individual's ability to handle a heterosexual relationship" This is the basis of the Freudian concept of 'Oedipus Complex' (Mernissi, 1975, p69). Further, cross-cultural studies such as Phillip Slater's show that "societies vary between two poles, one of which accents the mother-child relationship, the other the marital bond. Each produces its own pattern of self-maintaining circularity..." (Slater, 1968, p414, cited in Mernissi, 1975, p69).

In each of the married women whom I interviewed, there exists a definite
sense of the crucial relationship with the figure of the mother-in-law, and the impact that this person has on their respective relationships with their husbands (and often, even with their own children). For example, both Fiza (42, Ex-Businesswoman) and Sima (44, Modern Mother-in-Law) mention that in the beginning of their married lives, their husbands were expected to hand-over their entire pay-checks to their mothers, and personal spending required that they then request the permission of the mother. "The mother-in-law's involvement with her son, in a traditional setting, is not limited to material things. It goes so far as to prevent his being alone with his wife. There is no way for husband and wife to be together during the day without being conspicuously anti-social" (Mernissi, 1975, p77). Mernissi talks of a common room or focal point of a home where all members are encouraged to spend their time together. "Individual privacy is vehemently discouraged. One of the accepted gestures for showing dissent within the family is to refuse to come to this communal room... Leaving the communal room right after dinner is considered especially rude... It is therefore 'natural' for the mother-in-law to use this custom to keep her son with her for as long as possible" (Mernissi, 1975, p77). Fiza (42, Ex-Businesswoman) remembers an incident in the earlier days of her marriage:

"I found it very difficult at first. It was as though he wasn't allowed to notice me in the room. He would get home from work, put his briefcase down on a chair and then sit and chat with his mother. Then we would eat. After that, he sat in front of the television with the papers. By the time everyone (her mother-in-law and her husband's other siblings) was ready to retire, it was too late and he was too tired to tell me about his day. And, I felt, he was too tired to hear about what I had had to endure. So, I let it go. Everyday, something would go wrong, and I promised myself that he would have to know. He would stand by me. But the cycle continued. I tried, once or twice, to wait in my room at the time he was due to arrive from work, thinking that he would notice my absence and come to me. Instead, things went on as usual and his sister would eventually knock on my door,
calling me to eat. Those days I found it difficult to swallow my food, even"

(Fiza, 42, Ex-Businesswoman)

Fiza suffered depression throughout the first two years of her marriage, because she struggled to establish a bond with her husband. She felt that she was not able to relate to her mother-in-law either, even though she spent most of her waking hours with her. Further, she attributed the learning difficulties experienced by her child to her depression. In Sima's case, marriage at the age of 16 and motherhood soon thereafter, meant that much of her growth centred on these new responsibilities. Sima, age 44, conducted the telling of her story around a comparison of her life as a young daughter-in-law with the life of her own new daughter-in-law. In this way she was able to often re-evaluate the traditional sense of the relationship, hence the term used to refer to her as "The Modern Mother-in-Law". She remembered, that for the sake of respect towards her mother-in-law, on many occasions she was unable to accompany her husband to his weekly cricket matches, but instead was expected to remain behind in the kitchens. This points to the nature of patriarchal thinking in the local context that prescribed a particular degree of seclusion upon her as a daughter-in-law. In addition, her husband would be taken aside in order to be consulted on his (their) lifestyle or the way in which it was conducted. This was done in Sima's absence. This method of non-consultation relegated her to a lower status, usually given to children considered incapable of making rational life decisions. It points to the way in which the mother-in-law is able to perpetuate the patriarchal behaviour and the conditions inherent in the way in which her new daughter-in-law is 'accepted' into her family. Today, Sima has reached a different status with her mother-in-law. Or perhaps it is that she lives her own life, relatively separate from the extended unit of the family and is answerable only to her husband: she has narrowed the scope of limits imposed upon her by the patriarchal conditions she first faced upon marriage. Also having conducted retail businesses alongside her husband over the years has also allowed her a great amount of autonomy in the conduct of her household matters and in the
decisions regarding her children's lives. In this way, she has contributed to the family wealth status, proven herself a worthy addition to the family, and in both adhering to the honour code and adding to the family 'izzat', she has asserted a higher status for herself.

In the cases of Fiona (35, Limited) and Fiza (42, Ex-Businesswoman), job transfers in favour of their husbands, and the resultant moving to a different city, away from the extended family, meant having to put up with endless allegations by their respective mothers-in-law of "taking their sons away". In either case then, it is ironic that the decision to move was made by the husbands without having consulted the women. "When the couple decides to leave the extended family", Mernissi suggests that they require a legitimate cover for their intention, such as a government job transfer if the man is a civil servant. "The wife perceives the (move of the) husband to another locality as an opportunity to recover some power over her life... and the mother-in-law perceives such a decision as a plot against her" (Mernissi, 1975, p77). Time, and the success in establishing lives of their own, has allowed a measure of autonomy to these women, which would not have existed (and often is eroded) in the physical presence of the mother-in-law.

Newly acquainting herself with married life, Salma (46) contends that: "there were (my mother-in-law's) five children in the house. I had to wash them, dress them and do homework with them. Basically all my mother-in-law's responsibilities (had) passed on to me" (Salma, 46, Cheated-On).

In Fiona's new home, life centred around her mother-in-law.

"She used to accuse me of the weirdest of things; instead of confronting me one-on-one, she would go to my husband... she would run me down constantly to my husband, and if we were having an argument say four months later, he would say: 'now I understand why my mother said that about you!'. There was a time when I had lost my self-esteem to such an extent that I believed that I was totally worthless"

(Fiona, 35, Limited).

While Fiona, in retrospect, recognizes the error of the way she dealt with

particular incidents in which she often had to put up with doing her mother-in-law's bidding, she related how she made numerous excuses in order to cover up. Once again, we are made aware of an element of socialization that might compel a person to react in a particular way that may be against their better judgment in a more rational situation. There exists a "culture of protection that keeps us silent" about numerous wrongs. Fiona's account of marital life is emphasised by the ways in which she is meant to deal with adversity with the least amount of fuss and uproar:

"My mother would hate it if I had to expose what my mother-in-law was doing to me! I was expected to just keep quiet and do my mother-in-law's bidding without querying it. And it was becoming frustrating. But I couldn't voice it. Coming from the family that I did, there were already a number of instilled expectations as well as a whole set of new ones from my in-laws. And although I lived up to these expectations, I resented it because I put my own wants and needs right at the bottom of the list. If I complained about my mother-in-law to my mother, she would turn it around. She would make me feel like it was my responsibility or duty to make changes... And I couldn't go to my father; I was very shy and there was a certain degree of distance between us"

(Fiona, 35, Limited).

In this regard, Fiona feels that she "had to pretend that life was most fantastic" for the sake of appearances. She acknowledged that she felt an "inner resentment" and made particular note of the "tremendous pressure" that knowing her mother's reaction added to the way she dealt with life. The culture of silence that she refers to, illustrates the nature of seclusion in the South African context in particular. While measures of decency and respectability are set as controls for the ways in which women dress and behave the limits to dissent point to a more insidious form of social control. For her mother, trust and patience would always pays off: "For your sabr, Allah rewards you". About her mother-in-law, she said she resented the way she had "controlled and manipulated" their lives. Looking back, she felt she

was not strong enough to stand up for herself. "I wasn't positive enough". And she did not feel the active support of her husband was forthcoming, but on the odd occasion when he would stand by her, he was made to feel immensely guilty.

"And the one thing that I will always feel terribly guilty about is that I deprived my child of the parental love he needed at that first stage of life, and that care and stimulation that he should have had. He was neglected..... kind of like children in an orphanage who have no real stimulation and support. He was left to lie in the carry cot. And I was cooking and running around and doing things for my mother-in-law."

(Fiona, 35, Limited.)

Mernissi suggests, in defence of the mother-in-law, that "it is the structure which sets up the roles for everyone and leaves specific outlets for the human individual's cravings and wishes. It is the structure which is vicious, not the mother-in-law" (Mernissi, 1975, p79). In order to perpetuate patriarchal systems, it is the very women who have internalised and lived out the structure, who are relied upon to continue the legacy. Mothers and mother-in-laws together form a social system in their own right in maintaining the transfer of expectations and social controls. Upon passing the age of child-bearing capability, it seems that the patriarchal system, under which they live, confers upon them an honorary male status, recognizing in them the ability to educate the new generation in the ways of the honour code.

SUPERSTITION: A PROTOTYPE FOR SOCIAL CONTROL

Shared stories provide significant ways of understanding the world. In oral cultures, elders tell life stories for the edification and socialisation of children in the community. Knowing how and why such stories are true is part of the process of maturing, and is fundamental to intellectual, emotional and social development. To understand your own life in light of these stories is to be a full participant in a particular culture" (Personal Narratives Group,

1989, p261). Socialisation leads to social control, i.e. it puts into place the elements that facilitate the maintaining of the status quo. The nature and design of particular forms of social control and the often irrational elements that perpetuate it depends largely on two things: one is the nature of the belief systems of the people making use of it, and the other is the reason for that social control, i.e. maintaining a particular status quo, while remaining aware of the different nature of the socio-cultural unit for which it is being designated. Whatever the case may be the realm of the unknown and the inherent fear that it brings about has been used in a number of social settings in order to terrify and vilify the public into compliance of living in prescribed ways so as to alleviate the possibility of encountering the so-called objects of terror. This re-iterates the notion of instilled terror as a form of social control and that in turn points to losses of autonomous, reflexive capacities in the victim population, as discussed in the review of literature at the beginning. Superstitions such as those that warn a pregnant woman against handling a knife at the time of a solar eclipse, lest it cause the newborn baby to have some or other deformity (mostly used as explanation for children born with a cleft palate), are examples even though they are adhered to by a variety of traditionalists in South Africa, and not just Indians. A range of superstitious remarks and 'beliefs' are passed down the ages often compelling rational beings to comply with the regulatory warnings as a final precautionary measure of 'just-in-case' something does indeed go wrong.

One such example is the institution of the 'maanta'. A verbal source relates to me that this is a kind of pact made by women in need of acquiring the so-called divine help of a saint or a pious person who is believed to have the ability to intercede on behalf of the common person, in search of a fervent wish to be granted. (The examples cited occurred within the South African context and further illustrate the notion of superstition). This 'maanta' or pact is conceived as follows: a women who has had years of difficulty trying to conceive, makes a pact on behalf of a saint, often makes a kind of pilgrimage to the site of the tomb of this saint, and promises a range of things, such as a lifetime of sweetmeats given to charity at a particular time of the year that
may correspond with the date of the child's birth. Another example is the case of a couple who waited three years before they removed the first growth of hair of their new-born son, and then took him all the way to India in order to perform the ritual. Under normal conditions, the initial set of hair of a newborn is immediately removed as a cleansing ritual meant to remove any form of physical and symbolic or spiritual impurities. In another instance a mother makes a pact to have all future children in her family and 'khandaan' not wear newly bought clothes, but hand-me-downs for the entire first year of the child's life in order to ensure that those future generations can enjoy the birth of healthy children (this is mainly done with sons). The emphasis on child-birth is given high priority and it is often the mother-in-law who recommends that her daughter-in-law carry out the procedure. The daughter-in-law then continues this tradition with sons of her sons, and in the same way that she is often reminded by her mother-in-law or other family elders, she ensures its continuation. Where this procedure becomes problematic and can be identified as a fear-induced form of social control is in the stipulation that as of then, and for the sake of the child's survival (as well as the survival and prosperity of the future generations or 'khandaan'), it becomes incumbent upon all future daughters-in-law to carry out the same procedure. There are increasing accounts (although not necessarily in the majority) of women who make verbal intentions to end the tradition of the 'maanta' in their families. I was made privy to an incident where a woman consulted her daughter-in-law and asserted that she would be the last in the line who felt the obligation to continue the tradition, and that upon her death, any future generations would be exempt from the burden of perpetuating it.

CULTURAL STEREOTYPES AND HONOUR

The prescriptions of the honour code are designed to protect the 'izzat'of the clan/community of which the family is a microcosm. We have already identified a number of social controls in keeping with the codes of 'honour'. The (male and female) individual's childhood and upbringing is gendered and the process is accompanied by strategic forms of socialisation.
This affects the prospect of education, the choice to develop a career and the events preceding marriage, and the social expectations of marriage itself. In addition, at a more covert level, there exist various stereotypes that further ensure the stigmatisation of individuals who deter from the carefully structured status quo. The focus of everyday life is on an extended family structure and the honour of that greater setting. For example, moving out of the extended family does not open the option of going to the home of the wife's family, as they too, are bound by prescriptions. The concept of seclusion carries with it a number of stereotypes. These stereotypes have explicit implications for the prestige or honour of the family as perceived by society. One such example is the notion of 'ghar jamai' which literally translates to 'in-house son-in-law'. The connotations that accompany this concept imply derogatory status for the families involved because it suggests that for a man to happily live in his in-laws home, he would have to have no 'manly' pride and puts into question his ability to adequately support his wife. This understanding often makes the typical candidate the subject of jokes. In addition, we can draw out the preference given to male suitors of similar class and at-least equal wealth status, in the marriage of daughters. Jeffery's study gives insight into the possible origins of the disfavour surrounding the idea of 'ghar jamai'. One respondent in the Jeffery study explains as follows:

"It's for that very reason that we do not like the ghar jamai [the son-in-law that lives in his in-laws' home], for how can the man and his mother-in-law keep proper respect for one another when they live in the same house? They'll be using the same latrine, eating meals together. We think such arrangements are disgraceful. I would never permit it. When my daughter was having trouble with her mother-in-law she begged me to let her move in with us along with her husband. But I couldn't agree to that it would bring shame on our family" (Jeffery, 1979, p103).

Even in the South African landscape, stereotypes such as these exist and are perpetuated by beliefs in keeping with the code of honour. While these may often be re-evaluated in new contexts, their basic content is the same:
individuals who deter from the expected range of behaviours are singled out and labelled as deviant or given a lesser stature within the social setting. This is significant for social control and for unpacking the limits to reflexivity along the continuum of negotiating choices. It is clear, from a number of accounts that all dependents within a social network, strive for honour in a traditional sense by conforming and subscribing to regulations and expectations as set out by the honour code. "(Dependents, male and female), share with their providers the same ideals for self-image and social reputation, which they try to follow in their everyday lives" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p111).

'SABR' OR PATIENCE:

'SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT VS. COERCIVE PACIFIER'

The philosopher Al-Ghazali asserts that "whichever man is patient with the bad character of his wife shall be given a reward like unto that which Job shall receive; and whichever woman is patient with the bad character of her husband shall be given a reward like that of Asiya the (believing) wife of Pharoah" (cited in Maqsood, 1997, p133). In most of the culturally informed Eastern world, the concept of 'sabr' (Urdu), 'suboor' (Arabic) or patience, is highly regarded and perpetuated. Interestingly enough, most of the interviewees take account of this and mention that this form of absolute patience is what keeps them strong through hardships that they may face. Fiona (35, Limited) mentions that registering complaints to her mother is always met with the advice to maintain patience, and that the end reward will then be inevitable: "for your sabr, Allah rewards you". Salma (46, Cheated-On) on the other hand shows the greatest amount of trust in the strength of Faith and feels that patience in this regard has brought her through the trials she has faced along life's path; trials that she feels are often beyond her control, and that she feels limited to act against. She says that:

"My life has always been a test of strength and Faith, and happiness came at rare times, but Allah has never left my side; each experience has
made me stronger, and taught me valuable lessons about what's really important and that's my children!"

(Salma, 46).

It should be noted that the concept ofsabr is borne of religious conviction that takes as its premise that trust in the Almighty and strength of Faith is what brings people through trying times. Also, it is meant to aid the spiritual development of the believer by encouraging a less aggressive stance, and in no way implies lack of self-determinacy. However, sabr as a tradition or Sunnah of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), is then translated into a variety of cultural metaphors for the way that men and women are socialised, respectively. As a tenet of good moral living, what starts off as a life lesson in tolerance, turns into the repression of negative emotions and reactions. Patience exists in two forms, i.e. on the one hand, it resembles the level of trust in the Will of the Almighty (God), and on the other, it may lead to suppression and passivity that perpetuates subordination. In typical gendered fashion, men naturalise the idea that certain (household) tasks would not be expected of them and they tend to have a lower tolerance level toward women in terms of 'emotion dumping'. Women are taught the art of patience in order to make a marriage work, and the typically repressive repertoire of behaviour is passed on to daughters, by having watched their mothers, or having heard authoritative comment on the subject. The Wassiyat, or 'Advice of a Mother to her Daughter on her Wedding Day' outlines a number of prescribed acts and deeds which facilitate this. On the one hand, while it reminds a woman "not to obey anyone if his orders be contrary to the commands of Allah (God)", it recommends that she "be obedient to (her) husband and pay heed to whatever he says"; further it warns that she "be prepared for him at meal times, for the heat of hunger is inflammable", and to "be quiet when he is asleep, for the disturbance of sleep infuriates". In addition, she is admonished to "give preference to his likes over yours and his desires above yours in all things (she might) like and dislike" (Appendix 1).
The Wassiyat is often disseminated at weddings along with the customary gift of a something sweet to each guest. It is usually given out among the women, and forms an authoritative form of social control, as it is often quoted by older women in the South African Indian Muslim community. It openly perpetuates ideas of seclusion and the patriarchal nature of its message aims to further the prescriptions of 'izzat'. This is reminiscent of 'The Good Wife Guide' that was published and disseminated in the Housekeeping Monthly (1955), which similarly prescribes behaviours that would lead to a good marriage: "Let him talk first remember that his topics of conversation are more important than yours". Further, it recommends that women do what is domestically required of them in terms of keeping his food ready, keeping the home and the children and herself presentable, and making him comfortable by "arrang(ing) his pillow and offer(ing) to take off his shoes". It goes on to remind a woman not to "ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him". And lastly, but certainly not the least in effect, is the admonishment that "a good wife always knows her place"! While these examples of social control material meet more resistance from younger generations of people who reassert and re-evaluate older ideas, the entrenched notions still impose a degree of expectation upon women. This is the case when she marries and is often regardless of whether or not she lives with her in-laws. Social etiquette and protocols require that she conform in certain ways so as to maintain the 'izzat' of the family that she represents. And her representation may continue to affect the 'izzat' of her own family even after she has married into another. She is constantly aware of this responsibility and there is a considerable pressure on her to consider her actions through life.

Researcher Nayra Atiya finds in a range of interviews with Egyptian women, that "several of the women feel oppressed by their men, but all generally resign themselves to sticking out their marriages. In many instances, she notes that "it is (the) need for a male protector and supporter

and that makes males indispensable to the women" (Atiya, 1993, xii). This tendency can also be explained as "reverence mixed with fear and with submission to the ancestral custom which prescribes that the woman must always yield and comply" (Vreede-de Steurs, 1968, p47). "There may be severe limits on the husband's ability to impose his will on his wife, yet she remains dependent and subordinate" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p81).

One is made to question whether the concept ofsabr is one of growth and development of the mature individual, as it is meant to be, or a survival mechanism and a coercive pacifier that enables that the status quo remains intact.

DEGREE OF RELIGIOSITY:

In each of the women interviewed, the conception of religiousness is a part of their identities as Muslim women. Being Muslim, though, is not just an identity, but is constructed as a way of life, prescribing a framework for the believer's (male and female) conduct in every aspect of life, thought and action. However, the degree of religiosity of an individual is not an easily discernable feature, nor is it a predictor of the amount of reflexivity that each of the women may be allowed in their lives. If anything, the strength of resilience that the interviewees show in their adherence to patience and Faith is the very condition that allows them to extract the spaces of autonomy in their lives. We can appreciate that the continuum of degrees of reflexivity is not a linear or easily predictable statistic. Further, contemporary South African Muslim society has ample evidence of the fact that the degree of religiosity cannot be necessarily defined by the way a person dresses, for while the traditional secondary texts as well as interpretations of decent moral codes are taken to mean complete and rigid forms of 'hijab' (covering most of a woman's body except for the hands and face), seclusion and even purdah, a number of contemporary Muslim's around the world assimilate the secular dress code. Sima (44, Modern Mother-in-Law) and Salma (46, Cheated-On) wear the head-scarf regularly, while Mira (27, Going Places), Fiona (35, Limited) and Fiza (42, Ex-Businesswoman) only observe 'hijab' at the times of prayer and at
various occasions where prayers warrant it. Zara (59, Unmarried) on the other hand, feels the need to keep her head covered to a degree, as the notion that a woman should not leave home without a scarf was instilled in her from childhood, by her uncle (primary male caregiver) and was justified as an essential act for the sake of the family 'izzat' (honour). However, the way in which she wears it resembles the loosely worn 'duppata' of the Indo-Pak region, and is a sign of decency, modesty and femininity, whereas the conventional Muslim way of wearing the head-scarf is done so as to completely cover the hair of the individual, as is prescribed to every Muslim woman in the act of prayer. Sima and Salma observe the wearing of the head-scarf in this way, even though the rest of their wardrobe is predominantly secular.

Dress code aside, the source of measuring the degree of religiosity in each of the women, in an attempt against being superficially judgmental, is the response in terms of the gratitude and allegiance that each interviewee assigns to their Faith in the Almighty (God). Mention is made in terms of their resignation to the Will of Allah (God), and due appreciation given with regards to the Divine mercy and kindnesses perceived. Salma, for example, constantly makes mention of the great "unhappiness" that life has set out for her; and just when her comment begins to sound laden with self-pity, the extent to which she is able to fall back upon her sense of Faith (Iman) seems to give her peace and she is able to regain the energy to move forward in her life. Adversity brings out the real test of Faith and the measure of Trust (Tawakkal) in Allah (God).

Fiza (42, Ex-Businesswoman) points out a quote in an autobiography (Durrani, 1998) that she is reading, one that adequately captures the nature of relations between a wife and her husband in the state of turmoil, the way she perceives it to be. This quote, she says, is a regular event in the lives of Muslim women in our community:

"I began to say my prayers under my breath constantly: to keep him cool, to soften his heart toward me, to make him love me. I was incapable of thinking of any other issue. Nothing else was significant" (Durrani, 1998, p106).

In My Feudal Lord, author/biographer Tehmina Durrani tells her own
life story as the wife of a wealthy landowner and politician in Pakistan, Mustafa Khar. She reveals how her own conception of Islam is wholly contradictory to that of her ex-husband and as she later realises, is irreconcilable:

"His values were steeped in a medieval milieu, a mix of prejudices, superstitions and old wives' tales. High on the list was the role of the wife. According to feudal tradition, a wife was honour-bound to live her life according to her husband's whims. A woman was like a man's land 'The Koran says so', he said. This was a revealing simile. A feudal lord loves his land only in functional terms. He encloses it and protects it. If it is barren, he neglects it. Land is power, prestige and property. I interpreted the Koran differently. To me, land had to be tended and cultivated; only then could it produce in abundance" (Durrani, 1998, p107).

Marjorie Hall and Bakhita Amin Ismail conclude that"... most (women) accepted their lot in life because, if they thought at all, they believed that their circumstances were in accordance with Islam and therefore to be endured at all costs; the reverse however was true, for one of the most fundamental and progressive principles embodied in the faith was the improvement in the position of women, particularly within the marital relationship" (Hall and Ismail, 1981, p43). The practices that limit the autonomy in an individual's life are explained as adhering to religious obligation. The line between the religion of Islam as a way of life, and traditionalist thinking that derives from the Indian culture becomes blurred, and the female individual internalises this transposed network of ambiguous thought as a natural condition. She naturalises her own dependency and subordination as part of her greater link with Faith. In so doing, she becomes the perfect candidate for perpetuating the system later on in life as a mother or mother-in-law.

DECISIONS? DECISIONS!

Decision-making in the traditional household falls upon the head of the household, who tends to be male. While this notion continues to predominate in the contemporary setting of the South African Indian
Muslim household, there is acknowledgement, at least, of the space within which discussion may occur, whereby allowances are made for differing viewpoints. This democratic form of parenting is encouraged more and more in the interests of healthy growth of individuals. However, it cannot be overlooked, that indeed, traditional stereotypes of patriarchal family governance do exist in a number of more traditionalist and conservative Indian Muslim homes. This study is able to extract a variety of incidences that affect and reflect the decision-making allowances of the interviewees, in their respective roles within the family, and greater society. Sima (44, Modern Mother-in-Law), Fiza (42, Ex-Businesswoman) and Fiona (35, Limited), for example, are each involved in trying to extract a degree of independence from the network of the extended family lifestyle that they have had to contend with, especially in the initial years of their married lives. Sima has retained a substantial amount of decision-making with regards to the lives of her children, as this realm has not been given due consideration by anyone else, i.e. her husband or her in-laws. This works in her favour, she believes, but she acknowledged that it took years to get to that point. A lot of this, she said, can be attributed to the fact that she was required due to financial necessity to conduct retail businesses alongside her husband. This contribution to the financial survival and upliftment of the family's wealth status over time gave her an important status, allowed her greater decision-making capacity, and afforded her that measure of autonomy she so urgently sought. Fiza (42) and Fiona (35) continue to feel the effect of authoritative validation being required from the top of the hierarchical structure of the family. Fiona (35) recalled that "expectations (are) never really verbalised, they (are) just expected". Salma (46, Cheated-On), on the other hand, "cannot rely on the support of (her) mother-in-law" in condemning her husband's infidelity. However, her financial subordination as well as the fear of a stigma that may become a legacy for her children to bear in the event of a divorce, is what keeps her hanging on to her marriage. So, then, in her case, her decision-making capacity is inherently limited by her fear of bringing shame to her children, and especially to the mantle of a 'broken home' that
she feels they would have to endure. Her concern lies in the problematic, culturally entrenched view that in order to be accepted into another family, the individual often has to come with few stigmas or misgivings either of his/her own doing or that of his/her family, which may impact on his/her own reputation. However, looking back to Salma's childhood, we see how she regressed into a resigned way of doing what it takes to maintain a semblance of peace in the household. This has set the trend for her life, by having been socialised to be "always striving to please people" and in this way not be made to feel like a failure (Salma, 46, Cheated-On). Carried over to her marriage concerns, she knows that she cannot rely on her mother for support. Her mother has been a "domineering" person in her life (and, she observes that she continues to be so). Her one outlet was being able to go to school. After matric, when she was not allowed to continue with higher education, she found another form of temporarily escaping the direct brunt of her mother's domination of her life:

"Can you believe that I never wanted to drive? It never interested me. But anything to getout ofthehouse! Andtoday I'mjustgladthatIlearnt"

(Salma, 46, Cheated-On).

The interview with Zara (59, Unmarried) proves to be an interesting comparison in the way that traditional decision-making capabilities are challenged, albeit out of the need for survival. At the beginning of the interview, her sister shared an observation:

"You see, with us you going to get a little bit of a different story compared to the other women, because the other women have the men to make a final decision... We had no men older than us. Our mother... our father wasn 't there to take care of us, so our mother had to be a mother and a father. Eventually, she had to do what she had to do, and we followed suit".

(Zara's sister B, age 56, Unmarried).

A comparison of conflicting personalities can be identified in the
difference of choice and decision-making capacity that each of the sisters' displayed within a household which has had to readapt to life in ways that often went against the grain of the culturally male dominant society. This is illustrated in the following exchange, initiated around decision-making within Zara's family:

Z: We 've always been deciding together. We all get together and decide.

B (aboutZ): Never.

Z (about herself): So that is never... They'll say: "she's too stupid to

decide" (laughs).

B: (about herself): (B) does thefinal decisions she just presses it! Bottom

line, darling!

Me toZ: So what if you don't like what she's (B) deciding?

B: You gotta gulp it!

Z: You gotta gulp it. (laughs)

B: You gotta gulp it, sweetheart.

...but we make it proper.

Z: Butit's always thatwegive in - it's always giving in...

B: Otherwise it goes on...

Zara seems to have relatively little decision-making capacity in the household, even though she is the oldest and the pioneer in the family business. Her retirement could be a reason that this decision-making capacity has been shifted to her sister, but in the above exchange between them, she shows little confidence in her own capabilities. Her sister confirms that Zara has little or no decision-making power, and she instead takes full credit for the status of decision-maker. Zara's acknowledgement of this also suggested that there is no forum for discussion. In her view, whatever Sister B decides becomes the rule.

About male cousin A, Sister B says:

"He's about 12/13 years younger than me. But we still have given him the... final... he does the final (decision-making)... although I would help
him, I would say to him, you know.... but still if A.... says 'no', then it's 'no '...I trust him completely. Because we 've seen his sort of... we 've moulded him in the right way, you know. That's what we think. Hopefully" (Looks around for confirmation).

Decision-making has the tendency to fall on the so-called head of the household or primary breadwinner. While Zara was responsible for getting the family business on its feet in the earlier years, more recently younger sister B (56, Unmarried) has been at the helm of the family business alongside male cousin A (44). If we proceed along the continuum of reflexivity within this family, over time, financial control and hence decision-making within this family has been passed down from Zara (derived from their mother), to Sister B and further on to male cousin A. The variable of age instead of gender is responsible for this. Zara (59, Unmarried) has been the person who keeps the family together at a social level of seeing to the needs of the other siblings and their children. All have fallen into the roles of familial relations that maintain the order of a working unit. What I found particularly interesting was that as a child, Zara took on the responsibilities of co-adult alongside her mother in making ends meet and putting food on the table. Also, business and familial decision-making came from her at an early age. She claims to have been a proficient cook by the age of twelve and helped her mother with contractual 'CMT' work for the garment industry. After being at the fore of the family's financial survival for most of her life, she has passed on a degree of her decision-making authority along with the mantle of bread winning over the years. This may have affected the present nature of her decisions and opinion with regards significant concerns. As the interview resumes with Zara, now alone, inhibitions are lost and I am made privy to an account of authority when she was seventeen years old, and her mother was away on business in India:

"(My youngest sister) got sick, and I had to take her to hospital. They had to do an appendix operation. Now, no uncles want to sign and I was underage and they didn't want to accept my signature... So I went to Dr.
Katz myself and I said to doctor: 'none of my uncles want to give the authority; you know my mother, and you had promised my mother that (even though she) had this problem... my mother could go to India... I said doctor; you let my mother go; now (my sister) is critical. If this thing bursts; if it gets poison; if she dies, who's responsible? I'm going to say that you are responsible. So I said: 'doctor, you have to! I will sign, but you will sign next to it. 'So Dr. Katz signed, and I signed, and he operated on her."

(Zara, 59, Unmarried).

The above incident shows that the interviewee played a parental role to the younger siblings, especially in the absence of her mother. During this interview session, various recounts tell the story of survival and resilience in the face of adversity, dotted with numerous incidences of cultural expectation and influence that has affected the decisions in her life. These decisions, such as the prohibition to proceed to high school and the turning away of potential marriage suitors have not been made at the behest of the interviewee, and this in itself attests to the nature of women's upbringing along cultural lines and the limited kind of autonomy in the experience of life. Freedoms are not entirely annihilated by the prescriptions of the honour code, but there is a complexity in the nature of these limited allowances.

In the case of Mira (27, Going Places) who has had the opportunity to develop a professional career, the sudden clamp down on her freedom in the recent request made by her parents for her to marry a person of their choice, contradicted the allowances previously made. On the one hand, Mira feels that she has had the support and encouragement of her immediate family, and that this has inspired her to succeed in many ways, including in the development of herself as an independent individual. Comparing herself with other females of her age, in her social category makes her weigh the balance of how lucky she is to have been afforded all the opportunities that have come her way. After all the 'allowances' she wonders if it is really too much to ask of her to go along with their wishes.

Thus allowances have been made, and the structures for these allowances

were made available to her but were subject to the permission and encouragement of her father. Also, decisions to travel abroad to the United States in the interests of advancing her career were made on a consultative basis, and both approved and supported, but provisions for her accommodation were made beforehand, with friends of her parents. She feels that this was the acceptable compromise for the sake of their peace of mind, and so that family elders would not give the family a hard time about "sending a young woman all alone halfway across the world" (Mira, 27, Going Places).

But were Mira's parents indeed committed to liberal, progressive change in traditionally set out norms that often deny women the opportunities presented to men, or was this a plan of some sort to prepare her for the marriage that was to be set out for her. What they have in Mira is an educated, liberated daughter whom they hope to pair off with the son of a family friend, who lives in the United Kingdom with his family. Mira already has an idea of what life would be like, and the expectations of being a new daughter-in-law in the home of her father's friend, for although they too are affluent and progressive business oriented people who have lived in London for almost twenty years, the traditional values that accompany the new role of daughter-in-law are very much woven into their lives. Mira has a clear sense of the expectations that marriage will bring for her:

"And my first priority will have to be about having children, not because I want to, but because I'm considered old I mean I am 27, and it's an outrage that I haven't given thatathought, I suppose. Once you 're married, having a child should be a beautiful symbol of the love you share for each other, and most importantly, it should be a matter of mutual consent. Here it's like it becomes a social obligation"

(Mira, 27, Going Places).

When asked about her stand on marriage in general, Mira opens the discussion to accounts of her social life, most of which her family does not know about. The reasons for this go beyond the privacy required of a
responsible young adult's personal life. Mira feels that, while she has had a number of "healthy friendships" and got to know a number of interesting members of the opposite sex, the decisions affecting her social life are influenced by the "fear of complication", which she explains as being "foolish enough to want to fight a losing battle with the folks over someone that would never be accepted, or perhaps someone who may have a lot to prove before he can get a foot in the door" (Mira, 27, Going Places). She illustrated her meaning by telling me about her own encounters with romance. One of them is with a dashing 'rocket scientist' of meagre beginnings, whose creativity and ingenuity seems to have made an impact on her life enough for her to consider the possibility of speaking to her parents about him.

"Alright, so he was not a rocket scientist per se, but the focus was on intellectual stimulation and compatibility. Josh came down from Australia to work on a new project that the company had launched. We hit it off immediately, and became the best of pals. It took two years before we realised that something romantic might be possible between us. Problem number one emerged when the reality hit: his (different) religion would bean issue with my parents. I think it took a while for me to rethink the possibility because at first I had convinced myself that it wouldn't be a problem. But afterwards, I started losing sleep over how I would take this one to them"

(Mira, 27, Going Places).

Mira feels that a number of features would meet with the disapproval of her parents; and she believes that this phenomenon is common in typically Indian Muslim parents no matter how progressive they may be in other respects. She labels the taboo stereotypes that cast doubt on relationships especially with regard to long term commitments:

"Religion may be an obvious (feature), but even in the same religion, it's often that language group makes a difference. I know that my grandmother fusses about that! Also, an older man, like say with an age gap of 10 years or more, can pose problems for some parents. And add to
that the fact that he may have been divorced or widowed and/or have children, and the mercury rises"

(Mira, 27, Going Places).

It is stated in the documented Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad that "the woman has a right over herself concerning marriage, and her guardian has a right over her concerning marriage; but her right takes precedence over his. If he wishes to marry her to someone of a proper background, and she refuses, then she cannot be compelled; while if she wishes to marry someone who has a proper background, and her guardian refuses, he will be compelled to submit to her wishes; and if he persists in his refusal, the qadi (religious representative/judge) is authorised to give her away in marriage in his stead" (SharhSahih Muslim, IX, p204, cited in Maqsood, 1997, p109-110).

Mira (27, Going Places) is standing at the crossroads at this particular phase of her life, faced with a difficult decision of weighing the options of what the best possible path to take might be, and the kind of rewards and/or penalties that her choice may bring. Her choices are limited to either acceding to her parents request or rebelling against it. She is an autonomous, self-supporting, independent female. She is able to remove herself in order to question the situation that she finds herself in. On the other hand, she is able to re-immerse herself into the socio-cultural setting that she was raised in and rationalise the reasoning behind her parents' request. The contradictions that arise are illustrated in her constant volley between acknowledging her independence (which has always been encouraged by her parents) and in the questions she raises about her obligation to her parents because of their support. She believes that since they seem to have discovered a balanced co-existence between living freely within a space for respect for traditional values, that perhaps this is what is requested of her as well. Part of her questioning process now reveals that she is thinking deeply about her role as per her identity as an Indian Muslim woman, albeit as a South African citizen. So then, Mira, in spite of being the independent woman that she is, is not very different from the other women, in the
subservient tendency she illustrates. While the other interviewees also submit to custom, they often show signs of carving out spaces and ways in which they are able to manipulate the primary decision-maker or the structure that holds them back, by using subtle ways to ensure that they get their way in particular instances.

A number of factors affect the nature of decision-making in each of the lives of the women who form the back-bone of this study. And, striking to note, is the fact that although the variation in these features may alter the kind of spaces carved out for freedom of decision, or even the way in which decisions are made on behalf of the women interviewed, invariably it would seem that each of them is faced with the dilemma of having significant decisions affecting their lives, made by others, predominantly male relatives. And this is in keeping with the administration of the code of honour which has the ability to affect the status of the family unit in society.

RESOLUTION

The analysis of findings has opened up a Pandora's box of rich material that colours my study in a number of ways: the way in which women are socialised to subordinate positions as well as their internalised notions of 'izzat' and what is relevant for the family and generations to come (khandaan) as well as the household-community sphere (kutum qabila) in terms of their different roles and the expectations that may be allotted to them. I am made privy to the institution of the 'maanta' or socio-religious pact undertaken by superstitious women who seek some form of divine intervention, and continuing the tradition of lifetime charities made obligatory to all future daughters-in-law upon the birth of sons, becomes a heavy burden to bear. Further, I explore the concept of 'sabr'or patience, as a socialisation agent and also a form of social control, as opposed to its intended goal of spiritual upliftment and development of the individual who enjoins the tenets of patience and good moral living.

Taking into consideration the complexity of the findings given the nature of restrictions around the sample and the range of differences that can be
allotted to each of the women interviewed, it can be confirmed that the findings both expected and discovered, are embedded in a number of social factors. This includes the degree of reflexivity and autonomy, or the lack thereof. What Callaway and Creevey (1994) refer to as "a syncretic blend of Islam", and the cultural prescription that is ascribed to by South African Muslims of Indian origin, shapes the lives of the women. Some Muslim women continue to experience "limits to inheritance imposed by Islamic law, which hinders their control of wealth and denies them whatever power and influence direct access to wealth brings" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p8). However, even though these laws of inheritance are unequal, "women have rights and advantages they did not have in pre-Islamic society... under Islam widows theoretically have the means to live should they choose not to remarry" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p31). In addition, "women have a right to the money they themselves earn", and in many respects the "rules of inheritance are among the most highly developed and distinctive characteristics of Islamic law" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p30).

"... the degree of constraint of women called for... does not necessarily predict the degree of independence women will have in their personal lives. Context to some extent modifies content" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p30.) We can add a number of significant social factors and the variations affected by and to them in order to enhance the explanation of autonomy versus more structural aspects of social control. The individual accounts enrich the study of women as bearing particular individual features which they gather along the subjective path of life experience. Embedded in a network of prescribed socio-cultural factors, then, each woman is able to manoeuvre her way through and define parameters for herself, within which a semblance of autonomy and progressive development may be allowed. Beyond this modest wading through of the social composition, is the evidence that this study uncovers: reflected and confirmed in the observance of the Callaway and Creevey study, that indeed, context to some degree, is able to modify content, and women are able to carve out a space within which self reflexivity is allowed. This shows through in varying
degrees with each of the women, and is often not predictable.

The small size of the sample has allowed for richness in taking individual narrative into account and the success of extracting real sociological value often lay in being able to establish interpersonal bonds with each of the women interviewed. The structure of the sample and the way in which it is assessed is not an intended quantitative model. However, for the sake of modest assessment of the sample as a unit, I have created links which have aided in the further extraction of social phenomenon that provide interesting material for further observation of the nature of factors that shape and that allow the women to shape their lives. Let us unpack each of these social factors and extract the relevant understandings that each of them may bring forth.

For instance, if we had to look at each of the women's relationship to financial dealings, then it seems that Fiona (35, Limited) is the only women who does not show any particular form of such dealings, reminiscent of Callaway and Creevey's (1994, p8) assertion of the denial of the degree of power and influence that direct access to wealth may afford the individual. And further interrogation of her lifestyle suggests that her class position may have an impact on that aspect. Women in more affluent households may not be required to conduct any business dealings that are necessary to provide or compliment the family income. Hence, their involvement in financial dealings is cut to a minimum or non-existent. So then, an essential source of power and opportunity is removed from her sphere of allowances. She is financially dependent on her husband and confirms on various recounts that life decisions are made by her father, husband and mother-in-law. We can see how in this regard especially, she shows the lowest degree of reflexivity. Marriage brings with it the loss of the dream to pursue higher education beyond matriculation. However, recent years have seen her conduct a home-study degree, without the option of pursuing a career.

Each of the other women may be categorized within the broad spectrum of the middle class for the purposes of this analysis. Zara (59, Unmarried) takes on the responsibility of co-parent and co-business partner to her mother, having had to fend for themselves after her mother's divorce. Even

though we see how she relegates a substantial portion of this autonomy in her recent years, she can be seen to have pioneered much of the initial stages of their economic growth as a family, and she declares quite emphatically:

"Ikeep thefamily together"

(Zara, 59, Unmarried).

Sima (44, Modern Mother-in-Law) and Salma (46, Cheated-On) have both conducted businesses alongside their husbands. For Sima, this has allowed her an increasing amount of autonomy over the years as financial success has enhanced her status within the extended family and especially with regards to her relationship with her mother-in-law. This interrogates the notion that the acquisition of wealth and status may influence a breaking away from the restrictions of the honour code. On the other hand, as in the case of Fiona, it can be seen how honour-based restrictions are more necessitated by higher class status and a greater public profile. In the case of Salma, though, marital problems and the lack of support from her mother-in-law (or rather the negative support in the form of condoning her husbands behaviour) has contributed to a different scenario: Salma believes that any form of success that she may have experienced, or any progress she deems to have made in the business, especially when complimented by clients, has been stifled by her husband, to the extent where she has been removed from the business on trivial counts and her job descriptions have fluctuated in order to "show her her place". She says that "he tries to keep me under him at all times; I think he's intimidated by me and what I could achieve if he let me" (Salma, 46, Cheated-On). This financial dependence is one of the reasons which compel her to remain in the marriage and not be able to seek a divorce. However, we can acknowledge that Salma shows the capacity for financial involvement and speaks of the possibility of getting a 'real'job. She feels that her constraint is age and lack of extensive experience that would adequately furnish a curriculum vitae document. This would limit the possibilities, as would the need for transport.

While Salma and Sima both have a matric qualification, both were
married at early ages (for the sake of this study, marriage undertaken before the age of 21 has been categorized as early). Fiza (42, Ex-Businesswoman) on the other hand, only gets married at the age of 23, after choosing to leave school at the age of 16 without a matric qualification, and involving herself in the administration of a retail business. The form of autonomy she experiences and the moderate age of marriage as compared to the other women in her age and class category, especially, is higher. However, this is subordinated in similar ways to the others' upon marriage, and the relative maturity at marriage makes no difference in being able to deter the effects of cultural expectation and the domination of the mother-in-law.

In terms of education, Zara (59, Unmarried) continued until standard five, and would have happily gone on had it not been for the counter-decision of her uncle (primary male caregiver). This regulation of the choices presented to her is further reflected in the dismissal of prospective marriage partners in her youth. Mira, (27, Going Places) is also unmarried, and features at the other end of the age spectrum of the interview sample. She has a professional career as an architect and pursues it with zest and confidence derived from the support she receives from her parents. That is, until the twist in her tale makes her face the dilemma of feeling the obligation to adhere to her parents request to marry a man of their choice. This explicitly opposes the trend of independence that has so fervently been encouraged until this point in her life.

In trying to establish a continuum of sorts for the kind of reflexivity inherent in each of the interviewees concerned, analysing the life histories of the women has allowed for the uncovering of spaces of agency and the structures that limit, that are illustrated in "the forms of consciousness they express in their own interpretations of their histories" (Bozzoli, 1991, p1). Bozzoli asks that we interrogate what happens to consciousness in the realm of unequal balance between the forces of structure and agency. The reality is that "the ordinary person has infrequently been drawn into a vision of herself as capable of exerting power beyond a certain limited sphere. Consciousness here has been formed within and against structures, rather than above and around them" (Bozzoli, 1991, p2).
CHAPTER

SIX

### Concluding Considerations
SCHOLARS REVISIT THE QURANIC SCRIPTURE

From the cradle... and for the duration of a lifetime... the practising Muslim lives by the Qur'an. The verses in the Qur'an which were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century and the traditions connected with his life provide the Believer with a system of laws, obligations and moral values, and constitute a code of conduct and distinctive way of life... Despite the recognition given by the Prophet to the rights of women, the patriarchal nature of pre-Islamic society... continued to predominate and many of the enlightened ideals enshrined in the Qur'an were largely overridden by the customary laws which operated" (Hall and Ismail, 1981, p39). The life experience of women in Islam is shaped by the masculine interpreted text of the Qur'an. Divine sanction is justification for the prescribed norms and rules for acceptable behaviours and guidelines for avoiding taboos. A number of scholars revisit the classical interpretation, and provide the logic that previous interpretations were embedded in a context where the basis of patriarchies were never considered in the unequal status it afforded women. Because of this, previous readings are steeped in patriarchal rhetoric that poses problems for the implementation of social laws regarding women, and adversely affects their experience of life.

"...in spite of the diversity of Muslim cultures and societies, women in many societies have to endure similar forms of sexual inequality and discrimination. These range from cultural mores and psychological attitudes that condone bigotry or violence towards women, to laws that refuse to recognize them as legal and moral agents on a par with men, to the restriction or denial of political-economic rights and resources to them relative to men. What is more, discrimination, and even oppression, (is) often justified by recourse to sacred knowledge or, more accurately, knowledge claiming to derive from religion, including from Islam's Scripture, the Qur'an" (Barlas, 2001).

Asma Barlas identifies a central concern facing women in Muslim societies, which is "the prevalence of discriminatory and misogynistic practices and ideologies (howsoever defined) which prevent them from realising their full human potential and, in some cases, from being able to meet even their most basic needs for survival". She finds "the tendency to read misogyny and discrimination into Islam, particularly into the Qur'an" rather problematic and hence worthy of analysis (Barlas, 2001). Barlas'work culminates into a recent academic work titled "Believing Women " in Islam: Gender and Patriarchy in the Qur'an and aims to allow readers a view of the Qur'an which is not tainted by Western media stereotypes or by Muslim cultural practice. She asserts that "Muslims came to read inequality and patriarchy into the Qur'an to justify existing religious and social structures and demonstrates that the patriarchal meanings ascribed to the Qur'an are a function of who has read it, how, and in what contexts" (Barlas, 2002, http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/barbel.html).

"As numerous scholars have pointed out, patriarchal and sexual patterns in Muslim states are a function also of the nature of the state and political-economy, cultural practices that may have nothing to do with Islam, the history of a particular society, women's social class, the choices available to them, etc" (Barlas, 2001). The teachings of the Qur'an, she contends, are egalitarian and antipatriarchal in nature (Barlas, 2002, http://www.utexas. edu/utpress /books /b arbel.html).
Wadud proposes that in terms of Qur'anic injuncture, "there is no essential difference in the value attributed to women and men... Man and woman are two categories of the human species given the same or equal consideration and endowed with the same or equal potential... The Qur'an encourages all believers, male and female, to follow their belief with actions, and for this it promises them a great reward" (Wadud, 1999, p15). "Muslim progressives have long argued that it is not the religion, but patriarchal explication and implementation of the Qur'an that have kept women oppressed... The Qur'an does not prescribe one timeless and unchanging social structure for men and women"... Wadud's argument affirms "that the Qur'an holds greater possibilities for guiding human society to a more fulfilling and productive mutual collaboration between men and women than as yet assumed by Muslims or non-Muslims" (Wadud, 1999).

Barlas (2001) raises a number of questions as she interrogates the notion of patriarchal readings of the Qur'an and suggests that, indeed, the cultural derivatives of interpretation leave us with problematic implications for the way of life shaped for men and women respectively. In one interview, the respondent questions her "equation of patriarchy with zulm (violation), rightly pointing out that since most people view patriarchy as universal and 'natural', they are unlikely to share (Barlas') definition of it as a form of zulm (violation) against women. Isn't it hubris, she asks further, to suggest that there has been something quite misguided about Muslim readings of Islam for a millennium and a half?" (Barlas, 2001). Her research goes on to grapple with real-life concerns of "how can Muslims revise gender roles? Won't people resist egalitarian readings of the Qur'an? Can there be a meaningful dialogue between Muslim feminists and the standard bearers of patriarchy? These questions reveal real anxiety that the issue of Muslim women's rights not just remain at the level of theoretical discussions" (Barlas, 2001).
THE LEARNED AFFINITY TO 'SELF-CONSCIOUS' EMOTIONS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR AUTONOMY AND SELF-REFLEXIVITY

The centrality of other people is particularly evident in emotions... Emotions such as shame, guilt, pride and embarrassment are founded in social relationships, in which people not only interact but evaluate and judge themselves and each other. Self-conscious emotions are built on reciprocal evaluation and judgment... people are ashamed or guilty because they assume that someone (self and/or other) is making a negative judgment about some activity or characteristic of theirs" (Tangney and Fischer, 1995, p3-4).

Barrett (1995) presents a functionalist theoretical model towards understanding the development of shame and guilt. She is able to illustrate how these are not intrinsically 'bad' emotions, and are indeed useful to both the individual as well as to society in their capacity to provide avenues for self-knowledge and the maintaining crucial social standards. In addition, guilt aids in the development of social relationships and motivates the individual to both recognize and alter the mistakes or harm perpetrated (Tangney and Fischer, 1995, p57). Traditional theorists like Erikson and Benedict contend that shame is an emotion brought on after being caught in a misdeed by someone; an embarrassment. Guilt is an emotion brought on by knowing that one has transgressed one's own standards of moral good (Tangney and Fischer, 1995, p27).

For Barrett, the distinguishing features that separate shame and guilt is that shame involves hiding the head or face and hence averting the gaze (while guilt involves the efforts towards making amends). However, this definition is rather vague when we consider the essential concerns surrounding the development of these individual emotions. Barrett's study asks: "whether guilt is 'more internalised' and/or 'more developmentally advanced' than is shame; when, in development, shame and guilt can be observed; what kinds of prerequisites are or are not needed to display these emotions; whether or not these are biologically based, universal emotions;
what kinds of socialisation backgrounds should lead to proneness to guilt and/or shame; and how guilt and shame are related to each other" (Tangney and Fischer, 1995, p27).

An important consideration in the study of self-conscious emotion and the maturation of the autonomous individual is that "socialisation is crucial to the development of shame and guilt" (Tangney and Fischer, 1995, p57). Emotions are functional organisers of human action and thought by way of adapting and structuring behaviours and reactions. "In shame, for example, physical signs seem typically to include lowering the gaze, covering the face, and sometimes blushing and staying quiet" (Tangney and Fischer, 1995, p7). This brings to mind the learned and expected response that a woman living within the purports of 'purdah 'is meant to adhere to. Constructed as an ideal of femininity, 'shame' is convened as 'modesty' and features as an acceptable and honourable form of behaviour for women. Abu-Lughod finds that "the different beliefs about the value of assertiveness for boys and girls correspond to their future positions in the hierarchy... woman must be trained to be modest in general demeanor to be deferential, soft-spoken, obedient and cooperative or at least to be more sensitive to the social contexts in which modesty would be appropriate" (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p109-110). Modesty, as an ideology of honourable behaviour, continues to be a form of social control and a determinant, especially of female behaviour.

Evaluating events and deeds that produce self-conscious emotions depends on the ability to facilitate the achievement of goals. "Events that interfere with concerns lead to negative emotions, such as sadness, fear, anger and shame; events that facilitate concerns lead to positive emotions, such as joy and pride" (Tangney and Fischer, 1995, p8). Beyond this "positive-negative goal attainment" is the concern of how this "event relates to 'evaluation of self' (or the self s behaviour) as worthy or unworthy", and there is an inclusion of a number of prescribed rules for acceptable, "worthy behaviour or characteristics, such as performing a task well, covering the body, speaking tactfully, not harming others... Positive evaluation with regard to these self-standards leads to emotions such as pride and respect.
Negative evaluation leads to emotions such as shame, guilt, and embarrassment" (Tangney and Fischer, 1995, p8).

The ability of the individual to realise that s/he is vulnerable to exposure and humiliation provokes the experience of shame (Abu-Lughod, 1988, p112). Shame is seen as preceding guilt in the process of individual psychological development. Also, shame fixates on the notion that the self is bad and especially if progress beyond that stage is disallowed, it impinges on the construction of self-worth. Society that encourages the maintenance and normalization of shame, poses problematic obstacles for the potential of autonomy to emerge from the self. So then, when shame is socialized in explicit and implicit ways in order to maintain the status quo, the result is a guilt- and anxiety-ridden society. The self-conscious emotions are significant in the development of the individual sense of self. Self-hatred and social anxiety, born of the self-conscious emotions of shame and guilt, together act to remove necessary preconditions to the fully reflexive ideal of the human subject.

Psychologists have long theorised the notions of development of the healthy individual, and the structures that influence and impact on this growth. Religion prescribes numerous regulations designed with the goal of instilling morals and values in an effort to ensure minimal deviance and ample knowledge of the constituent elements of'right' and 'wrong'. "No one is born autonomous, and therefore no one is completely independent of people. Autonomy can be achieved only through satisfactory relations with others" (Feist and Feist, 1998, p505). The knowledge that one is accepted and/or loved unconditionally is a contributing factor in attaining confidence; once that confidence is attained in the self, the individual no longer relies on others for self-esteem (Feist and Feist, 1998, p505). This is the path to self-actualisation, as purported by the personality theorist, Abraham Maslow. Maslow recognises among the path of the psychological development of the individual, a sequence of needs that need to be fulfilled. These are physiological; safety; love and belongingness; esteem; and at the highest level of development, the need to self-actualise (Feist and Feist, 1998,pp493-6).
"... Self-actualisation is the tendency to actualise the self as perceived in awareness" (Feist and Feist, 1998, p460). It includes "the desire for self-fulfilment, to realise all of one's potential, to become everything that one can, and to become creative in the full sense of the word" (Maslow, 1970, cited in Feist and Feist, 1998, p496). He says that self-actualising individuals possess that confidence, and hence a substantial degree of autonomy, from which they are able to derive contentment unlike those who live up to the expectations of others. "... Autonomy (is) the ability to be independent of culture and environment" (Feist and Feist, 1998, p505).

Maslow identifies that the resistance to enculturation is a characteristic of the self-actualising individual; s/he is able to transcend culture. However this by no means implies antisocial or asocial traits, neither does it point to a conscious and rebellious non-conformity (Feist and Feist, 1998, p508). Conversely, the prescription of culture and the regulations of behaviour that go beyond the goals of establishing morality i.e. for the objectives of communal honour and esteem - may prove to stunt the individual's progress beyond the reach of his/her own esteem needs. For the upholding of the status quo is the glass ceiling of group or communal objectives of 'honour', esteem and respect; and the individual's allegiance to cultural prescriptions in this regard, ensures that the belongingness need is fulfilled. The individual needs some of the regulations in order to exist, co-exist and to belong, and thus is seen to conform in particular ways; once these are established, these same regulations can be seen as limiting, since they do not allow the individual to proceed to the next phase of development, i.e. self-actualisation. This phase may be seen as subversive to the status quo that the individual originally sought to protect. The cycle of development can be seen to be self-defeating when it coincides with socio-cultural structures.

The argument I make is now clearly this: The psychological concept of self-worth is a prerequisite to the consolidation of the reflexive, autonomous self. Individual dignity, in other words, is imperative to the individual who constitutes his/her self as a worthy candidate of the social network in which he/she finds him/herself. On the other end of the spectrum, the notion of
communal honour exists as a construct of this social network. This can be seen to have a number of implications for the conceptualisation of individual dignity, as it often impinges on the self-worth of the individual by imposing limits for behaviour. In addition, the person who is unable to follow these rules is ostracised and steps taken to remove him/her as the entity that may be damaging to the honour of the immediate social unit. He/she represents an element of subversion that may prove to be a threat to the 'normal' order of things. In the case where physical removal of such a threat is not possible, the ideology is tightened to make expectations and regulations on behaviour more and more unbreakable. Validation of such prescribed rules is given undue divine sanction when it is passed around as religious obligation. Shame and guilt are deeply entrenched self-regulators that ensure the non-subversion of thought and action. On the other hand, the prerequisite for the human subject to reach the heights of its self-actualisation potential, is that it has to be allowed to flourish as a fully autonomous entity. The confusion that arises out of mistaking cultural expectation for religious obligation becomes problematic in the arena of identifying the true nature of good moral living within the promise of autonomy allowed to the fully reflexive individual.

If we are to now look back to the initial questions raised in the beginning of this study, then we have been able to satisfactorily document and interrogate the ways in which the opportunities, challenges and obstacles facing South African Indian Muslim women within the family are perceived and experienced by the individual. In so doing, we have been able to test the extent to which traditionalist culture(s) both create and influence a gap between opportunity and achievement for South African Indian Muslim women. The range of freedoms forms a continuum. However, this is in no way a linear and precise statistic, since there are a range of factors and restrictions that both shape and allow that the women shape their lives. We find that along the continuum between a high reflexivity and the least amount of freedoms, religiosity is a neutral issue since it cannot be judged by outward appearance. Rather, the use of religion by religious authority to justify particular forms of social control affects the nature of the individual's

autonomy. Other neutral factors are the age of marriage (under-21 has been categorized as 'early'), and the age gap between the interviewee and her spouse (in categories of under-5 and over-5), since no significant changes were noticeable along the reflexive continuum. However, we find that there is a relation between a woman's financial independence and the amount of freedom that she is allowed in affecting the decisions regarding her own life, and the lives of her children. Also, the wealth and/or class status of the family illustrates on the one hand, that restrictions based on honour are often made essential to the higher class status and public profile of the family, and on the other hand, those who acquire greater wealth status over time show signs of being allowed to break away from these restrictions. In this way, it emphasises the notion that the factors are, indeed, not easily predictable. In addition to contributing to the literature on the South African Indian Muslim community in particular, this study seeks to open the door for future research in the realm of traditionalist versus more progressive ways of thinking by providing a model of reference.
CHAPTER

SEVEN

### RECOMMENDATIONS FOR

### FUTURE RESEARCH
The design of future research needs to take into account details such as the experience of different genders in terms of expectation and accountability as well as views of liberties and allowances within the realm of social intercourse. This will require one-on-one interview sessions with men and women separately. Dual-gender research is imperative in order to acknowledge the fact that male domination and female subordination invariably affects both and can add extensively to the understanding of the constructed role of conceptions of honour and shame in the realm of social control, and the implications that it has for the self-reflexive capacity of the individual, male or female.

The construction and articulation of 'izzat' or honour also affects men, just as it affects the life decisions and choices made available to women. The sociological honour code is constructed in a way that ensures that women are made symbolic of that code, and their male members of the family are afforded the responsibility of administrating the lives of the objects of honour in order to maintain the family's status within the social unit, or 'kutum-qabila'.

"It may well be that the restrictions imposed by Islamic law are reinforced and magnified by state structures that institutionalise both Western and indigenous elements of patriarchy. All come together to disadvantage women vis-à-vis men. But it is also true that such disadvantages exist in all societies. The degree and type of disadvantage differs from culture to
culture, but the fact of disadvantage is universal and certainly not unique to Islamic (or even Indian) societies" (Callaway and Creevey, 1994, p8). Philip Slater suggests that "...the more the male imprisons the female in the home and takes himself elsewhere, the more overwhelmingly powerful is the female within the home. The social position of women and the psychological influence of women are thus quite separate matters". He goes on to cite an explanation for the (Greek) male's contempt for women as both compatible and bound to "... an intense fear of them, and to an underlying suspicion of male inferiority. Why else would such extreme measures be necessary? Customs such as the rule that a woman should not be older than her husband, or of higher social status, or more educated, or paid the same as a male for the same work, or be in a position of authority betray an assumption that males are incapable of competing with females on an equal basis..." (Slater, 1992, p8). The exploration of other traditionalist cultures within South Africa, for example the Greek, Portuguese, and African cultures, among others have the potential to provide an interesting addition to the present study in a way that the obvious and similarly patriarchal nature of such structures is able to reconcile its social requirements within the democratic model of South Africa. There is a general paucity of literature in the realm of the diversification of life in post-apartheid South African society, and specifically in the study of Indian Muslim cultural conceptualisations of life. While this may have proven a limit to the frame of reference for this study, it also points to the need for research of this nature, with regard to the various traditionalist settings in South Africa.

There is no simple correlation, as this study discovers; there are no predictable patterns in the drama of human events. Each woman (and man) is accosted by a network of social factors along the path of life. This network consists of multiple controls and multiple opportunities that the individual is then meant to find their way through. And within these networks then, can be found and experienced a number of sociological codes, such as the honour code which is accompanied by its own range of prescriptions for behaviour that are particular to and become necessitated to the conduct of life in particular settings. These are among numerous social features that invariably affect the continuum of differing degrees of reflexivity and autonomy allowed to the individual.
I was going to tell you my story

But waves of pain drowned my voice.

I tried to utter a word but my thoughts

Became fragile and shattered like glass.

Even the largest ship can capsize

In the stormy sea of love,

Let alone my feeble boat

Which shattered to pieces leaving me nothing

But a strip of wood to hold on to.

Small and helpless, rising to heaven

On one wave of love and falling with the next

I don't even know if I am or I am not. When I think I am, I find myself worthless,

When I think I am not, I find my value.

Like my thoughts, I die and rise again each day

So how can I doubt the resurrection?

Tired of hunting for love in this world,

At last I surrender in the valley of love

And become free.

"Rumi: Hidden Music", translated by Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita

Kolin (2001, p98).

This study is a tribute to mothers, wives, sisters and daughters the world over who persevere, adapt and thrive on life, because of and in spite of all that they have to endure.
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APPENDIX

WASSIYAT

FROM A MOTHER TO HER DEPARTING DAUGHTER

ON THE OCCASION OF HER NIKAH (WEDDING)

You have left a nest in which you grew up and proceeded to a bed which you know not and a mate with whom you have not associated; be an earth for him, and he will be your sky; be a resting place for him and he will be your pillar; be his bondmaid and he will be your slave; do not make excessive demands for he will then desert you; do not become too distant from him, for he will then forget you.

Should he draw near, then draw close to him; should he become distant then stay away from him. Shield his nose, his hearing and his eyes so that he will smell nothing from you, but that which is sweet, hear nothing but that which is good, and look at nothing but that which is beautiful".

Be contented with whatever you receive for this will give you peace.

Be obedient to your husband and pay heed to whatever he says for this will bring you the Mercy of Allah.

He must not see in you untidiness nor smell but fragrance, and remember that water has the best fragrance in the absence of perfume, and surmah (kohl/eye-liner) adds the most beauty.
Be prepared for him at mealtimes, for the heat of hunger is inflammable.

Be quite when he is asleep, for the disturbance of sleep infuriates.

Safeguard his assets for which he will trust you.

Care for his children and servants for which he will confide in you.

Do not disclose of his secrets, for if you do so he will not spare you when he retaliates.

Dare not be joyous when he is worried, for this will be wrong on your part, and dare not display sadness when he is happy for this will breed hatred.

And remember, My Beloved Daughter, you will attain all this only if you give preference to his likes over yours and his desires above yours in all things you like and dislike.

And, My Beloved Daughter, be mindful of your duties to Allah at all times, give priority to the orders of Allah above all things for this will secure Jannah (Heaven) for you, and remember not to obey anyone if his orders be contrary to the commands of Allah.
