Radiance Viewsweekly has been serving as a much needed Muslim voice in post-Independence India. It is a periodical that speaks in the voice of the objective, educated Muslim, creating a fine balance between Islamic values and contemporary thought.
No modern publication can chronicle the affairs of a community while excluding women. As such, the Weekly has persistently focused on women’s issues. India in the 1960s was rife with misconceptions about the Muslim woman. The stereotype of her as a subjugated being governed by patriarchs, though steeped in ignorance, was a persistent one. Radiance did well in dispelling this myth. The Weekly presented facts from the Holy Quran and Prophetic traditions to reveal the true status accorded by Islam to women. Many a time, the misconduct of a few was mistaken for Islamic injunctions; a trend that sadly exists even today. The Weekly aimed at making this distinction clear.
So how did the Weekly achieve this goal? For starters, it did a close reading of the current affairs of its time. If there was a dowry death, a Sati burning or a heinous rape, good sense warranted that there be a protest against it; something the Weekly took on with diligence. So whether it was the forced Sati burning of a teenager named Roop Kanwar in the 1980s or the chilling pictures of dead women hanging from their ceiling fans as a result of dowry harassment, the Weekly covered it all. However, the Weekly did not merely report the incidents, but vociferously opposed them in its editorials. (Radiance Weekly, ‘Are Widows for Burning?’- 27 October 1987; ‘Fouler than Murder’- 1 November 1987)
The Weekly worked at contextualising the rights of Muslim women. It did this by explaining the Islamic stand on the prevailing evils against them. Islam expressly forbids the practice of dowry, as exhibited from the case of the Prophet Muhammad’s (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) daughter’s wedding tradition. His future son-in-law, Ali, who used to live with the Prophet at the time, was asked to make arrangements for his wedding himself. He had to sell his prized armour to meet the expenses. Contrast this to the Indian tradition, where the bride’s parents are burdened by unreasonably exorbitant dowry demands. (Radiance Weekly, ‘Dowry Deaths on Rise’ – 26 January 1992)
Another issue that was covered by Radiance was the plight of widows in India. It ranged from the extreme of burning them in the husband’s funeral pyre to the relatively ‘milder’ social ostracisation. The Weekly brought to light the position of widows in Islam. After their iddat, they are given the right to remarry as they choose and also to inherit from the deceased husband’s property. (Radiance Weekly, ‘Status of Divorced Women’ – 2 November 1985)
The Weekly documented the inheritance rights that Islam bestows on its women – a right which is included in the holy scripture no less, thus making it an indisputable aspect of religion. After postulating the established rights of women as wives, daughters, sisters and mothers in Islam, it does not behove the community to disdain the arrival of the girl child. Several articles cover this practice from the ‘days of ignorance’ when the pre-Islamic Arabs used to bury their female infants alive. Islam took a stringent stand against this barbarity. (Radiance Weekly, ‘Rights of Woman in Islam’ special edition, 13 April 1986; ‘Unveiling the Veiled: Status of Women in Islam’, 10 March 2002; ‘Female Foeticide, All for Want of a Son’ – 21 December 2003)
The Weekly published myriads of articles on the Islamic veil or hijab. It is often one of the most misunderstood aspects of a Muslim woman’s life. While the term hijabi has become more mainstream and trendy today, it was often looked at with an air of mysticism in the 1960s and 1970s. Radiance articles aimed at demystifying it for the masses. The articles discussed what the hijab really stood for and the rationale of modesty and chastity behind wearing it. Many people assume that Muslim women are coerced into wearing a veil. This myth was challenged when women, especially convert Muslim women, wrote about choosing to independently wear it as a right. (Radiance Weekly, ‘Hijab vs Nudity: the Debauchery of the American Woman, a non-Muslim Perspective’ – 27 October 2002; ‘(Hijab) after Embracing Islam’ – 27 September 1987)
The Weekly also recounted the contributions of Muslim women in the course of civilization. While Islam is indeed protective of its women, it by no means considers them mere accessories. They are intelligent beings. There have been several accounts of Muslim women scholars and educationists throughout Islamic history. The education of women, thus, is paramount and Islam encourages this.
Islam promotes equity between the sexes and not necessarily equality. The term ‘equity’ recognises that there do exist fundamental dissimilarities between the sexes. To claim that one required an equal and identical treatment as the other, is to deny the differences in their constitution (and biology). However, this does not mean that one can negate the value of the other. Islam places value on the roles of each of the genders and Radiance has tried to encapsulate this fine nuance in its articles.
Radiance has also published several editorials on the issue of polygamy. Islamic polygamy, which allows men to marry up to four women, requires some explanation to understand its conditionality. Radiance has covered the context of this provision. Polygamy is an option, not a recommendation as such. Moreover, it is a far better alternative than a man having adulterous relationships, which not only breaks the moral fibre of a family, but also reduces the mistress to a despicable position. Islam requires men, if they must, to respectfully engage with another woman in the holy bond of matrimony. A clandestine relationship forged only to fulfil one’s lust is absolutely unacceptable. A second marriage therefore, means taking upon additional duties and responsibilities. (Radiance Weekly, ‘Polygamy – Why So Much Furore?’ – 28 July 1985; ‘Second Wife is Mistress?’- 26 April 1987)
Since Islam requires a man to be the maintainer of his family, he must duly be so for his second wife’s family too. He thus must provide for her, accord her the respectable status of a wife, include her and her children in his inheritance and absolutely ensure that in the process, he is not unjust to his first wife and family either. The Qur’ān lays down a very high standard of justice for each wife. Needless to say, polygamy in Islam is not just a right, but a responsibility; something which adulterous men are very wont to shrug off.
Another issue that Radiance has attempted to explain is the complex nature of Islamic divorce. Islam was the first religion to accord this option to a married couple and yet, the process is so intricate, it would require a couple to rethink several times before they dissolve their marriage completely. As such, the option of divorce, though very essential in some cases, should not become the go-to norm in a society. Islam gives the right to initiate divorce even to a woman, a right unheard of in other religions. In this, Islam recognises human tendencies instead of ignoring them. Some relationships are not meant to be, and so, they must be allowed to be severed; yet, it is not something people should rush towards without having tried all attempts at reconciliation. Sadly, many divorces have become nasty public affairs because of a lack of understanding of this system.
Radiance has condemned the media circus that surrounds such cases and has chosen instead to exemplify the process in the light of Qur’ānic rulings. Knowledge on how to go about a situation can be empowering and Radiance has attempted to provide that knowledge. Whether it was the matter of triple talaq and its rules, to the concept of iddat to the issue of providing maintenance for the wife in iddat, Radiance articles have covered it all. (Radiance Weekly, ‘Status of Divorced Muslim Women’ – 11 August, 1985)
With every passing decade, the Muslim community was faced with a different range of issues. Radiance Weekly has tried to document both, the achievements and benchmarks of the community as well as the evils that plagued it. While the focus remained Indian, it did not restrict its purview only to Indian Muslims though. Whether it was the mass rapes of Muslim women in Bosnia in the 1990s or a Tunisian activist’s attempts at clamping a universal ban on the hijab, Radiance has tried to be inclusive to all issues relevant to Muslims, irrespective of their geography. (Radiance Weekly, ‘Inhuman Torture of Bosnian Womanhood’ – 16 January 1994)
Radiance Weekly has been a chronicler of the state of Muslim women in modern times. It has attempted, through the years, to empower them with a voice, to remind them of the rights that Islam has provided them and has at the same time, tried to amalgamate Islamic values with their progress and growth.