Tajik gender and identity

Margot Badran talks with Tajik author, academic, and activist Munira Shahidi in Yemen
In the old imamate capital of Kawkawban, perched on a high jebel peak reminiscent of the mountainscape of Central Asia, I talked with Tajik author, academic and activist Munira Shahidi about gender, culture, and identity. We spoke about history, contemporary troubles and dilemmas and about a vision for the future.
With ancestral roots in the old Islamic cosmopolitan culture of Samarkand, born and raised in the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan, steeped in the Islamic classics and reading literature and history in Farsi, Arabic, Russian, and several Western European languages, Munira Shahidi epitomises the late 20th century citizen with a multi-layered identity. A prolific writer, Shahidi's major work Ibn Sina and Dante (first serialised in Moscow in Russian, then published as a book in Dushambe in Tajik and later published in translations in Italy and other Western European countries) explores the transfer of thought from Central Asia to Spain and from there to the rest of Europe in the Middle Ages.
Ibn Sina was born in the Central Asian city of Bukhara of a Tajik mother and a father from Balh (in present-day Afghanistan). Claimed by both the Islamic world and the West, Ibn Sina (where he has been better known as Avicenna) is for Munira Shahidi the world's "greatest humanist." The local and the global, the indigenous and the international, that Ibn Sina represents is an icon for Munira Shahidi and other sensitive turn-of-the-21st-century Tajiks, whose identity is a stream fed by many tributaries.
When Samarkand became the capital of the new Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan in 1922, as part of the Soviet instigated process of carving new national republics out of the old multi-ethnic Central Asian urban centres, Munira's grandfather, Muqqaddas Khan Shahidi, and her father, Ziadullah Shahidi, were among the Tajiks who left their birthplace. With other dispersed Tajiks they founded the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan in 1924, setting up the new capital in a rural market town, the Monday market, from which Dushambe takes its name. When Munira's grandfather Muqqaddas Khan Shahidi, a staunch nationalist, was seen as a threat by the central Soviet authorities, he was deported to Siberia where he was executed in 1937. Her father Ziadullah Shahidi, who expressed his nationalism in art, was spared this tragic end. A composer, musician and poet, Ziadullah Shahidi was a founder of the national orchestra and the first national theatre in Dushambe. He composed a nationalist opera called The Dancer and the Singer. Ziahdullah Shahidi drew his inspiration from the 17th century poet Abdul-Qadir Bedil who left his native Samarkand for Moghul India where he wrote, in the Indian style of classical Farsi which he developed, an allegorical epic fusing sentiments for his lost land and his new home. Ziahdullah Shahidi composed the Symphony of the Makams, which won a grand prize at the Festival of Symphonic Music in Moscow in 1968. One of his other operas, Gulamon (The Slaves), was based on the Tadjik Sadriddin Ayni's novel on the Tajik fight for independence at the turn of the century. Many of his works were performed by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra of Moscow in Tashkent and Alma Ata. Ziahdullah Shahidi died a few years before the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Munira Shahidi, who witnessed the creation of the new Republic of Tajikistan in 1991, took up the mantle in the post independence era. Within a year the fledgling state was thrown into a bloody civil war between a secular (neo-communist) state and an Islamist opposition that continues to this day. Plans to build a new state were disrupted as everyday life was plunged into chaos. The Academy of Sciences where Munira Shahidi heads the Department of Manuscripts in the Institute of Written Legacy (the former Tajik Institute of Oriental Studies), like the State University of Tajikistan, has suffered a noticeable brain drain because of the widespread destruction. At the heart of the struggle in Tajikistan is a fierce contest over national identity. Of the two polar forces in Tajikistan today both were educated outside during the Soviet period. The former communists were Moscow educated and controlled. The new Islamists had received religious training mainly in Iran, Pakistan, and Egypt. Both groups, Shahidi stresses, were estranged from the ideals and values of their Central Asian humanist culture. But, not only is there a tension between these two political currents inside the country today but pressures from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey, as well as from Russia, add to the strains of finding a way to build a cohesive nation.
"For seven decades Moscow dictated ideology and politics. Now certain brands of Islamists 'want to teach us the pure way'," says Shahidi. "Meanwhile Western agencies, aid organisations and businesses, come with their own agendas for Tajikistan."
"Where in the middle of this is our Tajik identity?" asks Shahidi. "It is a critical moment for deciding our own way. People are trying to rethink what we passed through during the Soviet era and how we managed to survive. They are concerned about how to reconstitute ourselves today."
Munira Shahidi is alert to the gender dimension of this challenge. "There is a problem of women in society, but this is not a new problem."
She quoted Jalal Al-Din Rumi (whom she describes as a Farsi-Tajik): "As our Prophet said, 'Women can express themselves only in the society of honourable men.'" She laughed and asked, "Where are the honourable men?"
It was mainly men who left Tajikistan in the Soviet period for studies in Moscow or various Muslim capitals and who were estranged from their roots. The majority of the women remained in the country. The exceptions proved the rule. Back in the 1920s, when Tajik women and men alike left Samarkand after the Uzbek takeover women were among the nationalist activists who helped create the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan. These women were the educated elite, many of whom worked as teachers and who took advantage of the moment to unveil. Although this was encouraged by the central Soviet authorities, Munira Shahidi stresses that women's own personal initiative should not be underestimated. Among these women was one of her great aunts, a militant nationalist. She also points out that women in and around Dushambe had traditionally gone with unveiled faces, a common practice in agrarian societies.
During the Soviet period Tajik women benefited from three forces: Tajik secular nationalism, Soviet educational and work policies, and traditional Tajik Muslim culture. As nationalists women expanded their roles in civil society. While the central Soviet authorities tried to use women as instruments to further their own political agendas, Tajik women took advantage of new educational opportunities. Munira Shahidi, who earned her BA from the State University of Tajikistan, went on to take her PhD at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow where she studied Islamic classical thought under the supervision of the eminent Islamicist Andrey Bertels. Meanwhile, in Tajikistan women preserved certain Central Asian rituals such as the bibiseshambé (literally, "Mother of Tuesday") or ceremonial gathering where women recited poetry in the different languages of the region and also played music and performed dances. The bibiseshambé has its origins in the 15th century when women of the Sufi Nakshabandi order created "institutes" to instruct other women in Islamic adab. Unlike men, who were more fully drawn into the ideological and political discourses of communism and Islamism generated from outside, women's experiences were marked by more diverse influences. Munira Shahidi observes that this polyglot experience was more resonant with the old cosmopolitan humanist culture of Islamic Central Asia.
It is this cultural heritage, endangered today in independent Tajikistan, that Munira Shahidi is trying to salvage. At the start of the terrible rending of the country by the extremists on the left and the right, Shahidi, along with other intellectuals, artists, and musicians, created the Ziadullah Shahidi International Cultural Organisation headquartered in the house of her father in 1992. These cultural activists rescued books and musical recordings from the local shops that were being destroyed. The Cultural Organisation became an important space for recuperating and sustaining a humanistic cultural expression. Among those who participate in the life of this organisation are ordinary women who gather to recite poetry, play musical instruments and to enjoy each others company. Recently, the organisation sponsored a performance of Ziadullah Shahidi's national opera The Dancer and the Singer and some of his other symphonic compositions. Munira Shahidi is determined to keep alive the Tajik national culture and identity with its cosmopolitan roots that her father and his generation fostered earlier this century. This humanistic tradition is a necessary "middle space" that must be kept alive so that Tajikistan can become whole and not torn asunder by ideologically driven political extremists.
At the end of our talk, as the day's last light thinned behind the dramatic mountain peaks of highland Yemen, Munira Shahidi reflected aloud: "Central Asian culture rethought Greek culture and fused it with Arab thought and our own indigenous values. The civilised cosmopolitan cities of Samarkand and Bukhara experienced this synthesis. This past, suppressed during the Soviet period, must now resurface. The inner spirit that kept that society alive must re-emerge."
For Munira Shahidi the answer is to revive the comprehensive humanism of Ibn Sina. This intellectual luminary of the East and West is an icon for today. Tajik national culture, Central Asian culture, and global culture are circles within circles. For Tajik national Munira Shahidi fusions of Islamic culture and Western culture can find inspiration from the high humanistic heritage of a past that drew deeply from diverse sources.
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