Protecting Women’s Dignity: Women’s Organisations in Kelantan

Abstract

After having spent several months in the urban labyrinth of concrete highways and railways in the expanding Moloch of Kuala Lumpur and after being socialised and familiarised at workshops and conferences of the urban, multiethnic women’s organisations, I was eager to get to know other parts of the country. As a result, I travelled to Kelantan, the northernmost state of Malaysia, in September 2004. Many of the activists I had met in Kuala Lumpur suggested I should travel to Kelantan because “everything is so different there”. Some activists had stressed the traditional economic independence and power of Kelantanese women, referring to the well-known Kelantanese market women; others instead had referred more critically to Kelantanese women’s organisations as not being transformative enough. Nurhuda, one of Sisters in Islam’s internationally most prominent activists, whom I had met at a regional conference in Bangkok and who is currently living in Kelantan as a Professor for Health Studies, strongly criticised the organisations in Kota Bharu: NGOs here in Kota Bharu are not transformative NGOs. There was no reaction on the proposal to implement Hudud law. Their work does not lead to structural change. They don’t have the tradition and experience of fighting as the Kuala Lumpur NGOs. Also the legal literacy programmes that these NGO carry out are not reaching very far. It is the question whether they only teach the women about the law or if they also encourage critical reading. (Nurhuda, SIS member, 25.10.04)