ABSTRACT
In Bangladesh, 90.39 per cent of the population is Muslim (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2013, p. 51) and, as I have demonstrated in earlier chapters, Islam plays a very important role in society and politics. It governs the relations between men and women in Bangladesh. As a result, there are difficulties with the implementation of secular human rights standards in Muslim-majority countries where most people believe that international human rights instruments reflect ‘Western’ values and norms, so they consider these as both ‘culturally and religiously alien’ (Ali, 2000, p. 246). As I noted in Chapter 3, al-Hibri (1997) argues that a secular approach will not work for the advancement of Muslim women (p. 3). She writes, ‘The majority of Muslim women who are attached to their religion will not be liberated through the use of a secular approach imposed from the outside by international bodies or from above by undemocratic governments’ (al-Hibri, 1997, p. 3). Monsoor (1999, p. 2) argues that Bangladeshi women are not demanding sexual equality, freedom and liberation like some Western women:
Rather they see their roles within social contexts and would prefer gender equity within the traditional framework. Although there is some influence of idealized feminist thinking about sexual equality, women’s proper place is seen to be within the family in the wider context of Bangladeshi society.
