DAP tells PAS ulama ‘you give your party a terrible name' for rejecting Azizah

KUALA LUMPUR - PAS Ulama’s professed rejection of Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as Selangor mentri besar over her gender has met with scathing criticism from allies and women’s groups, who categorised the view as antiquated and misguided.

The critics drew the PAS clerics wing’s attention to the fact that women head several Fortune 100 companies and managed billions of dollars more successfully than the Islamist party’s Datuk Ahmad Yakob has in governing Kelantan as mentri besar.

DAP publicity chief Tony Pua also pointed out that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was running arguably the most successful country in Europe.

“You give your party a terrible name,” Pua said on his Facebook page yesterday.

On Wednesday, Malay Mail Online reported Ahmad, who is also the acting chief of the PAS ulama wing, as saying that Dr Wan Azizah is not fit to be Selangor mentri besar because she is a woman.

DAP Wanita chief Chong Eng said the PAS clerics’ mind-set on women leaders was antiquated and belonged in the 19th century.

“It’s like they’re from countries of the opinion that women should not be allowed to drive,” Chong told Malay Mail Online.

Saudi Arabia is one country that prohibits women from driving.

“Gender perception is socially constructed. When women grow up in environments that tell them that females are only good as wives and mothers, they will internalise that women are not capable to lead as a mentri besar,” said Chong.

PKR vice-president Chua Tian Chang reminded the Islamist party that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) believes in gender equality, saying: “We trust they will continue to uphold this principle”.

Sisters in Islam executive director Ratna Osman also disputed the PAS Ulama’s assertion that the rejection of Dr Wan Azizah was based on Islamic codes, pointing out that the Quran has acknowledged women leaders like Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba.

“Women leadership in Muslim countries like Benazir in Pakistan has also shown that Islam does not limit leadership posts to only men. Today, we have to look at the leadership quality of a person, and not the gender,” the Muslim women’s rights group chief told Malay Mail Online.

The late Benazir Bhutto, who was prime minister of Pakistan in the late 1980s and 1990s, was the first woman to lead an Islamic state.

Women’s rights group Empower noted that women leaders were present even in early Islam, such as Hurrah Malikah Arwa’ bint Ahmad, who governed Yemen on behalf of the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt.

“We are especially disappointed that PAS continues to hide behind its version of Islam to justify gender discrimination,” Empower said in a statement yesterday.

“Closer to home, Malaysian women – including Muslim women – have proven themselves capable of being leaders and decision-makers at all levels of society, despite the many barriers in their way,” the non-governmental organisation added.

While PKR and the DAP have women in top leadership posts, PAS’s vice-presidential seats and its highest positions are exclusively held by men.

Women’s Aid Organisation executive director Ivy Josiah said the conservative PAS ulama wing was clinging on to “patriarchal” ideas, in which they believe that a woman’s place is at home and in the kitchen.

“For me, this shows how much work that is needed to be done to educate men like these because not only is it old-fashioned, it is a form of discrimination, and that is constitutionally wrong,” the women’s rights group chief told Malay Mail Online. -Malay Mail