Challenging religious fundamentalisms: ways forward.

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The issue of the increasing impact of religious fundamentalism on women's rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) has been recognised as very important for more than a decade among feminists and the SRHR community of activists, donors and service providers. Despite this, there has been little regional work done to understand what is happening and what the solutions are. ARROW's symposium took a bold step to begin this discussion within the diverse stakeholders of the Fourth Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSH). For the first time at the APCRSH, activists and researchers who engage in the issue at local levels have spoken out on religious fundamentalisms, addressing three of the major religions together with strategies for moving forward.

The influence of religious interpretations that do not support women's sexual and reproductive rights and gender equality are having an increasing impact in many countries of our region. This extends from negatively influencing sexuality and reproductive policies and laws and their implementation, to actual access to health services, as well as morality norms and behaviour on women's sexuality and dress codes.

While there is still a need for more conceptual clarity and clear frameworks to guide activism, the bigger challenge now is to map and monitor country and local community situations in order to provide evidence of what is happening, how this is affecting women, men and young people, and what kind of activism and resistance is succeeding. There is also a need to provide more space for people and organisations to speak out and give alternative theological views interlinked with human rights principles. We need to claim back our religions and reform them to be just, compassionate and gender equal religions in practice. In a region like Asia and the Pacific where institutional religion still plays a central role in the daily lives of many people, this reform is essential for gender equality in practice.

Moving ahead to work after this symposium, there are several specific areas to work on. Conceptually, there is further need for clarity of terms to describe the issue both in the practical and strategic sense. Practically, we need to be very clear of what concepts actually mean, whether the terms we decide to use are 'fundamentalism,' 'conservatism' or 'extremism.' Then, we need to decide what concepts we are going to use together as a diverse SRHR community--what is most acceptable and strategic for us?

The framework of the impact of fundamentalisms on SRHR and women's rights also needs more operational clarity. For example, impact can be on sexuality norms and behaviour, including dress requirements, prohibitions on pre-marital sex, denial of homosexual and transgender identities, and marital sexual relationships, including coercion and rape. It can be on women's and men's overall relationships--religions can institutionalise gender power differences and inequality, giving more power to men in making decisions on sex, contraception and abortion, among other things. Or they can be interpreted as embracing the concept of gender equality with men and women as equal partners, and women having the edge on reproductive rights as they are the ones to bear and rear children. Overall, are women's actual choices and decision-making power on abortion, contraception, dress, and sexual choices reducing or increasing? Do women have more freedom from violence, coercion and discrimination, or have women's lives become tighter?

Then the impact of conservative and fundamentalist religious views on the health system and access to health services need to be examined. Are health systems, as well as the health providers, taking on conservative positions? Are they reducing women's access to services as moral gatekeepers by denying services that are in law and policy and to which women have a right to be available and accessible? Are SRHR services more available and accessible or are there more restrictions?

And finally the State itself. Is it colluding with conservative religious forces either openly in policy statements and practice as in the Philippines or more covertly as in Malaysia, and reducing access to contraceptive and abortion services?

With greater conceptual and operational clarity, the next task of mapping reality--what is actually happening in our countries--will be easier. This is a huge and complex task which involves both monitoring and research methodologies. We can monitor what SRHR services are available and whether or not some services have been removed (as have contraceptive services in Manila City, Philippines) based on religious reasons. We can also monitor the violations to SRHR which have been documented. But there is a need for deeper research too to find out what local people are believing, thinking and doing that are being directed by their religious beliefs.

Some of the symposium presentations spoke on impact more at a theoretical level, probably indicating that there is yet to be an evidence-based country mapping and analysis. Interviews with women, men, health providers and policymakers could be an important research methodology to find answers to these questions. Even national opinion polls on beliefs on religion and contraception would help. Whatever the methodology, we need to be sure that what we are saying about the situation is accurate; otherwise, our intervention strategies will not succeed.

Mapping and documenting successful interventions at country level will be easier but is just as critical. There have been a number of innovative and successful strategies which are not widely known. For example, Sisters in Islam in Malaysia brought the population advisor of Al Azhar University in Cairo as a resource person for a 1998 Southeast Asian seminar to clarify the majority global positions of Islam on contraception and abortion and to dialogue with health providers on ethical issues. A question and answer booklet on Islam and contraception and abortion was published after the forums and is the only source of information of its kind in Malaysia. As well, Indonesian women's groups have successfully worked with ulama (Islamic scholars)--a fatwa (judgement) on the permissibility of abortion for Muslims in certain circumstances, which goes beyond the civil law conditions was the advocacy outcome.

Unfortunately, this first symposium was too short to allow a full discussion of strategies. As with other complex conceptual areas of SRHR such as sexuality, men's responsibility, and an SRHR rights-based approach, we SRHR advocates need to be able to move quickly beyond the conceptual discussion of the issues to providing evidence of reality. In addition, what interventions are working to change that reality need to be in line with our vision of SRHR as in the Cairo Programme of Action and the Beijing Platform for Action agreements and with our goals of gender equality and social justice.

Rashidah Abdullah is the founder director of ARROW, has been in its Board of Directors since 1993, and was its executive director for 12 years. A keen policy researcher, writer and activist, Rashidah has been active in women's health, reproductive health and feminism since the early 1970s, both in Australia and Malaysia. She has co-founded in 2006, together with diverse partners, the Reproductive Rights Advocacy Alliance Malaysia (RRAAM). Rashidah is also a founder member of Sisters in Islam (SIS).