Who’s the man here?

Lucknow, Aug. 17: The Darul Uloom has issued an advisory barring Muslim women students from wearing jeans, sparking a furore in Uttar Pradesh colleges.

In response to a query by a Saharanpur student whether Islam permitted such clothes, the Deoband seminary said the Shariat was not in favour of women wearing men’s clothes.

“There are some Hadith (sayings) that relate curse for such women who adopt the resemblance of men,” it said on Monday.

Although the seminary’s response (no. 771/730=B) is technically called a fatwa, it is merely an advisory in the Indian context that may or may not be accepted and is not binding on all. Moreover, it is a response — not a diktat — to an individual query addressed to a special cell that handles such matters.

A mufti of the seminary, Ahshan Quereshi, told The Telegraph over the phone that women should not behave in a way that attracts undesirable male attention.

“We are seeing these scenes (women wearing jeans) in Muslim educational institutions, but this should better be avoided by the women and the guardians of these students should impose restrictions at home itself.”

Another mufti, Maulana Hanif Quereshi, explained the matter further. “Let me clarify that this fatwa is not meant to be pushed down the throats of Muslim women. We just advise. To obey or not depends entirely on the individual.”

Women students are, however, furious that the seminary — second only to Cairo’s Al Azhar — has put out such a fatwa. They said the Darul Uloom was so widely respected that the advisory was bound to restrict their choice of clothes.

It would ultimately turn into a potent weapon for maulanas to harass lady students, they claimed.

Shahira Abbas, a student of history at Aligarh Muslim University, today said she saw no harm in wearing jeans.

“Jeans, I think, is more suitable to women. It has a thick cloth cover. The male tag is because, historically, men used it first. Now, women are using it in large numbers. So what is the harm?” she asked. “Often men wear loose trousers worn by women. Do they look like women in that dress?”

Sabana Naim, a Lucknow college student, said the rule on women not wearing men’s clothes could not be applied to jeans. “Some clothes have become unisex, and jeans is one of them,” she said.

In September, a section of AMU had erupted after a journalism student, Farah Khatoon, defied male union leaders’ diktat that wearing jeans was against the tenets of Islam.

“Jeans, as such, should not be objected to. The issue is if women are dressed decently,” the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board president, Shaista Ambar, said.

Some students argued that the dress code imposed by some Islamic sects did not object to any particular type of clothes. All it insisted on was decency: “The material must not be so thin that one can see through it.”