Ferial Haffajee
Gender commissioner and renowned Muslim cleric Faried Esack has been given state protection after a series of death threats from the supporters of the renegade community station Radio Islam.
Members of VIP protection services provide 24-hour security to the man who serves as acting head of the Commission for Gender Equality.
“I have received very many death threats,” said Esack, who also receives regular crank calls, including one this week from a cackling woman who claims she is about to give birth. He lays the blame firmly at the door of Radio Islam, a Gauteng-based station that has broadcast programmes castigating the cleric.
He is not the only target of the station’s ire. Two members of the organisation Youth for Islamic Enlightenment Leadership and Development (Yield) — which lodged objections against Radio Islam’s refusal to allow women on the air — have had restraining orders served on the station. Zayne Marimuthu and Iqbal Gaffoor claim they sought the orders after they received numerous death threats on the telephone.
“They phoned me at work and at home. They were usually short telephone calls where they would say: `Tonight you are dead.’ It got so bad that we had to disconnect our phone,” said Marimuthu this week.
Gaffoor said the death threats had subsided after their court action though he also reports earlier calls where callers told him: “We’re after you. We want to kill you.”
The threats kept Esack away from last Saturday’s Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) hearing for a new Radio Islam licence. At the hearing women in full black purdah — the veiled covering where only the eyes are exposed — sat at the back of the packed hall while the front rows were filled by men wearing kufiyyas.
The hearing was charged and while its leaders sat in front, the station’s more gung-ho supporters at the back of the room threatened: “We’ll take the station to Swaziland if we don’t get the licence. We’ll just broadcast from there.”
Its temporary licence expired at midnight on Saturday, but it has been given a 30-day temporary licence to prepare to answer the concerns of six parties that object to the granting of further airtime to the conservative station.
Radio Islam is in violation of a Broadcasting Complaints Commission ruling that last year instructed the station to allow women three hours broadcasting time every day.
The station’s powerful governing body has defied the order and instead sought help from high political office for its stand. Essop Pahad, a deputy minister in Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s office, was reportedly approached for help and two African National Congress MPs, Ismail Vadi and Ram Saloojee, were present at the hearing. The two had earlier sought to mediate a compromise with the IBA, which has not yet taken punitive steps against the station.
Radio Islam is run by the Jamiatal-Ulama, the governing body for Muslim affairs in South Africa. Controlled by South Africa’s wealthiest Muslim families, the Jamiat carries great clout because it bankrolls most of the mosques, madressas (religious instruction classes) and Muslim schools in the country.
The radio station claims that between 28 000 and 30 000 women supporters signed a petition supporting the Islamic principle the station invokes to keep their voices off air.
The station has hired the best legal brains in the country to fight its cause: consultant Quraysh Patel, who until a fortnight ago headed the IBA’s policy unit, represented the station on Saturday while lawyer Goolam Ameer, of David Dison, Norval, Ameer and Ndlovu, one of the country’s top media law firms, has been retained. Neither comes cheap.
Ameer this week said his clients were “misunderstood”.
“The station regards the death threats as against good Muslim practice. You get emotional elements in every community and they are just idle threats. Nobody will carry them out,” said Ameer, adding: “My clients are not sexist, they have a very high respect for women.”
Meanwhile Esack argues that “theirs is essentially a minority position. Can a religious community seek refuge in its law [the shariah or Islamic law] to subvert the values of the country?”
All the parties in this case believe it could end in the Constitutional Court, where judges will have to weigh up the right to religious freedom against the enshrined right to gender equality. It’s a fight the Commission for Gender Equality is keen to square up for.
“So much gender inequality is justified on religious, cultural and traditional beliefs,” says Colleen Lowe-Morna, an adviser to the commission.
The more moderate voices in the Radio Islam camp do not rule out some accommodation with the IBA’s ruling: there is talk of allowing women broadcasters on air and on to the management structures of the station.
Their opponents from organisations like Yield argue that around the Muslim world, women broadcasters feature prominently on radio and television. Radio Islam is the only one of the country’s five Muslim community radio stations that has banned women from its programming schedule.