Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

36 Queens and Courtesans
read us the letter of the caliph to al-Hajjaj, which reassured us
about the innocence of the spiritual authority:
The Commander of the Faithful has learned that you have spilled
rivers of blood and wasted treasure. These are two acts that the
Commander of the Faithful cannot tolerate in anyone. Consequently,
he has decreed against you the payment of blood money for every
involuntary death, and for premeditated murder the law of retaliation.
The tyrant's power over the people in this instance had exceeded
the limits, and the duty of the caliph was to protect the faithful.
Realpolitik, alas, proved that the Commander of the Faithful had
need of al-Hajjaj and, despite his atrocities, he was kept on as one
of the strong men of the regime.
The tragedy of the caliphate has always been due to the gap that
separates the caliph and the 'amma, a gap filled by the elite and
the military. The vote with universal suffrage, which introduces the
'amma to the political stage as principal actor, opens up a whole
new political horizon for Muslim politics. It is a strange horizon in
relation to practice, but not in relation to the ideal of just government.
Parliamentary democracy unveils a scene where those of
yesteryear who had no responsibility, the 'amma, with women in
their wake, become principal partners in the game. The world is
turned upside down. It is enough to give you vertigo, and sometimes
this kind of vertigo is a good thing, but we should find a remedy
for it, not try to revert to the past. In this sense, the Pakistani
experience of a woman as head of government thanks to the vote
of the 'amma is an unparalleled opportunity to learn how to live in
a century filled with challenge. A century in which those excluded
in the past, including women, no longer need to be veiled in order
to play a leading role, as did the jawari of yesteryear.