I’ve been married for two-thirds of my life, and not once have I been an obedient wife.
The first time, I was married for 27 years to Ami Priyono, a prominent Indonesian film director, until his death in 2001. In all the time we were married, I don’t think Ami ever expected me to be obedient.
What he loved about me was precisely my independent, rebellious and adventurous spirit. Unlike many husbands, he never tried to “tame” his wife, because then I wouldn’t have been me. And if I stopped being me, I would have been unhappy, and he sure didn’t want an unhappy wife.
Since 2005, I’ve been married to Tim Lindsey, a professor at the University of Melbourne. He would also laugh his head off at the idea of my being obedient. Obedience is simply not something you’d associate with me — or, for that matter, any self-respecting woman who has integrity and values herself.
If you don’t understand what I mean, then check out the dictionary definition of “obedience”. You’ll find something like, “complying with orders or requests (from those in authority), submissive to another’s will”. See what I mean? Not much room for integrity or independent thought there, huh?
So why would any woman want to belong to the new Indonesian Obedient Wives’ Club (OWC), launched on June 18 in Jakarta? Founded by Dr. Ing. Gina Puspita, the club is affiliated with the conservative Global Ikhwan business organization, which also set up the controversial Polygamy Club. Ikhwan means “brothers” in Arabic, and the raison d’etre of both clubs is to prevent husbands straying, whether through marital affairs, prostitution or other forms of debauchery.
The solution for sex-crazed husbands, according to the OWC, is for their wives to become like first-class whores! Gina — who has three co-wives — says a husband who is “sated” sexually will not be tempted to “snack” outside the home front, and will become a responsible head of the household.
This is a woman with a PhD? Ah well, let’s not expect too much from higher degree qualifications these days. After all, Azahari Husin, aka “Demolition Man”, the Malaysian Jemaah Islamiyah bomb-maker believed to be the technical mastermind behind the 2002 Bali bombing, also had a PhD, and that didn’t prevent him from being a murderous madman.
Gina, whose PhD is in flight structural engineering, probably knows all there is to know about airplane structures. But that obviously isn’t enough to stop her from being misguided on men and marriage, and to subscribe to an ultraconservative Islamic ideology.
Does she seriously think men want subservient, docile, sheep-like puppets-cum-prostitutes-cum-slaves, who can be at their beck-and-call? Even in Malaysia, where the OWC originated, Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, the Minister of Women, Family and Community Development, said many husbands complained. They were embarrassed to be portrayed as under the sway of such limited and base needs.
Shahrizat slammed the OWC, saying a club dedicated to teaching wives to be “better than first-class prostitutes” did not represent Islam in Malaysia. She was also very worried that the club might give negative impressions of the teachings of Islam in the eyes of the world. It sure does!
For me, the OWC smacks a lot of Dharma Wanita, the civil servants’ wives association in Soeharto’s New Order. Within this association, a wife’s position in the hierarchy mirrored that of her husband’s. She had no autonomy whatsoever. If the husband changed his position in the bureaucracy or left it, so did she.
The ideology behind “state ibuism” (a term I coined) was that women existed to serve their husbands, children, family, community and state. Obedience was a central pillar of Dharma Wanita. For conservative Muslims, obedience to the husband is also part of their orthodoxy, something that sits well with the dominant worldwide culture of patriarchy.
One of the hadiths the conservatives often cite to justify their beliefs is from Abu Dawud. He claims that the Prophet Muhammad said, “Shall I tell you what the best thing is to treasure? A righteous woman: when he looks at her she pleases him, when he commands her she obeys him, and when he is away she preserves herself for him.”
However, according to Faqihuddin Abdul Kodir in his wonderful book Hadith and Gender Justice (Fahmina, 2007), one hadith cannot be relied on to define a good wife. There are other hadiths and Koranic verses where the term “righteous woman” is interpreted only as “an ultimate blessing” with no specific description of the woman’s duties. In these other hadiths, the Prophet is reported as saying that the most precious thing a man could have is a wife with whom he could share all his problems, who would be loyal to him in happiness or sorrow, and who would please him, but in relation to their mutual interests.
Dharma Wanita was part-and-parcel of an authoritarian state ideology that suppressed human rights and where social and political organizations were created to buttress oligarchic state power.
Likewise, an organization like the OWC — while ridiculously silly in itself — is part-and-parcel of a conservative and oppressive Islam that depends on women’s submission and subservience to imprison the ummah in dogma, rather than liberate them with the ijtihad (independent, rational thinking) that the Prophet advocated.
Hmmm … Perhaps someone should set up a Disobedient Wives Club?!?
The writer (www.juliasuryakusuma.com) is the author of “State Ibuisme” (Komunitas Bambu, 2011)
