“Most traditional Muslim men use the law of talaaq as it exists as a threat to women. They tell us that according to the Hadees (the Prophet’s traditions and sayings) whenever a divorce happens, arsh and farsh (the sky and earth) shake. So many divorces are taking place. I don’t see any movement,” says Farzana who works for an NGO Khoj which is working on school education in the otherwise ignored corners of Mumbai like Mumbra.

Women like Farzana was what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was rooting for when last fortnight, speaking to a gathering of Muslim clerics from across the country, he strongly condemned the linking of Islam with terror but delivered an unequivocal message: the community had to reform its treatment of women. He had enough reason to.

A 2004 survey by political scientists Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon found that key social indicators for Muslim women were more worrying than for other social groups. In the survey done across 12 states, it was found that in rural north India, only 15% of Muslim women were literate (as against the 2001 national 39.3% figure for women), and as one went up the education ladder, the drop-out rate was alarming. Only 3.56 per cent of Muslim women could be classified as having received higher education, which is less than the figure for Scheduled Castes. Even in employment, the gap is glaring: just 11.4% of Muslim women are in the workforce, lower than the dismal 16% for Hindu women.

That’s why Farzana is the exception. She may have broken away from what she calls the “compulsion of wearing long black robes in Mumbai’s muggy weather,” but the choice isn’t so easy for many others.

If you want to know why, speak to most Muslim clerics, and you are sharply rebuked for “not understanding” Islam. Take Maulana Tauhid Akhtar, the imam of Bandra’s Station Masjid for over 12 years: “The Prophet was many years ahead of his times. He gave women rights, and came down heavily against female foeticide, a common practice those days.” But has Islam in the subcontinent especially failed to adapt that spirit to changing realities?

“No,” says Akhtar. “You all did emerge from the rib, women aren’t equal to men. If we handed over the nizam (management) of the world to women, all would be topsy-turvy” he laughs. “The hijaab, women covering their hair, their arms, legs etc, are all dictated by Islam. We cannot allow otherwise with our women.”

Ayesha, a 35-year-old resident of Vashi, was subjected to all these rules once but again, like Farzana, after a marriage at the age of 13 has now managed to break out and now works for Awaaz- e- Niswaan, (an NGO working with women). She says, “All this talk of the model nikaah nama, very few people are getting married under that, only the very enlightened ones and that, too, over just the past one and a half years. The rest continue to interpret Islam at its narrowest.”

Some institutions are trying not to.

Mumbai has had a tradition of established and well-to-do Muslims, especially from business communities educating their women and helping them get into the mainstream. Established nearly a century ago, Anjuman e Islam’s Allana English School, facing Victoria Terminus in South Mumbai, acknowledges that English, Urdu and Islamic thought, all can be integrated under one roof. From 150 students in 1986, there are now 3000 students here. Wasim Jaffer, the Bombay opening batsman, is one of its alumni.

They have co-educational classes, a minimal fee, and deeniyat (religious instruction) in just two periods a week. Zakiya Farid, 41, is the principal here. She explains how the school concentrates on children who can’t keep pace with the system, so as to minimize drop-out rates, the most common problem with Muslim girl students.

The children here wear skirts or salwars, as they please, they don’t have to cover their heads. But what about Zakiya herself? The elegant black chiffon headgear? Is it by choice? Convent-educated Zakiya says: “It is and I feel it is the spirit of my faith to be modestly behaved when with other men. It doesn’t affect my work and I don’t force it on my staff or students. We want them to decide on their own.”

There are girls like Shaheen who have done that. Her parents sell vegetables and she is taking a video-editing course in Dadar, also attends a one-day workshop every month with 89 other Muslim girls with actor Rahul Bose. “We are made to think, talk and argue. We recently had a debate about Rang de Basanti, why the boys kill those people, and if it was right or not.”

Among other things, Bose uses rugby to teach them the value of team work, the need to go just a little ahead of the other girls if they want to move the ball ahead and score. Says Bose: “Sometimes, I have to simply spend a lot of time teaching them to walk straight with their heads held high, backs upright. It’s almost a pincer grip the girls are under. The fact of gender, and then being Muslim.”

Escaping this double-bind isn’t easy. Two Muslim girls stood first and second in the state Class X examinations this year. But, says London-educated doctor Anwar Amin Ansari, a Bandra resident, whose two daughters go to a convent: “Until the average Muslim family is not feeling secure, education, especially educating girls, cannot become a priority. In Muslim areas, there aren’t good government schools, sometimes none at all. The families are compelled to send them for a basic education in a madrasa or not at all.”

Many Muslims feel angry when asked the question of how women in the community are treated. Qayyum Ansari was pushed out of his chawl 13 years ago when a mob with torches came home. He says, “Will getting our women to abandon the purdah solve the problems of discrimination?”

But then what do you tell Farzana when she says: “Our men curse us and say it is because of our be-purdagi— shedding the veil — that we had to face the riots, even the July 26 deluge last year?”

—(Tomorrow: Why actor Emraan Hashmi can’t find a house)