Fighting For Their Rights

Society finds out how Noorjehan Sofia Niaz, co-founder of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), takes on the challenges of being a Muslim women’s rights activist in modern India…

- Joanne Natalia

First, the Haji Ali Dargah, now the Triple Talaq case and soon the codification of Muslim personal law! Noorjehan Sofia Niaz has been breaking barriers and empowering women since 1992.

A survivor of the 1993 communal riots that scourged the city of Mumbai, Noorjehan has dedicated her life to the empowerment of women. She began working in various organisations to rebuild and rehabilitate riot victims and soon realised the desperate need for change in her own community, especially when it came to women and Muslim Personal Law. “We realised that the law reform issue had not been addressed properly by the community and the government, especially on the legal reforms issue of Muslim women. And, we also felt there was no national platform for Muslim women to talk about their issues and concerns. So, while we have religious organisations and many other groups within the community; Muslim women’s voices were absent,” she says.

To tackle the issue at hand, Noorjehan, along with Zakia Nizami Soman, founded the BMMA in January 2007. They believed that a national platform for Muslim women was the need of the hour; where women from all parts of the country could come together and have a say in matters of the community. Also, that the community should not be led only by a certain kind of religious group, but by progressive, liberal people, who have certain values or a belief system in secularism, equality and democracy.