Muslim couple press gender equality
From Saudi Arabia, where police refused to let some women flee a burning building because they were not wearing full religious garb, to the late, unlamented Taliban in Afghanistan, Middle East regimes have saddled Islam with a misogynist image.
But a Cambridge couple, fueled by the faith of their small Muslim sect, are trying to improve the lives of impoverished women half a globe away.
Mohammed and Amatulla Zakir belong to the Dawoodi Bohras. Numbering 1 million worldwide, including 100 families in the Boston area, the Bohrases believe in gender equality. They also believe in entrepreneurship, and in that combination lies a story.
Moved by the plight of slum-dwelling weavers, most of them women, in Mohammed Zakir's hometown of Karachi in Pakistan, the Zakirs have started a small business, Silk Route Crafts, to import the workers' fabrics and fabric goods. The hope is to sell enough to Americans to send a decent wage to the workers, who Mohammed said have a good year if they earn the equivalent of $1,000.
"I never wanted to just work a job that meant I was just working a job," said Amatulla Zakir. "My religious belief . . . is to find something that I can do daily which is meaningful. We believe that wherever we live, we need to give back to the community."
Big ambitions begin with baby steps, and for now, Silk Route Crafts is no threat to Martha Stewart.
Mohammed said the company sold a half-dozen items for a few hundred dollars in the last three months.
His wife provides specifications for the goods and designed a website, www.silkroutecrafts.com, with photos. (A visitor to the Zakirs' apartment near Porter Square can see a rainbow piled in the corner of the living room -- pillowcases of gold, pink, aqua, lime with gold braid.)
Mohammed said he only recently realized that some customers are more likely to buy if the couple advertises their social justice mission. The link describing the workers was retitled from "Artisans" to "Empowering Women." "Most of my sales came after I changed that," he said.
Originating in 11th-century Egypt, the Bohrases migrated to Yemen before settling in India, where they have been based for more than 400 years. Their name is a tip-off to their cultural calling card: "Bohra" is from an Indian word meaning trader, and most members work in business and the professions. A picture of the Bohrases' spiritual leader hangs in the Zakirs' living room. "He has laid a lot of emphasis on entrepreneurship," Mohammed said.
"I think the notions of gender bias in Pakistan today stem more from culture and less from Islam," he added. For example, Muslims who "prohibit women from studying -- you know, the self-proclaimed religious scholars, for instance -- are incredibly ignorant, because the Koran itself says that the gaining of education is mandatory for each and every man and woman."
The Pakistani workers live on the outskirts of Karachi. Squatters have settled illegally on government land, and many work out of their homes, even without electricity and running water, Mohammed said. For the women, it is an especially hard life.
"They don't have a lot of education," he said. "They're exploited a lot. They're not paid much for the work they do. They end up basically just being hand to mouth, so they can't really afford to send their kids to school. Heathcare becomes really difficult for them. . . . A lot of these people don't have access to sanitation, because the government doesn't provide anything at all."
As a woman, Amatulla, who grew up in India, was struck during a trip to Karachi by how the women simultaneously fulfilled the domestic duties demanded by Pakistani culture and worked to earn an income, albeit a tiny one.
"My mother-in-law, for instance, would never work, because she feels she must be at home," she said. "That [view] gets stronger as you move down more in economically deprived sections of society." But the women artisans "managed to step out of that. . . . You just feel like, my God, I don't believe they've actually managed to make this huge, massive step. They just need a little help."
That faith-based bent for business dovetailed with Mohammed Zakir's professional expertise. He came to the United States almost a dozen years ago as a freshman at Middlebury College in Vermont.
He majored in economics and math and now works for an economic consulting firm in Boston. "I've been sort of thinking about doing something along the lines of social enterprise for a very long time. . . . It would be a drop in the bucket, but still, if enough drops get together, you know?"
Last March, on a trip to Karachi, the Zakirs scouted the slum for themselves, interviewing workers about their circumstances and talking to the middlemen who sell their wares locally.
Mohammed sees that business bent as a logical part of Islam. "Even the Prophet [Mohammed] himself was a trader, and that's how he met his wife."
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