A young girl’s fight for freedom from family, religion and society

By HANNINGTON OCHWADA

Maurice Amutabi’s novel, Because of Honor is a work of fiction set somewhere on the Kenyan Coast, focusing on the life of Amina, a young Muslim girl.

Amina and her family live in Chelani village where her life is characterised by intrigue and conflict with her family and later society at large.

Early in life, Amina negins to wish she could be freed from the shackles of religion and patriarchy, which have imposed female genital mutilation, forced and arranged marriages and deny girls the right to education.

She learns that going contrary to society expectations, her family included, results in honour killing, which she witnessed and traumatised her.

Amina nevertheless chooses to reject the existing order, setting herself on a collision course with her father, elders and society.

Knowing that her rebellion will mark her for life, she decides to escape and ends up in Mombasa, where she completes high school and goes to college, imagining that her dream at last has come true.

She soon however realises that her struggle has just begun.

Born a Muslim in a world not controlled by secular law but by Islamic law, she must behave and act as a Muslim woman is expected to.

The author is very descriptive and the characters, topography and social activities leave no doubt that the book is set in Africa.

The story commences and ends in Africa without belabouring the post-modern ambivalence, ambiguities and intellectual voyeurism that attend many novels in Africa where Europe and North America must be featured in order for the plot to appear to be intricate and the story fashionable and relevant.

Amina’s life provides the reader with invaluable insights into how Islam has evolved in East Africa.

For instance, the narrative successfully tackles the thorny issues of marriage, female genital mutilation and the vestiges of patriarchy in society.

Using a clear narrative and humorous style, Amutabi incisively and pointedly analyses historical conditions forced on women by faithful allegiance to religion and tradition.

The book also provides an extended commentary on the passive role of the government, leaving anachronistic tendencies to curtail women’s rights.

The book is insightful for readers who are interested in indigenous cultural encounters with Islam in East Africa.

Amutabi ably uses history in his fictional exploration of the impact of Islam in Africa in a uniquely personal way that most novels seem to gloss over.

It is important to state that some readers will perceive Because of Honour as an engagement in some kind of sardonic lampooning of Islam.

But the novel is well researched and contains enough accurate historical facts to be characterised as a great historical novel.

Characterisation

The balance between female and male characters is very engaging.

Of the many characters in the novel, there is Isa and Chiku Babu, Amina’s parents who have over 10 children.

Indeed, the success of any work of fiction that features numerous characters like Because of Honor, depends on the author’s ability to develop the main characters, a task that Amutabi successfully accomplishes.

It is also imperative in a problem-set novel such as this, to constitute some form of solution or to arrive at a resolution in which the seemingly contrasting factions lead to a meaningful closing.

As the novel comes to a conclusion, Amina calls for a need to rethink and purge Islam of anachronisms.

She also calls for a renegotiation between women and Islam.

For example, as her father lies on his deathbed, Amina and her siblings ask for a new beginning in social relations.

Amina says, “Finally what I want is to invite all of you to join me in a serious interrogation of society in general, especially what can be done to make us live together as humans without seeking to perceive others through the prism of male and female dichotomies, and other identities that bring about tension.”

She also seems to reconcile with her father when she says, “Isa Babu is a hero. I choose to remember the good memories I have of him.”

Although already a vegetable and near his death, Isa Babu surprises everyone by asking his children for forgiveness.

He says, “I have listened to you [my children] the whole evening. I am really sorry for everything [that I did to you].” This statement is a form of resolution, and closure.

For a Muslim man to ask his children for forgiveness is metaphorically and symbolically significant.

The novel’s dramatic conclusion with the death of Chiku and Isa Babu provides a strong example of how religion can make or unmake families; create happiness or sadness.

Their death could also be symbolic and metaphorical to mean the end of an old order and the beginning of a new one.

Because of Honour would benefit everyone, especially students and teachers of African history, culture, religious studies, sociology, anthropology, Islam, gender and women studies.

It provides the reader with an understanding of what goes on behind closed doors in ordinary Islamic homes.

It also equips one with knowledge of the power of religion in undermining and bringing about positive social change in communities.

-The East African