They’ve been off our radar for a while now, but the Malay-Muslim rights group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (ISMA) is back at it, with a shot across the bow aimed at Malaysian feminists – namely, that they’re leading women astray from their true nature, which is to be dutiful wives and mothers in the home.
ISMA president Abdullah Zaik Abdul Rahman said feminism has no place in Malaysia, because although women should be allowed to work (how gracious of him), their priority should be to their husbands and children.
Oh, and he said it at ISMA’s Women’s forum in Shah Alam.
“I believe that Asian women, especially Muslim women who still hold on to the principles, know that the main priority of the woman is at home,” he declared, as quoted by The Malay Mail Online‘s Mayuri Mei Lin.
Abdullah maintained that many women, after having been influenced by “feminist” ideas, have abandoned or neglected their “basic roles” of caring after their households and children.
“The function of women, even though they can enter all career fields, they cannot prioritise it more than their basic roles because if this is to continue then there will be an extraordinary void in our family institutions where the children that need the love and attention of their mothers,” he said.
Despite seemingly being okay with women joining the workforce, he said that mothers who leave their children to go to the office will “create an emptiness in (children) that is very extreme for the next generation. And they will try to fill the void with other things that may happen irresponsibly and may affect the development of their character.”
He then suggested that women, unlike men, be allowed to only work for half a day every day, so that they may sooner go home and take care of the important things in life, like their children, and their husbands’ dinner, and the laundry, we assume.
“If we reduce their workday to 6 hours or half day but same salary we can save the family institutions,” he said.
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