25th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF DAVO
Conference Summary:
The 25th Annual Congress of DAVO (German Middle East Studies Association for Contemporary Research and Documentation) combined with the Conference of the Frankfurt Research Center on Global Islam (FFGI) “Politics, Religion and Society at the Middle East” took place at the Cluster of Excellence "Normative Orders" at the Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany, from October 4-6, 2018. It was organized by Prof. Dr. Susanne (Director of the FFGI at the Cluster of Excellence “Normative Orders”). Prof. Dr. Gilles Kepel gave the keynote speech under the title “From the Arab Spring to ISIS.” The conference was wholly based on the discourse of politics, religion and society at the Middle East, in which research on Islam was widely presented.
My paper entitled “Feminist politics in Sindh: The case of Women Action Forum & Sindhyani Tehrik” was accepted for the panel “E.3. Women and the Public Sphere-Transformation of Gender Orders (Part-I)” that was to be held between 14:30 and 16:30 on October 5, but as I had to return to Shanghai and due to some problem I already had to book a flight for Shanghai that was to be departed at 14:40 on the same day, so on my request, my presentation was shifted to another panel i.e. “C.2. Pluralism and Islam in Pakistan: A Focus on Minorities (Part-I)” which was held on the same day, October 5, at 9:00-11:00, therefore, I presented my research in that panel and then I left to the airport.
As my research was about the feminist politics in Sindh, Pakistan, by taking a case study of two major women organizations, I gave a presentation by talking about the women empowerment and women movements since the very inception of Pakistan, but as my major focus was on two parties, the Women Action Forum and the other one was Sindhyani Tehrik (Struggle of Sindhi Women) and these both organizations were formed in the 1980s when General Zia-ul-Haq was ruling the country, so I discussed more about these organizations.
I talked about the General Zia’s so-called Islamization program by which he supposed to convert Pakistani state into an Islamic state by introducing his own made laws. This was the time period when in retaliation the Women Action Forum and the Sindhyani Tehrik were formed in order to resist the Zia regime so-called Islamization program, which was totally against the women empowerment and the basic rights of women of Pakistan. I discussed actual causes that led Pakistani women to form these organizations, and then also I discussed the organizational framework and the outcome of struggles launched by these both organizations. However, it was interesting that initially I was asked to finish my presentation within 20 minutes, but due to enthusiasm and interest of the audience in my research topic, I was allowed to talk and respond the questions till 45 minutes. In the end, during the tea break, I introduced Shanghai University and more specifically the Global studies Center that we have different centres, like China Study Center, Middle East Study Center, South Asian Study Center and North American study Center etc. However, my visit to Germany and presenting my paper successfully gave me a new insight after I got great feedback from the scholars available in the conference, and after returning from Germany, I made changes in my research accordingly.
