Both the contemporary Indian and Pakistani women movements have had a troubled relationship with Islam since the 1980s;  and even more aggressively since the advent of the global ‘War on Terror’.  In India the Shah Bano case  first brought the issue of Muslim women’s rights to the centre of national attention.  Over the past two decades, Muslim women rights activists have emerged as leaders within and outside the women's movement and have been working through both 'Islamic feminist' and ‘secular’ approaches in their advocacy campaigns.  In the Pakistani context, the women's movement was consolidated in the 1980s in the context of Zia-ul-Haq's regime, during which time women’s rights activists were forced to confront a particularly regressive form of Islam either through the deployment of ‘progressive’ interpretations of Islam or through a ‘human rights-based’ approach.  In the post 9/11 period, women’s rights activists in Pakistan have used a combination of religiously-informed and rights-based approaches depending on the issue at hand, the context, and the particular individual or group, both independently or with the support of international NGOs, donors and networks.

The paper highlights when and how women’s rights activists in both contexts have utilised both ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ approaches, emphasising the intertwined nature of both of these categories in practice.  Furthermore, it will explore the strategic debates that have taken place amongst feminists on the question of religion in both the countries.  These debates are placed within the post-9/11 context, which has impacted women’s rights activism dramatically, yet differently on either side of the border. This paper will provide a comparative perspective shedding light on the impact of political and social context at the local, national and international levels on the constraints and strategies of women's movements in an increasingly restrictive political context.