When even young girls wear the hijab, it needs to
be asked what the female cover-up symbolizes?
BySaira Baig | Aptil 2020
How is the Islamic veil seen in the West, particularly in parts of Europe, which is under attack by a loose coalition of the willing? There is an emergence there of a xenophobic right that is suspicious of Muslim immigrants. They even enjoy the support of some on the left who fight against what they see as subjugation. Liberalism is being tested by the new Islamic fervour. A French-style ban is unwise and unjust and so is it in Austria and Denmark.
Recent reports by Amnesty International and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation show that Muslims are long-standing victims of prejudice in the West. Today, Islamophobia in Western societies is a climbing concern. Muslim women face perhaps the greatest challenges of due to multiple layers of discrimination rooted in religion, gender equality and migration.
It could be a long-standing crisis or a delayed reaction to decades of bad history, but millions of Muslims seem to have turned inwards, hankering for an imagined golden age. They are contemptuous of modernity’s bendable, ductile values. Some are drawn to reactionary dogma and preachers while a good number have thrown themselves into political Islam to resist and combat Western hegemonies — or so the story goes.
The Islamic veil has been a particularly polarising garment since the turn of the century. Of course, I use the term ‘Islamic veil’ loosely because the cacophonous variety of veils can be confusing, from the all-encompassing tent-like burqa of the Afghans to the more contoured face-baring dress of the United Arab Emirates, with the loose-fitted burqa of Pakistan straddling middle ground. And veils are not necessarily Islamic but sometimes more an instrument of socio-cultural projection. Many theologists argue that Islam does not in fact mandate full cover, but requests an appreciation of modesty.
The debate on the veil has intensified to the extent that opposing camps are busy sniping at one another, far too busy to note that that reason and thoroughness both lie dead courtesy of stray shots. Curiously though, no such controversy ever surrounds Catholic nuns in the four corners of the world. There is much to be said about the veil, and opinions are varied. But opinions not grounded in principle are like old pop records — everyone has at least one, and most aren’t worth a listen.
In the West, particularly in parts of Europe, the veil is under attack by a loose coalition of the willing. Loosely ringing this auspicious alliance are lipstick feminists striking out against women being imprisoned behind a wall of thick cloth. Of course, countries with an Islamic bent gleefully seize on any such issues as further signs of racism and xenophobia, choosing to temporarily not remember that their dress codes can be far more restrictive of personal choice.
Like a half-naked woman, a veiled female represents an affront to female dignity, autonomy and potential.
Muslim feminists of the past critiqued and repudiated the veil. One of them was a man, Qasim Amin, an Egyptian judge and philosopher, who in 1899 wrote 'The Liberation of Women.' He was the John Stuart Mill of the Arab world. Huda Shaarawi set up the Egyptian women’s union in the early 1920s. One day in 1923, as she disembarked from a train in Cairo, she threw off her veil and claimed her right to be visible. Educated Iranian women started feminist magazines and campaigned against the veil around the same time. These pioneers have been written out of history or are dismissed as western stooges by some contemporary Muslim intellectuals.
After the transformative 60s, Muslim feminists resumed the fight for equality. European rule was over. It was time. Moroccan academic Fatema Mernissi, Egypt’s Nawal El Saadawi and Pakistani scholar Riffat Hassan, all argued for female emancipation. They rightly saw the veil as a tool and symbol of oppression and subservience. Mernissi’s Beyond the Veil (1975) is a classic text. So is El Saadawi’s The Hidden Face of Eve (1975). But more conservative Islamic tenets have taken over lands, communities, families, heads and hearts.
The promise of this version is a return to certainties and ‘purity’ of belief, a mission backed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Deobandi revivalists, funded by Arab money, now run more mosques in Britain than any other Muslim subgroup. Women are told not to travel without male relatives, not to work, to be subservient, to veil. This movement began as a reaction against the Indian raj and mutated into a fundamentalist creed. Today their pushback against ‘cultural imperialism’ appeals to many alienated young Muslims. And, in part, it explains the growing popularity of the hijab, jilbab and full veil.
But in the Qur’an, the veil is mostly used metaphorically to describe barriers between good and bad, believers and nonbelievers. In two verses, women are told to lower their gaze, and to cover their private parts and bosoms. Men are also instructed to lower their gaze, and to dress modestly. One verse commands women in the prophet’s family to fully veil, partly to protect them from enemies and supplicants.
Veils, in truth, predate Islam. Zoroastrian and Byzantine upper-class ladies wore them to keep aloof from the common people. When Islam’s armies first reached Persia, they were shocked at this snobbery; then they adopted the custom they loathed; the control of women was hard-wired into their psyches.
Like a half-naked woman, a veiled female to me represents an affront to female dignity, autonomy and potential. Both are marionettes, and have internalized messages about femaleness. A woman in a full black cloak, her face and eyes masked, walked near to where I was sitting in a park recently, but we could not speak. Behind fabric, she was more unapproachable than a fort. She had a baby girl in a pushchair. Her young son was running around. Will the girl be put into a hijab, then a jilbab? Will the son expect that of his sister and wife one day? To never have the sun warm your face, the breeze through your hair — is that what God wants? Whatever happened to sisterhood?
But do those who choose to veil think of women in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and even the west, who are prosecuted, flogged, tortured or killed for not complying? This is not a freestanding choice — it can’t be. Although we hear from vocal British hijabis and niqabis, those who are forced cannot speak out. A fully veiled woman once turned up at my house, a graduate, covered in cuts, burns, bruises and bites. Do we know how many wounded, veiled women walk around hidden among us? Sexual violence in Saudi Arabia and Iran is appallingly high, as is body dysmorphia.
But institutions can apply dress codes. A bank worker cannot dress like a stripper; a child cannot wear a tube top to school. Have rules and stick to them, within reason. In 1899, Qasim Amin warned that unless Muslims embraced modernity and equality, the future would be bleak. We are in that bleakness now and few dare to speak up for its values.
My personal likes and dislikes do not offer a sufficient raison d'être to unveil anyone. And neither do yours.
The writer is a freelance writer focusing on politics in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Her subjects cover feminism, fashion, cinema and sport. She contributes to The Lahore Times, The Daily Notable, The Express Tribune, Sri Lanka Guardian and The Turkish Weekly and can be reached at sairabaig2019@gmail.com
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