World Hijab Day: Is Hijab Really A Question Of Choice?
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
4 February
2021
Glossing
over other important problems which beset the Muslim world, it is mildly
farcical that some women ‘choose’ to celebrate the World Hijab Day on the 1st
of February. The idea is to invite religious and non-religious women to don the
hijab for a day so as to experience that the garment is not really oppressive
as it is made out to be. The celebration of hijab is being done in the name of
countering ‘Islamophobia’. Muslim women are arguing that their bodies and its
appearances have been the special target of this new western racism.
It is
interesting to note that the fulcrum of this movement is located in the west,
especially the US, where perhaps it is very easy to understand that hijab could
be a matter of pure choice of an individual believer. But can the same thing be
said about millions of women located in Muslim countries? Is it really a matter
of choice for them?
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February
1st is also the day when Khomeini returned to Iran, and post the revolution
decreed that all women must cover up. One is not sure if the organisers of
World Hijab Day are aware of this, but it is a crying shame that it is same
date on which women in Iran were denied the choice of dressing up the way they
liked. There might not have been a revolutionary decree in other Muslim countries,
but the force of convention and dominant Islamic theology have made sure that
Muslim women do not have the freedom to take off the veil. Young children are
taught to dress ‘modestly’ in Islamic schools and when they become adults, this
piece of cloth becomes an inalienable part of their bodily comportment.
Movements
ranging from the Islamic Brotherhood to the Jamat e Islami, have all understood
the hijab as an essential expression of political Islam. So configuring the
hijab as a matter of choice might be true for some individuals but for the
majority of Muslim women, it simply isn’t. Rather there are powerful regimes
which are heavily invested in making the hijab as the distinctive symbol of
Muslim identity. Marketing it as choice is simply sinister as it gives the
impression that there is no societal and religious imposition behind the
adoption of the veil.
Choice has
almost become a sacred word. When all other arguments fail, people say that it
is a question of their choice and therefore it should be respected. Liberals
often fall for this kind of logic and in fact go to lengths to justify veils as
an individual choice. Granted that for some it can be a matter of choice, but
then should all choices be respected? Some Muslim communities across the world
practice female circumcision and they too have been arguing that their
religious choice should be respected. How many of those celebrating the hijab
as a choice would extend the same courtesy to such a heinous practice? A
difference must be made between choices that are empowering and choices that
might have the appearance of empowerment but in fact does just the opposite.
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The hijab
has never been about choice. In fact, it is a religious commandment. The
dominant Islamic theology commands and expects the separation of spaces between
men and women. Women have been put in charge of men as Islamic theology
understands the latter as being the primary providers. The hijab is certainly
empowering in the sense that it breaks down the traditional separation of
spaces between men and women. To the extent that it allows Muslim women to claim
and reclaim public spaces, it must be welcome. It is quite clear from the
neo-advocates of the hijab that they are hardly bound by the traditional
interpretation of religion. Had that been the case, they would have spoken from
behind a curtain as is enjoined in the Islamic sharia. They hardly do so. The
women who are advocating the hijab are all university educated Muslims who
speak before thousands of men.
Some would
say that these women are engaged in selective interpretation of religious
texts, but then so have been the bearded men since centuries. Just because
women have started doing it now should be no reason for alarm. Ultimately, all
theology is about interpretation, and one should not have a problem if Muslim
women have started exercising it too. It is the idea behind such a hermeneutics
that needs to be questioned.
And that
idea seems to be the legitimation of a certain modesty culture which Islam
enjoins on women. If one asks the simple question why Islam commands only women
to cover themselves but not the men, then it becomes clear that the religion
assumes fundamental differences between the two genders. Women are to be
secluded and there are express commands forbidding women to show their Awra.
What constitutes Awra is a matter of interpretation; in some cultures
almost the entirety of women’s body is to be covered while in others the hands
and the face are excluded. It seems that there is a general consensus amongst
the theologians that women’s hair are an extremely important part of their Awra
and hence needs to be hidden at all times except while in privacy.
It is not surprising therefore that most
Muslim cultures have some form of head covering and even those who do not
normally adhere to this norm would do so on special occasions. Women’s hair is
thus considered tempting for men but ironically it is women who are supposed to
cover them up. The pressure and responsibility of being ‘modest’ rests on the
women and if she is not, then the understanding is that she has herself invited
trouble. It is this patriarchal and sexist understanding which has informed the
traditionalist reading of Islam and which needs to be questioned.
The pro
veil advocacy in this sense is thus nothing more than an extension of such a
traditionalist gender understanding which sustains itself on positing a
fundamental inequality between men and women. Given the education and agency
which some of the pro-hijab women have acquired, their activism would have been
put to much better use had they started to question this religion ordained
inequality rather than uncritically celebrating the hijab as a matter of
choice.
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Arshad
Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/world-hijab-day-hijab-really/d/124224
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