Halima Aden: Hijab Doesn’t Represent All Muslim Women
By Abigail R. Esman
January 22,
2021
Several
years ago, an art dealer friend had a Renoir painting available for sale, a
portrait of a young woman in half-profile, dressed in a pale frock and with a
blue ribbon in her hair.
It was an
expensive work of art, and so it took time to find a buyer; but eventually one
woman fell so in love with the painting she was more than happy to pay the exorbitant
asking price. A deal was made. But as my friend began to fill out the
paperwork, the buyer paused.
"Do
you think," she said, "that I could repaint the ribbon? It's not
quite the exact blue to match my drapes."
Halima Aden's face has been
everywhere, from newspapers to magazines to television here and abroad.
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I thought
of this story recently when I read that Muslim model Halima Aden, who broke
barriers by being the first supermodel to wear hijab and, later, to pose in a
Burkini for Sports Illustrated, had decided to end her blossoming career. The
fashion industry, she said, had failed to accommodate her needs; and joining a
chorus of other Muslim women in the field, she called on designers, fashion
editors, and others to remake themselves to fulfil the demands of Muslim (read:
Hijabi) women.
In
announcing her decision on Instagram, Aden condemned photo shoots for which she
had worn outfits that, while conforming to the standards of "modest
dress," were "not me." Of the American Eagle campaign for its
popular denim hijab – a creation that sold out in all its stores – she
complained: "Why did I let them put jeans on my head when at the time I
had only ever worn skirts and long dresses?"
"I can
only blame myself for caring more about the opportunity than what was actually
at stake," she added. "I blame myself for being naïve and rebellious.
What I do blame the industry for is the lack of MUSLIM women stylists.... I did
good, but that isn't enough. We gotta have these discussions in order to change
the system truly."
Aden is not
the only Muslim woman in fashion to voice her objections to the industry that
has rewarded her enviable career with fame, fortune, and a voice. Speaking to
the Daily Beast soon after Aden's retirement, model and stylist Saniyyah Bilal
complained of having to dress in a bolero jacket the way its designer had
wanted it to be worn, with the neckline clearly visible. When the designer
refused to let her close the collar, Bilal waited until she was set to walk the
runway, then pinned it closed to suit her own views of modesty. It was her way
of repainting the ribbon to suit the color of her drapes.
A Muslim woman in a hjiab.
Photo: UK Channel 4/Screenshot.
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But "a
clothing designer is an artist who makes clothing to fit their style and their
vision," says Yasmine Mohammed, an ex-Muslim and author of Unveiled: How
Western Liberals Enable Radical Islam. "A model's job is simply to
showcase the clothing for the audience. It's incredibly entitled and
disrespectful for a model to think that their personal choices should impact
another person's work."
Farhana
Qazi, the first American Muslim woman to join the U.S. government's Counter
Terrorism Centre and the author of Invisible
Martyrs: Inside the Secret World of Female Islamic Radicals, agrees:
"Western fashion...doesn't need to conform to Muslim fashion," she
said in a recent e-mail. "There is a wide platform now for Muslim/Islamic
fashion which supports those in hijab and modern dress."
Most of
this could be waved away had it not attracted so much attention and applause,
even beyond her million followers on social media. Naomi Campbell, Gigi Hadid,
Rihanna and other celebrities praised Aden's "integrity." CNN, the
New York Times, the Daily Beast and others picked up her story. It was as if
she had done something heroic, taken a bold, liberating stand for Muslim women
around the world.
She did
not.
In fact,
her actions contradict entirely the symbolism and purpose of the hijab:
Modesty. With the same grandiose, self-promoting egoism with which she
voluntarily stepped into the world of glossy magazines, posing seductively in
form-revealing burkinis that advertised her beauty, she called for attention in
announcing the end of her modeling career. "Look at me," she was
saying. "Look at me."
And yet,
the hijab is worn specifically to disguise a woman's beauty. "Look at
me" is exactly what the hijab stands against. "The whole purpose of
the hijab is modesty," says Mohammed, who founded "No Hijab Day"
in support of women who have risked their lives by daring to remove their
scarves in the face of laws or family rules that demand them. "The reason
why it exists is because it aims to hide a woman from the view of all men who
are not in her family. The idea is that a woman's being – her body and her
voice – are awrah. That means, essentially, that they are private parts.
Although I disagree entirely with the idea of hijab and misogynist reasons
behind it, it's easy to see the blatant contradiction between wearing clothing
for religious modesty purposes [and] strutting on a catwalk."
Moreover,
the criticism these women hurl at the fashion world implies that Muslim women
all wear hijabs, that there is somehow something discriminatory, even racist,
about designers who do not incorporate "modest" fashion in their
lines. More, it suggests that women who do not cover their heads are somehow
"too Westernized" – a condemnation some fundamentalist Muslim
families have used as reason to beat or even kill their daughters as happened
to 16-year-old Canadian Aqsa Parvez, beaten and killed by her father for her
"Westernized" clothing and behavior.
And yet
none of the women gracing the covers of Turkish Vogue or Elle over the past two
years, for instance, wear hijabs or veils. Rather, these women represent the
Muslima who is comfortable with her spiritual life and her religion, regardless
of what she does or does not wear.
By
contrast, in presenting the Hijabi as the model for Muslim girls, Aden and
those like her are echoing the viewpoint of extreme and conservative Muslims,
suggesting that it is the covered Muslima, not the Westernized liberal woman,
that a young Muslim girl should aspire to become, that this is the ideal.
Secularism is not merely rejected, but denounced.
This is
potentially dangerous stuff: as a ground-breaking and highly influential model,
Aden and others seeking to "change the system" arguably risk steering
younger Muslim girls towards a patriarchal and conservative religious ideal –
and the ideologies that accompany it.
Ultimately,
my friend cancelled the Renoir sale, refusing to allow this woman to impose her
style and her will on an icon of our culture.
The fashion
world should do the same.
-----
Abigail R. Esman is a freelance writer based in
New York and the Netherlands, and the author of Rage: Narcissism, Patriarchy,
and the Culture of Terrorism. F
Copyright © 2020. Investigative Project on
Terrorism. All rights reserved.
Original Headline: When Conservative Islam and Fashion Collide
Source: The Investigative Project
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/halima-aden-hijab-doesn’t-represent/d/124172
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