Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
By Mona Eltahawy
The Jerusalem Report
April 27, 2009
I love public speaking. I used to want to be an actress when I was younger so it obviously satisfies the performer in me. I like to think that I’m pretty fast on my feet during the Q&A sessions, too, but occasionally someone asks me something that leaves me aghast.
“In London, I see these women covered from head to toe and it’s the summer and I want to ask them ‘Aren’t you hot?’” asked a woman at the end of a talk I gave in March at Sarah Lawrence College, in New York state, on gender and power in the Muslim world.
I used to wear a headscarf but the questioner wasn’t talking about the hijab. She meant the face veil, or the niqab. Full disclosure: the niqab terrifies me. It says very little about religion but a whole lot about the erasure of a woman’s identity and her very existence as a human being in any society.
I fully confess my views on the niqab are thoroughly grounded as much in my own very personal struggles with the hijab, which I wore for nine years, as they are more generally with the obsessive focus of both Muslims and non-Muslims on how Muslim women dress.
And to this day I unequivocally refuse to defend the niqab, regardless of who is making the argument for or against it. But the woman in the audience who claimed to feel sorry for the women in the niqab during the height of summer displayed a disdain and condescension that annoys me as much as those arguments.
Another woman in the audience, who identified herself as Jewish, told her that when she sees ultra-Orthodox Jewish women on the New York subway in the height of summer she too wants to ask them “Aren’t you hot?” because of the way they dress.
But for some reason, it’s mostly Muslim women who seem to be the focus of the “Clash of Civilizations”.
Iranian photographer and writer Haleh Anvari put it beautifully during a performance in New York a couple of years ago when she said she was fed up of being fought over by Iran’s mullahs on the one side who want to protect her soul with the chador and the western media on the other which wants to rescue her from it.
When an American woman in the audience asked if she should wear a chador out of solidarity with Iranian women, the farce and beauty of being a Muslim woman today was too much bear.
Like my interlocutor at Sarah Lawrence, this was a classic killer combo of condescension marinated in a deep-seated desire to liberate and rescue Muslim women and seasoned with good old ignorance.
Some might call me unkind for ripping into a well-intentioned inquiry about ways to help, but nine years of wearing a headscarf made me an expert in figuring out the saviors from the liberators. The liberators, to be fair, weren’t always from the “West.” Sometimes they were fellow Egyptian Muslims who just didn’t like the hijab.
Just as importantly, the headscarf honed my skills at figuring out the honest from the patronizing and there’s nothing like being spoken to IN A SLOW AND VERY LOUD VOICE AS IF ONE WERE DEAF to make you want to yell I MIGHT COVER MY HAIR BUT I’M NOT STUPID.
When I decided to stop wearing the hijab, my biggest fight was with myself. But the saviors and liberators were still going at it. One Muslim friend chided me for giving non-Muslims a shaky image of Islam. “I’m not the Quran in motion” I would reply. The liberators assured me I looked so much better with the headscarf off – which just added to my guilt.
The saviors and liberators don’t really care about me or my soul. The conversation for them begins and ends with how a Muslim woman looks. What she thinks, feels or wants is quite irrelevant.
So imagine my horror when I first came across the misguided desire to cover up in support of Muslim women shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Again, the path from well-intentioned to clueless was not that long or winding. As news spread that Muslims or anyone who seemed to be Muslim were being targeted, I began to read about “Wear Hijab Days,” as groups in various North American cities handed out headscarves for their members to wear in solidarity with Muslim women.
While the dangers to Muslim women wearing headscarves were real, my instinct was to tell those groups what I told the woman at Anvari’s performance and my interlocutor at Sarah Lawrence – stay out of it!
I was more captivated by the religious edicts allowing Muslim women in the West to remove their headscarves if they felt they were in danger. By that point, I no longer believed the headscarf was obligatory for Muslim women and to hear those pronouncements added a whole new layer to the cake.
But to those “Wear Hijab Days” groups, complexity, nuance and anything beyond the surface be damned! Other people’s causes are so much cuddlier, of course. What did it matter that they were offending some of us Muslims who didn’t believe hijab was a religious requirement?
Ironically, Muslim women in the United States have more freedom to wear the headscarf than they do in, say, Turkey, where the scarf is banned in government buildings and public schools. And for the polar opposite, there’s Saudi Arabia and Iran where women must cover up in public.
How absurd that some groups want to cover up to support us while others want to support us to uncover! How about leaving us alone to decide? Now that’s support.
Comments (12)
Dale said:
You know, Mona, an Arab once asked me the same question (aren’t you hot?) regarding a BDU uniform, Kevlar helmet, and all the rest of my military battle rattle.
Why does this question have to have such deep and profound socio/political implications? Most Arabs have never worn an American military uniform just as most Western women have never worn the garments you reference in this article. Could the questioner merely have been curious about the garment?
Some things really are that simple. How would you have answered the questioner? I guess I’d have looked at it as an opportunity to enlighten a Western woman on at least a single aspect of Muslim socio/religious culture.
Why would this question leave you “aghast”? I’ve asked you several questions that I would think would be much more likely to draw your ire than this and when you responded, you always responded politely, which filled in another piece of the puzzle that is Mona.
April 22nd, 2009, 1:40 pm
limpia said:
Dale, i definitely responded the same way to the article. Could the intellectualization have been defensiveness or embarrassment?
April 23rd, 2009, 7:25 pm
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! said:
People will always be ignorant. Great essay, Mona, as usual. You hit it right on the nail.
April 24th, 2009, 10:03 am
D.T. Gamble said:
I think the reason why so many women/people in the west feel the need to “liberate” Muslim women from the hijab is because they do not really hear or see Muslim women speaking about it. I think they feel like most of these women have been indoctrinated to the extent that they do not know how to think or talk for themselves. I think it is a step in the right direction that more Muslim women, with and without the hijab, speak about THEIR position hijab. And it also helps that Muslim women do learn to speak up and say “stay out of it. I have a brain; can think for myself and I’ll decide what is and isn’t good for me.”
When I was young I would see Muslim girls with the hijab on and I felt sorry that they had to wear it because, basically, I was ignorant and did not know any better. Now, a little older and much wiser, and having quite a few Muslim friends I realize what many fail to; a head scarf does not inhibit a woman’s ability to function, eat, study, walk or curse someone out and sometimes, it is that woman’s CHOICE to wear it. Often times, the hijab is a personal symbol of a way one leads their life. So, more power to you if you choose to wear or not to wear it for whatever reason, just make sure you’re doing it for you.
April 24th, 2009, 10:52 am
nashe said:
Hello from Singapore. I’m glad that while many people are acting the same way in my country, we as a nation are still harmonious.
Many of my female Muslim friends in university are don the hijab, out of their own free will. It is their own representation of the religion, on their own terms. Nothing is forced, and nothing is restricted.
April 25th, 2009, 8:37 am
Mr.ihsaan said:
Mona said:the niqab terrifies me. It says very little about religion but a whole lot about the erasure of a woman’s identity and her very existence as a human being in any society. THINGS WHICH NULLIFY ONES ISLAM…..5. Anyone who hates any part of what the Messenger of Allah [saw] has declared to be lawful has nullified his Islam, even though he may act in accordance with it. Allah Most High says(in the meaning):
“This is because they hate what Allah has sent down, so he has made their deeds fruitless” (Soorah Muhammad 47:9)
The Noble Qur’an – Al-Ahzab 33:59
O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (veils)* all over their bodies (i.e. screen themselves completely except the eyes or one eye to see the way). That will be better, that they should be known (as free respectable women) so as not to be annoyed. And Allah is Ever Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.’Aisha used to say: “When (the Verse): ‘They should draw their veils over their necks and bosoms,’ was revealed, (the ladies) cut their waist sheets at the edges and covered their faces with the cut pieces.”(bukhari 6-282)
April 25th, 2009, 9:26 am
Aynur said:
@Mr.ihsaan
You know that the parts in parenthesis you quoted are from the translator, not the actual arabic text??
April 25th, 2009, 12:54 pm
Mona Eltahawy said:
Mr. Ihsan
If you want to comment on my blog, keep your insults to yourself. Repost without insults regarding my morals and class.
April 26th, 2009, 3:17 pm
Voideka said:
Mona, you’ve identified the problem any popular movement has, and it’s not unique to this issue. Basically, you have the core group who has a particular belief, in this case the belief of the ‘liberators’ is that women should be able to choose their dress for themselves (among other things). After this comes the well intentioned people who like the idea, but who don’t fully grasp the issue at hand. This group usually makes up the majority of any movement, but you shouldn’t let yourself be fooled into thinking they represent it. It’s the core that matters, and usually their message gets through in the end.
April 27th, 2009, 3:29 am
kelebek said:
I moved from Turkey to the US when I was 13. It was mostly because my father wanted to open up a business in America, but also wearing the hijab in school was becoming very difficult. I explained to people that in if you lived in Turkey you will not be able to wear the hijab. Confused they would ask me to clarify “So you have to wear it, right?” “No, you have to take it off if you are in school.” I do like living in America (and now in Australia) where I can choose for myself what I will wear. And yes of course I am hot! Or if you are asking me in a snarky way “No I am not hot, I got built in Air Con.”
April 29th, 2009, 1:51 am
Imad said:
Love your work, Ms. Eltahawy. I can udnerstand where you are coming from, somewhat, even though i’m just a Muslim man. I lived in Pakistan and Indonesia ( i had lived in Nigeria as well, but i was but a wee baby, so don’t remember much
) where wearing the headscarf is not an issue.
I’m from Pakistan, and I can say that most women i see out in the streets there don’t wear the headscarf, and for those who do, no one is harassed. However, i had lived in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, which are relatively more liberal than those living on the western side of the country. I find the Paksitanis living in NWFP (right next to Afghanistan) and Baluchistan (bordering Iran) are more tribal, and strictly stick to tradition.
I had lived even longer in Indonesia, where once more the headscarf is not an issue. Roughly half of the women i have seen wears the headscarf, half don’t. I haven’t seen anyone wear the niqab in Indonesia though…
And finally, i’m living in Australia at the moment. I am realitvely close to the Muslim community here in Perth, and for me it’s ironic that roughly 9 out of 10 women in this community wear the headscarf when out in public. My own mother, who is the most devout of all of us in my family, doesn’t wear the headscarf except when meeting with Muslim sisters club.
Overall, i agree 100% that the “hijab issue” needs to be depoliticized by both sides of the spectrum.
April 29th, 2009, 11:13 pm
Joseph said:
I can not explain the hate that people feel toward women.
I can only live as a father of daughters and I am so proud of all that they have accomplished.
May 27th, 2009, 3:19 am
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