a response to both Nomani/Arafa and their detractors

I’m writing the following while waiting for my flight, so expect typos, incoherence, etc. I’m happy to clarify things later on if necessary.

In what follows, I want to discuss some of the problems with Asra Nomani and Hala Arafa’s recent article as well as some problematic reactions and responses to it. Most basically, both Nomani/Arafa and their detractors are displaying and perpetuating a whole bunch of patriarchy in their attitudes towards Muslim women’s bodies and choices. One side says the hijab isn’t required so why wear it, being totally dismissive of the nuance in some women’s choice to wear it; another side says, “you don’t cover your head, you ‘so-called Muslim,’ and so you don’t get to have an opinion on the hijab! We wear it because this is our choice, because we want to respect our bodies, because we want to obey God’s command that we cover.” I think this response to Nomani/Arafa is deeply flawed (arrogant and patriarchal and righteous), as is this other response, coming mostly from men: “Uh… actually, the hijab is mandatory, and it is so per the consensus of the ulama for over 1400 years.” What happens here is that, while some hijabi women have told Nomani that she doesn’t get to opine on the hijab since she doesn’t cover her head herself, they totally ignore the fact that men are constantly talking about the hijab, in support of it, and those men do not wear a head-covering. Why do men get an opinion, then? (I know, I know – a lot of women have spoken critically of this, but I’m speaking of the men who have been talking about it in response to Nomani’s article and not a flinch from the hijabi women who don’t want non-hijabi women to speak.) Or is it that you can have an opinion so long as you say women are required to wear the hijab, because apparently, that’s the only legitimate face of solidarity?

So, I fully support problematizing popular claims–in general but especially when they pertain to women or have some sort of an impact on women’s lives, including the claim that the hijab is required or that its purpose is modesty and all (because early Muslim scholars’ opinions actually don’t see it this way – and remember that the hijab was not allowed to slave women while required of free women. That should make us pause for a second and wonder about modesty and piety, unless we decide that slave women don’t get to have access to the same level of piety and modesty that free women do); I also think that the claim that “we” wear the hijab to resist patriarchy, Islamophobia, capitalism, etc. is totally fair (so long as it’s not “we” but “I” or “some of us”), but then I’m tempted to ask … how do Muslim men show resistance to those same things? Note, then, the gendering of resistance. My point isn’t that resistance can look only certain ways; my point, instead, is that we need space to critique the different displays of resistance, of piety, of any and all things, really, when they carry serious implications—and one person’s telling us that “we wear the hijab to be modest” does have implications, as does the argument that “we wear the hijab to oppose imperialism.” But at the same time, I think that there’s an appropriate time and place for raising these discussions or probelmatizing popular ideas and practices.

The Problem with World Hijab Day

Apparently, February 1st is “World Hijab Day.” I don’t support the campaign for many reasons, although I feel it incumbent upon me to say that I fully respect hijabi women and the hijab (and I wear the hijab myself, too, whenever I feel like it); I recognize the struggles that Muslim women–not just hijabis but non-hijabis too–face and these struggles, and Islamophobia more generally, definitely need to be recognized more widely; I do not support and do everything to condemn the discrimination against people because of what they wear (or what they believe or how they identify themselves in term of their sexual orientation, etc.). But this campaign isn’t helping with anything. Let me explain briefly below; I’d go into details, but a few really nice articles have already articulated that.

The following two articles (“Everyone’s Favourite Dress-Up Day” and “All Hijabbed Out”) explain how I feel about the whole “World Hijab Day” campaign, too. But to add to them:

Hijab-policing on the internet: images about how to wear the hijab “correctly”

I’ve come across so many funny images/messages on the hijab that I figured I should start compiling them and share them on the blog. I hope you enjoy them at least as much as I do!

Source

DISCLAIMER: I am not against the hijab and I am not against any hijabis. In fact, I fully support the hijab as well as those who wear it. But I am against the objectification of the hijabi, as can be seen in too many of the images below; I’m against the sexualization of the woman (the human!) through the hijab; I’m against the many assumptions that are made about the Muslim female who does not cover her head, whether per her own volition or someone/something else’s–the hijab doesn’t define anyone; a person’s character does. Beliefs say nothing about us, and they mean nothing; it is our behavior, our personality, our character–everything that is “us” besides the piece of cloth that is on our head. After all, do most Muslims not agree that the hijab is more than just the head-covering? If that’s really true, then why the following images? Why the judgments against anyone who doesn’t wear the hijab? Why the comparison of the non-hijabi female to a lolly pop (wow – just wow) and that of the hijabi to a “pearl” (again, wow!)? Or the chicken metaphor (see below). And, dude! Men (or women) telling us “how” to wear the hijab or what’s hijab and what’s not? What the hellz? Who put YOU in charge, my dear “outwardly pious” brother (or sister) in Islam? And, by the way, to those patriarchal folks fighting for “men’s rights,” know that you’re actually insulting men by telling women to cover their head so as not to test men’s “sexual urges” & stop insulting women by objectifying them through the hijab. The human male is NOT a rapist or molester by default or by nature; he grows up as one, and our ideas that “women whose hair is covered are better and more self-respecting than those whose hair is not covered; the one with the head-covering on doesn’t want to be raped and doesn’t want negative attention, but the one without it OBVIOUSLY does” are crucial to their (men’s) growing up as rapists or potential rapists/molesters. These messages don’t help anyone but rapists.

 

It is tragic to realize that we live in a society that teaches women how NOT to get raped instead of teaching men NOT to rape. For more on this, see my post “The Hijab as a Solution to Rape?”