The joys of explaining personal choices: The hijab

This article was sparked by Laurence Rossignol, the French minister for women comparing women who wear the headscarf to ‘negroes’ in the US who supposedly ‘accepted’ slavery. Much of the criticism she seemed to face was with regards to her racist comment, which is ironic since she apparently founded an anti-racist coalition.

I’ve always personally steered away from conversations that directly focused on the hijab, or Islamic covering for women. Partly because I am a hijabi Muslim woman, and although you would think I’d be the best person to talk about this, I do not want it to be the issue that defines me.

But the main reason is that I find the idea that we are still making judgements on how women choose to dress as problematic when it comes from a place of personal choice.

I find the conversation bizarre. We spend a massive amount of time discussing what women wear.

Why?

If she doesn’t wear enough clothing, there’s certain judgements made about it, positively or negatively. It goes from a spectrum of ‘she’s sexually empowered’ to ‘She’s asking for it’.

The same is said for the hijab, you have your French women’s minister variety of people labelling us as ‘oppressed and submissive’ and this is then broken down into, ‘she was forced to cover’ or if she made the personal decision to cover then is must be because ‘she’s oppressed by men/religion/patriarchy (as if to some extent we all aren’t, but that’s a different story) and she doesn’t realise it’. The other spectrum is those who feel they have some kind of stake on morality by women covering more.

Whichever way you look at it, it’s patronising and demeaning to women, and people get seriously sensitive over the issue, even when it doesn’t effect them.

Now don’t get me wrong, if anyone is forced to do anything for religious or cultural reasons, then this is wrong. It doesn’t require me to say this but often it needs to be said, because those of us who are viewed as ‘moderates’ or ‘liberals’ (always love the labels) within Islam, have to place disclaimers on what we say. Just incase.

On a personal level, I’ve always grappled with the hijab, and for a long time I felt I didn’t fit in or couldn’t be in certain spaces because of it. This was and still is, significantly because of the lack of representation of Muslim hijabi women across all areas of life and the attacks on women who do cover in many countries.

I am not merely referring to physical acts of violence or general intolerance, although this is a massive concern for many women who are visibly Muslim, but also attacks on hijabi women through the highest institutions and laws.

The head covering for women, is often an issues which raises much controversy. In both France and even in the Muslim majority country of Turkey, the hijab is banned from state institutions because of the ‘secular’ identity it proposes to display.

Recently I visited Bosnia and Herzegovina, where a significant number of the population are Bosniak Muslims. In discussions, I heard from women that those working within judicial institutions could not wear the hijab as it was a religious symbol. It boggles the mind to assume that once you remove a religious symbol, that this somehow makes ones ideas and thoughts also secular.

There are numerous countries which have either set in place bans for the headscarf or have had debates to see the necessity of a ban, specifically in state institutions.

Refreshingly, Sweden’s former prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, stated that he was against the ban on veils because he felt that “legislation shouldn’t lead to certain women being isolated even more from Swedish society”.

Each of us have different reasons for dressing how we do. We need to move away from making women’s dress choices an issue of controversy and continued discussion, when we have way bigger issues in this world to deal with.

The current reality is that Muslim women have continually been targeted and more often than not, we are spoken about but not spoken to. This needs to change.