Recently Swedish women have been wearing the hijab in public
in order to declare their “solidarity” with Muslim women. This action is to
declare their “sisterhood” with Muslim women who are facing increasing “discrimination”
in Swedish society. Hijab is also given a more politically neutral label, “head
scarf”, and an increasing number of retailers, such as H&M, are using this
opportunity to sell the hijab to the public. Further, social media has followed
this trend and it has created an important discussion about the hijab on
numerous Facebook pages and on twitter. In these discussion many arguments are
made in favour of wearing the hijab such as arguing that it is about “choice”
and “empowering women”. Wikipedia also spreads this view, stating “wear the
hijab allows (women) to retain their modesty, morals and freedom of choice.
They choose to cover because they believe it is liberating and allows them to
avoid harassment.” Meanwhile, the traditional left in the West has taken a cultural
relativist position and has actively avoided criticizing Islam or political
Islam.
The pseudo feminists that are the flag bearers of wearing
hijab in solidarity with Muslim women have a distorted, or at the least a
misunderstanding of what hijab or the “head scarf” really is. In a world where political
Islam was defeated and a head scarf was just a head scarf, then it would not
matter who wore it. But we are not living in that world today. Political Islam
is infamously misogynistic. The social signature of Islam is the hijab. Political
Islam has a penchant for eliminating women’s social and economic footprint from
society in order to ossify its patriarchal hegemony. The Hijab is one of the
many tools used by political Islam as a means to that end. Hijab, as the
Western pseudo feminists like to assume, is not politically neutral at all, it
is in fact heavily politically charged.
The hijab represents the social and political harm against
women. The act of wearing the hijab in the West, where the person has a choice
not to do so, is not a show of “sisterhood”
or “solidarity”: it is essentially the act of committing political and social
self-harm. Further, this is also a slap in the face to the millions of women
who are trapped in Islamic stricken countries, and in the West, that are facing
daily harassment by the state, by the community, and by their family. Also, the
act of wearing the hijab by a Western women, in a twisted way of “showing
solidarity”, also dangerously normalizes the hijab in the West and further
extends the reach of political Islam in the life of those who have fled Islam stricken
countries: it normalizes the social and economic oppression of women. The task for
all feminists and humanists everywhere is the opposite of this. The task is to
find ways to remove social and
economic pressures exerted by the state (such as Islamic regimes), community, and
families of Muslim women to wear hijab. The task is also to find safe spaces
for women to find support when they are being attacked and harassed by family
members and their larger communities to wear hijab.
There is a group that wishes to separate “hijab” from Islam
and political Islam. The argument is that the Quran says nothing about hijab
and it is in fact the governments that have imposed it. It is also interesting
how this group selectively forgets that there are in fact numerous misogynistic
quotes in the Quran, everything from controlling a women’s sexuality to how a
man should discipline his wife! At the crux of this, it is a gross
misunderstanding of patriarchy and political Islam. What it fails to understand
is that political Islam is a movement with the objective of gaining hegemonic political,
social and economic control of society. If Islam was a group of people with
their heads stuck in the sands of superstition in the privacy of their homes,
it would be different. Political Islam is a very active and dangerous movement
that is targeting fundamental human values, rights and freedoms. Hijab has a
central political role in this movement. The enslavement of women is the
signature of political Islam. It is with such tools that these political
movements exert their patriarchal domination and suppress a population!
WWW.CHIABARSEN.COM
By Chia Barsen
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