2 Sides of HIJAB: EXTREMISM AND RESTRICTION

Islam views Hijab as a voluntary act of faith. Neither should it be forced, nor should it be restricted.

The following article depicts two wrong ideas of how Hijab is viewed. Neither is the correct view. I start here, on my quest to give Islam back its voice, because as a Muslim Woman I cannot be silent about the injustices being waged against my fellow sisters by Muslim Countries and Non-Muslim Countries alike. Although I myself wear the Hijab, I strongly oppose anyone forcing this obligatory act on a Muslim woman, nor restricting her right to wear it.

French Not Only Offenders on Hijab
By Tarek Fatah

The proposed French law banning the hijab in that country’s
public school system has outraged Canada’s Muslim community
and many civil liberty activists. Considering that
France has been vocal in its support of the Muslim world in international
affairs, many Muslims are bewildered by President Jacques
Chirac’s ill-advised initiative.

Recently, anger against the French proposal brought about a
hundred Toronto Muslims to the streets. In freezing temperatures,
they stood outside the French consulate waving placards and raising
slogans to register their protest.

However, as I marched in solidarity with my fellow Muslims, I
couldn’t help but realise that our reaction to the French initiative
was not based on universal principles.

The French law may be foolish - if not outright racist - but our
outrage against it leaves the door open for others to accuse us of dou-ble
standards.

If Muslims feel governments have no business dictating what
their citizens should, or should not wear, then we need to apply this
principle to all governments, not just the French.

If we consider the French law against the hijab offensive, then
the Saudi and Iranian laws enforcing compulsory wearing of the
hijab should also be condemned because they take away a woman’s
right to choose. While the proposed French law would ban Muslim
women from wearing the hijab in school, the Saudi and Iranian laws
ban women from appearing in public without the hijab.

In the worst application of the Saudi law, 15 schoolgirls perished
in March, 2002, when they were not permitted to flee their burning
school in Mecca because they were not "wearing correct Islamic
dress."

Why then are we not questioning the hijab laws of Saudi Arabia
and Iran? Why is our anger directed against the French alone? Is it
because Saudi Arabia and Iran are Muslim countries?

I asked a number of people at Saturday’s demonstration whether
they were willing to stage a similar protest against Saudi Arabia and
Iran. While some agreed with my rationale, many more answered
my questions with empty stares or a flat refusal to even entertain
such a discussion.

Considering the fact that the situation of Muslim women in
Saudi Arabia far outweighs the problems facing them in France, the
inability of the young Muslim protesters to see the obvious parallels,
was disappointing.Mouna Naim, a respected journalist with the
French newspaper Le Monde, in a report from Saudi Arabia wrote
of a 13-year-old Saudi girl who asked, "Why was I born a girl? This
is a country of men, and I wish I was one."

The Le Monde correspondent wrote that while many Saudi
women voluntarily wear the head cover, many others "find the
wearing of the garment intolerable because they see it as embodying
the raft of restrictions they have to endure, which include the
requirement that the slightest patch of flesh must remain covered,
reducing women to formless, uniform shadows."

In the days leading up to the demonstration outside the French
consulate, there was considerable debate on the Internet on whether
the French and Saudi laws were flip sides of the same argument, that
is, state enforcement of citizen’s dress codes.

Judy Rebick, former head of the National Action Committee on
the Status of Women, and currently a professor at Ryerson, while
supporting the protest outside the French consulate, addressed the
concerns that demonstrating only against France without at the
same time criticizing Saudi Arabia would send the wrong message.

She wrote: "I have heard similar concerns expressed by women’s
groups from the Middle East. If we lived in France it would be a dif-ferent
story but since we are protesting the action of a foreign gov-ernment,
I think we should protest both sides of the problem.

"I think if we are going to protest against a state forcing women
not to wear the hijab we should also protest forcing women to wear
the hijab."

Rebick went on to say, "In France, it is racism and
Islamophobia. In Saudi Arabia, it is fundamentalism and sexism. I
think it is a good time to make the point that we are for freedom
from oppression everywhere."

Muslims will be well served if they took Rebick’s suggestion to
heart. Failure to apply the principle of universality, and refusal to
double-critique our positions, could seriously hurt our credibility.

When we Muslims demand that others respect our human
rights, we need to be courageous and honest enough to recognize the
oppression within our own community and speak out against it.