Head Scarves, Islam, and France (original) (raw)
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Reprinted at www.beautyworlds.com with permission January 2004. © Christian Science Monitor
French tussle over Muslim head scarf is positive push for women's rights
By Cheryl Benard
ARLINGTON, VA. - French President Jacques Chirac has been sharply criticized by Muslim clerics around the world for his recent call for a ban on the Islamic head scarf, or hijab , in French public schools. Mr. Chirac's move has been attacked as a curtailment of personal freedom and an assault on Islam.
But the proposed ban has also kicked loose a debate among Muslims everywhere. Indeed, a growing number of Muslims worldwide are coming forward to say the hijab is not a valid symbol either of freedom or Islam.
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"Neither the Koran, nor the hadith [the sayings of the prophet Muhammad] require women to wear a head scarf," says Gammal Banna, the Egyptian author of several works on the rights of Muslim women and brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the influential radical Islamic movement with offshoots worldwide. While telling Agence France-Presse that he did not support the French president's interference in the personal choice to wear a head scarf, Mr. Banna noted, "The head scarf is not an obligation, but derives from an erroneous reading of the Koran."
Nor is the hijab a good symbol for freedom. Throughout the Islamic world the hijab is often something girls and women wear because they're forced to - a symbol of restriction and intimidation, not freedom. Millions of women worldwide are daily threatened - and substantial numbers even assaulted, maimed, or killed - for refusing to wear whatever the local male authorities decide they should be wearing.
In countries such as Saudi Arabia, special religious patrols beat, insult, and arrest women who aren't covered according to their stringent specifications. In Pakistan, Kashmir, and Afghanistan, hundreds of women have been blinded or maimed when acid was thrown on their unveiled faces by male fanatics who considered them improperly dressed. In post-Taliban Afghanistan, women have been raped for daring to think they could now go without theburqa.
In March 2002, 15 Saudi girls ran for their lives when their school caught fire, without wasting precious time to first wrap themselves in their abayas (black robes that are mandatory female attire). Better dead than bare-headed, the religious police decided, and forced the girls back into the burning building and fiery deaths.
For most Muslim women, a head scarf is just a small part of oppressive attire that includes large, bulky garments that impair vision, impede movement, stifle breathing, and are unbearably hot in the summer. This, too, is un-Islamic. "God desires ease for you; he does not desire hardship for you," the Koran states.
As a "symbol," the hijab says that women's bodies are sinful, that women really shouldn't be out in public, that there can be no innocent interaction between women and men, and that the obligation for guaranteeing public morality rests on women alone.
Increasingly, Muslim women and their supporters - even in arch- conservative Saudi Arabia, where some of the most severe restrictions on women have the force of law - argue that extreme dress codes for women are not just un-Islamic, but anti- Islamic. The Koran supports their position. "There is no compulsion in religion," it states. A woman who wears the hijab out of fear acquires no merit, and the person exercising the compulsion is committing a sin.
When the reformist Afghan King Amanullah decided to liberate his country's women from their stifling burqas in the 1920s, he called together an assembly of the country's most conservative religious leaders, handed them a Koran, and asked them to point to the passage requiring women to veil. The religious leaders couldn't do it, because no such passage exists.
There are three sections in the Koran that deal with the issue of dress. The first instructs men and women to dress modestly. All people are to cover "that which is customarily concealed," in other words, what we think of as "private parts."
A second passage advises the prophet Muhammad to "enjoin the believing women to draw their covering over their bosom. That is more proper, so that they will be respected and not molested."
A third passage deals only with Muhammad's wives. Muhammad didn't like his younger wives to be chatted up by young men who didn't recognize them as members of his household. When fundamentalists argue that Muslim women should conceal themselves, remain secluded, and not interact freely with men, they refer to this passage, which was never intended to apply to average Muslim women: "Wives of the Prophet, you are not like other women. If you fear Allah, do not be careless in your speech, lest the lecherous should lust after you. Show discretion in what you say. Stay in your homes and do not display your beauty."
Fundamentalists contend that unveiled women inspire lewd thoughts in men, leading them into sin. Islam, however, holds that no one is responsible for the sins of another. The Koran even tells Muslims how to deal with temptation: "Tell the believing men to lower their gaze, and tell the believing women to lower their gaze."
Muhammad was no proponent of sexual segregation. He enjoyed the company of women, sought their advice, nominated them to significant posts in the community such as market supervisor and mosque custodian, and named several of them as authoritative experts to be consulted after his death on the interpretation of Islam. Men and women prayed together in his mosque and attended "co-ed" entertainment there. The prudish apartheid of today's fundamentalists cannot be laid at his feet.
Ironically, France's new secular dress code may end up taking Islamic society a step forward by sending Muslims back to their own religious texts for review. They'll then discover that Islamic orthodoxy never truly required the restrictions on women that conservatives and fundamentalists demand.
Cheryl Benard is author of 'The Government of God, Iran's Islamic Republic.' She is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.
By Cheryl Benard. Reused with permission from The Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com), January 5, 2024 © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. For permissions, contact copyright@csmonitor.com
Comment on this article:
"As you at Beauty Worlds probably already know, I am not a Muslim. However, I do recognize each individual's right to choose their own faith and their own style of dress so long as it does not harm anyone.
Ms. Benard's article smacks of presumption and lack of consideration for other people's personal privacy. It is as if she didn't even try to see it from anyone else's point if view.
Most literate Muslims are aware that neither the Quran nor Hadiths require scarves specifically. However, anyone who can crack open a history book can see that even in African and west Asian cultures where women bared their breasts, there is usually some sort of traditional hairstyle or head covering.
Head scarves are only partly a religious issue. They are mainly a cultural one. I fail to see how banning someone being whatever culture they come from, is promoting freedom. The westerners I've seen who've written on the subject *invariably* use the same justifications for forced unveiling that some companies in the past used for not allowing women of African descent to wear natural hairstyles and get employment or scholarships.
What makes this even worse is that it's the government deciding that people being their natural selves or doing something that is normal for their culture that doesn't harm anyone, removes their entitlement to a public education.
Like the anti traditional braiding laws in many states in the US, the letter of these laws covers everyone, but the primary targets of enforcement belong to a specific ethnic group.
Both hijab and dreadlocks would fall under this rule, but I would be willing to bet a considerable amount of money that nobody with dreadlocks would be barred from school based on this ban.
...and again, while the letter of this ban would cover more than Muslims, those defending it *invariably* focus on Muslims and the hijab.
Then to make it even more sick, they use the actions of some extremists to justify their own extremism...because some women are forced to wear headscarves, suddenly personal freedom doesn't matter anymore?
Huh?
I hate to break it to Ms. Benard, but neither this ban nor her and her fellows' supremacist attitudes are going to help the situation.
Immigrants from Islamic countries may assimilate all they like, but in the end, they will learn the same lessons that we African Americans have about cultural tradeoffs.
Straightening our hair, speaking proper English, and excelling in school has not made any bigot hate me less. It has also not made America or any other western country more friendly to my people. It was not until we reclaimed our culture that anyone else began to respect it.
We let go of our African-ness in the past out of fear and because of oppression. What we should have let go of was just the fear and oppression."
Niki Lasher a.k.a. Kthulah
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