Ladies As
Hooded Bandits
by Khalid Hasan
The
rumpus being created in the West by exhibitionist and deluded Muslim women,
whose conduct flies in the face of clear Qur’anic
injunctions and who confuse tribal customs with divine commandments is creating
even more difficulties for ordinary, God-fearing Muslims than they already were
struggling against. The utterly uncalled for insistence on donning the hijab and, of late, wearing the niqab, an attire
more suited to the profession of banditry than anything I can think of,
belittles Islam in whose good name it is being done.
No
sensible person can disagree with British politician Jack Straw who ended up
putting his head into a hive of very angry bees when he said that he found it hard
to communicate with a person whose face he could not see. Neither the hijab nor the niqab has anything to do with
Islam, as anyone who has taken the trouble to read the right texts and who is
not smitten by that arch priestess of ignorance Dr. Farhat
Hashmi and her ilk would know.
Dr.
Fazlur Rahman suggested
that all Qur’anic passages, revealed as they were at
a specific time in history and within certain general and particular
circumstances, should be given expression relative to those circumstances.
Another Muslim scholar, Dr. Ibrahim Syed, has written that those who claim that
Qur’anic verses are explicit about hijab, base that position on Surah Al-Ahzab
(33:59). The operative words in Arabic on which this interpretation is based
mean that women should ‘lower their garments’ or ‘draw their garments closer to
their bodies.’ Nowhere does the verse say that the face should be covered.
Actually, the verse makes no mention of the word ‘face’.
Hijab advocates often
quote Surah Al-Nur
(24:31) to back their position. According to Dr. Syed, “In
the pre-Islamic period, women used to wear a cloth called khimar on their necks that was
normally thrown towards the back, leaving the head and the chest exposed.
The reference in Al-Nur
apparently instructs that this piece of cloth, normally worn on the head and
neck, should be made to cover the bosom. So it is erroneous to conclude that
the Qur’an demands (of) Muslim women to cover their heads.” Another Islamic
scholar, Dr. Abou el Fadl,
says, “From the gross liberties taken in translating the (Qur’anic)
text, apparently the translators believe that God wishes women to be like
house-broken dogs – loyal, sweet and obedient. One can only ponder what type of
rotted and foul soul imagines that God wishes to imprison women in a sewer of
squalid male egos, and suffer because men cannot control their libidos. What an
ugly picture they have created of God’s compassion and mercy!”
A
Western scholar of Islam, Daphne Grace , writes that
the veiling of women is nowhere explicitly prescribed in the Qur’an. Another
scholar, Fadwa El Guindi,
has said that the original meaning of the Qur’anic
verse was to “cover the cleavage of the breasts.” What the Qur’an forbade was
the public flaunting of sexuality, with a parallel verse prescribing a modest
dress code for men as well. According to El Guindi,
the original use of the veil was to distinguish the status and identity of the
wives of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) “so that they may be recognized
and not molested.”(The Qur’an, 33:59). Fatima Mernissi,
an Arab scholar, has written that the boundary between forbidden space, which
is hidden by the hijab and permitted
space, became a key concept in the Islamic world, but “reducing or assimilating
this concept to a scrap of cloth that men have imposed on women to veil them
when they go out on the street is truly to impoverish this term, not to say
drain it of its meaning.”
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown,
the well-known London-based Muslim journalist, wrote in Time magazine on 16
October that it is “time to speak out against this objectionable garment and
face down the obscurantists who endlessly bait and intimidate the state by
making demands that violate its fundamental principles. That they have
brainwashed young women, born free, to seek self-subjugation breaks my heart.
Trained creatures often choose to stay in their cages even when released. I
don’t call that a choice. I would not propose that Muslim women should be
stopped from wearing what they choose as they walk down the street, although,
to be sure, there are practical problems with the niqab. I have seen Muslim women
who had been appallingly beaten and forced to wear it to keep their wounds
hidden. Veiled women cannot eat in restaurants, swim in the sea, or smile at
their babies in parks.”
The
British-Muslim journalist supports the ban imposed by France on the hijab in public schools, noting that
protests against the injunction soon died down and many Muslim French girls
were happily released from a heritage that has no place in the modern world. Belgium,
Denmark, and Singapore
have taken similar steps. Noting that Britain has been both more relaxed about
cultural differences and over-anxious about challenging unacceptable practices,
she points out that few Britons have realized that the hijab – now more widespread than ever – is, for Islamicist
puritans, “the first step on a path leading to the burqa, where even the eyes are
gauzed over.” She goes on to write, “I have interviewed young women who say
they feel so wanton wearing only a headscarf that they will adopt the niqab. Now even
6-year-olds are put into hijabs.” She
writes, “Western culture - it is true – is wildly sexualized and lacking in
restraint. But there are ways to avoid falling into that pit without
withdrawing into the darkness of a niqab. The robe is a physical manifestation of the
pernicious idea of women as carriers of original sin; it assumes that the sight
of a cheek or a lock of hair turns Muslim men into predators. The niqab rejects
human commonalities. The women who wear it want to observe fellow citizens, but
remain unseen, as if they were CCTV cameras.”
Alibhai-Brown writes that as a modern Muslim
woman, she fasts and prays, but refuses to submit to the hijab or to an “opaque, black shroud.” A Saudi Arabian woman lawyer
said to her, “The Qur’an does not ask us to bury ourselves. We must be modest.
These fools who are taking niqab will one day suffocate like I did, but they will not
be allowed to leave the coffin.”
Millions
of progressive Muslims want to halt this Islamicist
project to take us back to the Dark Ages, Alibhai-Brown
warns.
Islamism
is a negation of Islam and it must be resisted wherever one comes across it. It
is being carried to ridiculous limits, for example, in Iraq’s
Shia-controlled areas, where,
according to a report in The Washington Post, long hair is banned because it
makes men look feminine. Haircuts that are long on the sides and short on top
are forbidden because they are “Jewish” and Muslims are not allowed to “imitate
Jews.” There is “hair police” on the prowl, one of whom said that if someone is
judged to have an improper hairstyle, “we will take him to the barber and we’ll
ask the barber to cut his hair according to our regulations. If he refuses, we
would send for his father or elder brother and tell them, ‘Either
you take this measure or we’ll take the measure for you’.”
I
think Iqbal, being the seer he was, got it right: Ye Ummat khurafat mein kho
gayee (The body of the faithful got lost in
delusions).
Posted October
24, 2009. The original article was posted on Friday October 20th, 2006 at
1:42pm at http://www.khalidhasan.net/2006/10/20/ladies-as-hooded-bandits