Tareq Shahwan – The Concordian

The debate surrounding the hijab should be seen as more than just conservative versus liberal

As the debate about the place of hijab rages in Western nations, Arab feminists and scholars are still rarely consulted or referenced when analyzing this important issue, especially in Western public spheres. As a highly political Arab in Canada, every single time I participate in a debate about the hijab, I feel that I’m sorted into one of the camps that dominate Western political discourse: liberal vs. conservative.

When I tirelessly try to convince the debaters that Arab intellectuals and feminists have dealt with the issue of the hijab from every standpoint possible, long before it started gaining momentum in the West, and that their intellectual endeavor was neither liberal nor conservative, the reaction I get is shock, and most commonly, disbelief.

The question is how can Western people believe that there are other theories, which can extend beyond the fruitless debate between “people should wear whatever they wish to” versus “the state and public spaces should be religion-neutral”? Meanwhile, the media is using these lines of thought to provide a Western framework for cultural translation of a non-Western issue.

Yes, I am writing this article because I refuse to be “Westernly” dichotomized, with all the preconceptions that are attached to each camp. The issue is deeper than this though, and it is very layered and nuanced. One can infer from this forced dichotomy that Arabic intellectuals are not sophisticated enough to empirically and scientifically analyze a social phenomena like this. Or, at least, analyze it to the level of complexity needed to relax the political anxiety that people in the West have. The focus on complexity is perhaps connected to the focus on academia as a source of intellectual authority in the West.

When I was able to get over the dispiriting part of this feeling of intellectual inferiority, I started looking for ways to further analyze this Western belief, and then professor and literary critic Edward Said came to my aid. His famous concept of Orientalism teaches us that Western colonialists planted the idea that the East is primitive and needs rescuing, but not in the traditional sense; they need to be rescued intellectually.

Therefore, Orientalism can explain why Western media rarely quote famous Arab feminists, such as Nawal El Saadawi, who adamantly argues against wearing the hijab and supports the French ban on religious garments. Nawal gives a nuanced and complex analysis of the idea of choice, and how religion, with all its pressures, can prevent Muslim women from taking an independent choice. Be it political, economic, spiritual, or even the societal and state pressures, which she faces on a daily basis in Egypt—she was imprisoned multiple times for being a radical feminist.

Nawal has been dubbed the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arabic/Islamic world due to the sheer amount of research and work that she has done on the topic of women’s rights. In spite of this, she among other Muslim/Arab feminists, will continue to be excluded at worst and marginalized at best from the Western political discourse. This will continue as long as the political climate and discourse does not go beyond the subtle Orientalist thought, which prevents Westerners from achieving a successful cultural translation. It is about time to start thinking outside the box of liberal vs. conservative. This is where change happens.

Graphic by @spooky_soda

Why you should think twice before making up your mind about the burkini

Images depicting police in French municipalities enforcing a ban on the burkini have flooded the mainstream news outlets and social media feeds across the world last month. The issue has been sensationalized by the media to the point where the French are now considered by some to be misogynistic, bigoted and illiberal. However, I think that most of the discussions surrounding the burkini have only scratched the mere surface of the issue.

Let’s start off with a fundamental normative idea: no one should force anyone else to wear anything they don’t want to. If we agree on this, then we should also agree to apply this concept consistently and equally to both sides of the moral equation.

As such, the French police have no right to tell women what to wear—whether it’s a law or not. On the other side, religious texts written from a male perspective also have no right to tell women what to wear or to criminalize their bodies. Encouraging women to cover up because men are unable to control their sexual desires is emphasized in Islamic texts.

For example, a verse from the Quran (24:31) says that women should conceal their entire bodies and should only reveal themselves to their husband or close family members, according to translations provided by clearquran.com.

These verses, among others, promote placing the blame on women who are the victims of sexual harassment and rape, rather than on men who are saturated with patriarchal values—’she should have just covered up.’ The issue of blaming women for their own sexual harassment does exist in the Middle East and South Asia as a result, and is a major factor in explaining why a significant number of Muslim women chose to wear the veil. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

“If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat?” said Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, a religious leader based out of Australia, in an excerpt quoted by The Guardian back in 2006. “The uncovered meat is the problem,” he added, further lamenting his point of view.

This cloud of fear that religious institutions have been creating for hundreds of years in Islamic countries is the antithesis of women’s empowerment and freedom of choice. If women wear the hijab, the niqab or even the burkini because they would otherwise face punishment, how can we view wearing these garments as a choice made freely, and not simply a response to coercion?

The liberal critique of the burkini ban ignores the religious and historical aspect of this issue. It doesn’t highlight the fact that the burkni by and large disempowers women, disabling them from taking full control of their bodies.

Those who are for the ban are seen as bigots opposed to immigration by mainstream media. This disallows healthy and panoramic discussions about these issues, and creates smokescreens to prevent people from thinking more deeply about the issue, which often prevents discussion about the issue’s root causes, whether it’s why France chooses to ban the burkini, or the historical and religious contexts of such garments.