There is need for a different approach to thinking about the issue of hijab and female dress. Any campaign for the liberation of women in Muslim societies requires an intellectual enlightenment, and this enlightenment requires that a new approach be crystallised, one that goes beyond a reliance on literal texts, and instead maintains its focus on overall aims and core values.
BY RASHA AWAD
IN ANY SOCIETAL issue that is marked by continuous change and influence from the cultural and social environment, such as the issue of dress, we need to go back to the texts and evaluate their various interpretations if we wish to defeat the Salafi thinking that claims that there is one single ruling in this matter. This is defined as the ruling, but we must emphasize that on this matter there are several different human views, so different that they are in complete contradiction with each other as to what this legal ruling actually is.
On this basis we can discern a multiplicity of options, but aside from that we need – in addition to the jurisprudential dimension – to embrace new dimensions in discussing this issue, such as the historical dimension and the philosophical dimension. The Islamic tradition is replete with thinkers and philosophers who established rational currents for the understanding and interpretation of the faith. As one example among many we have the philosopher Ibn Rushd and his work: Faṣl al-Maqāl fī mā bayn al-Sharī‘a wal-Ḥukm min al-Ittiṣāl (‘The Decisive Treatise, determining the nature of the connection between Religion and Philosophy’).[1] One must constantly stress that the militant Salafī current is not the only trend in the Islamic heritage, and that there are rational trends that are more worthy of celebrating if our societies seek to progress. Based on that, a philosophical discussion of the subject of hijab and modes of dress should be an integral part of the campaign for female liberation.
This is because women’s rights in public life in many Muslim societies are being violated and sometimes even death sentences issued as these societies incarcerate women in the prison of the body. Under the influence of Arabic, Persian and Turkish cultures that have shoe-horned Islam into a narrow framework, Muslim women everywhere have become imbued with the idea that her body is the source of strife, corruption and all of the most perilous aspects threatening society. So many Muslim women are of the belief that the best service they can provide to religion and society is to hide their bodies in order to save humanity from that deadly sexual explosive!
Muslim women have become imbued with the idea that her body is the source of strife, corruption and all of the most perilous aspects threatening society
This idea fully occupies the subconscious of Muslim women: it is endemic in their subconscious mind, and this occupation is the reason why there is a significant number of young Muslim women raised in Europe and America who, in choosing the path of commitment to Islam, have not found any way to express the sincerity of their religious belief other than by wearing the niqab. The Islamic da‘wā groups that these girls have been trained by are traditionalist Salafī groups have introduced into their fears the concept that women are all ‘awra.[2] Even her voice is ‘awra ! She is ‘a Muslim’ inasmuch as she has mastered ways to cover up that ‘awra – that is, in covering herself. This mundane concept, one that is the result of human culture, custom and tradition, is presented to women as if it were the unalloyed word of Allah and that whoever rejects it or subjects it to any rational discussion deserves the wrath of Allah to fall upon him and to be cast into Hell !
Incidentally, the vast majority of non-religious Muslim women who wear ordinary modern costumes are not doing so out of some libertarian motivation, but are simply following their innate desire for beauty and elegance. But inside them they maintain a sense of guilt and religious shortfalling. So it is that many of them, motivated by this complex of guilt, will exaggeratedly defend the so-called hijab and even the niqab, despite their own lack of actual commitment to either of these. This means that the idea that a woman’s body is ‘awra is deeply rooted within them, with all its implications of women’s inferiority and doubt as to their religious commitment. No emancipatory campaign for women can ignore addressing this endemic complex.
Addressing the issue of dress in women’s liberation
In addressing this issue I do not mean to make some simplistic judgment that a condition of liberation must be the removal of the head covering. There are women who wear this cover by choice, and yet they still participate strenuously in the cause of women’s liberation in its intellectual sense and in its philosophical, social, political and cultural dimensions – thus fully qualifying them for prominence and leadership in this field. What I mean is the following:
First: One must understand fully the exaggeration of the so-called hijab in Muslim societies by Salafī groups and political Islam organisations to the extent that it almost turned this hijab into a sixth pillar of Islam, and made this sixth pillar more important than some of the five pillars. For example, in Saudi Arabia a family may not be outraged because a daughter dos not perform her prayers regularly, or pay zakāh, but explodes in rage if she goes out into the street with her face uncovered or without wearing the ‘abāya. Going out without a headscarf is a seismic event akin to leaving the fold of Islam! Does this exaggeration of the so-called hijab have anything to do with the essence of the faith?
The answer certainly is no, even if we address the subject in the context of traditional jurisprudence itself: none of the jurists, old or young, ancient or contemporary, have stated that the hijab is more obligatory than prayer or zakāh. The issue of women’s dress is a sub-issue in religion, but the male human-based cultures that are biased against women and pre-occupied by the idea of associating women to temptation, sedition and sexual promiscuity, have seized on this disputed sub-issue and turned it into a central issue. The hidden reason behind the exaggeration of the hijab issue and the systematic spreading of fear and terror concerning the seditious temptation posed by women and the idea of immorality is to impede women from entering the broader horizons of work outside with a sense of confidence and equality with men. This hinders their development and keeps them in a state of anxiety, weighed down with the heavy burden of their explosive-rigged bodies!
The hidden reason behind the exaggeration of the hijab issue is to impede women from entering work with a sense of confidence and equality
A woman cannot achieve liberation without realising that her body is but one of many elements of life, a manifestation of the greatness of the Creator as opposed to something shameful and shocking. The presence of this body within society is therefore something spontaneous and natural, and the issue of dress must therefore be given it proportionate importance. A woman showing her hair or wearing trousers or a short skirt should not be an issue of greater import than one of the existential threats to the Muslim nation! At a time when Muslim societies suffer from the rise of behaviours that are completely contrary to the morals of Islam – such as lying, hypocrisy, social injustice, political corruption and backwardness – as a result of which thousands of Muslim women die from hunger, from lack of access to medicine and from complications during pregnancy and childbirth from lack of health care, and millions of both women and men suffer from poverty and illiteracy, we do not need to fabricate “existential fears” raised by the appearance of a woman without a headscarf!
Would it not be better for adolescent girls and Muslim immigrant women in Europe and America to demonstrate their pride in their Islamic identity by making tangible contributions to combating underdevelopment in their home countries, rather than reducing Islam to cowering behind the niqab?
Second: we need to adopt an educational philosophy that establishes ethics on the basis of an awakened conscience, a chaste soul and a responsibility shared between men and women alike. We must find an answer to a specific question: does Islam take it as read that a Muslim male is so dominated by blind instinct that he is unable to put a stop to vices and taboos unless the woman is completely veiled from him by donning a niqab, which is effectively a funerary shroud imposed on the woman, burying her alive. This entirely deprives her of any natural social intercourse as a human being while her face is stuffed into a bag of black cloth that robs her of the ability to see clearly and breath comfortably. Most importantly it confiscates her right to having any social presence with a complete personality and identity?
Does Islam view women as a ‘sex object’ that should be hidden from men? Or as a ‘human being’ with her own needs, feelings, and instincts just as a man?
Does Islam view women as a ‘sex object’ that should be hidden from men? Or as a ‘human being’ with her own needs, feelings, and instincts just as a man? Should not society be cleansed of sexual deviation by humanising the behaviour of both men and women. The most important criterion for humanization is that a man or a woman should be in control of their instincts as opposed to their instincts controlling them. Or is society to be so cleansed by normalising the idea of men’s ‘animal’ nature and assuming that merely seeing a woman’s face justifies his instincts being aroused and forcibly driven towards the swamp of vice? Even so, despite this such a man is not remonstrated with or obligated to pay any fine as some punishment for his bestiality. Instead, women are made to pay this fine on his behalf by staying eternally inside these mobile shrouds and graves!
One reason for the continuing phenomenon of large numbers of women and girls, of different ages and from educational, cultural and economic levels, taking refuge in to those black tents and shrouds and mobile graves – in all countries of the world, America and European countries included – is the ‘spectre of religious terrorism’ that haunts the issue of the hijab in its most extreme and oppressive manifestation the niqab, with all of its ramparts of religious sanctity that ban it from rational evaluation.
Suggested Reading
Muslim women will not be freed from this imprisoning belief that the ideal image for women’s modesty is this moving shroud or grave, except through an intellectual project of enlightenment that investigates the historical, social and cultural roots of the so-called hijab as a pre-Islamic phenomenon. Thee issue needs to be addressed in a philosophical, intellectual, cultural and social depth that will systematically transcend the traditional methods that are being imposed by Salafī thought when all issues related to religion are discussed.
Finally, from my personal opinion, freedom from the prison of the body cannot be limited to freedom from the niqab and those black tents, but must also include freedom from all forms of vulgarity and an adherence to a reasonable level of ‘decency’, an all-round behaviour that embraces modesty in dress, but at the same time leaves the choice of clothes as a personal matter. For the standards of decency themselves change from one society to another, even in the case of a single religious belief.
[1] In this work Ibn Rushd argued that philosophy—which for him represented conclusions reached using reason and careful method—cannot contradict revelations in Islam since they are simply two different methods of reaching the Truth, and ‘truth cannot contradict truth’. When conclusions reached by philosophy appear to contradict the text of the Revelation, then according to Ibn Rushd, Revelation must be subjected to interpretation or allegorical understanding in order to remove the contradiction. (Ed.)
[2] The term ‘awra literally means ‘pudendum’, and thus ‘what has to be concealed’. In Urdu the word ‘awrat is the general term for ‘woman’. (Ed.)
Main image: Demonstration against the enforcement of the hijab in Iran, and the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, after her arrest for wearing her headscarf improperly and for wearing tight trousers.
Read Part One of this essay here
